Ponet was translated from Rochester and Scory put in his place, while the other two sees were left vacant for the time. Every change was attended by the robbery or fraudulent exchange of some of the possessions of the see, most of which were lavished upon the courtiers, and friends of the successful faction; and all this deliberate malversation of what was treated as the property of the State, took place at a time when the King's debts were large and increasing, when the coinage was deliberately debased, and when the nation at large, and the poor in particular, were suffering from scarcity, from the sweating sickness, and from the general rise in rents which followed upon the transference of the Church lands to lay landlords, mostly belonging to the class of 'nouveaux inches.' Before we acquiesce altogether in the currently received view that the risings in this reign were due to the attachment of the people to their old religion, and the unpopularity of the reform, we ought in fairness to remember that the rapacity of the upper classes, the financial errors of the government, and the general distress and misery of the people, were such as have rarely been equalled in England; and there can be little doubt that much of the unpopularity of the religious measures of the time was due to the fact that they appeared to proceed from the same hands as did all its other evils. It is certain that papal supremacy was never popular in England, and it is also certain that in Henry VIII.'s time the priesthood was in no better odour with the people than the Pope, and that Henry carried popular opinion with him in his measures against both; and it seems unlikely that any very great feeling would have been aroused in favour of either, had Edward's counsellors moved on with any degree of mildness or moderation, or had they not shown, in their general government, an
