Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/529

1550.] Edward writes in his journal, 'being receiver-general of Yorkshire, confessed how he lent my money upon gain and lucre; how he had paid one year's revenue over with the arrearages of the last; how he bought my own land with my own money; how in his accounts he had made many false suggestions.'

'Beaumont, Master of the Rolls/ Edward records also, ' did confess his offences how in his Office of Wards he had bought land with my own money; had lent it and kept it from me, to the value of nine thousand pounds and above, more than this twelvemonth, and eleven thousand pounds in obligations; how he, being judge in the chancery between the Duke of Suffolk and the Lady Powis, took his title, and went about to get it into his hands, paying a sum of money, and letting her have a farm of a manor of his; and caused an indenture to be made falsely with the old Duke's counterfeit hand to it, by which he gave these lands to the Lady Powis.'

As to the mass of the people, hospitals were gone, schools broken up, almshouses swept away; every institution which Catholic piety had bequeathed for the support of the poor was either abolished or suspended till it could be organized anew; and the poor themselves, smarting with rage and suffering, and seeing piety, honesty, duty, trampled under foot by their superiors, were sinking into savages. From the coast of Sussex was reported the novel and yet unheard-of crime of wrecking. A corn-vessel was driven on shore in a gale;