188 SOME REMARKS ON THE 



nity of the crown, the sturdy and honest bigot replied that she 

 valued her salvation more than ten kingdoms. And it is evident 

 from the following passage in Burnett that great apprehensions 

 were entertained lest the queen, in the plenitude of her benevolence 

 and justice, should prescribe to her subjects a similar course of pro- 

 ceeding, though it can scarcely be doubted that nothing short of an 

 irresistible necessity would have led them to submit. " On the 23rd 

 of November, the bill for suppressing the first fruits and tenths, 

 and the resigning up all impropriations that were yet in the Queen's 

 gift to the church, to be disposed of as the legate pleased for the 

 relief of the clergy, was brought into the house. It was once 

 thought fit to have the surrender of impropriations left out ; for it 

 was said the queen might do that as well by letters patent, and if 

 it were put in the bill it would raise great jealousies, since it would 

 be understood that the queen did expect that her subjects should 

 follow her example."* Now, beyond all controversy, it would be 

 reaching at once the summit of what is most absurd in conception — 

 it would be making the closest approximation in point of rationality 

 to an inmate of Bedlam — to entertain for a moment the supposition, 

 that any lay impropriator of these days would be, like Mary, in- 

 fluenced, " by compunctious visi tings", to restore to the church the 

 things which were once hers. 



" No : all is lost ! — the earth where abbeys stood 

 Is layman's land, the glebe, the stream, the wood." 



Such an occurrence would, indeed, be just as likely to happen as that 

 Norwich should ever again have sixty parish churches for a popula- 

 tion of six thousand souls.f But when the interests of religion so 

 materially suffer by the church having been shorn of her patrimony J 



* Hist, of the Reformation, vol. ii. p. 647. 



•f- The Subsidy Roll of 51 Edward III., which contains a return of all lay 

 persons, male and female, above fourteen years of age, (real mendicants ex- 

 cepted), all of whom were subjected by a statute of that year to a poll tax of 

 a groat, has brought the above extraordinary fact to light — " Observations" 

 by Henry Hallam " on a Communication made to him by Sir Francis Pal- 

 grave, respecting the population of certain districts in Wiltshire* Essex, and 

 Kent, in the time of Henry VIII." — See Proceedings of the Statistical Society 

 of London, vol. L, 1835-1836, No. 3, p. 90. 



X Those who are disposed to indulge in their " railing accusations''' against 

 the church, on the score of her imputed wealth would do well to ponder on 

 these memorable words of Lord Bacon : — M All the parliaments, since the 

 27th and 31st of Henry VIII., who gave away impropriations from the 

 church, seem to stand in a sort obnoxious and obliged to God, in conscience, 



