[519] When their enormities were first read in the parliament house, they were so great and abominable that there was nothing but "Down with them!"—Latimer's Sermons, p. 123.
[520] 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 28.
[521] Many letters from country gentlemen to this effect are in the collection made by Sir Henry Ellis.
[522] Latimer at first even objected to monks leaving their profession. Speaking of racking Scripture, he says, "I myself have been one of them that hath racked it; and the text, 'He that putteth his hand to the plough and looketh back,' I have believed and expounded against religious persons that would forsake their order, and would go out of their cloyster."—Sermons, p. 60. We find him entreating Cromwell to prevent the suppression of Great Malvern, and begging that it may be allowed to remain,—"Not in monkery, but any other ways as should seem good to the King's Majesty, as to maintain teaching, preaching, study, with praying and good housekeeping."—Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 149. Late in his life, under Edw. VI., he alluded bitterly to the decay of education, and the misuse of the appropriated abbey lands.—Sermons, p. 291.
[523] "This is my consideration; for having experience, both in times past and also in our days, how the sect of prebendaries have not only spent their time in much idleness, and their substance in superfluous belly cheer, I think it not to be a convenient state or degree to be maintained and established: considering that commonly a prebendary is neither a learner nor teacher, but a good viander."—Cranmer to Cromwell, on the New Foundation at Canterbury: Burnet's Collectanea, p. 498.
[524] 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 28.
[525] Either to be held under the Crown itself for purposes of State, or to be granted out as fiefs among the nobles and gentlemen of England, under such conditions as should secure the discharge of those duties which by the laws were attached to landed tenures.
[526] The monks generally were allowed from four to eight pounds a-year being the income of an ordinary parish priest. The principals in many cases had from seventy to eighty pounds a-year.
[527] Burnet's Collectanea, p. 80.
[528] In the autumn of 1535 Latimer had been made Bishop of Worcester, Shaxton of Salisbury, and Barlow of St. David's.