UPON regaining his liberty, Knox immediately repaired to England. The objections which he had formerly entertained against a residence in that kingdom were now in a great measure removed. Henry VIII. had died in the year 1547; and archbishop Cranmer, released from the severe restraint under which he had been held by his tyrannical and capricious master, now exerted himself with much zeal in advancing the Reformation. In this he was cordially supported by those who governed the kingdom during the minority of Edward VI. But the undertaking was extensive and difficult; and, in carrying it on, he found a great deficiency of ecclesiastical coadjutors. Although the most of the bishops had externally complied with the alterations introduced by authority, they remained attached to the old religion, and secretly thwarted, instead of seconding, the measures of the primate. The inferior clergy were, in general, as unable as they were unwilling to undertake the instruction of the people,[113] whose ignorance of religion {79} was in many parts of the country extreme, and whose superstitious habits had become quite inveterate. This evil, which prevailed universally throughout the popish church, instead of being corrected, was considerably aggravated by a ruinous measure adopted at the commencement of the English reformation. When Henry suppressed the monasteries, and seized their revenues, he allotted pensions to the monks during life; but to relieve the royal treasury of this burden, small benefices in the gift of the crown were afterwards substituted in the place of pensions. The example of the monarch was imitated by the nobles who had procured monastic lands. By this means a great part of the inferior livings were held by ignorant and superstitious monks, who were a dead weight upon the English church, and a principal cause of the nation’s sudden relapse to popery, at the subsequent accession of queen Mary.[114] Cranmer had already adopted measures for remedying this alarming evil. With the concurrence of the protector and privy council, he had invited a number of learned protestants from Germany into England, and had placed Peter Martyr, Martin Bucer, Paul {80} Fagius, and Emanuel Tremellius, as professors in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. This was a wise measure, which secured a future supply of useful preachers, trained up by these able masters; but the necessity was urgent, and demanded immediate provision. For this purpose, instead of fixing a number of orthodox and popular preachers in particular charges, it was judged most expedient to employ them in itinerating through different parts of the kingdom, where the clergy were most illiterate or disaffected to the Reformation, and where the inhabitants were most addicted to superstition.