Be this as it may, we possess the writer's genuine work, for the printer, Pynson, was faithful to his author. The rarity of this first edition Bale, on a loose rumour which no other literary historian has sanctioned, ascribes to its suppression by Cardinal Wolsey, who is represented in his fury to have condemned the volume to a public ignition, which no one appears to have witnessed, for its "dangerous exposition of the revenues of the clergy," which is not found in the volume. FABYAN truly was _ter Catholicus_; he was of the old religion, dying in the odour of sanctity, and was spared the trial of the new. The alderman's voluminous will is now for us at least as curious as anything in his chronicle.[1] We here behold the play of the whole machinery of superstition, when men imagined that they secured the repose of their souls by feeing priests and bribing saints by countless masses. This funereal rite was then called "the month's mind," and which, at least for that short period, prolonged the memory of the departed. For this lugubrious performance were provided ponderous torches for the bearers, tapers for shrines, and huge candlesticks to be kept lighted at the altar. Three trentballs--that is, thirty masses thrice told--were to be chorused by the Grey Friars; six priests were to perform the high mass, chant the requiem, and recite the _De Profundis_ and the _Dirige_; and for nine years, on his mortuary day, he charges his "tenement in Cornhill" to pay for an _Obite_! But not only friars and priests were to pray or to sing for the repose of the soul of Alderman Fabyan, all comers were invited to kneel around the tomb; and at times children were to be called in, who if they could not read a _De Profundis_ from the Psalter, the innocents were to cry forth a _Pater-Noster_ or an _Ave_! There was a purveyance of ribs of beef and mutton and ale, "stock-fish, if Lent," and other recommendations for "the comers to the _Dirige_ at night." The Alderman, however, seems to have planned a kind of economy in his "month's mind," for not only was the repose of his soul in question, but also "the souls of all above written"--and these were a bead-roll of all the branches of Fabyan's family.