Note 1225 — Chapter IX · THE PROTESTANT CONCEPTION OF MARRIAGE

Ibid., 166. See Tyndale, Answer to More, 29 n. 4: "More saith in his Conf. (p. ccliiii), 'Syth the marriage (of a priest) is no marriage, it is but whoredom itself. And I am sure also that it defileth the priest more than double and treble whoredom.'" Tyndale accuses the pope of opposing God's law in denying marriage to priests and by dispensations licensing concubinage for money, "as through Dutchland every priest, paying a gildren unto the archdeacon, shall freely and quietly have his whore, ... as they do in Wales, in Ireland, Scotland, France, and Spain;" and in "England, thereto, they be not few which have" such licenses. When the parishes go to law to make them put away their concubines, "the bishop's officers mock them, poll them, and make them spend their thrifts and the priests keep their whores still."—Ibid., 40, 41 n. 4, and the documents there quoted. Cf. Coverdale, Remains, 484; Tyndale, Doc. Treatise, 232; Hutchinson, Works, 202; and especially Jewell's controversy with Harding in "Defence of the Apology," Works, IV, 629 ff., 640 ff. On the prevalence of concubinage in England during the Middle Ages see Stubbs, Const. Hist., III, 372; Makower, Const. Hist. Eng. Church, 217-20, notes, who declares that from the close of the twelfth century onward a priest was punished less severely for fornication than for marrying. "Loss of office is the penalty only for a breach of the prohibition to marry," not for fornication, unless very notorious: op. cit., 217. Compare Johnson, Canons, II, 26, 33, 40, 80, 81, 114, 132; and 2 and 3 Ed. VI.: Gee and Hardy, Documents, 367, for complaints of this evil. See the literature on the evils of celibacy cited in chap. viii.