Note 1159 — XXVI. THE ANGLICAN CHURCH.

As published in the Harleian Miscellany, the Beggars’ Petition bears the date of 1538, but internal evidence would assign it to a time anterior to the suppression of the monasteries, and Burnet attributes it to the period under consideration, saying that it was written by Simon Fish, of Gray’s Inn, that it took mightily with the public, and that when it was handed to the king by Ann Boleyn, “he lik’d it well, and would not suffer anything to be done to the author” (Hist. Reform. I. 160). Froude, indeed, assigns it to the date of 1528, and states that Wolsey issued a proclamation against it, and further, that Simon Fish, the author, died in 1528 (Hist. Engl. Ch. VI.), while Strype (Eccles. Memorials1. 165) includes it in a list of books prohibited by Cuthbert, Bishop of London, in 1526. In the edition of 1546, the date of 1524 is attributed to it.

The tone of that which was thus equally agreeable to the court and to the city, may be judged from the following extracts, which are by no means the plainest spoken that might be selected.

“§ 13. Yea, and what do they more? Truly, nothing but apply themselves by all the sleights they may to have to do with every man’s wife, every man’s daughter, and every man’s maid; that cuckoldry should reign over all among your subjects; that no man should know his own child; that their bastards might inherit the possessions of every man, to put the right-begotten children clean beside their inheritance, in subversion of all estates and godly order.

Ҥ 16. Who is she that will set her hands to work to get three-pence a day, and may have at least twenty-pence a day to sleep an hour with a friar, a monk, or a priest? Who is he that would labour for a groat a day, and may have at least twelve-pence a day to be a bawd to a priest, a monk, or a friar?

“§ 31. Wherefore, if your grace will set their sturdy loobies abroad in the world, to get them wives of their own, to get their living with their labour, in the sweat of their faces, according to the commandment of God, Gen. iii., to give other idle people, by their example, occasion to go to labour; tye these holy, idle thieves to the carts to be whipped naked about every market-town, till they will fall to labour, that they may, by their importunate begging, not take away the alms that the good Christian people would give unto us sore, impotent, miserable people your bedemen.”