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The English Scholar's Library of Old and Modern Works.
_LECTURER IN ENGLISH LITERATURE ETC., UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON._
Only to be obtained by _postal_ application to EDWARD ARBER, _at Southgate, London, N.; England_. No. 4. 15 August 1878.
_UNWIN BROS., IMP._] Eighteen Pence. [_CHILWORTH & LONDON._
To _my Godfathers in English Literature_,
HENRY MORLEY, ESQ., _PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE_, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.
HENRY PYNE, ESQ., Late _ASSISTANT TITHE COMMISSIONER_, ST. JAMES'S SQUARE, LONDON.
_this_ Old Series _is, with blended admiration and gratitude, filially_ Inscribed.
The English Scholar's Library of Old and Modern Works.
_LECTURER IN ENGLISH LITERATURE ETC., UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON._
SOUTHGATE, LONDON, N. 15 August 1878. No. 4. (_All rights reserved._)
1. _The yearly exactions from the people taken by this greedy sort of sturdy idle holy thieves_ 3
They have a Tenth part of all produce, wages and profits 4
What money pull they in by probates of testaments, privy tithes, men's offerings to their pilgrimages and at their first masses; by masses and _diriges_, by mortuaries, hearing of confessions (yet keeping thereof no secrecy), hallowing of churches, by cursing of men and absolving them for money; by extortion &c.; and by the quarterage from every household to each of the Five Orders of begging Friars, which equals £43,333 6s. 8d. [= _over £500,000 in present value_] a year 4
400 years ago, of all this they had not a penny 4
These locusts own also one Third of the land 5
Or in all more than half of the substance of the realm 5
Yet they are not in number, one to every hundred men, or one in every four hundred men women and children 5
Neither could the Danes or Saxons haue conquered this land, if they had left such a sort [_company_] of idle gluttons behind them; nor noble King ARTHUR have resisted the Emperor LUCIUS, if such yearly exactions had been taken of his people; nor the Greeks so long continued the siege of Troy, if they had had to find for such an idle sort of cormorants at home; nor the Romans conquered the world, if their people had been thus yearly oppressed; nor the Turk haue now so gained on Christendom, if he had in his empire such locusts to devour his substance 5