Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/534

514 all the devils there will laugh at your coughing. There is no remedy but restitution, or else hell.'

Before the same high audience Lever, at Paul's Cross, attributed the sufferings of the country to the misappropriation of the chantry lands, which had been taken to serve the King in his necessary charges; while 'the King was disappointed,' 'the poor were spoiled,' 'learning decayed,' and the hangers-on upon the council only 'enriched.'

'Because ye have no eyes,' he said, 'ye shall hear it with your ears. You have deceived the King and the Universities to enrich yourselves. Before you did begin to be disposers of the King's liberality towards learning and poverty, there were in Cambridge two hundred students of divinity, which be now all clean gone, not one of them left. A hundred others that had rich friends, and lived of themselves in ostles and inns, be gone, or be fain to creep into colleges, and put poor men from bare livings. In the country, grammar schools, founded of godly intent to bring up poor men's sons in learning and virtue, be now taken away by reason of greedy covetousness in you that were put in trust by God and the King, to erect and make grammar schools. The alms yearly bestowed in poor towns and parishes, to the great displeasure of God, yea and contrary to God's Word and the King's laws, ye have taken away.

'The people of the country say that their gentlemen