[45] Henry the VIII, finding that the clergy readily paid the first fruits of their livings to the Pope, and that £160,000 had been transmitted to Rome, on account of this claim, since the second year of Henry the seventh, thought, very naturally, as he had been proclaimed “The supreme head of the church and clergy of England, in so far as is permitted by the law of Christ,” that he ought to stand in the Popes’s shoes in this particular also; and that the annates, or first fruits, ought to be paid to the Crown of England, instead of going to enrich a Foreign Potentate. He first reduced the payment to five per cent. “the better to keep the Pope in awe,” but finding that remedy unsuccessful took the whole to himself.—Vide Hume’s History of England.
[46a] The seven Protestant Bishops who succeeded Ridley in this see held it but fifty years.
[46b] Whether Edmund Grindall, Ridley’s protestant successor in the see of London, renewed this lease and received a fine for the renewal I cannot say; I speak in the text of the income reserved by the Crown.
[46c] Ecclesiastical Memoirs.—Vol. ii. part 1, p. 339.
[47a] An account of Collectors and other ministers of the possessions of the Bishop of London, 9th of Elizabeth, ending Michaelmas.
[47b] This notice is at the foot of the account, and evidently written in another hand: it is Richard Brown’s account.
[47c] Rough Notes, 3rd of Elizabeth.
[49a] Vide Collectanea Topographica. vol. iii. p. 31. The original MS. from which this survey is printed is in the Rawlinson collection in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, No. 240.
[49b] Ibid, vol. i. p. 287; or additional M.SS. British Museum, 9049, p. 37.
[50a] 26 Geo. 2. c. 43.