1529]
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1529
195
priest or deacon being so complicated as to amount to absolute protection. [1]
Among the clergy, properly so called, however, the prevailing offence was not crime, but licentiousness. A doubt has recently crept in among our historians as to the credibility of the extreme language in which the contemporary writers spoke upon this painful topic. It will scarcely be supposed that the picture has been overdrawn in the act books of the Consistory courts; and as we see it there it is almost too deplorable for belief, as well in its own intrinsic hideousness as in the unconscious connivance of the authorities. Brothels were kept in London for the especial use of priests;[2] the 'confessional' was abused in the most open and abomin-
- ↑ In May, 1528, the evil had become so intolerable, that Wolsey drew the Pope's attention to it. Priests, he said, both secular and regular, were in the habit of committing atrocious crimes, for which, if not in orders, they would have been promptly executed; and the laity were scandalized to see such persons not only not degraded, but escaping with complete impunity. Clement something altered the law of degradation in consequence of this representation, but quite inadequately.—Rymer, vol. vi. part 2, p. 96.
- ↑ Thomas Cowper et ejus uxor Margarita pronubæ horribiles, et instigant mulieres ad fornicandum cum quibuscunque laicis, religiosis, fratribus minoribus, et nisi fornicant in domo suâ ipsi diffamabunt nisi voluerint dare eis ad voluntatem eorum; et vir est pronuba uxori, et vult relinquere eam apud fratres minores pro peccatis habendis.—Hale, Criminal Causes, p. 9.Joanna Cutting communis pronuba at præsertm inter presbyteros fratres monachos et canonicos et etiam inter Thomam Peise et quandam Agnetam, &c.—Hale, Criminal Causes, p. 28.See also Ibid. pp. 15, 22, 23, 39, &c.In the first instance the parties accused 'made their purgation' and were dismissed. The exquisite corruption of the courts, instead of inviting evidence and sifting accusations, allowed accused persons to support their own pleas of not guilty
