[Footnote 29:  Page 38.]

To smooth the way for the return of Popery in Queen Mary’s time, the grantees were confirmed by the Pope in the possession of the abbey lands.  But the Bishop tells us, that “this confirmation was fraudulent and invalid” I shall believe it to be so, though I happen to read in his Lordship’s history:  But he adds, that although the confirmation had been good, the priests would have got their land again by these two methods; “first,[30] the Statute of Mortmain was repealed for 20 years, in which time no doubt they reckoned they would recover the best part of what they had lost; besides that, engaging the clergy to renew no leases, was a thing entirely in their own power, and this in forty years time would raise their revenues to be about ten times their present value.”  These two expedients for increasing the revenues of the Church, he represents as pernicious designs, fit only to be practised in times of Popery, and such as the laity ought never to consent to:  Whence, and from what he said before about tithes, his Lordship has freely declared his opinion, that the clergy are rich enough, and that the least addition to their subsistence would be a step toward Popery.  Now it happens, that the two only methods, which could be thought on, with any probability of success, toward some reasonable augmentation of ecclesiastical revenues, are here rejected by a Bishop, as a means for introducing Popery, and the nation publicly warned against them.  The continuance of the Statute of Mortmain in full force, after the Church had been so terribly stripped, appeared to Her Majesty and the kingdom a very unnecessary hardship; upon which account it was at several times relaxed by the legislature.  Now as the relaxation of that statute is manifestly one of the reasons which gives the Bishop those terrible apprehensions of Popery coming on us; so I conceive another ground of his fears, is the remission of the first-fruits and tenths.  But where the inclination to Popery lay, whether in Her Majesty who proposed this benefaction, the parliament which confirmed, or the clergy who accepted it, his Lordship hath not thought fit to determine.

[Footnote 30:  Page 39.]

The other popish expedient for augmenting church-revenues, is “engaging the clergy to renew no leases."[31] Several of the most eminent clergymen have assured me, that nothing has been more wished for by good men, than a law to prevent (at least) bishops from setting leases for lives.  I could name ten bishoprics in England whose revenues one with another do not amount to L600 a-year for each; and if his lordship’s, for instance, would be above ten times the value when the lives are expired, I should think the overplus would not be ill disposed toward an augmentation of such as are now shamefully poor.  But I do assert, that such an expedient was not always thought popish and dangerous by this right reverend historian.  I have had the honour formerly to converse with him;