Bishop Barlow, of S. David's, had torn the lead roof off his palace and the castle at Lawhadden to provide dowers for his daughters, and would have unroofed his cathedral had he not been prevented by Elizabeth, because in it was the monument of Edmund, Earl of Richmond, the father of Henry VII. When translated to Bath and Wells he destroyed the lady chapel, the finest Perpendicular building in the West of England, surpassing even Sherborne and Bath, and sold it--lead, roof, stones, and all. Some of the clergy were mere temporizers, without convictions, taking their colour from their patrons, and ready to believe or pretend to believe this or that, as suited their pockets. The majority were indifferent--ignorant--not knowing where they stood. Many had thrust their way into Holy Orders for the sake of the loaves and fishes that might be obtained in the Established Church, with no work to do, without education, without zeal, without convictions, and consequently totally without the least enthusiasm, without any fixed principles. Laud and the Star Chamber sought to produce conformity by cutting off ears and slitting noses. But what Laud failed to see was that the only men in religious England who knew their minds, who had any fixed principles in religion, were the Papists and the Puritans. What they should have done, but what probably they could not do, was to inspire the clergy of the Church with zeal and enthusiasm. But the clergy could not catch the fire from off the altar; they had entered Orders for the sake of a rectory, a glebe and tithe, and cared for nothing else. If one half--nay, one quarter--of the charges brought against them by the Tryers be true, they were a most unworthy set. In Elizabeth's reign there had been a difficulty in filling the benefices, and any Jack and Tom who could gratify the bishop and could read was ordained and appointed to a benefice. And these were the men to maintain the doctrine of the Universal Church and Apostolic tradition against fiery enthusiasts on one side who took their own reading of Scripture for divine inspiration, and on the other against the Papists who set their back against the Rock of Peter. With churches picked bare, with sermons without fire, services performed without dignity, often with indecorum, without religious instruction from teachers who did not know what to teach, it is no wonder that the people turned away to hot-gospellers and tub-thumpers who, if they could not kindle in them love and charity, could set them on fire with self-righteousness and religious animosities.