These articles thus ordained and to the people delivered. The inhabitants of the north parts being at that time very ignorant and rude, knowing not what true religion meant, but altogether noseled in superstition and popery, and also by the means of certain abbotts and ignorant priests, not a little stirred and provoked for the suppression of certain monasteries, and for the extirpation and abolishment of the bishop of Rome, now taking an occasion at this book, saying "See, friends, now is taken from us four of the vii Sacraments and shortly ye shall lose the other three also, and thus the faith of the Holy Church shall utterly be suppressed and abolished": and therefore they suddenly spread abroad and raised great and shameful slanders only to move the people to sedition and rebellion, and to kindle in the people hateful and malicious minds against the King's Majesty and the Magistrates of the realm, saying, Let no folly bind ourselves to the maintenance of religion, and rather than to suffer it thus to decay, even to die in the field. And amongst them also were too many even of the nobility, that did not a little to provoke and stir up the ignorant and rude people the more stiffly to rebel and stand therein, faithfully promising them, both aid and succour against the King and their own native country (like foolish and wicked men) thinking by their so doing to have done God high pleasure and service. There were also certain other malicious and busy persons who added oil (as the adage says) to the furnace. These made open clamours in every place where opportunity served, that Christian religion should be utterly violate, despised and set aside, and that rather than so it behoved and was the parts of every true and Christian man to defend it even to the death, and not to admit and suffer by any means the faith (in which their forefathers so long and so many thousand years have lived and continued) now to be subverted and destroyed. Among these were many priests which deceived also the people with many false fables and venomous lies and imaginations (which could never enter nor take place in the heart of any good man, nor faithful subject), saying that all manner of prayer and fasting and all God's service should utterly be destroyed and taken away, that no man should marry a wife or be partaker of the Sacraments, or at length should eat a piece of roast meat, but he should for the same first pay unto the king a certain sum of money, and that they should be brought in more bondage and in a more wicked manner of life, than the Saracens be under the great Turk.... And at the last they in writing made certain petitions to the King's Majesty, professing that they never intended hurt toward his royal person. The King's Majesty received those petitions and made answer to them as followeth: