“As for the charge, that the bishop made his porter a minister; all things considered he thought it to be justifiable and lawfully done, and not to lack example of many such that had been after that sort admitted, both since the Queen’s coming to the crown, by many good bishops, and by sound histories ecclesiastical. That where churches, by reason of persecution, or multitudes of Hamlets and free chapels, had commonly very small stipends for their ministers, honest godly men, upon the discretion of the governors of the church, had been, and might be, brought in to serve, in the want of learned men, in prayer, administration of the sacraments, good example of life, and in some sort of exhortation. And this man therefore when the bishop found him by good and long experience to be one that pleased God, to be conversant in the scriptures, and of very honest life and conversation, he allowed of him to serve in a small congregation at Paddington, where commonly for the meanness of the stipend no preacher could be had; as in many places it came to pass, where the parsonage was impropriate, and the provision for the vicar or curate very small. And how that good man behaved himself there, time and trial proved him; for he continued in that place with the good liking of the people eight or more years till he grew dull of sight for age, and thereby unable to serve any longer.” {124a} What Fletcher, Bancroft, Vaughan, Ravis, Abbot, and King did for Paddington, I cannot tell. But the truth is, that the protestant bishops, no more than the popish abbots, have applied the revenues of the church to their original purposes. It is true that much of the revenue of the church vanished at the Reformation. The great Reformers of the Church did not possess the princely fortunes of their predecessors; or of the present bishops. {124b} But the reformed bishops did not relinquish the old practice of receiving fines, for granting life-leases, when the impropriate leases dropped in. Rectory lands, and tithes, were still badly managed; and the fines raised by leasing them were appropriated, as heretofore, to individual uses. To such an extent was this “waste of church lands” carried that the people saw little good had been done, in this respect, by that revolution which had been sanctioned by Henry the eighth. During the next reformation another survey of ecclesiastical property was made. Commissioners were appointed in 1649, by the parliament, to enquire into the nature of ecclesiastical benefices; and from their report we learn the condition of the “living of Paddington” at that time.