Whereas in the last parliament, holden at Westminster in November, the first year of the King's Majesty's reign, among other articles contained in the act for colleges and chantry lands, etc., to be given unto his Highness, it was also inserted that the lands pertaining to all guilds and brotherhoods within this realm should pass unto his Majesty by way of like gift, at which time divers then being of the lower house did not only reason and argue against that article made for the guildable lands, but also incensed many others to hold with them, among the which none were stiffer nor more busily went about to impugn the said articles than the burgesses for the town of Lynn, in the county of Norfolk, and the burgesses of the city of Coventry, in the county of Warwick; the burgesses of Lynn alleging that the guild lands belonging to their said town were given for so good a purpose (that is to say, for the maintenance and keeping up of the pier and seabanks there, which being untended to would be the loss of a great deal of low ground of the country adjoining), as it were great pity the same should be alienated from them as long as they employed it to so necessary an use; and semblably they of Coventry declaring that where that city was of much fame and antiquity, some times very wealthy though now of late years brought into decay and poverty, and had not to the furniture of the whole multitude of the Commons there, being to the number of xi or xii thousand housling people, but two churches wherein God's service is done, whereof the one, that is to say, the church of Corpus Christi, was specially maintained of the revenues of such guild lands lying only in houses and tenements within the town as had been given heretofore by diverse persons to that use and others no less beneficial to the supporting of that city; if therefore now by the act the same lands should pass from them it should be a manifest cause of the utter desolation of the city, as long as the people, when the churches were no longer supported, nor God's service done therein, and the other uses and employments of those lands omitted, should be of force constrained to abandon the city and seek new dwelling places, which should be more loss unto the King's Majesty by losing so [much] of the yearly fee farm there, and subversion of so notable a town, than the accruing of a sort of old houses and cottages pertaining to the guilds and chantries of the said cities, should be of value or profit to his Majesty, as long as his Highness should be at more cost with the reparations of the same than the yearly rents would amount unto.