“Your pretence of putting downe abbeys, was, to amend that was amisse in them. . . . It is amended euen as the deuell amended his dames legge (as it is in the prouerbe) whan he shuld haue set it ryght, he bracke it quyte in peces.”[147] It is evident that the monastic system had been gradually losing its hold on the nation. The idea of partial disendowment had also been working in men’s minds, no one foreseeing that the plunder of rich foundations would ultimately lead to the robbery of poor people. In 1410 the Commons petitioned in the Parliament of Westminster that the surplus wealth of ecclesiastics might be transferred to other uses, and that destitute persons might benefit by the provision of new hospitals. Henry IV replied that he would deliberate upon the matter, and although no revised appropriation of funds then took place, he did afterwards suppress certain alien priories, a policy which was followed by Henry V. In 1414 the above proposal was renewed in the Parliament of Leicester, but the astute Chichele undertook that the clergy should supply money for the wars:—“a thrust was made at all [p229] Abbies,” says Fuller, “which this Archbishop, as a skilful Fencer, fairly put by.” In the following century Wolsey, not anticipating the wholesale destruction which was to follow, sought to dissolve certain small priories in order to assist educational institutions (1523). A contemporary writer observes that by this precedent “he did make loose in others the conscience towardes those houses.” The people desired the reformation of hospitals and an extension of the system. Sir John Oldcastle’s bill in 1414 proposed the foundation of new institutions each to be endowed with one hundred marks yearly. The Commons suggested that money now wasted by churchmen might maintain a standing army and also suffice to provide:— “an hundred houses of alms, to the relief of poor people . . . with oversight of two true seculars unto every house. And also with provision that every township should keep all poor people of their own dwellers, which could not labour for their living, with condition that if more fell in a town than the town could maintain, then the said almshouses to relieve such townships.”[148] A similar plan was proposed by Brinklow about the year 1542. He probably uttered what was in the minds of many when he suggested measures for the re-distribution of ecclesiastical wealth. One chapter of his _Complaint_ contains “A Godly aduisement howe to bestowe the goodes and landes of the Bisshops &c. after the Gospell, with an admonytion to the Rulers, that they loke better upon the hospitals.” A part might, he thought, be given in alms to the blind, sick and lame, to free schools, or to needy maidens for marriage portions, etc. [p230] Poorhouses and parish doctors should be provided, and he adds:—