In Grindall’s primacy, monthly prayer meetings, called “prophesyings,” came into fashion among the clergy. For some reason these meetings gave the government offence, and Grindall was directed to put a stop to them. Attacked thus, in the priests’ dearest rights, the archbishop refused. Without more ado the old prelate was suspended, nor was he pardoned until he made submission five years later. The correspondence of the Elizabethan bishops is filled with accounts of their thraldom. Pilkington, among others, complained that “We are under authority, and cannot make any innovation without the sanction of the queen ... and the only alternative now allowed us is, whether we will bear with these things or disturb the peace of the Church.”[293] Even ecclesiastical property continued to be seized, where it could be taken safely; and the story of Ely House, although it has been denied, is authentic in spirit. From the beginning of the Reformation the London palaces of the bishops had been a tempting prize. Henry took York House for himself, Raleigh had a lease of Durham House, and, about 1565, Sir Christopher Hatton, whose relations with the queen were hardly equivocal, undertook to force Bishop Cox to convey him Ely House. The bishop resisted. Hatton applied to the queen, and she is said to have cut the matter short thus:-- “Proud prelate: I understand you are backward in complying with your agreement, but I would have you know that I who made you what you are can unmake you, and if you do not forthwith fulfil your engagement, by God, I will immediately unfrock you. Elizabeth.” Had the great landlords been either stronger, so as to have controlled the blouse of Commons, or more military, so as to have suppressed it, English ecclesiastical development would have been different. As it was, a knot of ruling families, gorged with plunder, lay between the Catholics and the more fortunate of the evicted yeomen, who had made money by trade, and who hated and competed with them. Puritans as well as Catholics sought to unsettle titles to Church lands:-- “It is wonderfull to see how dispitefully they write of this matter. They call us church robbers, devourers of holly things, cormorantes, etc. affirminge that by the lawe of god, things once consecrated to god for the service of this churche, belong unto him for ever.... ffor my owne pte I have some imppriations, etc. & I thanke god I keepe them w^{th} a good conscience, and many wold be ondone. The law appveth us.”[294]