and Henry seldom neglected to creep to the Cross on Good Friday, to serve the priest at mass, to receive holy bread and holy water every Sunday, and daily to use "all other laudable ceremonies".[1079] [Footnote 1077: _E.g._, _L. and P._, v., 285; XIII., ii., 849, Introd., p. xxviii. Sir John Wallop admired the "charitable dexterity" with which Henry treated them (_ibid._, xv., 429).] [Footnote 1078: When a book was presented to him which he had not the patience to read he handed it over to one of his lords-in-waiting to read; he then took it back and gave it to be examined to some one of an entirely different way of thinking, and made the two discuss its merits, and upon that discussion formed his own opinion (Cranmer to Wolfgang Capito, _Works_, ii., 341; the King, says Cranmer, "is a most acute and vigilant observer"). Henry was also, according to modern standards, extraordinarily patient of theological discourses; when Cranmer obtained for Latimer an appointment to preach at Court, he advised him not to preach more than an hour or an hour and a half lest the King and Queen should grow weary! (_L. and P._, vii., 29).] [Footnote 1079: _L. and P._, XIV., i., 967, an interesting letter which also records how the King rowed up and down the Thames in his barge for an hour after evensong on Holy Thursday "with his drums and fifes playing".] With such feelings at heart, a union with Protestants could never for Henry be more than a _mariage de convenance_; and in this, as in other things, he carried with him the bulk of popular sympathy. In 1539 it was said that no man in London durst speak against Catholic usages, and, in Lent of that year, a man was hanged, apparently at the instance of the Recorder of London, for eating flesh on a Friday.[1080] The attack on the Church had been limited to its privileges and to its property; its doctrine had scarcely been touched. The upper classes among the laity had been gorged with monastic spoils; they were disposed to rest and be thankful. The middle classes had been (p. 389) satisfied to some extent by the restriction of clerical fees, and by the prohibition of the clergy from competing with laymen in profitable trades, such as brewing, tanning, and speculating in land and houses. There was also the general reaction which always follows a period of change. How far that reaction had gone, Henry first learnt from the Parliament which met on the 28th of April, 1539.