The arrangement with Warham was one quite in accord with the practice of the day in such cases, but not altogether in harmony with some of Erasmus' lofty pretensions about pecuniary burdens. When Warham offered Erasmus the "living" of Aldington in Kent, it was rather a severe test of the famous critic's sincerity in his utterances on church morality. A more flagrant case of abuse of church funds, so far as the principle was concerned, could hardly be imagined. Here was a needy foreigner, who had, to be sure, the ordination of a priest, but who from the moment of his ordaining had never done a single clerical act, to be set over a congregation of English souls, only that their contributions might go to support him in a life of scholarly production. To be sure there were excuses enough in the habits of the day, but it was precisely as a critic of such corrupt practices that Erasmus was now before the world. Another palliation may be found in the nature of the work which the scholar hoped to do in the leisure thus acquired. He was laying great and far-reaching plans for such an advancement of theological study as should bring in a really new era of Christian faith and practice. Still all such reasoning could not obscure the real fact that to accept such a parish living meant to take money for which no proper equivalent was given to those who furnished it. This was not Warham's money, but only a trust in his hands for the benefit of the souls of Aldington. [Illustration: WILLIAM WARHAM, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. FROM A PAINTING BY HOLBEIN, IN THE LOUVRE GALLERY.] Erasmus' own account[88] of the transaction represents himself as very reluctant to take the benefice, and Warham as insisting upon it so urgently that he finally could no longer resist. Fortunately we have the original documents[89] in Warham's own words, and there is no hint of any reluctance on Erasmus' part. The fact was, at all events, that he took the living, did nothing by way of service, and in a few months resigned it in exchange for an annual pension of twenty pounds. Warham's account of the matter goes far beyond the ordinary limits of a deed of record, and is in fact nothing less than a frank apology for a practice which he did not himself approve. It was far too common for a parish priest to resign a living with duties in exchange for a substantial life-pension without duties, and Warham declares his determination not to permit this sort of thing in the diocese of Canterbury. He makes, however, an exception in Erasmus' case, he says, for several reasons: First, he is [88] Knight's Life of Erasmus, p. 155, note a. [89] Knight, Appendix, xl., and Vischer's _Erasmiana_, 1876, pp. 8-15.