He did not, however, deceive himself about the practical difficulties in the way of a conservative reform, which should remove the causes of popular discontent, and leave the Church an integral part of the State organisation. He knew that the ecclesiastical system, even in its manifest abuses, was closely interwoven with English society, and he knew the strength of clerical conservatism. He knew also the dangers which beset the Church if it came across the royal will and pleasure. If any reform were to be carried out it must be by raising the standard of clerical intelligence. Already many things which had accorded with the simpler minds of an earlier age had become objects of mockery to educated laymen. The raillery of Erasmus at the relics of St. Thomas of Canterbury and the Virgin's milk preserved at Walsingham expressed the difference which had arisen between the old practices of religion and the belief of thoughtful men. It would be well to divert some of the revenues of the Church from the maintenance of idle and ignorant monks to the education of a body of learned clergy. This diversion of monastic property had long been projected and attempted. William of Wykeham endowed his New College at Oxford with lands which he purchased from monasteries. Henry VI. endowed Eton and King's College with revenues which came from the suppression of alien priories. In 1497 John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, obtained leave to suppress the decrepit nunnery of St. Rhadegund in Cambridge and use its site for the foundation of Jesus College. Wolsey only carried farther and made more definite the example which had previously been set when in 1524 he obtained from Pope Clement VII. permission to convert into a college the monastery of St. Frideswyde in Oxford. Soon after he obtained a bull allowing him to suppress monasteries with fewer than seven inmates, and devote their revenues to educational purposes. Nor was Wolsey the only man who was of opinion that the days of monasticism were numbered. In 1515 Bishop Fox of Winchester contemplated the foundation of a college at Oxford in connection with the monastery of St. Swithin at Winchester. He was dissuaded from making his college dependent on a monastery by his brother bishop, Oldham of Exeter, who said, "Shall we build houses and provide livelihoods for a company of bussing monks, whose end and fall we ourselves may live to see? No, no: it is meet to provide for the increase of learning, and for such as by learning shall do good to Church and commonwealth." Oldham's advice prevailed, and the statutes of Fox's college of Brasenose were marked by the influence of the new learning as distinct from the old theology.