Whether parliament may break appropriations

Stud. I think also that the king by parliament may break all appropriations that be made against any statute, or against the good order of the people, or against the commonwealth; and the cause is this: there can be no church appropriated, but that the patronage of the advowson thereof must be given before the appropriation to the abbot, or prior, or other, to whom the propriation shall be made, and to their successors, for if it be given but for term of life, the appropriation cannot stand in effect but for term of life. And because the advowson is a temporal inheritance, therefore it is under the power of the parliament to order it as it seeth cause, and to bring it again to be presentable as it was first: and in likewise if a man bring a writ of right of advowson against him that hath such an advowson appropried to his house, and recovereth the advowson, the appropriation is dissolved: for the appropriation can no longer continue than they have the patronage. And the parliament may leave the advowson to the house, as an advowson presentable if they see cause; or they may give it to the first giver, or otherwise dispose it, as the matter requireth. And under such manner all the vicarages that were unyed, annexed, or appropried from, the first year of king Richard II., unto the parliament holden in the fourth year of king Henry IV., were disapproved. And by the same statute of Henry IVth it is enacted, That all vicarages appropriated after the statute made in the fifteenth year of king Richard against the form of the statute, shall be disappropried, except the vicarage of Haddenham in the diocese of Ely, as in the said statute appeareth. But yet I suppose, that the parliament may not make an appropriation without spiritual assent; ne I mean not that it were good that all appropriation should be broken; but I have spoken this to show what authority the parliament hath if they would execute it; and if there be a reasonable consideration why it is done, then the disappropriation holdeth as well in conscience as in the law. And good it is, that the authority of parliament be known in this behalf to the intent that it may cause them the rather to observe such statutes as be already made of such appropriations, and to dispose some part of the fruits thereof among the poor parishioners, according to the statute of the 15 Rich. II. made in that point. And it were asked them; why they have not observed the said statute, they have none other excuse, but either to say that they knew not the statute, or else that the statute had no power to bind them to it. And I suppose verily that neither of those savings can be any reasonable excuse unto them in that behalf.