ANNO DOM. 1551, 1552. 1. WE must begin the sixth year of the King with the fourth session of parliament, though the beginning of the fourth session was some days before; that is to say, on the twenty-third day of January, being the next day after the death of that great person. His adversaries possibly could not do it sooner, and found it very unsafe to defer it longer, for fear of being overruled in a parliamentary way by the Lords and Commons. There was summoned also a convocation of the Bishops and Clergy of the province of Canterbury, to begin upon the next day after the parliament. Much business done in each, as may appear by the table of the statutes made in the one, and the passing of the book of Articles as the work of the other. But the acts of this convocation were so ill kept that there remains nothing on record touching their proceedings, except it be the names of such of the Bishops as came thither to adjourn the house. Only I find a memorandum, that on the twenty-ninth of this present January the bishopric of Westminster was dissolved by the King’s letters patents; by which the county of Middlesex, which had before been laid unto it, was restored unto the see of London: made greater than in former times by the addition of the archdeaconry of St Alban’s, which, at the dissolution of that monastery, had been laid to Lincoln. The lands of Westminster so dilapidated by Bishop Thirlby, that there was almost nothing left to support the dignity; for which good service he had been preferred to the see of Norwich, in the year foregoing. Most of the lands invaded by the great men of the court, the rest laid out for reparation to the church of St Paul — pared almost to the very quick in those days of rapine. From hence first came that significant by-word (as is said by some) of robbing Peter to pay Paul. But this was no business of that convocation, though remembered in it. 2. That which most specially doth concern us in this convocation is the settling and confirming of the book of Articles, prepared by Archbishop Cranmer, with the assistance of such learned men as he thought fit to call unto him, in the year last past; and now presented to the consideration of the rest of the Clergy. For that they were debated and agreed upon in that convocation, appears by the title of the book, where they are called, Articuli , de quibus in synodo Londinensi , anno Domini 1552, etc., that is to say, “Articles, agreed upon in the synod of London, anno 1552.” And it may be concluded from that title also, that the convocation had devolved their power on some grand committee, sufficiently authorized to debate, conclude, and publish what they had concluded in the name of the rest. For there it is not said, as in the Articles published in Queen Elizabeth’s time, anno 1562, that they were “agreed upon by the Archbishops and Bishops of both provinces, and the whole Clergy, in the convocation holden at London;” but that they were “agreed upon, in the synod of London, by the Bishops, and certain other learned men;” inter Episcopos , et alios eruditos viros , as the Latin hath it. Which seems to make it plain enough, that the debating and concluding of the Articles contained in the said book was the work only of some Bishops and certain other learned men sufficiently empowered for that end and purpose. And, being so empowered to that end and purpose, the Articles by them concluded and agreed upon may warrantably be affirmed to be the acts and products of the convocation, confirmed and published for such by the King’s authority (as appears further by the title) in due form of law. And so it is resolved by Philpot, Archdeacon of Winchester, in behalf of the Catechism which came out anno 1553, with the approbation of the said Bishops and learned men. Against which when it was objected by Doctor Weston, Prolocutor of the Convocation, in the first of Queen Mary, that the said Catechism “was not set forth by the agreement of that house;” — it was answered by that reverend and learned man, — that “the said House had granted the authority to make ecclesiastical laws unto certain persons to be appointed by the King’s Majesty, and therefore whatsoever ecclesiastical laws they or the most part of them did set forth, (according to the statute in that behalf provided), might be well said to be done in the Synod of London.” 3. And this may also be the case of the book of Articles, which may be truly and justly said to be the work of the Convocation, though many members of it never saw the same till the book was published; in regard — (I still use Philpot’s words in the “Acts and Men.” fol. 1282) — that “they had a synodal authority unto them committed, to make such spiritual laws as to them seemed to be necessary or convenient for the use of the Church.” Had it been otherwise, King Edward, a most pious and religious Prince, must needs be looked on as a wicked and most lewd impostor, in putting such an horrible cheat upon all his subjects by fathering these Articles on the Convocation, which beget them not nor ever gave consent unto them. And yet it is not altogether improbable, but that these Articles, being debated and agreed upon by the said committee, might also pass the vote of the whole Convocation, though we find nothing to that purpose in the Acts thereof, which either have been lost or were never registered. Besides, it is to be observed that the Church of England, for the first five years of Queen Elizabeth, retained these Articles, and no other, as the public tenets of the Church in point of doctrine; which certainly she had not done, had they been commended to her by a less authority than a Convocation. 4. Such hand the Convocation had in canvassing the Articles prepared for them, and in concluding and agreeing to so much or so many of them as afterwards were published by the King’s authority in the name thereof. But whether they had any such hand in reviewing the Liturgy, and passing their consent to such alterations as were made therein, is another question. That some necessity appeared both for the reviewing of the whole and the altering of some parts thereof, hath been showed before; and it was showed before by whose procurement and solicitation the Church was brought to that necessity of doing somewhat to that purpose. But, being not sufficiently authorized to proceed upon it, because the King’s sole authority did not seem sufficient, they were to stay the leisure and consent of the present Parliament. For, being the Liturgy then in force had been confirmed and imposed by the King in parliament, with the consent and assent of the Lords and Commons, it stood with reason that they should not venture actually on the alteration, but by their permission first declared.

