BILLS PASSED IN THIS SESSION.

Another bill being prepared in the house of lords, enjoining the subjects to wear the woollen manufacture at certain seasons of the year, a petition was presented against it by the silk-weavers of London and Canterbury, assembled in a tumultuous manner at Westminster. The lords refused their petition, because this was an unusual manner of application. They were persuaded to return to their respective places of abode; precautions were taken against a second riot; and the bill was unanimously rejected in the upper house. This parliament passed an act, vesting in the two universities the presentations belonging to papists: those of the southern counties being given to Oxford; and those of the northern to Cambridge, on certain specified conditions, Courts of conscience were erected at Bristol, Gloucester, and Newcastle; and that of the marches of Wales was abolished as an intolerable oppression. The protestant clergymen, who had been forced to leave their benefices in Ireland, were rendered capable of holding any living in England, without forfeiting their title to their former preferment, with the proviso that they should resign their English benefices when restored to ‘those they had been obliged to relinquish. The statute of Henry IV. against multiplying gold and silver was now repealed; the subjects were allowed to melt and refine metals and ores, and extract gold and silver from them, on condition that it should be brought to the Mint, and converted into money, the owners receiving its full value in current coin. These, and several other bills of smaller importance being passed, the two houses adjourned to the twentieth clay of September, and afterwards to the nineteenth day of October.