or Insurrection. Secondly, To aid his Confederates, otherwise they would never assist him. Thirdly, To reward his well-deserving Servants. Now the Project was, if the Parliament would give unto him all the Abbies, etc., that for ever, in Time then to come, he would take Order that the same should not be converted to private Use; but, first. That his Exchequer, for the Purposes aforesaid, should be enriched. Secondly, the Kingdom strengthened by the Maintenance of 40,000 well-trained Soldiers, with skilful Captains and Commanders. Thirdly, for the Benefit and Ease of the Subject, who never afterwards (as was pretended) in any Time to come, should be charged with Subsidies, Fifteenths, Loans, or other common Aids. … Now observe the Catastrophe. In the same Parliament of 32 Henry VIII., when the great and opulent Priory of St John's of Jerusalem was given to the King, he demanded, and had, a Subsidy both of the Laity and Clergy; and the like he had in 34 Henry VIII. and in 37 Henry VIII., he had another Subsidy. And since the Dissolution of the aforesaid Monasteries, he exacted great Loans, and against Law received the same" (Coke's Fourth Institute, folio 44).[1]
An astonishing change came over political opinion. Of course, a king who was Supreme Head of the Church, must be supreme in the State. John Bale, one of the most unscrupulous and violent partisans of the Reformation, wrote a historical play, entitled "Kynge Johan," in which John is represented as a pious and patriotic monarch, and all who withstood his tyranny as resisting God. One
- ↑ "To make it pass the better, a Prospect of vast Advantage was opened to the Subject. The Nobility were promised large Shares in the Spoils, as one Author (Dugdale) terms it … the Gentry were promised a very considerable Rise both in Honour and Estate: nor were they disappointed."
Cromwell "told the King that the parcelling these Lands out to a great many Proprietors, was the only Way to clinch the Business, and make the Settlement irrevocable. And such it has hitherto proved; for it may even now be observed, that most of those Famines who are, at present, possessed of the greatest Share of Abbey Lands, show the greatest Aversion to Popery, or any Thing that may in the least tend towards a Restitution of them."—"Parliamentary History of England," vol. iii., 146-147. 1762.
