IV minority and within age, not apt ne able to serve the cure of CHAP any such benefice; whereby the said ordinaries do keep and detain the fruits and profits of the same benefices in their A.D. 1532 own hands, and thereby accumulate to themselves right great and large sums of money and yearly profits to the most pernicious example of your said lay subjects-and so the cures and promotions given unto such infants be only employed to the enriching of the said ordinaries; and the poor silly souls of your people, which should be taught in the parishes given as aforesaid, for lack of good curates to perish without doctrine or any good teaching. number of “IX. Also, a great number of holydays now at this present Excessive time, with very small devotion, be solemnised and kept Holydays throughout this your Realm, upon the which many great, abominable, and execrable vices, idle and wanton sports, be used and exercised, which holydays, if it may stand with your Grace's pleasure, and specially such as fall in the harvest might, by your Majesty, with the advice of your most honourable council, prelates, and ordinaries, be made fewer in number; and those that shall be hereafter ordained to stand and continue, might and may be the more devoutly, religiously, and reverendly observed to the laud of Almighty God, and to the increase of your high honour and favour. cusations and impri "X. And furthermore the said spiritual ordinaries, their Unjust accommissaries and substitutes, sometimes for their own 'pleasure, sometimes by the sinister procurement of other sonments spiritual persons, use to make out process against divers of your said subjects, and thereby compel them to appear before themselves, to answer at a certain day and place to such articles as by them shall be, ex officio, then proposed; and that secretly and not in open places; and forthwith upon their appearance without any declaration made or showed, commit and send them to ward, sometimes for [half] a year, sometimes for a whole year or more before they may in any wise know either the cause of their imprisonment or the name of their accuser; and finally after their great costs and charges therein, when all is examined and nothing can be proved against them, but they clearly innocent for any fault or crime that can be laid unto them, they be again set at CHAP large without any recompence or amends in that behalf to be towards them adjudged. IV A. D. 1532 Unfair with heresy "XI. And also if percase upon the said process and appearance any party be upon the said matter, cause, or examination, brought forth and named, either as party or witness, and then upon the proof and trial thereof be not able to prove and verify the said accusation and testimony against the party accused, then the person so accused is for the more part without any remedy for his charges and wrongful vexation to be towards him adjudged and recovered. "XII. Also upon the examination of the said accusation, treatment if heresy be ordinarily laid unto the charge of the parties so of persons accused, then the said ordinaries or their ministers use to put charged to them such subtle interrogatories concerning the high mysteries of our faith, as are able quickly to trap a simple unlearned, or yet a well-witted layman without learning, and bring them by such sinister introductions soon to their own confusion. And further, if their chance any heresy to be by such subtle policy, by any person confessed in words, and yet never committed neither in thought nor deed, then put they, without further favour, the said person either to make his purgation, and so thereby to loose his honesty and credence for ever; or else as some simple silly soul [may do] the said person may stand precisely to the testimony of his own wellknown conscience, rather than confess his innocent truth in that behalf [to be other than he knows it to be], and so be utterly destroyed. And if it fortune the said party so accused to deny the said accusation, and to put his adversaries to prove the same as being untrue, forged and imagined against him, then for the most part such witnesses as are brought forth for the same, be they but two in number, never so sore diffamed, of little truth or credence, they shall be allowed and enabled, only by discretion of the said ordinaries, their commissaries or substitutes; and thereupon sufficient cause be found to proceed to judgment, to deliver the party so accused either to secular hands, after abjuration, without remedy; or afore if he submit himself, as best happeneth, he shall have to make his purgation and bear a faggot, to his extreme shame and undoing. IV "In consideration of all these things, most gracious CHAP Sovereign Lord, and forasmuch as there is at this present time, and by a few years past hath been outrageous violence A.D. 1532 on the one part and much default and lack of patient sufferance, charity, and good will on the other part; and consequently a marvellous disorder of the godly quiet, peace, and tranquillity in which this your Realm heretofore, ever hitherto, has been through your politic wisdom, most honourable fame, and catholic faith inviolably preserved; it may therefore, most benign Sovereign Lord, like your excellent The King goodness for the tender and universally