But we have now chiefly to see how these various changes affected the constitution and position of our church of Wells. As Wells was a secular foundation, the suppression of the monasteries did not touch it at all; Glastonbury and Bath fell, but Wells went on just as it had done before. If anything, the church of Wells gained by the suppression, as it was thereby restored to the rank which it held before the days of John de Villulâ. As I have already said, the church of Bath was suppressed along with the other monasteries, and the Chapter of Wells was once more made, by an Act of Parliament in 1543, the sole Chapter of the Somersetshire Bishoprick.[41] It is undoubtedly true that, for three years, from 1537 to 1540, the Deanery was irregularly held by the King's favourite, Lord Cromwell, who, of course, as a layman, could not perform its duties.[42] This was a great abuse, but it was not altogether a new abuse. To search no further, earlier in Henry's reign the two Deaneries of Exeter and Wimborne had been held at once by the King's cousin, Reginald Pole, who was afterwards Cardinal and Archbishop, but who had not then taken holy orders. Reginald Pole was, to be sure, a theological student, a description which would hardly apply to Thomas Cromwell; still Pole could as little discharge the duties of Dean of Exeter as Cromwell could discharge those of Dean of Wells.[43] It was not till the reign of Edward the Sixth that the systematic picking and stealing from ecclesiastical bodies, as distinguished from their regular suppression, set in like a flood. The first instalment of destruction was indeed done in a regular and legal way. In his first year (1547), all chantries and colleges were suppressed, the cathedral chapters, the colleges in the Universities, and a few others only being spared.[44] The suppression of the chantries, where masses were said for the souls of particular persons, necessarily followed on the change of doctrine; but the general suppression of Colleges, which had the effect of destroying the capitular bodies at Beverley, Wimborne, and a crowd of other places, was sheer destruction, and not reformation. Then came the general plunder of Bishopricks, Chapters, and ecclesiastical bodies generally, which began under Edward, and went on again in a form one degree less shameless under Elizabeth. A Bishop was commonly bullied into exchanging the estates of his see for some pretended equivalent, commonly in the shape of impropriate tithes. No church suffered in this way more than that of Wells. William Barlow, who became Bishop in 1547, the first year of Edward the Sixth, was driven in the course of that year and the next to give up to Edward Duke of Somerset pretty well everything belonging to the see, including the palace of Wells itself, in exchange for a few rectories.[45] A large part of this property was lost for ever; but a good deal was recovered by Barlow himself after