that it was necessary to bribe them to accept it; and the conditions of the compromise, even yet, were far from concluded.
The sanction given to the secularization of Church property was a cruel disappointment to the clergy, who cared little for Rome, but cared much for wealth and power. Supported by a party in the House of Commons who had not shared in the plunder, and who envied those who had been more fortunate,[1] the ecclesiastical faction began to agitate for a reconsideration of the question. Their friends in Parliament said that the dispensation was unnecessary. Every man's conscience ought to be his guide whether to keep his lands or surrender them. The Queen was known to hold the same opinion, and eager preachers began to sound the note of restitution.[2] Growing bolder, the Lower House of Convocation presented the bishops immediately after
- ↑ Renard to the Emperor: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.
- ↑ 'It was this morning told me by one of the Emperor's council, who misliked much the matter, that a preacher of ours whose name he rehearsed, beateth the pulpit jollily in England for a restitution of abbey lands. It is a strange thing in a well-ordered commonwealth that a subject should be so hardy to cry unto the people openly such learning, whereby your winter work may in the summer be attempted with some storm. These unbridled preachings were so much misliked in the ill-governed time as men trusted in this good governance it should have been amended; and so may it be when it shall please my Lords of the Council as diligently to consider it, as it is more than necessary to be looked unto. The party methinketh might well be put to silence, if he were asked how, being a monk, and having professed and vowed solemnly wilful poverty, he can with conscience keep a deanery and three or four benefices.'—Mason to Petre: MS. Germany, bundle 16, Mary, State Paper Office. It is not clear who the offender was. Perhaps it was Weston, Dean of Westminster and Prolocutor of Convocation.
