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Rh all sorts of unscrupulous men, of a low class, rushed into Orders, without university education, indeed without any education at all, so as to secure a living in which they could draw the tithe and farm the glebe, without a thought as to their religious responsibilities.

Such a man Gilbert Germyn seems to have been. In 1582 articles of misdemeanours were drawn up against him by Henry Bidlake and some of the parishioners, but as far as can be learnt without effect. The Bishop had presented him, for reasons best known to himself, and was indisposed to take cognizance of his conduct.

It is worth while looking at some of the charges brought against a man whom the Bishop, John Woolton, delighted to honour.

He was complained of for his grasping character. Although the glebe comprised a manor of eight or nine tenements, yet he did not rest till he got into his own hands "by dyvers meannes three of the best and most fruitfull tenements in the two parishes."

That, in addition to being rector of Bridestowe and Sourton, he was vicar of another parish in Cornwall.

That he was litigious, citing his tenants and the tithe payers even for a halfpenny.

That he refused at Easter to give the Holy Communion to a bedridden woman, eighty years old, named Jane Adams, till she paid him a penny for his trouble.

"He is a great skold and faller owte with his neybors, for lyght occasyons, as with Mr. William Wrays, and other the best of the parishes; and stycketh not to saye yn the churche Thou lyest; and to skold yn the Churchyerde."

"For his pryde, Skoldyng, Avarice and Crueltye his