Henry VIII deplored the hold those men kept on the common people, and on some of their betters too; he considered it his duty to enact new rules. “The science and connyng of physyke and surgerie,” said the king in his statute, “to the perfecte knowlege wherof bee requisite bothe grete lernyng and ripe experience, ys daily within this Royalme exercised by a grete multitude of ignoraunt persones, of whom the grete partie have no maner of insight in the same nor in any other kynde of lernyng; some also can no lettres on the boke, soofarfurth that common artificers, as smythes, wevers, and women boldely and custumably take upon theim grete curis and thyngys of great difficultie, in the which they partely use sorcery and which-crafte, partely applie such medicine unto the disease as be verey noyous and nothyng metely therfore, to the high displeasoure {190} of God . . . and destruccion of many of the kynge’s liege people, most specially of them that cannot descerne the uncunnyng from the cunnyng.”[241] The examples above have shown how difficult it must often have been to “descerne” between them. Consequently, the king continues, every one who may wish to practise in London or seven miles round, must previously submit to an examination before the bishop of that city, or before the Dean of St. Paul’s, assisted by four “doctors of phisyk.” In the country the examination will take place before the bishop of the diocese or his vicar-general. In 1540, the same prince united the corporation of the barbers and the college of surgeons, and granted each year to the new association the bodies of four condemned criminals “for anathomies.” Hardly were all these privileges conceded than doubts filled the mind of the legislator himself, and who, it may be wondered, did he regret? precisely those old unregistered quacks, those possessors of infallible secrets, those village empirics so harshly treated in the statute of 1511. A new law was enacted, which is but one long enumeration of the guilty practices of qualified doctors; they poison their clients as thoroughly as the quacks of old, the chief difference is that they take more for it, refusing even to interfere if the patient is poor: