Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/532

512 fine was to be paid to the Crown on every wedding, funeral, or christening; that a tax would be levied on every head of cattle, or the cattle should be forfeited; that no man should eat in his house white meat, pig, goose, nor capon, but that he should pay certain dues to the King's Grace.'

In the desecration of the abbey chapels and altar-plate a design was imagined against all religion. The clergy were to be despoiled; the parish churches pulled down, one only to be left for every seven or eight miles; the church plate to be confiscated, and 'chalices of tin' supplied for the priest to sing with.

Every element necessary for a great revolt was thus in motion—wounded superstition, real suffering, caused by real injustice, with their attendant train of phantoms. The clergy in the north were disaffected to a man; the people were in the angry humour which looks eagerly for an enemy, and flies at the first which seems to offer. If to a spirit of revolt there had been added a unity of purpose, the results would have been far other than they were. Happily, the discontents of the nobility, the gentlemen, the clergy, the commons, were different, and in many respects, opposite; and although, in the first heat of the commotion, a combination threatened to be possible, jealousy and suspicion rapidly accomplished the work of disintegration. The noble lords