William Harrison had opinions of his own about public and social matters in his day, and also had often racy ways of expressing those opinions. I'll extract some. He calls Becket "the old cocke of Canturburie;" notes how the Conferences of clergy and laity stirrd the parsons "to applie their books ... which otherwise ... would giue themselues to hawking, hunting, tables, cards, dice, tipling at the alehouse, shooting of matches, and other like vanities;" he complains of the subsidies and taxes that the clergy are made to pay, "as if the church were now become the asse whereon euerie market man is to ride and cast his wallet;" also of "the couetousnesse of the patrones, of whom some doo bestow aduousons of benefices vpon their bakers, butlers, cookes, good archers, falconers, and horsekeepers," while others "doo scrape the wool from our clokes;" he notes how Popish "images ... and monuments of idolatrie are remooued" from the churches, "onelie the stories in glasse windowes excepted," which are let stay for a while, from the scarcity and cost of white glass; he'd like to get rid of Saints' Days; he commends the decent apparel of the Protestant parsons, as contrasted with that of the Popish blind sir-Johns, who went "either in diuerse colors like plaiers, or in garments of light hew, as yellow, red,[34] greene, etc., with their shooes piked,[35] ... so that to meet a priest in those daies was to behold a peacocke that spreadeth his taile when he danseth before the henne;" and then he denounces the cheating at elections for College fellowships, scholarships. Harrison also tells us that he had for a time the "collection" (of MSS., maps, etc.) of "William Read,[36] sometime fellow of Merteine college in Oxford, doctor of diuinitie, and the most profound astronomer that liued in his time." He has a cut at the Popes' nephews--"for nephues might say in those daies: Father, shall I call you vncle?"--says that he knew one of the Norwich-diocese churches turnd "into a barne, whilest the people heare seruice further off vpon a greene: their bell also, when I heard a sermon there preached in the greene, hanged in an oke for want of a steeple. But now I vnderstand that the oke likewise is gone." After saying what England in old time paid the Pope, he asks, "and therevpon tell me whether our Iland was one of the best paire of bellowes or not, that blue the fire in his kitchen, wherewith to make his pot seeth, beside all other commodities."