Note 840 — PART IV. From the Reformation to the present time. (continued 4)

From the preceding extracts it appears that the corporation affected or pretended to have surrendered their old charters voluntarily, or as their own free and spontaneous act and deed: hence they speak of having done it with one assent and content—freely surrendering—as the act and deed of the mayor and burgesses, &c. Whereas it was all the effect of constraint, or imperious and unavoidable necessity. The same was the case with the monks and friers at the reformation, previously to the dissolution of the monasteries: they all solemnly declared, in their instruments of surrender, that they acted freely and without compulsion, though the contrary was well known to have been invariably the fact. Thus it is very clear that the surrendering of the charters as well as of the convents was a scene of hypocrisy and falshood.