Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/37

 1561.] THE EXGLISII A T II A VKE. 7 ioners 'were fain to bury their corpses themselves/ And 'joining- as it did hard to one of the chief roads of England, where all sorts of nations were compelled to take succour and touch, the shameful using of the same church caused the Queen's council and the whole realm to run in slander.' l 'It brcedeth,' said Elizabeth in a remonstrance which she addressed to Archbishop Parker, ' no small offence and scandal to sec and consider upon the one part the curiosity and cost bestowed by all sorts of men upon their private houses ; and on the other part the unclean and negligent order and spare keeping of the houses of prayer, by permitting open decays and ruins of cover- ings of walls and windows, and by appointing unmeet and unseemly tables with foul cloths, for the communion of the sacrament ; and generally leaving the place of prayer desolate of all cleanliness and of meet ornament for such a place, whereby it might be known a place provided for divine service.' 2 Nor again were the Protestant foreigners who had taken refuge in England any special credit to the Re- formation. These exiled saints were described by the Bishop of London us ' a marvellous colluvies of evil persons, for the most part facinoro*'., cbriosi, ct scctarii. 9 Between prelates reprimanded by the council for fraudu- lent administration of their estates, chapters bent on 1 Presentation of George Oglander : Domestic JlfSS., Elizabeth, Rolls House. 2 The Queen to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 1560 (Cecil's liand) : Domestic MSB., vol. xv, VOL. VII. 2