Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/74

54 Good Friday, 'the unthrifty curate entered the pulpit, where he had set no foot for years,' and 'admonished his parishioners to give no credence to the new-fangled fellows which read the new books.' 'They be like knaves and Pharisees,' he said; 'they be like a dog that gnaweth a marry-bone, and never cometh to the pith, therefore avoid their company; and if any man will preach the New Testament, if I may hear him, I am ready to fight with him incontinent;' and 'indeed,' the petitioners said, 'he applyeth in such wise his school of fence so sore continually, that he feareth all his parishioners.'

So the parish clerk at Hastings made a speech to the congregation on the faults of the translation: 'It taught heresy,' he said; 'it taught that a priest might have a wife by God's law. He trusted to see the day that the book called the Bible, and all its maintain ers and upholders, should be brent.'

Here, again, is a complaint from the parishioners of Langham in Essex, against their village potentate, a person named Vigors, who with the priest oppressed and ill-used them.

'Upon Ascension day last past did two maidens sit in their pew or stool in the church, as all honest and virtuous persons used to do in matins time, saying their matins together upon an English primer. Vigors this seeing was sore angry, in so much that therefore, and for nothing else, he did bid the maidens to avoid out of