Note 132 — Chapter II

Strype, Burnet, Collier, passim; Harmer's Specimens, 100. Sir Philip Hobby, our minister in Germany, writes to the Protector in 1548, that the foreign protestants thought our bishops too rich, and advises him to reduce them to a competent living; he particularly recommends his taking away all the prebends in England. Strype, 88. These counsels, and the acts which they prompted, disgust us, from the spirit of rapacity they breathe. Yet it might be urged with some force that the enormous wealth of the superior ecclesiastics had been the main cause of those corruptions which it was sought to cast away, and that most of the dignitaries were very averse to the new religion. Even Cranmer had written some years before to Cromwell, deprecating the establishment of any prebends out of the conventual estates, and speaking of the collegiate clergy as an idle, ignorant, and gormandising race, who might, without any harm, be extinguished along with the regulars. Burnet, iii. 141. But the gross selfishness of the great men in Edward's reign justly made him anxious to save what he could for a church that seemed on the brink of absolute ruin. Collier mentions a characteristic circumstance. So great a quantity of church plate had been stolen, that a commission was appointed to enquire into the facts, and compel its restitution. Instead of this, the commissioners found more left than they thought sufficient, and seized the greater part to the king's use.