And therefore it is said expressly in the Act of Parliament made this present year, that “the said Order of Common Service, entitled the Book of Common Prayer, had been perused, explained, and made fully perfect,” not singly by the King’s authority, but by the King with the assent of the Lords and Commons. More than the giving of their assent was neither required by the King nor desired by the prelates; and less than this could not be sought, as the case then stood. The signifying of which assent enabled the Bishops, and the rest of the Clergy whom they had taken for their assistants , to proceed to the digesting of such alterations as were before considered and resolved on amongst themselves; and possibly might receive the like authority from the Convocation as the Articles had, though no such thing remaining upon record in the registers of it. But whether it were so, or not, certain it is that it received as much authority and countenance as could be given unto it by an Act of Parliament: by which imposed upon the subject under certain penalties (imprisonment’s, pecuniary mullets, etc.) which could not be inflicted on them by Synodical Acts. 5. The Liturgy, being thus settled and confirmed in Parliament, was by the King’s command translated into French, for the use of the isles of Guernsey and Jersey, and such as lived within the marches and command of Calice. But no such care was taken for Wales till the fifth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth; nor of the realm of Ireland from that time to this. King Henry had so far prepared the way to a reformation as his own power and profit was concerned in it; to which ends, he excluded the Pope’s authority, and caused himself to be declared Supreme Head on earth of the Church of Ireland, by Act of Parliament. And by like Acts he had annexed to the Crown the lands of all monasteries and religious orders, together with the twentieth part of all the ecclesiastical promotions within that kingdom; and caused the like course to be settled for the electing and consecrating of Archbishops and Bishops, as had been done before in England. Beyond which as he did not go, so, as it seems, King Edward’s Council thought not fit to adventure further.

They held it not agreeable to the rules of prudence, to have too many irons in the fire at once; nor safe in point of policy, to try conclusions on a people in the King’s minority, which were so far tenaciously addicted to the superstitions of the Church of Rome, and of a nature not so tractable as the English were. And yet that realm was quiet, even to admiration, notwithstanding the frequent embroilment’s and commotion’s which so miserably disturbed the peace of England; which may be reckoned for one of the greatest felicities of this King’s reign, and a strong argument of the care and vigilancy of such of his ministers as had the chief direction of the Irish affairs. At the first payment of the money for the sale (rather than the surrender) of Bulloign, eight thousand pounds was set apart for the service of Ireland; and shortly after, out of the profits which were raised from the mint, four hundred men were levied and sent over thither also, with a charge given to the governors, that the laws of England should be carefully and duly administered, and all such as did oppose, suppressed: by means whereof great countenance was given to those who embraced the reformed religion there, especially within those counties which are called commonly by the name of the English Pale; the Common Prayer Book of England being brought over thither, and used in most of the churches of the English plantation, without any law in their own parliaments to impose it on them. But nothing more conduced more to the peace of that kingdom, than that the governors for the most part were men of such choice that neither the nobility disdained to endure their commands, nor the inferior sort were oppressed to supply their wants. Besides which, as the King drew many men from thence to serve him in his wars against France and Scotland, which otherwise might have disturbed the common peace, so, upon notice of some great preparations which were made in France for the assistance of the Scots, he sent over to guard the coast of Ireland four ships, four barks, four pinnaces, and twelve victualers. By the advantage of which strength he made good three havens, two on the south side toward France, and one toward Scotland; which afterwards made themselves good booties out of such of the French as were either cast away on the coast of Ireland, or forced to save themselves in the havens of it. For the French, making choice rather of their passage by St George’s Channel than by the ordinary course of navigation from France to Edinburgh, fell from one danger to another; and, for fear of being intercepted or molested by the ships of England, were shipwrecked, as before was said, on the coast of Ireland. Nothing else memorable in this King’s reign, which concerned that kingdom; and therefore I have laid it all together in this place and on this occasion. 6. But we return again to England, where we have seen a Reformation made in point of doctrine, and settled in the forms of worship; the superstitions and corruption’s of the Church of Rome entirely abrogated, and all things rectified according to the Word of God and the primitive practice: nothing defective in the managing of so great a work which could have been required by equal and impartial men, but that it was not done, as they conceived it ought to have been done, in a General Council. But, first, we find not any such necessity of a General Council, but that many heresies had been suppressed, and many corruption’s removed out of the Church, without any such trouble. St Augustine in his Fourth Book against the two Epistles of the Pelagians, cap. 12, speaks very plainly to this purpose; and yet the learned Cardinal, though a great stickler in behalf of General Councils, speaks more plain than he. By whom it is affirmed, that for seven heresies condemned in seven General Councils, — (though, by his leave, the seventh did not so much suppress as advance an heresy), — an hundred had been quashed in national and provincial Councils. The practice of the Church in the several Councils of Aquileia, Carthage, Gangra, Milevis, etc. make this plain enough; all of them being provincial, or at least but national, and doing their own work without help from others. The Church had been in an ill condition, had it been otherwise; especially under the power of the heathen Emperors, when such a confluence of the Prelates from all parts of the world would have been construed a conspiracy against the State, and drawn destruction on the Church and the persons both. Or, granting that they might assemble without any such danger, yet being great bodies, moving slowly, and not without long time and many difficulties and disputes to be rightly constituted the Church would suffer more under such delay, by the spreading of heresy, than receive benefit by this care to suppress the same.

So that there neither is, nor can be, any such necessity, either in order to the reformation of a national Church or the suppressing of particular heresies, as by the objectors is supposed. 7. Howsoever, taking it for granted that a General Council is the best and safest physic that the Church can take on all occasions of epidemical distempers — yet must it be granted at such times and in such cases only when it may conveniently be had. For where it is not to be had, or not had conveniently, it will either prove to be no physic or not worth the taking.

But so it was at the time of the Reformation, that a General Council could not conveniently be assembled; and more than so, it was impossible that any such Council should assemble: — I mean a General Council rightly called and constituted, according to the rules laid down by our controversers.

For, first , they say, It must be called by such as have power to do it.

Secondly , That it must be intimated to all Christian Churches, that so no Church nor people may plead ignorance of it.

Thirdly , That the Pope and the four chief Patriarchs must be present at it, either in person or by proxy.

