They have begged so importunatly that they have gotten ynto their hondes more than a therd part of all youre Realme.  The goodliest lordshippes, maners, londes, and territories, are theyres.  Besides this, they have the tenth part of all the corne, medowe, pasture, grasse, wolle, coltes, calves, lambes, pigges, gese and chikens.  Ye, and they looke so narowly uppon theyre proufittes, that the poore wyves must be countable to thym of every tenth eg, or elles she gettith not her rytes at ester, shal be taken as an heretike....  Is it any merveille that youre people so compleine of povertie?  The Turke nowe, in your tyme, shulde never be abill to get so moche grounde of christendome....  And whate do al these gredy sort of sturdy, idell, holy theves?  These be they that have made an hundredth thousand idell hores in your realme.  These be they that catche the pokkes of one woman, and here them to an other.

The petitioner goes on to tell how they steal wives and all their goods with them, and if any man protest they make him a heretic, “so that it maketh him wisshe that he had not done it”.  Also they take fortunes for masses and then don’t say them.  “If the Abbot of west-minster shulde sing every day as many masses for his founders as he is bounde to do by his foundacion, 1000 monkes were too few.”  The petitioner suggests that the king shall “tie these holy idell theves to the cartes, to be whipped naked about every market towne till they will fall to laboure!”

#Church History#

King Henry did not follow this suggestion precisely, but he took away the property of the religious orders for the expenses of his many wives and mistresses, and forced the clergy in England to forswear obedience to the Pope and make his royal self their spiritual head.  This was the beginning of the Anglican Church, as distinguished from the Catholic; a beginning of which the Anglican clergy are not so proud as they would like to be.  When I was a boy, they taught me what they called “church history”, and when they came to Henry the Eighth they used him as an illustration of the fact that the Lord is sometimes wont to choose evil men to carry out His righteous purposes.  They did not explain why the Lord should do this confusing thing, nor just how you were to know, when you saw something being done by a murderous adulterer, whether it was the will of the Lord or of Satan; nor did they go into details as to the motives which the Lord had been at pains to provide, so as to induce his royal agent to found the Anglican Church.  For such details you have to consult another set of authorities—­the victims of the plundering.

When I was in college my professor of Latin was a gentleman with bushy brown whiskers and a thundering voice of which I was often the object—­for even in those early days I had the habit of persisting in embarrassing questions.  This professor was a devout Catholic, and not even in dealing with ancient Romans could he restrain his propaganda impulses.  Later on in life he became editor of the “Catholic Encyclopedia”, and now when I turn its pages, I imagine that I see the bushy brown whiskers, and hear the thundering voice:  “Mr. Sinclair, it is so because I tell you it is so!”