“Item, part of these forsayde goodes may be employed to this use, that in euery hundreth, good towne or citie, certein houses be mainteined, to lodge and kepe pore men in, such as be not able to labour, syck, sore, blind, and lame, and euery one of them to haue wherwith to liue, and to haue poore whole women to minister unto them. . . . Let Physycians and Chyrurgians be founde in euery suche town or cyte, where such houses be, to loke uppon the Poore in that Town, and in all other Joyninge unto it and they to lyue uppon their stipend onely, without taking any penny of their pore, uppon payne of lousing both his eares and his stipend also.” Henry VIII proposed to the Commons very much what their predecessors had suggested to Henry IV and Henry V, omitting, nevertheless, the clause relating to a hundred new almshouses. If they would grant him the religious houses, these should not be converted to private uses, and the army would be strengthened and taxes reduced. No provision, however, was made for these projects, but the king was put in possession of the monasteries, and then of the chantries, hospitals and free chapels. The Parliament, in granting the hospitals to the king and his heirs for ever, expressed its confidence in the royal benevolence towards them and desire for their improvement:— “The Kinges Highnes of his most godlie and blessed disposicion entendeth to have the premisses used and exercised to more godlie and uertuouse purposes and to reduce and bringe them into a more decent and convenient order, for the commoditie and welthe of this his realme and for the suertie of the subjects.” When the king went to prorogue Parliament, he seems to [p231] have alluded in his “Oration,” as set forth by Foxe, to the above expression of their hopes and wishes:— “Surely if I, contrary to your expectation, should suffer the ministers of the church to decay; . . . or poor and miserable people to be unrelieved; you might say that I, being put in so special a trust, as I am in this case, were no trusty friend to you, nor charitable man to mine even-christened, [fellow Christians], neither a lover of the public wealth, nor yet one that feared God, to whom account must be rendered of all our doings. Doubt not, I pray you, but your expectation shall be served more godly and goodly than you will wish or desire, as hereafter you shall plainly perceive.” But although Henry VIII thus professed to remember the higher court of justice, his conduct gave no evidence of it. Brinklow ventured upon a reminder in _A Supplication of the Poore Commons_,[149] published shortly after the king’s speech:—