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 A HISTORY OF LONDON the year. A mercer left property to the churchwardens of St. Thomas Apostle to find yearly the paschal light and also tapers to stand before the high altar at Christmas.^^' Richard Hilles, on the other hand, refused to make the usual annual payment for the rood and sepulchre lights, having by this time come definitely to the conclusion that all ' external observances ' in worship were vain devices of men, unpleasing to God. His fellow parishioners ' after some months' time, when they began to have some hope of a change of affairs,' laid an information against him before Bishop Stokesley, who ' ordered them to be quiet for a short time (at least so it was told me) and that all things would at last turn out as they could wish.' ''' Perhaps the hopes of the conservative party were raised by the tem- porary change of policy which followed the ' Pilgrimage of Grace.' It is doubtful how far the Londoners shared the grievances of the northern rebels. One cause of the original rising in Lincolnshire was the report that all jewels and church goods were to be seized ; ^'^ some of the London parochial records""' show that large sales of church plate were made in 1534—8 by the churchwardens and parishioners. At St. Christopher le Stocks some was sold in 1534 and more in 1536 ; at St. Andrew Holborn the churchwardens of 1537—8 sold plate worth over £2°^ without consent of the parson and parish. These sales, which are quite exceptional in their amount, are the first sign of a coming change in the outward manifestations of religious life with which those records are concerned. In December 1536 a London shoemaker said to a ' northern man ' : ' Ye shall pay but 6d. for your shoes, for ye have done very well there of late ; and would to God ye had come an end, for we were in the same mind that ye were.'"' During the rising certain members of the Council were directed ' to have special respect to London and its neighbourhood,' "* and a week after it began, in October 1536, the mayor proposed to the Court of Aldermen that all the priests and friars in the City should be ordered to give up what armour and weapons they had.'" But the king blamed those who had preached against ceremonies for causing the rebellion ; on 16 November three or four men ' who went up and down the country ' spreading the new opinions were arrested and imprisoned in London, and Dr. Barnes was sent to the Tower the day after he had preached at the funeral of Packington.^-* These strong measures acted as a restraint on others ; even Latimer moved his hearers to unity, 'without any special note of any man's folly.'*" Those on the conservative side became bolder for a time ; at Paul's Cross in Lent "' Sharpe, Ca/. of iVills, ii, 692. The two other enrolled wills made between 1535 and 1538 contain charitable bequests only ; ibid. 643, 650. '" Orig. Letten (Parker Soc), i, 230-1. "' L. and P. Hen. Fill, xi, 534, 656, 828, 854. '" Festry Min. of St. Christopher le Stocks (ed. Freshfield), 66 ; Bentley's Register, St. Andrew Holborn ; Chwdns. Accts. St. Botolph Aldersgate, 1534-5 ; .^rci. Joum. xlii, 330. "' L. and P. Hen. Fill, xii (i), p. 95. Cf. xiii (2), 1202. Possibly some sympathy with their cause may have prompted Wriothesley's prayer that God would pardon the souls of the twelve rebels executed at Tyburn in March 1537 ; Chron. (Camd. Soc), i, 62. He records however without comment the terrible number of executions which followed during the next few months. Hall speaks of the ' ignorant and rude ' people of the north as 'traitorous rebels,' deluded by the 'false fables and erroneous lies' of their priests. '» L. and P. Hen. Fill, xi, 580 (3). "' Rec. Corp. Repert. ix, fol. 200. Cf L. and P. Hen. Fill, xi, 559. The mayors of 1535-6, 1536-7, and 1537-8 were all nominated by the king ; Wriothesley, op. cit. i, 31, 57, 67. "' Wilkins, Condlia, iii, 825-6 ; L. andP. Hen. Fill, xi, 1097, 1 164 (cf vi, 1059), 1220, 1250, p. 718 ; cf. 1 1 1 1, 1246, 1355, and Foxe, op. cit. v, App. xiii. "' L. and P. Hen. Fill, xi, 1374. 266