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He had been devoted to his royal master and friend; he enjoyed rich livings, and was Archdeacon of Canterbury; he had shown no opposition to the royal will. Moreover Henry wanted an able man for that exalted post, in order to carry out his schemes of making himself independent of priestly influence and papal interference.
It was said that they spent more time in hunting foxes and betting on race-horses than in conducting religious services or visiting the sick; and according to Bishop Meade, many dissolute parsons, discarded from the church in England as unworthy, were yet thought fit to be presented with livings in Virginia. To this general character of the clergy there were many exceptions.
Small wonder was it, when every strolling adventurer and soldier out of employment took orders and found favour in his Lordship's eyes, and were given the fattest livings in place of worthier men, that the Established Church fell somewhat into disrepute.
Hereby then, and by those already remembered, it is found that the Church of England is no less commodious to the prince's coffers than the state of the laity, if it do not far exceed the same, since their payments are certain, continual, and seldom abated, howsoever they gather up their own duties with grudging, murmuring, suit, and slanderous speeches of the payers, or have their livings otherwise hardly valued unto the uttermost farthing, or shrewdly cancelled by the covetousness of the patrons, of whom some do bestow advowsons of benefices upon their bakers, butlers, cooks, good archers, falconers, and horsekeepers, instead of other recompense, for their long and faithful service, which they employ afterward unto the most advantage.
Whilst the chaplain is preaching, the king is chattering in German and almost as loud as the preacher; so loud that the clergyman actually burst out crying in his pulpit, because the defender of the faith and the dispenser of bishoprics would not listen to him! Land and Livings And how is it in the twentieth century? Have conditions been much improved?
In the days of the merry monarch a John Marryat became distinguished as a "painful preacher," and was twice expelled from his livings for non-conformity.
The only boon secured to them was exemption from their share of vestry cess, for, though Althorp intimated that the ultimate surplus to be realised by the union of sees and livings would be at the disposal of parliament, they well knew how many influences would operate to prevent its reaching them.
By gad, this rogue of a vicar does not deserve to live; and yet he has two livings worth four hundred pounds per annum, while poor I am fain to do all his drudgery, and ride twenty miles every Sunday to preach for what? why, truly, for twenty pounds a year. I scorn to boast of my own qualifications but comparisons are odious.
"Val Mark me, widows Are long extents in law upon men's livings, Upon their bodies' winding-sheets; they that enjoy 'em Lie but with dead men's monuments, and beget Only their own ill epitaphs." Act ii. Sc. 2.
'It is really a cruel thing, Lord Liverpool wrote to Peel, 'that the patronage of the Crown as to Church matters should be divided between the Minister and the Chancellor, and that all the public claims should fall upon the former. The Chancellor has nine livings to the Minister's one.
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