word, which for the space of twelve years” (the term of Cranmer’s acquaintance with him) “he had always been ready to promote in his country, not rashly nor seditiously, but gently and soberly; _so that his own country could neither greatly hate him nor love him_. They could not hate him, for his kindness and gentleness, being ready to do every man good as much as in his power was; and yet they could not heartily love him, because he ever commended the knowledge of God’s word, studied it himself diligently, and exhorted them unto the same; and spake many times against the abusions of the clergy, for which he had all the hate that most of the clergy could procure against him.”[404] A character of this complexion, moderation the leading feature of it, was not the one to win upon a patron, himself prepared to rush into the extremes of the Puritans. But the reign of a minor, which was favourable to the growth of that party, indeed Edward had himself, perhaps, a leaning to their opinions, was not unfriendly to the further pillage of the church. Here, therefore, Cranmer had again to interpose, that in this instance he might protect the temporalities, as in the other he had protected the doctrines, of the Establishment. The division of the abbey-lands amongst the nobles seems to have begot a general taste amongst the upper classes for expense, and consequent appetite for spoil--it grew by what it fed on. Rents were raised to an extravagant height; the farm for which Latimer’s father paid from three to four pounds a year; and which enabled him to send a man and horse to the King’s service, and to portion his daughters with five pounds a-piece, was, in Latimer’s own time, let for sixteen pounds or more, to the utter impoverishment of the occupier.[405] The waste lands were every where enclosed for sheep-walks (the wool trade having now become considerable), to the annihilation of those ancient rights of pasturage which the neighbouring peasantry enjoyed, and to the fomentation of fierce rebellions throughout the country.[406] Now it happened that the chantries or chapels endowed by individuals for private masses had survived the spoliation of Henry: these it was proposed should be given to the King (which was another word for the nobles through the King), and an act of parliament to that effect was passed in 1547, in spite of the opposition of the bishops, and of Cranmer above all, who had been in hopes of reserving these endowments till Edward should come of age, and then inducing him to assign them to the relief of the numerous poor clergy whom the sale of tithes had left almost pennyless. He had already resisted encroachments of the same kind under Henry; beseeching him that there should be no alienation of church lands without the production, at least, of the royal warrant; many of the nobles being in the habit of seizing them in the King’s name, though without any intention of appropriating them to the King’s use. Moreover, in those