English Convocations, since the 25th of Henry VIII.--when an Act was passed depriving Archbishops of the right to call those assemblies at pleasure--came to be convoked exclusively by writs addressed to the Archbishops, who were authorized, under their seals, to summon for business the Clergy of their province. The Archbishop of Canterbury addressed his mandate to the Bishop of London, to be executed by him as his provincial Dean, and the Bishop of each diocese to whom the immediate execution of such a mandate belongs, received directions to make a proper return to his Grace or his Commissary--such return, when made, being entered in the Register of the Archiepiscopal See. But, as early as the reign of Edward I., there was introduced into the writ summoning a Bishop to Parliament a clause--called the _præmonentes_ or _præmunientes_ clause, from its beginning with that word--requiring him to give notice of such writ to the Prior and Chapter, and to the Archdeacon and Clergy, so as to cause the Prior and the Archdeacon, in their own persons, and the Chapter and Clergy by their Procurators, or proxies--one for the Chapter, and two for the Clergy--to be present with him at Westminster, there to attend to public affairs. After the Reformation, Deans were substituted for Priors; and, with that alteration, the writ continued to run in its ancient form.[327] The writ indicated exactly the same kind of representatives to be summoned as did the Archbishop’s mandate; and, upon this ground, the author of the _Letter_ insisted upon the right of the Lower Clergy to assemble for deliberation as being no less inalienable than the right of the House of Commons--the premonition, or warning, to be delivered to the Clergy being, as he says, “an argument of invincible strength to establish the necessity of Convocations meeting as often as Parliaments.” [Sidenote: CONVOCATION.] The author of this famous pamphlet maintained that Convocation had the power of determining its own matters of debate; but in the maintenance of this position, he had to explain away the sense of the words employed in the writ of summons, _super præmissis, et aliis quæ sibi clarius exponentur ex parte Domini Regis_--words which limit Convocational discussions to topics proposed by Royal authority.[328] [Sidenote: 1697.]