The current volume brings together contributions from two separate editors. The first is a collection of texts edited by Peter Clarke that evidence Cardinal Thomas Wolsey's legatine powers to grant dispensations and other papal graces and his exercise of these powers during the 1520s in Henry VIII's realm. The second is a text edited by Michael Questier. It takes the form of glosses on and suggested readings of the Elizabethan statute law which imposed treason penalties on Catholic clergy who exercised their office in reconciling to Rome (i.e. absolving from schism and heresy) and on those who availed themselves of this sacramental power. The rationale for linking these contributions in a single volume is threefold. First, both generally concern Catholicism in Tudor England, especially the authority of Catholic clergy there both before and after the break with Rome. Secondly and more specifically, they regard the role of these clergy as agents of papal authority in Tudor England. Wolsey was appointed as a papal legate in 1518 and obtained legatine powers from successive popes on a scale unparalleled in pre-Reformation England, notably to grant dispensations, and he exercised these dispensing powers there extensively; he was thus the papal agent par excellence in Tudor England on the eve of the Reformation. The Elizabethan ‘tolerationist’ text, by contrast, seeks to deny that Catholic clergy necessarily functioned as agents of papal authority. They were not, therefore, all without exception traitors to the queen, even though one literal reading of the statute book might give the impression that this was what the State had meant. Instead, so this manuscript claimed, the statutes themselves could be read in such a way as to imply that the legislators themselves accepted that the Catholic clergy's priestly functions did not depend exclusively on papal supremacy (unlike Wolsey's legatine status) or even a malign anti-popish understanding of the papacy as a legal and ecclesiastical entity. Therefore the exercise of their faculties could not automatically be interpreted as treasonable. Coincidentally Wolsey's activity as a papal agent led to him being attainted him with treason, and although the charge did not relate to his dispensing powers, four years after Wolsey's fall Henry VIII forbade his subjects to petition Rome or its agents for the kinds of graces Wolsey had issued. He established the Faculty Office to issue such graces instead, and its authority depended on royal, not papal, supremacy. Both contributions, therefore, concern the relationship between Catholic clergy and supreme authority in the English Church, wherever this was deemed to lie. Thirdly, both contributions illuminate the limits of the law and flexibility in interpreting and applying it. Wolsey's graces in effect limited the operation of canon law: his dispensations suspended it in specific instances, notably regarding marriage and ordination; and he also granted licences permitting activity that it normally forbade, such as clergy not residing in their benefices. The ‘tolerationist’ text implies, although with arguments which at times seem rather specious, that the Elizabethan State was, even in its more draconian utterances, to some extent drawing in its horns. Both contributions, therefore, concern apparently binding law which might be relaxed in Tudor England with regard to Catholic clergy (as well as laity in the case of Wolsey's papal graces).

Cardinal Wolsey, archbishop of York and Henry VIII's chancellor, was appointed as papal legate a latere by Pope Leo X on 17 May 1518. Wolsey was to exercise legatine powers in the English realm until his fall from grace in October 1529. As the pope's representative in Henry VIII's realm he was to wield almost unprecedented authority over the English Church, including the power to conduct visitations of religious houses, convene legatine councils and intervene extensively in the jurisdiction of bishops. This activity is well known to historians, but a neglected aspect of his legatine authority is his power to grant dispensations. The aim of the present edition is to assemble documents evidencing Wolsey's dispensing powers and his exercise of them.

This letter is compared in the notes with Leo's letter to Wolsey of 1 April 1521 printed by Rymer in Foedera. . ., VI. 193–194 (XIII. 739–742), which it replicates in parts, especially before n. 40, and is here designated R.

[In an early 16th-c. humanist hand; centred heading:] Clemens PP. vii / Dilecti fili &c. [salutem et apostolicam benedictionem]. Magnus ille / pietatis respectus, quem in christi-/anorum gregem cure sollicitudinique / nostre concreditum iam olim a / suscepto primum munere pastorali, / quo dei beneficio fungimur, in / terris animo impresum retinemus, / illas nobis cogitaciones etiam / in mediis malorum fluctibus, quibus / ingrato nimis et impio scelere / quorundam contumeliose iactati / ad miserum captivitatis scopulum / allidimur, et gravissimo naufragio [fol. 232v] laboramus, suggerere non desinit / et inculcare, ut congrue nihilominus / orbis tutele prospicere et precavere / itaque providere studeamus, ut / durissimi casus sevicia qui nos / patrem invasit a filiis quoad / fieri potest longissime arceatur, / nec sublato quotidianarum necessitatum / salubri remedio communem nobiscum / senciant captivitatem.

[1] Letter of Cardinal Wolsey as legate a latere of Leo X to Henry VIII and his realm dispensing Thomas Stafford, brother of the Hospital of St John the Baptist, OSA, Northampton, Lincoln dioc., under a papal faculty, to receive and retain a benefice with cure of souls as if a secular clerk. Dated at our residence near Westminster, 12 August 1521. Reg. Longland, fol. 70v.

The Elizabethan settlement of religion of 1559 required that the queen's subjects, whatever their disposition in religion, should conform to specific statute-based aspects of that settlement. The consensus among scholars nowadays seems to be that the 1559 ecclesiastical legislation was relatively limited in its scope although the Elizabethan acts of supremacy and uniformity served as the groundwork for much of the subsequent, and more wide-ranging and coercive, law relating to the established Church.

The question ordreth, by what is ment by the sea of Rome, and howe the subjectes of this land are bound by the lawes of the land to beleve one holy Catholyke and apostolyke Churche, which is to be represented by some cleregy, which Church or cleregy may make priestes withowt daunger of the lawe; and whether Clemens 8o be only pope, or only bischop of Rome, or both pope and bischop of Rome; that having diverse dignities, he hath different aucthorities; of the difference betwene episcopus, papa with pontifex; the difference betwene jus and lex; and by comparing other statutes with the statute in anno 27 of hyr majestie cap 2o, yt is to be taken particulerly and not generally; and howe the woordes absolution, reconciliation and persuading to the Romishe religion are to be understoode in some sorte treason, in other sorte not treason. [p. 506]