either man, horse, nor any other thing, in all this so furious a tempest. All this is much largerly related by Thomas Walsingham in A.D. 1379.

A.D. 1380. Though the attempts of rebels and traitors be usually suppressed by the power of the prince; yet that notorious rebel Wat Tyler and his confederates prevailed so against king Richard II., that neither his (the king's) authority, nor the power of the kingdom could resist them; insomuch as they became lords of the city and tower of London, and had the king himself so far in their disposition, as they got him to come and go, to do and forbear when and what they required: but after they had spoiled and burnt the monastery of S. John's of Jerusalem, beheaded the archbishop of Canterbury, and done some other acts of sacrilege, their fortune quickly changed; and their captain Wat Tyler being in the greatest height of his glory, (with his army behind him to do what he commanded, and the king fearfully before him, not able to resist,) was upon the sudden wounded and surprised by the mayor of London, his prosperous success overturned, and both he and they (whom an army could not erst subdue) are now by the act of a single man utterly broken and discomfited, and justly brought to their deserved execution.*

2 HOLINSHED and STOW in 4 Rich. II.

[CHAPTER IV.]

The attempt and project upon the lands of the clergy in the time of Henry IV. disappointed; [and of other Sacrileges until the Reformation.]

By that time king Henry IV. was come to the crown, the clergy of England had passed the meridian of their greatness, and were onward in their declination. For the people now left to admire them, as before they had done, and by little and little to fall off from them in every place, being most distracted, though not wholly led away, by the prime* lectures, sermons, and pamphlets, of them that laboured for an alteration in religion. The commons also of parliament, which usually do breathe the spirit of the people, not only envied their greatness, but thought it against reason, that those whom the laity had raised, fed and fatted by their alms and liberality, should use such rigorous jurisdiction (so they accounted it) over their patrons and founders; and against religion also, that they who had devoted themselves to spiritual contemplation, should be so

* [So in 'the printed copies, though there is probably some mistake.-EDD.]

much entangled with secular affairs: but above all, that they who laboured not in the commonwealth, nor were the hundredth part of the people, should possess as great a portion almost of the kingdom, as the whole body of the laity. For an estimate hereof had been taken anciently by the knight's fees of the kingdom, which in Edward the First's time were found to be sixty-seven thousand, and that twenty-eight thousand of them were in the clergy's hands. So that they had gotten well towards one half of the knight's fees of the kingdom, and had not the statutes of Mortmain come in their way, they were like enough in a short time to have had the better part. Yet did not the statutes otherwise hinder them, but that with the king's licence they daily obtained great accessions, and might by the time of king Henry IV. be thought probably enough to have half the kingdom amongst them, if not more, considering that out of that part, which remained to the laity, they had, after a manner, a tenth part by way of tithe, and besides that, an inestimable revenue by way of altarage, offerings, oblations, obventions, mortuaries, church duties, gifts, legacies, &c.

The parliament therefore, 6 Hen. IV., (called the Laymen's Parliament, that all lawyers were shut out of it), casting a malevolent eye hereon, did not seek by a moderate course a reformation, but, as may be observed in other cases, to cure a great excess by an extreme defect, and, at one blow, to take from the clergy all their temporalities.

This was propounded to the king by Sir John Cheiney their speaker, who in former time had been himself a deacon, and lapping then some of the milk of the Church found it so sweet, as he now would eat of the breasts that gave it. He inforced this proposition with all the rhetoric and power he had, and tickled so the ears of the king, that if the archbishop of Canterbury had not that day stood, like Moses, in the gap, the evils that succeeded might even then have fallen upon the clergy.* But the archbishop declaring, that the Commons sought thereby their own enriching, knowing well that they should be sharers in this royal prey, assured the king, that as he and his predecessors (Edward III. and Richard II.) had by the counsel of the Commons confiscated the goods and lands of the cells or monasteries, that the Frenchmen and Normans did possess in England, being worth many thousands of gold, and was not that day the richer thereby half a mark; so if he should now (which God forbid) fulfil their wicked desire, he should not be one farthing the richer the next year following. This demonstrative and prophetical speech pronounced with great vehemency by the archbishop, it so wrought upon the heart of the king, that he professed, he would leave the Church in better state than he found it, rather than in worse. And thus that hideous cloud of confusion, which hung over the head of the clergy,

* [See the very curious scene described by Srow, s. a. 1404. -EDD]

vapoured suddenly at this time into nothing. Yet did it lay the train that [in] Henry V. did make a sore eruption, and in Henry VIIIth's time blew up all the monasteries. The event of which project of the speakers, his lineal heir Sir Thomas Cheiney, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, did then behold, and shortly felt the wrathful hand of God upon his family; whether for this or any other sin I dare not judge.

But being reputed to be the greatest man of possessions in the whole kingdom, insomuch as Queen Elizabeth on a time said merrily unto him, that they two (meaning herself and him) were the two best marriages in England, which afterward appeared to be true, in that his heir was said to sue his livery at three thousand one hundred, never done by any other, yet was this huge estate all wasted on a sudden.

Yet when the Commons did desire to have the lands of the clergy, they did not design, nor wish. that they should be otherwise employed, than for public benefit of the whole kingdom, and that all men should be freed thereby from payment of subsidies or taxes to maintain soldiers for the defence of the kingdom. For they suggested that the value of the lands would be sufficient maintenance for a standing army, and all great officers and commanders to conduct and manage the same, for the safety of the public; as that they would maintain one hundred and fifty lords, one thousand five hun