foreign governments, which contributed not a little to deface our constitution in the sixteenth century, seems deliberately to have been introduced as part of the process in those dark and uncontrolled tribunals which investigated offences against the state.[57] A commission issued in 1557, authorising the persons named in it to enquire, by any means they could devise, into charges of heresy or other religious offences, and in some instances to punish the guilty, in others of a graver nature to remit them to their ordinaries, seems (as Burnet has well observed) to have been meant as a preliminary step to bringing in the inquisition. It was at least the germ of the high-commission court in the next reign.[58] One proclamation, in the last year of her inauspicious administration, may be deemed a flight of tyranny beyond her father's example; which, after denouncing the importation of books filled with heresy and treason from beyond sea, proceeds to declare that whoever should be found to have such books in his possession should be reputed and taken for a rebel, and executed according to martial law.[59] This had been provoked as well by a violent libel written at Geneva by Goodman, a refugee, exciting the people to dethrone the queen; as by the recent attempt of one Stafford, a descendant of the house of Buckingham, who, having landed with a small force at Scarborough, had vainly hoped that the general disaffection would enable him to overthrow her government.[60] _The House of Commons recovers part of its independent power in these two reigns._--Notwithstanding, however, this apparently uncontrolled career of power, it is certain that the children of Henry VIII. did not preserve his almost absolute dominion over parliament. I have only met with one instance in his reign where the Commons refused to pass a bill recommended by the Crown. This was in 1532; but so unquestionable were the legislative rights of parliament, that, although much displeased, even Henry was forced to yield.[61] We find several instances during the reign of Edward, and still more in that of Mary, where the Commons rejected bills sent down from the upper house; and though there was always a majority of peers for the government, yet the dissent of no small number is frequently recorded in the former reign. Thus the Commons not only threw out a bill creating several new treasons, and substituted one of a more moderate nature, with that memorable clause for two witnesses to be produced in open court, which I have already mentioned;[62] but rejected one attainting Tunstal Bishop of Durham for misprision of treason, and were hardly brought to grant a subsidy.[63] Their conduct in the two former instances, and probably in the third, must be attributed to the indignation that was generally felt at the usurped power of Northumberland, and the untimely fate of Somerset. Several cases of similar unwillingness to go along with court measures occurred under Mary.