“As to the extent of church property,” Milman remarks (v. 201) “in London and the neighbouring counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Essex, the church lands must have been enormous. Hardly a parish in Middlesex which did not belong, certainly so far as manorial rights, to the Bishop of London, the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, the Abbots and Monks of Westminster, and other Religious Houses; the Carthusians, St. John Clerkenwell (Hospitallers), Sion, and many smaller foundations. The chapter of St. Paul’s swept in a broad belt round the north of London till they met the church of Westminster at Hampstead and Paddington. The Abbot of Westminster was almost a Prince of Westminster.” Again, to quote from the same writer:— “The wealth of the Clergy, the landed property, even with the tithe, was by no means the whole: and, invaded as it was by aggression, by dilapidation, by alienation through fraud or violence, limited in its productiveness by usage, by burthens, by generosity, by maladministration, it may be questioned whether it was the largest part. The vast treasures accumulated by the Avignonese Pontiffs when the Papal territories were occupied by enemies or adventurers, and could have yielded but scanty revenues, testify to the voluntary or compulsory tribute paid by Western Christendom to her Supreme Court of Appeal. If the Bishops mainly depended on their endowments, to the Clergy, to the monastic houses, oblations (in many cases now from free gifts hardened into rightful demands) were pouring in, and had long been pouring in, with incalculable profusion. Not only might not the altars, hardly any part of the church might be approached without a votive gift. The whole life, the death of every Christian was bound up with the ceremonial of the church: for almost every office was received from the rich and generous the ampler donation, from the poorer or more parsimonious was exacted the hard-wrung fee. Above all, there were the masses, which might lighten the sufferings of the soul in purgatory: there was the prodigal gift of the dying man out of selfish love for himself, the more generous and no less prodigal gift of the bereaved, out of holy charity for others. The dying man, from the King to the peasant, when he had no further use for his worldly riches would devote them to this end: the living, out of profound respect or deep affection for the beloved husband, parent, brother, kinsman, friend, would be, and actually was not less bountiful and munificent. Add to all this the oblations at the crosses of the Redeemer, or the shrines of popular or famous saints, for their intercessory prayers to avert the imminent calamity, to assuage the sorrow, or to grant success to the schemes, it might be, of ambition, avarice, or any other passion, to obtain pardon for sin, to bring down blessing: crosses and shrines, many of them supposed to be endowed with miraculous powers, constantly working miracles.