acquiescing in the policy of an unpopular minister; and that the English nation would have looked on with stoical resignation if pope and papacy had been wrecked together. They were not inclined to heresy; but the ecclesiastical system was not the Catholic faith; and this system, ruined by prosperity, was fast pressing its excesses to the extreme limit, beyond which it could not be endured. Wolsey talked of reformation, but delayed its coming; and in the mean time, the persons to be reformed showed no fear that it would come at all. The monasteries grew worse and worse. The people were taught only what they could teach themselves. The consistory courts became more oppressive. Pluralities multiplied, and non-residence and profligacy. Favoured parish clergy held as many as eight benefices.[1] Bishops accumulated sees, and, unable to attend to all, attended to none. Wolsey himself, the Church reformer (so little did he really know what a reformation meant), was at once Archbishop of York, Bishop of Winchester, and of Durham, and Abbot of St Alban's. In Latimer's opinion, even twenty years later, and after no little reform in such matters, there was but one bishop in all England who was ever at his work and ever in his diocese. 'I would ask a strange question,' he said, in an audacious sermon at Paul's Cross, 'Who is the most diligent bishop and prelate in all England, that passeth all the rest in doing of his office?[2] I can tell, for I know him who it
- ↑ 21 Hen. VIII. cap. 13.
- ↑ Roy's Satire against the Clergy, written about 1528, is so plain-
