Mary to adopt this position. The consequence was that in the reigns of Elizabeth and James and Charles I there was no enthusiasm in the clergy of the Church. The bishops were grasping, self-seeking worldlings. Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the best among an ignoble crew. When he died, says Froude, "he left behind him enormous wealth, which had been accumulated, as is proved from a statement in the handwriting of his successor, by the same unscrupulous practices which had brought about the first revolt against the Church. No Catholic prelate in the old easy times had so flagrantly abused the dispensation system. Every year he made profits by admitting children to the cure of souls, for money. He used a graduated scale in which the price for inducting an infant into a benefice varied with the age, children under fourteen not being inadmissible, if the adequate fees were forthcoming."[2] The great majority of the nobility and gentry of England clung to the doctrine and ceremonies of the ancient Church, and yet were united in determination to oppose the Papal claims. Benefices in their presentation were held by priests who said the Communion Service, which was but the Mass in English, with the ancient vestments and ritual; and others, next door, were held by men who could hardly be compelled to wear even the surplice, and who celebrated the Eucharist but once in the year. The Church was a hodgepodge of conflicting doctrines and ceremonial. As Froude says:-- "So long as a single turn of the wheel, a violent revolution, or the Queen's death, might place a Catholic (Papist) on the throne, the Established Church held a merely conditional existence. It had no root in the nation, for every earnest man who was not a Puritan was a Catholic; and its officers, for the most part, regarded their tenures as an opportunity for enriching themselves, which would probably be short, and should in prudence be made use of while it remained. Benefices were appropriated to laymen, sold, or accumulated upon favourites. Churches in many places were left unserved, and cobblers and tailors were voted by the congregations into the pulpits. 'The bishops,' said Cecil, 'had no credit either for learning, good living, or hospitality.' The Archbishop of York had scandalized his province by being found in bed with the wife of an innkeeper at Doncaster. Other prelates had bestowed ordination 'on men of lewd life and corrupt behaviour.' The Bishop of Lichfield had made seventy 'lewd and unlearned ministers, for money,' in one day."[3]