Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/206

186 would collect to overawe them on their tribunals; and Cromwell was constituted a referee, to whom victims of episcopal persecution rarely appealed without finding protection. Devout communities were scandalized by priests marrying their concubines, or bringing wives whom they had openly chosen to their parsonages. The celibacy of the clergy was generally accepted as a theory; and, though indulgence had been liberally extended to human weakness and frailty, the opinion of the world was less complacent when secret profligacy stepped forward into the open day under the apparent sanction of authority.