In the last years of his reign, Henry vacillated in his uncertain reform. Sometimes leaning on one party and sometimes on another; he had lost the vigour of his better days. In his last parliament, though not without some difficulty, both from Protestant and Papist, they had voted for "the augmentation" of the royal revenue, their grant of the chantries. These chantries were the last wrecks of the monastic lands. A single church had often several chantries attached to it. Chantries were endowments of estates by the sinners of that age for the benefit of having eternal masses sung for their departed souls. Henry on this occasion, in his last speech, strongly animadverts on the national disunion; and among his thanks mingles his menaces "to unite them in a more unacceptable way" than the tenderness with which at that moment he addressed them, for their concessions to his "Court of Augmentation." It is also evident, by this able and extraordinary speech, that Henry would gladly have revoked his gift to the people of "the Word of God in their mother-tongue," as his majesty expresses himself.[2] He had, indeed, already in part withdrawn the freedom he had granted by restricting it to a few persons, and only to be used on particular occasions. His majesty proceeds--"You lay too much stress on your own expositions and fantastical opinions. In such sublime matters you may easily mistake. This permission of reading the Bible is only designed for private information, not to furnish you with reprimanding phrases and expressions of reproach against priests and preachers. I am extremely sorry to find with how little reverence the Word of God is mentioned; how people squabble about the sense; how it is turned into wretched rhyme, sung and jingled in every alehouse and tavern." This part of the king's speech was pointed at the general readers of the Scriptures; but his majesty did not discover any happier union among the clergy themselves, whom he roundly rates:--"I am every day informed that you of the clergy are declaiming against each other in the pulpit; and here your charity and discretion are quite lost in vehemence and satire. Some are too stiff in their old _mumpsimus_, and others too busy and curious in their new _sumpsimus_.[3] Thus the pulpits are, as it were, batteries against each other; the noise is hostile and ruinous. How can we expect the poor people should live friendly with their neighbours when they have such unhappy precedents of discord and dissension in those that teach them?"