Unfavourable as some of the reformed doctrines undoubtedly were to moral improvement, it cannot be said to be the case with all of them. Some were evidently of the opposite tendency, as were also some of the romish doctrines. But they could not be expected to produce the desired effect unless they were extensively promulgated; and that does not appear to have been the case in this country, at least till a long while after the commencement of the reformation. It was one of the great and glaring defects of the reforming system in England, that it did not provide a sufficient number of religious or public instructors in lieu of those of the old religion who had been suppressed and silenced at the dissolution of the monasteries and other religious houses, or in consequence of their aversion to the new order of things. These are known to have been very numerous, but the number of the reformed ministers, or protestant clergy, who were appointed to succeed them and supply their places as public instructors, appears to have been very inconsiderable; comparatively at least: and, what is not a little remarkable, they were also, for the most part, far less competent than their predecessors for the charge they undertook. In such circumstances, and with such a ministry, it might be expected that vice and licentiousness would increase and abound. The state of things at Lynn, at, and long after the reformation, does not appear to have been at all favourable to moral and religious improvement. Before that period the town abounded with religious and moral instructors, such as they were, who certainly contributed in no small measure to preserve social order and public decency; and when they were afterwards superseded, their successors did not appear to greater advantage. They were not their superiors in abilities, and they were far inferior to them in number, and probably no less so in the public estimation, and the weight and extent of their influence over the minds of the inhabitants at large, especially those of the middling and lower orders, who constituted the main body or majority of the inhabitants. For among these there did not appear to be many then, as there had been formerly, who were dissatisfied with the old order of things, and anxious for a religious revolution. {672}