ness, wherewith, most men were so infected that it seemed the one would devour another, without charity, or any godly respect 'to the poor, to their neighbours, or to the commonweal:' this it was, the council said, 'for which God had not only now poured out this plague on them, but had also prepared another plague that after this life should plague them everlastingly:' the bishops must 'use persuasions that might engender a terror to redeem men from their corrupt and naughty lives; but the clergy were chiefly to blame; 'the members of a dull head could not do well;' 'the flocks wandered because the ministers were dull and feeble.'[1]
The people, says Holinshed, for a time were affected and agitated. 'They began to repent, to give alms, and to remember God; but as the disease ceased, so devotion in a short time decayed.' The council perhaps confined their own penitence to the exhortation of others, seeing that at the time when the disease was at its worst, they were engaged upon their last great fraud with the currency. Lulled by the panegyrics of the Protestants, who saw in them all that was most excellent, most noble, most devout, the Lords, or rather the triumvirate of Warwick, Northampton, and Sir William Herbert, who now governed England, were contented to earn their praises by fine words, by persecuting and
- ↑ Tytler, vol. i. p. 404. Lord Warwick affected to Cecil a keen regret for the shortcomings of the clergy, which he attributed to their marriages. 'These men,' he said, 'that the King's Majesty hath of late preferred, be so sotted of their wives and children, that they forget both their poor neighbours and all other things which to their calling appertaineth.'—Ibid. vol. ii.
