case.[1] Bishop Stubbs also, in an elaborate chapter upon 'The Clergy, the King, and the People,' says, in regard to the moral influence of the clergy, that 'the records of the spiritual courts of the middle ages remain in such quantity, and in such concord of testimony, as to leave no doubt of the facts; among the laity as well as among the clergy of the towns and clerical centres there existed an amount of coarse vice which had no secrecy to screen it or prevent it from spreading.'[2] This is no exaggerated statement, and to say, as Canon Dixon does say, ' that no proof of deep corruption has been made good against the English clergy,'[3] is simply to fly in the face of the evidence, not only of satirists and lampooners but of annalists and historians, of records and of law reports.
Such was the state of things when Henry VIII. came to the throne. Of the changes which took place before he left it, the following chapters will contain the record.
