For him, however, the essential matter was the study of the Word of God. He used frequently to read and expound it in the houses of evangelical Christians in London. Bishop Gardiner, when examining one of Hilles' neighbors, said to him: 'Has not Richard Hilles been every day in your house, teaching you and others like you?' Some ecclesiastics one day called upon him, while making a collection for placing tapers before the crucifix and the sepulchre of Christ in the parish church. He refused to contribute. The priests entreated his kinsmen and friends to urge him not to set himself against a practice which had existed for five centuries. No custom, said he, can prevail against the word of Christ--'They that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.' The priests now increased their threatenings, and Hilles left London and went to Strasburg, keeping up at the same time his house of business in London. The reader of Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, and Augustine, on leaving the banks of the Rhine, went to Frankfort and to Nürnberg to sell his cloth.[415] Moreover he made a good use of the money which he received. 'I send herewith to your piety,' he wrote to Bullinger, 'ten Italian crowns, which I desire to be laid out according to your pleasure, as occasion may offer, upon the poor exiles (rich, however, in Christ), and those especially, if such there be, who are in distress among you.'[416] The more Henry VIII. felt the loss which he had sustained by the death of Cromwell, the more did he feel drawn to Cranmer and to the cause he advocated. Already, in this same year, 1542, he addressed to Cranmer some letters for the abolition of idolatry, ordering the disuse of images, relics, tapers, reliquaries, tables and monuments of miracles, pilgrimages and other abuses.[417]