BY TRAVERS TWISS, D.C.L.,

OF DOCTORS' COMMONS;

FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD;

AND COMMISSARY-GENERAL OF THE DIOCESE OF CANTERBURY.

"Quid ad me de Litteris Apostolicis ?" ait Rex: "Jura regni mei nolo amittere."

WILH. DE MALM.

LONDON:

LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS.

PREFACE.

THE title of the present work may have sufficiently prepared the reader for a discussion of a purely legal and political character. But lest the reader's attention should not have been arrested by the title-page, the Author thinks it right to state, that he has endeavoured, as far as the subject would admit, to keep clear of the religious question involved in the principles of the Reformation, as contrasted with those of the Papacy. Conscious that his own convictions on this head are beyond the reach of argument, he has refrained from assailing with argument the convictions of others. Besides, he feels that the subject is out of his province, and should be left to other pens, more competent than his own, to fathom its difficulties. Accordingly the reader must be prepared to find many questions examined exclusively from the point of view which they occupy as historical facts, and not in subordination to any general theory. The Author's object has been rather to supply premises from which others may reason, than to impose his own conclusions upon the judgment of the reader.

It is a singular coincidence, that almost immediately upon the bearer of the Papal Brief landing