Page:History of england froude.djvu/368

346 become, the payment of money was ever welcomed, as the ready expiation of crime. To prevent the escape of the Bishop of Rochester's cook, who was a 'clerk,' Parliament had specially interfered, and sentenced him without trial, by attainder. They now passed a general Act, remarkable alike in what it provided as in what, for the present, it omitted to provide. The preamble related the nature of the evil which was to be remedied, and the historical position of it. It dwelt upon the assurances which had been given again and again by the ordinaries that their privileges should not be abused; but these promises had been broken as often as they had been made; so that 'continually manifest thieves and murderers, indicted and found guilty of their misdeeds by good and substantial inquests, and afterwards, by the usages of the common lawes of the land, delivered to the ordinaries as clerks convict, were speedily and hastily delivered and set at large by the ministers of the said ordinaries for corruption and lucre; or else because the ordinaries enclaiming such offenders by the liberties of the Church would in no wise take the charges in safe keeping of them, but did suffer them to make their purgation by such as nothing knew of their misdeeds, and by such fraud did annull and make void the good and provable trial which was used against such offenders by the King's law; to the pernicious example, increase, and courage of such offenders, if the King's Highness by his authority royal put not speedy remedy thereto.'