And, lastly , That no Bishop be excluded, if he be known to be a Bishop and not excommunicated. According to which rules, it was impossible, I say, that any General Council should be assembled at the time of the Reformation of the Church of England. It was not then as when the chief four Patriarchs, together with their Metropolitan and Suffragan Bishops, were under the protection of the Christian Emperors, and might without danger to themselves or to their Churches obey the intimation and attend the service: the Patriarchs, with their Metropolitans and Suffragans, both then and now languishing under the power and tyranny of the Turk, to whom so general a confluence of Christian Bishops must needs give matter of suspicion of just fears and jealousies; and therefore not to be permitted (as far as he can possibly hinder it) on good reason of state. 8. And then, besides, it would be known by whom such a General Council was to be assembled. If by the Pope, as generally the papists say, — he and his court were looked on as the greatest grievance of the Christian Church, and it was not probable that he should call a Council against himself, unless he might have leave to pack it, to govern it by his own legates, fill it with titular Bishops of his own creating, or send. the Holy Ghost to them in a cloak-bag, as he did to Trent. If jointly by all Christian Princes, which is the common tenant of the Protestant schools: — what hopes could any man conceive, (as the times then were), that they should lay aside their particular interesses, to enter all together upon one design? Or, if they had agreed about it, what power had they to call the prelates of the East to attend the business, and to protect them for so doing at their going home? So that I look upon the hopes of a General Council, — I mean a General Council rightly called and constituted, — as an empty dream. The most that was to be expected was but a meeting of some Bishops of the West of Europe, and those but of one party only; such as were excommunicated, — (and that might be as many as the Pope should please) — being to be excluded by the Cardinal’s rule. Which how it may be called an (Ecumenical or General Council, unless it be a Topical-Ecumenical, a Particular-General — (as great an absurdity in grammar as a Roman- Catholic) — I can hardly see. Which being so, — and so no question but it was, — either the Church must have continued without reformation, or else it must be lawful for national particular Churches to reform themselves. And in that case the Church may be reformed per partes , part after part, province after province, as is said by Getson. Further than which I shall not enter into this dispute, this being enough to justify the Church of England from doing any thing unadvisedly, unwarrantably, or without example. 9. That which remains, in reference to the progress of the Reformation, concerns as well the nature as the number of such feasts and fasts as were thought fit to be retained, — determined and concluded on by an Act of Parliament, to which the Bishops gave their vote; but whether predetermined in the Convocation, must be left as doubtful. In the preamble to which Act it is declared, that “at all times men are not so mindful of performing those public Christian duties which the true religion doth require, as they ought to be; and therefore it hath been wholesomely provided, that, for calling them to their duties and for helping their infirmities, some certain times and days should be appointed, wherein Christians should cease from all other kind of labors, and apply themselves only and wholly unto such holy works as properly pertain to true religion: that the said holy works, to be performed upon those days, are more particularly to hear, to learn, and to remember Almighty God’s great benefits, his manifold mercies, his inestimable gracious goodness, so plentifully poured upon all his creatures, rendering unto him for the same our most hearty thanks: that the said days and times are neither to be called or accounted holy, neither in the nature of the time or day, nor for any of the saints’ sakes whose memories are preserved by them, but for the nature and condition of those godly and holy works, with which only God is to be honored and the congregation to be edified: that the sanctifying of the said days consisteth in separating them apart from all profane uses, and dedicated not to any saint or creature, but only to the worship of God: that there is no certain time nor definite number of days appointed by holy Scripture, but that the appointment of the time, as also of the days, is left to the liberty of Christ his Church by the Word of God: that the days which from henceforth were to be kept as