Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/527

1550.] stews, and schools of the devil.' While Peter Martyr was disputing on the real presence, and Lord Grey was hanging the clergy on their church towers, the wild boys left at Oxford took up the chorus of irreverence. The service of the mass was parodied in plays and farces, with 'mumblings,' 'like a conjuror's,' In the sermons at St Mary's, priests were described as 'imps of the whore of Babylon:'—an undergraduate of Magdalen snatched the bread from the altar after it had been consecrated, and trampled it under foot. Missals were chopped in pieces with hatchets; college libraries plundered and burnt. The divinity schools were planted with cabbages, and the Oxford laundresses dried clothes in the Schools of Arts. Anarchy was avenging superstition, again, in turn, to be more frightfully avenged.

In the country the patron of a benefice no longer made distinctions between a clergyman and a layman. If the Crown could appoint a bishop without the assistance of a congé d'élire the patron need as little trouble himself with consulting his diocesan. He presented himself. He presented his steward, his huntsman, or his gamekeeper. Clergy, even bishops, 'who called them Gospellers,' would hold three, four, or more livings, 'doing service in none;' or if, as a condescension, they appointed curates, they looked out for starving monks who would do the duty at the lowest pay—men who would take service indifferently under God or the devil