They, with other nobles, seized the unenclosed lands of the country and fenced them in for sheep pastures, thus driving into beggary many who had formerly got a good part of their living from these commons. At the same time farm rents rose in somee cases ten and even twenty fold,[1] depriving thousands of the means of subsistence, and reducing to poverty many who had been in comfortable circumstances. [1] This was oweing to the greed for land on the part of the mercantile classes, who had now acquired wealth, and wished to become landed proprietors. See Froude's "England." The bitter complaints of the sufferers found expression in Bishop Latimer's outspoken sermon, preached before King Edward, in which he said: "My father was a yeoman [small farmer], and had no lands of his own, only he had a farm of three or four pounds [rent] by year, and hereupon tilled so much as kept half a dozen men; he had walk [pasture] for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine. "He was able and did find the King a harness [suit of armor] with himself and his horse, until he came to the place where he should receive the King's wages. I can remember that I buckled his harness when he went into Blackheath Field. He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to have preached before the King's majesty now. He married my sisters with five pounds [dower] ... apiece. He kept hospitality for his poor neighbors, and some alms he gave to the poor. "And all this he did off the said farm, where he that now hath it payeth sixteen pounds a year or more, and is not able to do anything for his prince, for himself, nor for his children, or give a cup of drink to the poor." But as Latimer patheticall said, "Let the preacher preach till his tongue be worn to the stumps, nothing is amended."[1] [1] Latimer's first sermon before King Edward VI, 8th of March, 1549. 362. Edward establishes Protestantism, 1549. Henry VIII had made the Church of England independent of the Pope (S349). His son took the next great step, and made it practically Protestant in doctrine. At his desire, Archbishop Cranmer compiled a book of Common Prayer in English. It was taken largely from the Roman Catholic Prayer Book, which was in Latin (1549). The first Act of Uniformity, 1549 (reenacted 1552), obliged all churches to use the new English Prayer Book, thereby, (for the time) establishing a modified form of Protestantism throughout England (S405).[2] [2] On the Church of England, see Macaulay's "England," I, 40-42. Edward's sister, the Princess Mary, was a most devout Catholic. She refused to adopt the new service, saying to Bishop Ridley, who urged her to accept it as God's word, "I cannot tell what you call God's word, for that is not God's word now which was God's word in my father's time." It was at this period (1552) that the Articles of Religion of the Church of England were first drawn up; but they did not take their final form until the reign of Elizabeth (S383).