Note 148 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Strype, iii. 107. He reckons the emigrants at 800. Life of Cranmer, 314. Of these the most illustrious was the Duchess of Suffolk, first cousin of the queen. In the parliament of 1555, a bill sequestering the property of "the Duchess of Suffolk and others, contemptuously gone over the seas," was rejected by the Commons on the third reading. Journals, 6th December.
It must not be understood that all the aristocracy were supple hypocrites, though they did not expose themselves voluntarily to prosecution. Noailles tells us that the Earls of Oxford and Westmoreland, and Lord Willoughby, were censured by the council for religion; and it was thought that the former would lose his title (more probably his hereditary office of chamberlain), which would be conferred on the Earl of Pembroke, v. 319. Michele, the Venetian ambassador, in his Relazione del Stato d'Inghilterra, Lansdowne MSS. 840, does not speak favourably of the general affection towards popery. "The English in general," he says, "would turn Jews or Turks if their sovereign pleased; but the restoration of the abbey lands by the crown keeps alive a constant fear among those who possess them."—Fol. 176. This restitution of church lands in the hands of the Crown cost the queen £60,000 a year of revenue.