Page:History of england froude.djvu/237

1529] minority and within age, not apt ne able to serve the cure of any such benefice: whereby the said ordinaries do keep and detain the fruits and profits of the same benefices in their own hands, and thereby accumulate to themselves right great and large sums of money and yearly profits, to the most pernicious example of your said lay subjects—and so the cures and promotions given unto such infants be only employed to the enriching of the said ordinaries; and the poor silly souls of your people, which should be taught in the parishes given as aforesaid, for lack of good curates [be left] to perish without doctrine or any good teaching.

IX. Also, a great number of holydays now at this present time, with very small devotion, be solemnized and kept throughout this your Kealm, upon the which many great, abominable, and execrable vices, idle and wanton sports, be used and exercised, which holydays, if it may stand with your Grace's pleasure, and specially such as fall in the harvest, might, by your Majesty, with the advice of your most honourable council, prelates, and ordinaries, be made fewer in number; and those that shall be hereafter ordained to stand and continue, might and may be the more devoutly, religiously, and reverendly observed, to the laud of Almighty God, and to the increase of your high honour and favour.

X. And furthermore the said spiritual ordinaries, their commissaries and substitutes, sometimes for their own pleasure, sometimes by the sinister procurement of other spiritual persons, use to make out process against divers of your said subjects, and thereby compel them