The elementary bread of the eucharist was expressed by base and indecent nicknames.[12] The alehouses were filled with profane disputants upon the mysteries of our faith, and the dissolute scoffers made songs upon them:[13] "Green Sleeves," "Maggy Lauder," and "John Anderson my Jo," with numbers more, were all of this class of compositions; and psalms (in this instance, perhaps, without any intentional levity) were set to hornpipes. To crown all, a multitude of disaffected persons were at large in the country, speaking evil of dignities, and exciting the idle, the hungry, and the aggrieved, to riot and rebellion; bearding the government with audacious demands of changes, both civil and ecclesiastical, to be made at their pleasure, couched in language the most imperative and insolent; "such," Cranmer observes in his answer to them, "as was not at any time used of subjects to their prince since the beginning of the world."[14] [4] Some Account of Shrewsbury, p. 128. [5] See the Petition of the Inhabitants of Holm Cultram, in Cumberland, to Cromwell, praying for the preservation of the abbey church there A.D. 1538. Ellis's Original Letters, ii. 89. [6] Spelman, Hist. and Fate of Sacrilege, p. 202. The extract is from a letter of John Bale to Leland. [7] Homily on keeping clean of Churches. [8] Strype's Cranmer, 177. [9] Latimer's Sermons, i.60, 61.--Id. i. 176. [10] Id. i. 167. [11] Latimer's Sermons, i; 176, 220. [12] Strype's Cranmer, 175. [13] Fox, 1048. Percy's Reliques of English Poetry, ii 291. Shakspeare's Winter's Tale, act iv. sc. 2. [14] Strype, Append, 88. _Fox's Book of Martyrs_.