holy days in the Church of England, should be all Sundays in the year, the Feast of the Circumcision, the Epiphany, the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, etc., with all the rest recited at the end of the Calendar in the public Liturgy: that the Archbishops, Bishops, etc. shall have authority to punish the offenders in all or any of the premises, by the usual censures of the Church, and to impose such penance on them as to them or any of them shall seem expedient: and finally, that, notwithstanding any thing before declared, it shall and may be lawful for any husbandman, laborer, fisherman, etc. to labor, ride, fish, or work any kind of work, on the foresaid holy days, not only in the time of harvest, but at any other time of the year, when need shall require; with a proviso for the celebrating of St George’s Feast on the two and twenty, three and twenty, and four and twentieth days of April yearly, by the Knights of the Right Honorable Order of the Garter, or by any of them.” Which declaration, as it is agreeable in all points to the tenor of approved antiquity, so can there be nothing more contrary to the doctrine of the Sabbatarians, which of late time hath been obtruded on the Church. 10. Then for the number of the fasts, it is declared that from that time forwards “every even or day going before any of the aforesaid days of the feasts of the Nativity of our Lord, of Easter, of the Ascension of our Lord, Pentecost, of the Purification and the Annunciation of the aforesaid Blessed Virgin, of All Saints, of all the said feasts of the Apostles, (other than of St John the Evangelist, and of St Philip and Jacob) shall be fasted, and commanded to be kept and observed, and that none other even or day shall be commanded to be fasted.” For explication of which last clause, it is after added that “the said Act, or any thing therein contained, shall not extend to abrogate or take away the abstinence from flesh in Lent, or on Fridays and Saturdays, or any other appointed to be kept for a fasting-day, but only on the evens of such other days as formerly had been kept and observed for holy, and were now abrogated by this Act. And for the better suppressing or preventing of any such fasts as might be kept upon the Sunday, it was enacted in the same (according to the practice of the elder times) that, when it shall chance any the said feasts, the eves whereof are by this statute to be kept for fasting-days, to fall upon the Monday, that then the Saturday next before shall be fasted as the eve thereof, and not the Sunday.” Which statute, though repealed in the first of Queen Mary, and not revived till the first year of the reign of King James, yet in effect it stood in force, and was more punctually observed in the whole time of Queen Elizabeth’s reign than after the reviver of it. 11. Such course being taken for the due observing of days and times, the next care was that consecrated places should not be profaned by fighting and quarrelling, as they had been lately since the episcopal jurisdiction and the ancient censures of the Church were lessened in authority and reputation. And to that end was enacted in this present parliament, “that if any persons whatsoever, after the first day of May then next following, should quarrel, chide, or brawl, in any church or churchyard, he should be suspended ab ingressu ecclesioe , if he were a layman, and from his ministration, if he were a Priest; that if any person after the said time should smite or lay violent hands upon another [in any church or churchyard,] he should be deemed to be excommunicate ipso facto , and be excluded from the fellowship and company of Christ’s congregation; and, finally, that if any person should strike another with any weapon in the church or churchyard, or draw his sword with an intent to strike another with the same, and thereof be lawfully convicted, he should be punished with the loss of one of his ears,” etc. A seasonable severity, and much conducing to the honor both of Church and State. There were some statutes also made for taking away the benefit of Clergy in some certain cases; for making such as formerly had been of any religious order to be heritable to the lands of their ancestors or next of kindred, to whom they were to have been heirs by the common law; for confirming the marriages of priests, and giving them, their wives, and children, the like capacities as other subjects did enjoy, whereof we have already spoke in another place. There also passed another Act, “That no person by any means should lend or forbear any sum of money for any manner of usury or increase, to be received or hoped for above the sum lent, upon pain to forfeit the sum so lent and the increase, and to suffer imprisonment and make fine at the King’s pleasure.” But this Act, being found to be prejudicial to the trade of the kingdom, first discontinued of itself, and was afterwards repealed in the thirteenth year of Queen Elizabeth. 