chapter 11._

"The great Statute of Provisors, passed in 1351, was a very solemn expression of the National determination not to give way to the pope's usurpation of patronage. ... All persons procuring or accepting papal promotions were to be arrested. ... In 1352 the purchasers of Provisions were declared outlaws; in 1365 another act repeated the prohibitions and penalties; and in 1390 the parliament of Richard II. rehearsed and confirmed the statute. By this act, forfeiture and banishment were decreed against future transgressors." {812} The Statute of Præmunire as enacted finally in 1393, provided that "all persons procuring in the court of Rome or elsewhere such translations, processes, sentences of excommunication, bulls, instruments or other things which touch the king, his crown, regality or realm, should suffer the penalties of præmunire"--which included imprisonment and forfeiture of goods. "The name præmunire which marks this form of legislation is taken from the opening word of the writ by which the sheriff is charged to summon the delinquent."

_W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 19, section 715-716._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1307. Accession of King Edward II.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1310-1311. The Ordainers.

"At the parliament which met in March 1310 [reign of Edward II.] a new scheme of reform was promulgated, which was framed on the model of that of 1258 and the Provisions of Oxford. It was determined that the task of regulating the affairs of the realm and of the king's household should be committed to an elected body of twenty-one members, or Ordainers, the chief of whom was Archbishop Winchelsey. ... The Ordainers were empowered to remain in office until Michaelmas 1311, and to make ordinances for the good of the realm, agreeable to the tenour of the king's coronation oath. The whole administration of the kingdom thus passed into their hands. ... The Ordainers immediately on their appointment issued six articles directing the observance of the charters, the careful collection of the customs, and the arrest of the foreign merchants; but the great body of the ordinances was reserved for the parliament which met in August 1311. The famous document or statute known as the Ordinances of 1311 contained forty-one clauses, all aimed at existing abuses."

_W. Stubbs, The Early Plantagenets,