same
subject week after week, in his parish church. Abbots and priors were to
teach their convents; noblemen and gentlemen their families and
servants; mayors and aldermen the boroughs. In town and in all houses,
at all dinner-tables, the conduct of the pope and the causes of the
separation from Rome were to be the one subject of conversation; that
the whole nation might be informed accurately and faithfully of the
grounds on which the government had acted. No wiser method could have
been adopted. The imperial agents would be busy under the surface; and
the mendicant friars, and all the missionaries of insurrection. The
machinery of order was set in force to counteract the machinery of
sedition.

[Sidenote: Bishops sworn to the king as Head of the Church, and the
pope's name blotted out of the Mass books.]

Further, every bishop, in addition to the oath of allegiance, had sworn
obedience to the king as Supreme Head of the Church;[274] and this was
the title under which he was to be spoken of in all churches of the
realm. A royal order had been issued, "that all manner of prayers,
rubrics, canons of Mass books, and all other books in the churches
wherein the Bishop of Rome was named, or his presumptuous and proud pomp
and authority preferred, should utterly be abolished, eradicated, and
rased out, and his name and memory should be never more, except to his
contumely and reproach, remembered; but perpetually be suppressed and
obscured."[275]

Nor were these mere idle sounds, like the bellow of unshotted cannon;
but words with a sharp, prompt meaning, which the king intended to be
obeyed. He had addressed his orders to the clergy, because the clergy
were the officials who had possession of the pulpits from which the
people were to be taught; but he knew their nature too well to trust
them. They were too well schooled in the tricks of reservation; and, for
the nonce, it was necessary to reverse the posture of the priest and of
his flock, and to set the honest laymen to overlook their pastors.

[Sidenote: June 9. Circular order addressed to the sheriffs to see that
the clergy do their duty.]

[Sidenote: If they hear of any slackness, they are to report to the
Council,]

With the instructions to the bishops circulars went round to the
sheriffs of the counties, containing a full account of these
instructions, and an appeal to their loyalty to see that the royal
orders were obeyed. "We," the king wrote to them, "seeing