indifferent zeal, besought to remedy benign love and favour which your Highness beareth towards these evils both the said parties, that the said articles (if they shall be by your most clear and perfect judgment, thought any instrument of the said disorders and factions), being deeply and weightily after your accustomed ways and manner, searched and considered; graciously to provide (all violence on both sides utterly and clearly set apart) some such necessary and behoveful remedies as may effectually reconcile and bring in perpetual unity, your said subjects, spiritual and temporal; and for the establishment thereof, to make and ordain on both sides such strait laws against transgressors and offenders as shall be too heavy, dangerous, and weighty for them, or any of them, to bear, suffer, and sustain. which he bliss "Whereunto your said Commons most humbly and By doing entirely beseech your Grace, as the only Head, Sovereign will merit Lord, and Protector of both the said parties, in whom and by eternal whom the only and sole redress, reformation, and remedy herein absolutely resteth [of your goodness to consent]. By occasion whereof all your Commons in their conscience surely account that, beside the marvellous fervent love that your Highness shall thereby engender in their hearts towards your Grace, ye shall do the most princely feat, and show the most honourable and charitable precedent and mirrour that ever did sovereign lord upon his subjects; and therewithal merit and deserve of our merciful God eternal bliss-whose goodness grant your Grace in goodly, princely, and honourable estate long to reign, prosper, and continue as the Sovereign Lord over all your said most humble and obedient servants." CHAP mons' ad When the Convocation of Canterbury met in the Chapter House of Westminster, on April 12, 1532, A.D. 1532 this memorial of the House of Commons (which had The Com- been placed in the hands of Archbishop Warham some time before, and had, doubtless, been talked to Convo- over by the Bishops) was handed down to the Prolocutor with a direction to the lower house to take it into immediate consideration, as the King required a reply as soon as possible. dress sent cation Analysis of the address It will be observed, by carefully analyzing the complaints here made respecting the bishops and their subordinates, that they may all be reduced to a few principal heads, notwithstanding the length to which the verbose document is spun out. 1. There is a great deal of discord among the King's subjects in regard to religion. 2. The Convocations make canons without the consent of the King and the laity, and these canons are not so published as that the laity may become acquainted with them. 3. There is much vexation, trouble, and expense connected with the bishops' courts, and especially too few proctors and too many fees. 4 The clergy take fees for "occasional duty," and some of them fill secular offices in the establishments of the bishops. 5. The bishops make simoniacal contracts in presenting to benefices, and fill too many with their relatives 6. There are too many holydays. Familiar as we Its charges are in these days with the reports of royal commisformidable sions on the army, the navy, and other national not very institutions, this address of the Commons-or "accusation of the clergy," as it has been called-does not seem more formidable than any hostile representation of supposed Church abuses might be made at the present day, or in any church throughout the world. IV A commission of subalterns reporting on the practice CHAP of promotion in the army could doubtless make out a case that would look very bad, until it was met by A.D. 1532 explanations from the War Office; and a commission of suitors would probably report very unfavourably respecting the fees taken by officers of the Court of Chancery. If such commissions were pledged, moreover, to foregone conclusions by pressure from above to which they were willing to yield, we should not attach much weight to their reports. tions an tion Convocation, however, felt it necessary to take the Accusareport before us into their deliberate consideration, swered by and it was answered clause by clause. Probably the Convoca bishops had already prepared the draft of an answer, and on this the reply of Convocation was founded. This reply was addressed to the King, and was agreed to in the upper house of Convocation on April 15th, in the lower on April 19th. It was presented to the King, who forwarded it to Speaker Audley with a significant notification that it was not to be accepted as satisfactory. "We think this answer," wrote the King, "will smally please you, for it seemeth to us very slender. You be a great sort of wise men; I doubt not you will look circumspectly on the matter, and we will be indifferent between you. And yet, the address of Convocation was a very In an adfair reply to the charges brought against the bishops Crown and clergy. It was quite as long as the address of the Commons, necessarily recapitulating a great deal of what they had said. Instead of further burdening these pages, its substance only, therefore, may be given, especially as its text does not offer any further illustration of the abuses alleged against the Church. dress to the |