_L._ This crime is not unlike to that for which a man is outlawed, when he will not come in and submit himself to the law; saving that in outlawries there is a long process to precede it, and he that is outlawed is put out of the protection of the law. But for the offence against the statute of provisors (which is called _præmunire facias_, from the words in the original writ), if the offender submit not himself to the law within the space of two months after notice, he is presently an outlaw. And this punishment, if not capital, is equivalent to capital. For he lives secretly at the mercy of those that know where he is, and cannot, without the like peril to themselves, but discover him. And it has been much disputed, before the time of Queen Elizabeth, whether he might not be lawfully killed by any man that would, as one might kill a wolf. It is like the punishment amongst the old Romans, of being barred the use of fire and water; and like the great excommunication in the papacy, when a man might not eat nor drink with the offender without incurring the like penalty. _P._ Certainly the offence for which this punishment was first ordained was some abominable crime, or extraordinary mischief. _L._ So it was. For the Pope, you know, from long before the Conquest, encroached every day upon the power temporal. Whatsoever could be made to seem to be _in ordine ad spiritualia_, was in every commonwealth claimed and haled to the jurisdiction of the Pope; and for that end, in every country he had his court ecclesiastical, and there was scarce any cause temporal which he could not, by one shift or other, hook into his jurisdiction, in such sort as to have it tried in his own courts at Rome, or in France, or in England itself. By which means the King’s laws were not regarded, judgments given in the King’s courts were avoided, and presentations to bishoprics, abbeys, and other benefices, founded and endowed by the Kings and nobility of England, were bestowed by the Pope upon strangers, or such as with money in their purses could travel to Rome to provide themselves of such benefices. And suitably hereunto, when there was a question about a tithe, or a will, though the point were merely temporal, yet the Pope’s court here would fetch them in, or else one of the parties would appeal to Rome. Against these injuries of the Roman Church, and to maintain the right and dignity of the Crown of England, Edward III made a statute concerning provisors, that is, such as provide themselves with benefices here from Rome. For in the twenty-fifth year of his reign he ordained, in a full Parliament, that the right of election of bishops, and right of advowsons and presentations, belonged to himself, and to the nobility that were the founders of such bishoprics, abbeys, and other benefices. And he enacted further, that if any clerk which he or any of his subjects should present, should be disturbed by any such provisor, that such provisor or