{1544.} While the winter season restrained Henry from military operations, he summoned a new parliament, in which a law was passed, such as he was pleased to dictate, with regard to the succession of the crown. After declaring that the prince of Wales, or any of the king’s male issue, were first and immediate heirs to the crown, the parliament restored the two princesses, Mary and Elizabeth, to their right of succession. This seemed a reasonable piece of justice, and corrected what the king’s former violence had thrown into confusion; but it was impossible for Henry to do any thing, how laudable soever, without betraying, in some circumstance, his usual extravagance and caprice: though he opened the way for these two princesses to mount the throne, he would not allow the acts to be reversed which had declared them illegitimate; he made the parliament confer on him a power of still excluding them, if they refused to submit to any conditions which he should be pleased to impose; and he required them to enact, that, in default of his own issue, he might dispose of the crown as he pleased, by will or letters-patent. He did not probably foresee that, in proportion as he degraded the parliament, by rendering it the passive instrument of his variable and violent inclinations, he taught the people to regard all its acts as invalid, and thereby defeated even the purposes which he was so bent to attain. An act passed, declaring that the king’s usual style should be “king of England, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, and on earth the supreme head of the church of England and Ireland.” It seemed a palpable inconsistency to retain the title of defender of the faith, which the court of Rome had conferred on him for maintaining its cause against Luther; and yet subjoin his ecclesiastical supremacy, in opposition to the claims of that court. An act also passed for the remission of the debt which the king had lately contracted by a general loan levied upon the people. It will easily be believed, that after the former act of this kind, the loan was not entirely voluntary.[*] But there was a peculiar circumstance attending the present statute, which none but Henry would have thought of; namely, that those who had already gotten payment, either in whole or in part, should refund the money to the exchequer. The oaths which Henry imposed for the security of his ecclesiastical model, were not more reasonable than his other measures. All his subjects of any distinction had already been obliged to renounce the pope’s supremacy; but as the clauses to which they swore had not been deemed entirely satisfactory, another oath was imposed; and it was added, that all those who had taken the former oaths should be understood to have taken the new one;[**] a strange supposition to represent men as bound by an oath which they had never taken. * 35 Henry VII. c. 12. ** 35 Henry VII c. 1.