During the reign of Edward II. the clergy showed their unwillingness to attend parliament, and their decided preference for voting their grants in convocation. When, for example, they were summoned to the parliament in which the work of the Ordainers was published in 1311, they sent no proctors. Before the meeting in the autumn the king wrote to the archbishops, calling on them to urge the attendance of the clergy. Winchelsey objected to the writ, and the king issued another, promising that if it contained any cause of offence it should be remedied. Again, in 1314 Edward ordered the archbishops to summon the convocations of their provinces to treat about an aid. The clergy, however, declared that this was an infringement of the rights of the Church, and departed without further discussion. Before the next parliament, besides the regular writ with the "præmunientes" clause, he sent a special letter to the archbishops, urging them to press the attendance of the clergy; and this double summons was thenceforth sent regularly until 1340. Nevertheless in 1318 the clerical estate in parliament refused to make a grant without convocation. When the matter was referred to the convocation of Canterbury, the answer was returned that the grant must depend on the Pope's consent, and a messenger was sent to Avignon to obtain it. The position of the clerical estate in Parliament was peculiar, for it is certain that its consent was not necessary to legislation. At the same time, when, as in 1316, a petition of the clergy touching spiritual matters received the royal assent, it was with that assent accepted as a statute. In convocation the action of the clergy was perfectly free; they made what grant they would without lay interference, though they had no means of appropriating the supplies they voted. While they withdrew as far as possible from parliament, they did not do so altogether, and in critical times their attendance was specially insisted on, in order that the consent of parliament might be general. Even at the present day they are summoned to every parliament by the "præmunientes" clause, and it is by their own act, by their preference for taxing themselves in their own assembly, that they have lost the right of obeying the summons. Convocations were summoned by the archbishops for other purposes besides taxation, and the ordinary legislative business of the Church was carried on in them. When a convocation met for self-taxation, it did so in consequence of a royal request for money, though it was summoned, as on other occasions, by the archbishop, not by the king. As the king made a like request to the lay estates at the same time, it naturally came to pass that convocation and parliament met about the same date. Nevertheless it would be easy to give many instances which show that meetings of convocation for purposes of taxation were not necessarily concurrent with, nor in any way dependent upon, the parliamentary session, as they became at a later period.