INTRODUCTORY. 9 



a precedent which was sure to beget other precedents whenever 

 it should seem that the interests of the monastic orders were 

 inconsistent, or appeared to be inconsistent, with those of the 

 Crown or the Government. Some of these priories were sold 

 to Chicheley, and formed the foundations which this prelate 

 established at Oxford and Higham Ferrers : most remained in 

 the King's hands, till Henry the Sixth founded from these 

 estates the Colleges of St. Nicholas (since called King's College) 

 at Cambridge, the School and College at Eton, and the great 

 monastery of Sion. 



During the fifteenth century a common practice prevailed of 

 appropriating under royal and papal license the great tithes of 

 benefices to monastic and cathedral bodies, to the serious impo- 

 verishment of the parochial clergy, and, as we are informed, to 

 the great injury of education and learning and good order. This 

 appropriation of the estate of the secular clergy was a perpetual 

 subject of indignant complaint on the part of contemporaries, 

 such as Gascoigne was, who traces the decline of -morals and 

 corruption of manners to this practice. During the reign of 

 Henry the Sixth, the greatest abuses prevailed. The bishops, 

 appointed by papal provision, rarely resided in their dioceses, 

 but hung about the Court, six of thern, according to Gascoigne, 

 filling high offices of state at one time, and all neglecting their 

 duties. Kemp, archbishop of York for twenty-eight years, 

 rarely visited his diocese, and suffered his official residence to 

 fall into decay 1 . We are told that so great was the popular in- 

 dignation against these prelates that they dared not live in Lon- 

 don in 1450 for fear of their lives, or even enter their dioceses. 

 Two were actually murdered by infuriated mobs ; De Moleyns, 

 bishop of Chichester, at Portsmouth, in January 1450, and 

 Aiscough, bishop of Salisbury, at Edindon, in June of the same 

 year. It is certain that the prelates provoked the discontent 

 which led to the downfall of the House of Lancaster 2 and the 

 exaltation of the House of York, that the ecclesiastics of the 

 time were entirely passive during the bitterest years of the 



1 Loci e Libro Veritatum, p. 37. a Ibidem, p. 43. 



