"But that the consideration of profit (says Dr. Heylin) did advance this work as much as any other, (if perchance not more), may be collected from an inquiry made two years after; in which (inquiry) it was to be interrogatedWhat jewels of gold or silver crosses, candlesticks, censers, chalices, copes, and other vestments, were then remaining in any of the cathedrals or parochial churches, or otherwise had been embezzled or taken away.'......' The leaving,' adds Dr. Heylin, of one chalice to every church, with a cloth or covering for the Communion-table, being thought sufficient. The taking down of altars by command, was followed by the substitution of a board called the Lord's Board, and subsequently of a table, by the determination of Bishop Ridley.'

The free chapel of St. Stephen, the chapel royal of the Court, with its curious cloister, built by John Chambers, the king's physician, were fitted up and employed for a House of Commons. The church and college of St. Martin's, near Aldersgate, were made a present by the boy king to the church of Westminster. Both were pulled down by those persons they had been given to, the materials sold by the Dean and Chapter, and a tavern built on the site of the east part of the premises.

Westminster Abbey, in its turn, says Heylin, was disposed of. Seventy of its manors in Gloucestershire, the Dean and Chapter were obliged to make a present of to Lord Thomas Seymour, in addition to his manor of Sudely, "humbly beseeching him to stand their good lord and patron, and to preserve him in fair esteem with the Lord Protector."

The nobility and gentry, following the rapacious example of the Government, seized on the revenues of the benefices to which by law they were only entrusted with the presentations. Bishop Latimer, in his published sermons, pp. 31, 71, 91, and 114, complains of the abuse.

The gentry of that time invaded the profits of the Church, leaving the title only to the incumbent......many benefices were let out in fee-farm, or given unto servants for keeping of hounds, hawks, and horses, and for making of gardens......The poor clergy being kept to some sorry pittance, were forced to put themselves in gentlemen's houses,

* Dr. Heylin, Ap. Historical Collections, p. 88.

and there to services, clerks of the kitchen, purveyors, and receivers.

The booty of the spoiled Church in the reign of Edward VI., when the bishoprics even ceased to be respected, and the Gilds, Fraternities, and Chantries, devoted to charitable and pious purposes were totally abolished, Dr. Heylin informs us, "did not prove so great as was expected."

Private persons embezzled the plundered property, and ornaments of gold and silver, and rich vestments and tapestry, "so that although some profit was heretofore raised to the king's exchequer, yet the greater part of the prey came to other hands.* Insomuch that many private persons' parlours were hung with altar cloths, their tables and beds covered with copes instead of carpets and coverlets, and many made carousing cups of the sacred chalice, as once Belshazzar celebrated his drunken feasts in the sanctified vessels of the temple. It was a sorry house not worth the naming which had not something of this furniture in it, though it were only a fair large cushion made of a cope or altar cloth to adorn their windows, and to make their chairs appear to have somewhat in them of a chair of

state.

"Yet how contemptible were those trappings in comparison of those vast sums of money which were made of jewels, plate, and cloth of tissue, either conveyed beyond the seas or sold at home, and good lands purchased with the money, nothing the more blessed to the posterity of them that bought them, for being purchased with the consecrated treasures of so many Churches."t

"As for the fruit, (says Dugdale,) that the people reaped from all the hopes built upon those specious pretensions of reform, it was very little; for subsidies from the clergy, and fifteenths of all laymen's goods were soon after exacted; and in Edward's time, the Commons were constrained to supply the king's wants by a new invention; to wit, taxes on sheep, clothes, goods, debts, &c., for three years, which grew so heavy, that the year following they prayed the king for the mitigation of it."

Somerset, the principal actor in this reign in the struggle with the old Church, was an ambitious, remorseless man ; avaricious and prodigal.

Historical Collections.

+ Ibid. p. 99.

In 1549 he was the means of bringing his own brother to the block, who had quarrelled with him on account of the public spoil; and in his turn Somerset was brought to the same end, in 1552, by the intrigues of a jealous rival, the most zealous promoter in his time of the destruction of altars and abolition of images, vestments, and church ornaments, Dudley of Northumberland, previously Earl of Warwick. This nobleman, in his turn, having promoted the Reformation by the spoliation of chantries, colleges, and bishoprics, and having made an attempt at the crown for his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, was brought to the block to which he had consigned his fellow labourer in the Reformation.

It is difficult, in the history of great crimes and their retributions, to avoid anticipating events.

At the end of the reign of Edward VI. the same state of things was found in existence, as at the conclusion of the former reign. The treasury was involved in debt, notwithstanding all the plunder of the churches, which was to have enriched the state and its ruler.

