Meanwhile the English parliament continued to check the clergy and the court of Rome, by more sober and more legal expedients. They enacted anew the statute of “provisors,” and affixed higher penalties to the transgression of it, which, in some instances, was even made capital.[*] The court of Rome had fallen upon a new device, which increased their authority over the prelates: the pope, who found that the expedient of arbitrarily depriving them was violent, and liable to opposition, attained the same end by transferring such of them as were obnoxious to poorer sees, and even to nominal sees, “in partibus infidelium.” It was thus that the archbishop of York, and the bishops of Durham and Chichester, the king’s ministers, had been treated after the prevalence of Glocester’s faction: the bishop of Carlisle met with the same fate after the accession of Henry IV. For the pope always joined with the prevailing powers, when they did not thwart his pretensions. The parliament, in the reign of Richard, enacted a law against this abuse: and the king made a general remonstrance to the court of Rome against all those usurpations, which he calls “horrible excesses” of that court.[**] It was usual for the church, that they might elude the mortmain act, to make their votaries leave lands in trust to certain persons, under whose name the clergy enjoyed the benefit of the bequest: the parliament also stopped the progress of this abuse.[***] In the seventeenth of the king, the commons prayed, “that remedy might be had against such religious persons as cause their villains to marry free women inheritable, whereby the estate comes to those religious hands by collusion.” [****] This was a new device of the clergy. * 13 Richard II. cap. 3. 16 Richard II. cap. 4. ** Rymer, vol. vii. p. 672. **** Knyghton, p. 27, 38. Cotton, p. 355. **** Cotton, p. 355.