12. This Parliament ending on the fifteenth of April, gave time enough for printing and publishing the Book of Common Prayer, which had been therein authorized; the time for the officiating of it being fixed on the Feast of All Saints then next ensuing. Which time being come, there appeared no small alteration in the outward solemnities of divine service to which the people had been formerly so long accustomed. For by the rubric of that book no copes or other vestures were required, but the surplice only; whereby the Bishops were necessitated to forbear their crosses, and the prebends of St Paul’s and other churches occasioned to leave off their hoods. To give a beginning hereunto, Bishop Ridley, then Bishop of London, (obediently conforming unto that which he could not hinder), did the same day officiate the divine service of the morning in his rochet only, without cope or vestment. He preached also at St Paul’s Cross in the afternoon, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Companies, in their best liveries, being present at it; the sermon tending for the most part to the setting forth of the said Book of Common Prayer, and to acquaint them with the reason of such alterations as were made therein. On the same day the new Liturgy was executed also in all the churches of London. And not long after, — (I know not by what strange forwardness in them that did it) — the upper quire in St Paul’s church, where the high altar stood, was broken down, and all the quire thereabout; and the Communion-table was placed in the lower part of the quire, where the Priest sang the daily service. What hereupon ensued of the rich ornaments and plate, wherewith every church was furnished after its proportion, we shall see shortly, when the King’s Commissioners shall be sent abroad to seize upon them in his name for their own commodity. 13. About this time the Psalms of David did first begin to be composed in English meter, by one Thomas Sternhold, one of the Grooms of the Privy Chamber; who, translating no more than thirty-seven, left both example and encouragement to John Hopkins and others to dispatch the rest. A device first taken up in France, by one Clement Marot, one of the Grooms of the Bedchamber to King Francis the First; who, being much addicted to poetry, and having some acquaintance with those which were thought to have inclined to the Reformation, was persuaded by the learned Vatablus (Professor of the Hebrew tongue in the University of Paris) to exercise his poetical fancies in translating some of David’s Psalms. For whose satisfaction and his own he translated the first fifty of them: and after, flying to Geneva, grew acquainted with Beza, who in some tract of time translated the other hundred also, and caused them to be fitted unto several tunes; which thereupon began to be sung in private houses, and by degrees to be taken up in all the churches of the French and other nations which followed the Genevian platform. Marot’s translation said by Strada to have been ignorantly and perversely done, as being but the work of a man altogether unlearned; but not to be compared with that barbarity and botching which everywhere occurreth in the translation of Sternhold and Hopkins. Which, notwithstanding, being first allowed for private devotion, they were by little and little brought into the use of the Church; permitted rather than allowed to be sung before and after sermons; afterwards printed and bound up with the Common Prayer Book, and at last added by the stationers at the end of the Bible. For, though it be expressed in the title of those Singing Psalms that they were “Set forth and allowed to be sung in all churches, before and after Morning and Evening Prayer, and also before and after Sermon,” yet this allowance seems rather to have been a connivance than an approbation: no such allowance being anywhere found by such as have been most industrious and concerned in the search thereof. At first it was pretended only that the said Psalms should be sung “before and after Morning and Evening Prayer, and also before and after Sermon:” which shows they were not to be intermingled in the public Liturgy. But in some tract of time, as the Puritan faction grew in strength and confidence, they prevailed so far in most places to thrust the Te Deum , the Benedictus , the Magnificat , and the Nunc Dimittis , quite out of the Church. But of this more perhaps hereafter, when we shall come to the discovery of the Puritan practices in the times succeeding. 