Great Britain -- History -- Lancaster and York, 1399-1485 -- Sources
It is notorious now in the realm of England that boys, youths and
men dwelling in the courts of the worldly are placed in churches, in
high offices and in prelacies, others being set aside who have long
been occupied in study and preaching and in the guiding of the people
without thought of worldly lucre.... Among others unworthily promoted,
one foolish youth, eighteen years of age, was promoted to twelve
prebends and a great archdeaconry of the value of a hundred pounds, and
to one great rectory, and a certain layman received the rents of all
the said benefices, and spent upon the youth just as much as he, the
layman, pleased, and never rendered an account, and that youth was the
son of a simple knight, and, like an idiot, was drunk almost every day.
_Non-residence_ [pp. 3, 149].
Some never or seldom reside in their cures, and he to whom a church is
appropriated and who is non-resident, comes once a year to his cure,
or sends to the church at the end of the autumn, and having filled
his purse with money and sold his tithes, departs again far away from
his cure to the court where he occupies himself in money-making and
pleasures.... O Lord God! incline the heart of the Pope, Thy vicar, to
remedy the evils which arise through the appropriation of churches, and
by the non-residence of good curates in the same. For now in England a
time draweth nigh when men will say, "Formerly there were rectors in
England, and now there are ruined churches in which cultured men cannot
decently live...."
_Church dues oppressive_ [p. 13].
For Rome, like a singular and principal wild beast, hath laid waste
the vineyards of the church, reserving to herself the elections of
bishops, that none may confer an episcopal church on anyone unless they
first pay the annates or first-fruits and rent of the vacant church.
Also she hath destroyed the vineyard of God's church in many places,
by annulling the elections of all the bishops in England. Also she
destroys the church by promoting wicked men according as the King and
the Pope agree.
_The abuse of the Sacraments_ [pp. 197].
It is now known that many infants die without baptism because the
parish churches have no fonts, and divers abbeys have licence and
custom that everyone of certain parishes should baptise in their
monasteries, and yet they cannot come conveniently by night, or at
other times to the font there.
_Proud Prelates_ [pp. 22, 23].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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