The anxiety of Somerset for the good of the people's souls and bodies; his denunciations of the religious houses he pillaged, as "nurseries for vice and luxury;" his complaints of the plundered friars as "cherishers of all evil vices, robberies, rebellious thefts, whoredoms, blasphemies, and idolatry," furnish evidence of the extraordinary extent to which the brazen impudence of unblushing rapacity and barefaced hypocrisy were carried in those times.

The official reports on monastic abuses of the foreign reformers the liberal statesmen of Spain and Portugal, in our own times, addressed to their respective sovereigns in justification of the seizure of the Church property of those countries-in respect to hypocrisy, cannot be compared with

those of our own reformers.

In 1553 the illfated Duke of Somerset, Cranmer, and Northumberland died.

The following summary affords a view of the chief Penal Acts of Edward's reign:

"It is provided by the 1 Ed. VI. c. 12. that all persons maintaining the supremacy of the pope, or denying that of the king, or his successors, shall, for the first offence, forfeit all their goods and chattels, and suffer imprisonment at the king's pleasure; for the second, shall forfeit the profit of

their lands and promotions, and be imprisoned for life; and for the third, shall be deemed guilty of high treason, the penalties of which are also incurred by those who, by writing or printing, offend against this statute......

"For the establishment of a conformity of religious opinions, a book of Common Prayer having been provided, it was ordered by the 2 and 3 Ed. VI. c. 1. that if any minister preach or speak in degradation of anything therein contained, or refuse to read this, or wilfully use any other manner of mass, openly or privately, he shall suffer for the first offence forfeiture to the king of the profit of one of his benefices, and imprisonment for six months; for the second, imprisonment for one year, and deprivation of all spiritual promotions; and for the third, imprisonment during life. If, however, the offender should have no spiritual promotions, he shall for the first offence be imprisoned for six months, and for the second for life. Those persons who deprave the said book, or cause any one to use any other form of prayer, or interrupt him in the use of this, forfeit for the first offence ten pounds, or not paying it in six weeks, shall have three months' imprisonment; for the second, twenty pounds, or not paying it within the same period, six months' imprisonment; and for the third, shall forfeit all their goods and chattels, and be imprisoned during life.

66

"By the 3 and 4 Ed. VI. c. 10, Missals, &c., in English or Latin, other than such as are set forth by the king's authority, are abolished for ever; and persons having them or any images, &c., taken from, or yet standing in any church or chapel, in their possession, who do not destroy, or cause them to be delivered to the bishop or his commissary, to be openly burned or destroyed, shall forfeit for the first offence twenty shillings, for the second four pounds, and for the third shall suffer imprisonment at the king's will......

"The 5 and 6 Ed. VI. c. 1, confirms a former act of Henry VIII., relative to conformity of religious opinions, and adds, that whoever is present at any other form of prayer than that directed to be used in the said statute, shall suffer imprisonment for the first offence for six months, for the second for one year, and for the third during life."*

*Brown's Penal Laws, pp. 51, 52.

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CHAPTER VI.

CHANGE OF RELIGION IN ENGLAND, AND CONSEQUENCES OF IT IN THE REIGN OF MARY. PERIOD FROM 1553 TO 1558.

MARY commenced her reign with prudence and moderation, and with generosity to the opponents of her rightful claims to the throne. Happy would it be for her memory, if she had continued in this wise and merciful course!

During her brother's reign, she had resisted all attempts to cause her to renounce her religious sentiments, and adopt those of the court. This fidelity to her religion passes for besotted bigotry. Her liberation of the bishops and clergy unjustly imprisoned in the late reign, is denounced as treason to the interests of the new true religion.

All that was evil in Mary's nature was derived from her brutal father; all that was good in it (and there was much more in it than Protestant historians choose to admit) she derived from her noble mother, Catharine of Arragon.

In a letter to the Protector, in 1549, Mary boldly vindicated the right of toleration for her religious opinions at a time when very great perils beset her. "I pray you, my lord," she said, "and the rest of the council, no more to disquiet and trouble me with matters touching my conscience, wherein I am at a full point, with God's help, whatsoever shall happen to me; intending, with His grace, to trouble you little with any worldly suits," &c.

But this letter only caused her renewed annoyance; the Lord Chancellor and Bishop Ridley were sent to remonstrate with her on her nonconformity to the new religion, and threaten her with the king's displeasure, to which she answered, that "her soul was God's; and touching her faith, as she would not change, she would not dissemble.' The messengers informed her the king intended not to constrain her faith, but to restrain the outward profession of it.

The princess, however, was constrained in her faith, and kept rather as a state prisoner, than in the enjoyment of