14. Next to the business of religion, that which took up a great part of the public care was the founding and establishing of the new hospital in the late dissolved house of Grey Friars, near Newgate, in the city of London; and that of St Thomas, in the borough of Southwark. Concerning which we are to know, that the church belonging to the said house, together with the cloisters, and almost all the public building which stood within the liberties and precincts thereof, had the good fortune to escape that ruin which generally befell all other houses of that nature. And, standing undemolished till the last times of King Henry, it was given by him, not many days before his death, to the city of London, together with the late-dissolved Priory called Little St Bartholomew’s; which at the suppression thereof, was valued at 305 pounds 6s. 7d. In which donation there was reference had to a double end — the one, for the relieving of the poor out of the rents of such messuages and tenements as in the grant thereof are contained and specified: the other, for constituting a parish-church in the church of the said dissolved Grey Friars, not only for the use of such as lived within the precincts of the said two houses, but for the inhabitants of the parishes of St Nicholas in the Shambles, and of St Edwine’s, situate in Warwick Lane end, near Newgate Market. Which churches, with all the rents and profits belonging to them, were given to the city at the same time also, and for advancing the same ends, together with five hundred marks by the year for ever; the church of the Grey Friars to be from thenceforth called Christ Church, founded by King Henry the Eighth. All which was signified to the city in a sermon preached at St Paul’s Cross by the Bishop of Rochester in the thirteenth of January, being no more than a fortnight before the death of the King: so that he wanted not the prayers of the poor at the time of his death, to serve as a counterbalance for those many curses which the poor monks and friars had bestowed upon him in the time of his life. 15. In pursuance of this double design, the church of the said Friars (which had before served as a magazine or storehouse for such French wines as had been taken by reprise) was cleansed and made fit for holy uses, and Mass again sung in it on the thirteenth day of January before remembered; resorted to by such parishioners as were appointed to it by the King’s donation. After which followed (in the first years of King Edward the Sixth) the taking down of the said two churches, and building several tenements on the ground of the churches and churchyards; the rents thereof to be employed for the further maintenance and relief of the poor, living and loitering in and about the city, to the great dishonor of the same. But neither the first grant of the King nor these new additions being able to carry on the work to the end desired, it happened that Bishop Ridley, preaching before the King, did much insist upon the settling of some constant course for relief of the poor. Which sermon wrought so far upon him that he caused the Bishop to be sent for, gave him great thanks for his good exhortation, and thereupon entered into communication with him about the devising of some course by which so great and so good a work should be brought to pass. His advice was, that letters should be written to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen for taking the business into consideration, in reference to such poor as swarmed in great numbers about the city. To which the King so readily hearkened, that the letters were dispatched and signed before he would permit the Bishop to go out of his presence. Furnished with these letters and instructions, the Bishop calls before him Sir Richard Dobbs, then Lord Mayor of London, with so many Aldermen as were thought fit to be advised with in the present business; by whom it was agreed upon, that a general contribution should be made by all wealthy and well-affected citizens towards the advancement of a work so necessary for the public good. For the effecting whereof, they were all called to their parish-churches, where, by the said Lord Mayor, their several Aldermen, and other grave citizens, they were by eloquent orations persuaded how great and how many commodities would ensue unto them and their city, if the poor of divers sorts were taken from out their streets, lanes, and alleys, and were bestowed and provided for in several hospitals. It was therefore moved, that every man would signify what they would grant towards the preparing and furnishing of such hospitals, as also what they would contribute weekly towards their maintenance until they were furnished with a more liberal endowment.

