“We ourselves shall be driven to seek our living at all houses and taverns, for mansions upon the benefices and vicarages we have none. And as for gentlemen and substantial honest men, for fear of inconvenience, and knowing our frailty and accustomed liberty, they will in no wise board us in their houses.” In this year the Lower House of Convocation presented a memorial inveighing against priestly marriages. But in the reign of Edward VI., what might be called a Permissive Bill was passed for the sufficient reason that “great filthiness of living had followed on the laws that compelled chastity and prohibited marriage.” Under Queen Mary celibacy was again enforced, married priests were ejected from their livings, and even those who renounced their wives were not always secure of their places. Elizabeth had a great aversion to married priests, and openly expressed her contempt for their wives, whom she could not bring herself to receive at Court. But though she demurred a good deal to giving a formal assent to ecclesiastical marriages, the Act of Edward VI. was eventually reinforced, a reaction having set in with the rise of the Protestant party. The Act was hedged round with various restrictions. “No manner of priest or deacon shall hereafter take to his wife any manner of woman without the advice and allowance first had upon good examination by the bishop of the same diocese and two justices of the peace of the same shire dwelling next to the place where the same woman hath made her most abode before her marriage; not without the good-will of the parents of the said woman, if she have any living, or two of the next of her kinsfolks, or for lack of the knowledge of such, of her master or mistress where she serveth.” The advantages and disadvantages of celibacy, and the manner of life proper for the married and the unmarried priest, are set forth by George Herbert in his dissertation on the “Country Parson.” “The country parson, considering that virginity is a higher state than matrimony, and that the ministry requires the best and highest things, is rather unmarried than married. But yet, as the temper of his body may be, or as the temper of his parish may be, where he may have occasion to converse with women, and that among suspicious men, and other like circumstances considered, he is rather married than unmarried.... If he be unmarried, he hath not a woman in his house, but finds opportunities of having his meat dressed and other services done by men-servants at home, and his linen washed abroad. If he be unmarried and sojourn, he never talks with any women alone, but in the audience of others; and that seldom, and then also in a serious manner, never jestingly or sportfully....