t be maintained, hospitality, almsgiving, and
other charitable deeds might be done, and prayers be said for the souls
of the founders and their heirs; the abbots, priors, and governors of
the said houses, _and certain aliens their superiors_, as the abbots and
priors of the Cistercians, the Premonstrants, the orders of Saint
Augustine and of Saint Benedict, and many more of other religions and
orders have at their own pleasure set divers heavy, unwonted heavy and
importable tallages, payments, and impositions upon every of the said
monasteries and houses subject unto them, in England, Ireland, Scotland,
and Wales, without the privity of the king and his nobility, contrary to
the laws and customs of the said realm; and thereby the number of
religious persons being oppressed by such tallages, payments, and
impositions, the service of God is diminished, alms are not given to the
poor, the sick, and the feeble; the healths of the living and the souls
of the dead be miserably defrauded; hospitality, almsgiving, and other
godly deeds do cease; and so that which in times past was charitably
given to godly uses and to the service of God, is now converted to an
evil end, by permission whereof there groweth great scandal to the
people." To provide against a continuance of these abuses, it was
enacted that no "religious" persons should, under any pretence or form,
send out of the kingdom any kind of rent, tax, or tallage; and that
"priors aliens" should not presume to assess any payment, charge, or
other burden whatever upon houses within the realm.[3]

The language of this act was studiously guarded. The pope was not
alluded to; the specific methods by which the extortion was practised
were not explained; the tax upon presentations to benefices, either
having not yet distinguished itself beyond other impositions, or the
government trusting that a measure of this general kind might answer the
desired end. Lucrative encroachments, however, do not yield so easily to
treatment; nearly fifty years after it became necessary to reenact the
same statute; and while recapitulating the provisions of it, the
parliament found it desirable to point out more specifically the
intention with which it was passed.

The popes in the interval had absorbed in their turn from the heads of
the religious orders, the privileges which by them had been extorted
from the affiliated societies. Each English benefice had become the
fountain of a rivulet which