Which course prevailed so far upon them, that every man subscribed according to his ability, and books were drawn in every ward of the city, containing the sum of that relief which they had contributed. Which, being delivered unto the Mayor, were by him humbly tendered to the King’s Commissioners on the seventeenth of February. 16. This good foundation being laid, a beginning was put to the reparation of the decayed buildings in the Grey-friars on the twenty-sixth of July, for the reception of such poor fatherless children as were then to be provided for at the public charge. The like reparation also made of the ruinous buildings belonging to the late-dissolved priory of St Thomas in the borough of Southwark, which the citizens had then newly bought of the King, to serve for an hospital of such wounded, sick, and impotent persons, as were not fit to be intermingled with the sound. The work so diligently followed in both places at once, that on the twenty-third of November the sick and maimed people were taken into the hospital of St Thomas, and into Christ’s Hospital to the number of four hundred children; all of them to have meat, drink, lodging, and clothes at the charge of the city, till other means could be provided for their future maintenance. And long it was not before such further means was provided for them by the piety and bounty of the King — then drawing as near unto his end as his father was when he laid the first foundation of that pious work. For, hearing with what cheerfulness the Lord Mayor and Aldermen had conformed themselves to the effect of his former letters, and what a great advance they had made in the work, [he] commanded them to attend him on the tenth of April, gave them great thanks for their zeal and forwardness, and gave for ever to the city his palace of Bridewell (erected by King Henry the Eighth), to be employed as a relieving-house for such vagabonds and thriftless poor as should be sent thither to receive chastisement, and be forced to labor. For the better maintenance whereof, and the more liberal endowment of the other hospitals before remembered, it was suggested to him, that the hospital founded in the Savoy by King Henry the Seventh, for the relief of pilgrims and travelers, was lately made the harbor or relieving-place for loiterers, vagabonds, and strumpets, who sunned themselves in the fields all day, and at night found entertainment there. The Master and Brethren of the house are thereupon sent for to the King, who dealt so powerfully and effectually with them, that they resigned the same into his hands, with all the lands and goods thereunto belonging. Out of which he presently bestowed the yearly rent of seven hundred marks, with all the beds, bedding, and other furniture which he found therein, towards the maintenance of the said workhouse and the hospital of St Thomas in Southwark. The grant whereof he confirmed by his letters patents, bearing date the twenty-sixth of June; adding thereunto a mortmain for enabling the city to purchase lands to the value of four thousand marks per annum, for the better maintenance of those and the other hospitals. So that by the donation of Bridewell, which he never built, and the suppression of the hospital in the Savoy, which he never endowed, he was entitled to the foundation of Bridewell, St Bartholomew’s, and St Thomas, without any charge unto himself. 17. But these last passages concerning the donation of Bridewell, the suppression of the hospital in the Savoy, and the endowment of the said three houses with the lands thereof, happened not till the year ensuing, anno 1553, though laid unto the rest in the present narrative in regard of the dependence which it hath on the former story. Nothing else memorable in the course of this present year, but the coming of Cardanus, the death of Leland, and the preferment of Doctor John Taylor to the see of Lincoln.