It is certain, that when the people saw the legislature so attentive to repress the growing accumulations of the hierarchy, there might be grounds for designing men to disturb both them and their devotees in such possessions, which they could discover to have been obtained without all the forms which the foregoing restrictions required; it is not unlikely, these informations increased so fast as to alarm, and, perhaps, so successfully as to abridge, the monasteries of some of their newly acquired temporalties; wherefore they seem to have procured an act which indemnified and released them on an impeachment, if they could produce the royal charter of 18 Edw. 3. sta. licence, the inquest on the writ of Ad quod damnum, or 3. c. 3. fine; and if they could not sufficiently shew that they entered by due process, after such licence granted, then "that they should be well received to make convenient. fine for the same."

The next invention to elude all these restrictions was,

15 R. 2 c. 5.

to procure persons to take the lands in their own names, 3 Hume, 56. and then declare the same to be for the only use of certain monasteries, gilds, or fraternities; and also to purchase and dedicate large tracts of land adjoining to churches, as churchyards. An act to subvert these pretended uses (which were the origin of the modern declarations of trust) was accordingly passed in the reign of Richard II. which amortized all such possessions, and rendered them forfeitable; and declared all cities, boroughs, towns, guilds, and fraternities, as being perpetual, under the same disabilities of mortmain as religious houses.

It was the custom, at this period of our history, for the sheriffs of every county to hold congregational courts twice a year, for the decision of causes ecclesiastical, criminal, and civil, in which the bishops also presided. From what has already been related, it is easy to conceive

4 Inst. c. 83,

p. 259.

Sharp's Accient Tithings,

count of the an

p. 69, 70.

2 Rich. 3.

to what encroachments episcopal authority had gradually aspired and arisen at that time; but it did not stop here; for in order to attain a right of judging alone in all matters ecclesiastical, according to causes and decretals unknown to the people, the clergy set up a fictitious charter, said to have been granted them by William the Conqueror, but never known till then, which was three hundred years after the demise of that prince, and which in the weak and confused reign of Richard II. they procured to be enrolled; thus assuming a self-erected power of sitting in their consistory courts; which now subsist under no better authority.

The fifteenth century, (from Richard II. to Henry VII.) famous for the councils of Constance and Basil, was likewise famous for the deplorable state of the christian church. The leading articles of the faith were no longer adhered to, and the far greater part of the people's religion was made to consist in pilgrimages, and the idolworship of the Virgin Mary, saints, and relics. The example of the clergy excited no devotion, the church discipline was relaxed, and the purity of the gospel was forgotten or despised: temporal advantages were the sole pursuit of the teachers of the christian faith. England was in the same state with the rest of Europe. The people were extremely desirous of a reformation of divers abuses which had crept into the church; but the clergy opposed all attempts at a reform, because no change could be made but to their prejudice; and the kings made religion subservient to their interests. When they imagined they stood in need of the clergy, they

found ways and means enough to evade the people's demands: but when the parliament's good-will was re6 Rapin, 454, quisite, they assented to such statutes as served to curb the encroachments of the pope and the clergy.

479, 484.

Notwithstanding all the complaints which the Eng

lish had frequently carried to the court of Rome about her continual encroachments, and notwithstanding the precautions which several parliaments had taken to screen themselves from her usurpations, the popes did not abate the least of their pretensions; upon every occasion that offered they made no scruple to act contrary to the statutes of the English parliament, and to assert their apostolic power, without troubling themselves whether they prejudiced the king or his subjects. The parliament, willing to remedy these abuses, passed an act against purchasing dispensations from payment of tythe; and another against provisions of exemption from the jurisdiction of the bishops; but these were ineffectual; for the fulness of the apostolic power again exempted the monks from any observance of these statutes; and this roused the parliament, and the penalties of the statute of pramunire were added to their former acts.*

In 1523, Cardinal Wolsey, the favourite and minister of Henry VIII. had raised his power at court so high, that his influence carried him above all care or s licitude for the welfare of the people. His arrogance surpassed the bounds of his own interest, and at length produced his fall. To perpetuate h name, he formed a project, for which he afterwards procured the pope's bull, "to

In the reign of Henry V. anno 1404, and 1414, two unsuccessful attempts were made by the commons, to reduce the wealth of the clergy. But the latter ended more effectually than the former, in a proposal of delivering up to the king, through zeal and affection (professed to be more sincere than that of the commons), the alien priorie, which being one hundred and ten in number, were possessed of lands that would considerably increase the revenues of the crown. The king seems to have judged it most prudent to take what the clergy offered of their own accord, and therefore accepted the proposal, and the act passed without any opposition.

Rapin, 263, 277, 4.8.

Arno 1529.

21 Hen. S. c.13.

suppress as many monasteries as he pleased, to the "amount of 3000 ducats a year," in order to transfer their revenues to two colleges he had intention to found, one at Oxford, and another at Ipswich, the place of his birth, in order to fit students for the former. But although the cardinal had exerted every power to establish these colleges, yet the king was deaf to all hi- entreaties for the preservation of them, and in the general confìscation which afterwards distinguished the mourntul annals of the church, their endowments were vested in the hands of the crown, and the name of their founder sunk in obscurity.

In 1529, Henry restrained the clergy from taking any lands to farm, and from buying and selling any merchandize, except such as belonged to their spiritual person or glebe; and all spiritual persons of any religious house, having lands, or other yearly profits in right thereof, of the yearly value of 800 marks, might occupy the same to the advantage and maintenance of their house only, and not having sufficient, might take in farm other lands, and buy and sell corn and cattle, for the only manurage, tillage, and pasturage, of such farms, so that the profit should be appropriated to the house alone.

The See of Rome had long been engaged in very serious contests with several of the states of Europe; the assumed supremacy she had constantly exerted over England became insupportable. The writings of Martin Luther had been industriously and successfully circulated in every part of the island, and the people now began to entertain very different opinions of religion, to those of their ancestors, especially with regard to the papal authority. Pope Clement VII. did not take the means to preserve any conciliation, but persisting in his measures,

and

que a se in his ~ɔjec ion to the king's divorce from queen Ca arme, the interest of the king and the people thus b.cause the save. he pope afterwards signified his desire of ace molaion by dispensation, which the kre, resat ud do reject; and this produced the first blow trapal asthority-a proclamation, forbidding, untre penalties, the receiving any bull from Rome. contrast to the prerogatives of the crown. The conseqant all of Wolsey was grounded on his exercising his legatne authority without the king's licence; and of his disposing, as legate, of several benefices, contrary to the statutes of provisors and pramunire: the whole body of the clergy fell likewise under the same predicament; they were obliged to sue to the crown for a pardon, which was granted at the expence of 100,000l. The thunders of the Vatican were now heard with contempt, and the crown of England at length began to feel itself released from an unjust bondage, and subject to no other control than the laws of the realm.

The grant of lands to superstitious uses, such as for masses to be said for the soul of the donor, when he should quit the present stage of existence, and the like; was the most fertile invention to increase the power of the clergy (and a principal support of the arguments in favour of purgatory): the heads of the papal priesthood luxuriously slumbered upon large bequests for this purpose, while their inferior brethren spread their tattered garments over the graves of departed visionaries, and exhausted their breath in vain repetitions for the safety of those souls for whom they felt very little regard, and less pious concern.

The former statutes had as yet applied only to corporate bodies; it became now essential to preserve whole families from ruin, by forbidding such acts of selfish

devotion;