208.
**** Burnet, vol.i.

Collect.No.41.Strype, vol.i.

p.
144.
Since the second of Henry VII., no less than one hundred and sixty thousand pounds had been transmitted to Rome on account of this claim; which the parliament, therefore, reduced to five per cent.

on all the episcopal benefices.

The better to keep the pope in awe, the king was intrusted with a power of regulating these payments, and of confirming or infringing this act at his pleasure; and it was voted, that any censures which should be passed by the court of Rome on account of that law, should be entirely disregarded, and that mass should be said, and the sacraments administered, as if no such censures had been issued.
This session, the commons preferred to the king a long complaint against the abuses and oppressions of the ecclesiastical courts; and they were proceeding to enact laws for remedying them, when a difference arose, which put an end to the session before the parliament had finished all their business.