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1540.]
ANNE OF CLEVES: FALL OF CROMWELL.
293
divided the leading root of the feudal system. Persons holding lands by military tenure were allowed to dispose of two-thirds in their wills, as they pleased. Lands held under any other conditions might be bequeathed absolutely, without condition or restriction.[1] To prevent disputes on titles, and to clear such confusion of claims as had been left remaining by the Uses Act, sixty years' possession of property was declared sufficient to constitute a valid right; and no claim might be pressed which rested on pretensions of an older date.[2] May.The Privy Seal's hand is legible in several Acts abridging ecclesiastical privileges, and restoring monks, who had been dead in law, to some part of their rights as human beings. The suppression of the religious houses had covered England with vagrant priests, who, though pensioned, were tempted by idleness, and immunity from punishment, into crimes. If convicted of felony, and admitted 'to their clergy,' such persons were in future to be burnt in the hand.[3] A bill in the preceding year had relieved them from their vows of poverty; they were permitted to buy, inherit, or otherwise occupy property.
- ↑ 32 Henry VIII. cap. 2.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ 32 Henry VIII. cap. 3. 'Many goes oft begging,' 'and it causeth much robbing.'—Deposition of Christopher Chator. Here is a special picture of one of these vagabonds. Gregory Cromwell, writing to his father from Lewes, says, 'The day of making hereof came before us a fellow called John Dancy, being apparelled in a frieze coat, a pair of black hose, with fustian slops, having also a sword, a buckler, and a dagger; being a man of such port, fashion, and behaviour that we at first took him only for a vagabond, until such time as he, being examined, confessed himself to have been heretofore a priest, and sometime a monk of this monastery.'—MS. State Paper Office, second series, vol. vii.
