ons of the government.
It would have been well if the clergy could have accepted them as they
were given, and submitted their understandings once for all to statesmen
who were wiser than themselves. The majority (of the parish clergy at
least) were perhaps outwardly obedient; but the surveillance which the
magistrates were directed to exercise proves that the exceptions were
expected to be extensive; and in many quarters these precautions
themselves were rapidly discovered to be inadequate. Several even of the
most trusted among the bishops attempted an obstructive resistance. The
clergy of the north were notoriously disobedient. The Archbishop of York
was reported to have talked loosely of "standing against" the king "unto
death."[388] The Bishop of Durham fell under suspicion, and was summoned
to London. His palace was searched and his papers examined in his
absence; and the result, though inconclusive, was unsatisfactory.[389]
The religious orders again (especially the monks of such houses as had
been implicated with the Nun of Kent) were openly recusant. At the
convent at Sion, near Richmond, a certain Father Ricot preached as he
was commanded, "but he made this addition, that he which commanded him
to preach should discharge his conscience: and as soon," it was said,
"as the said Ricot began to declare the king's title," "nine of the
brethren departed from the sermon, contrary to the rule of their
religion, to the great slander of the audience."[390] Indeed it soon
became evident that among the regular clergy no compliance whatever was
to be looked for; and the agents of the government began to contemplate
the possible consequences, with a tenderness not indeed for the
prospective sufferers, but for the authorities whom they would so
cruelly compel to punish them. "I am right sorry," wrote Cromwell's
secretary to him, "to see the foolishness and obstinacy of divers
religious men, so addict to the Bishop of Rome and his usurped power,
that they contemn counsel as careless men and willing to die. If it were
not for the opinion which men had, and some yet have, in their apparent
holiness, it made no great matter what became of them, so their souls
were saved. And for my part, I would that all such obstinate persons of
them as be ready to die for the advancement of the Bishop of Rome's
authority were dead indeed by God's hand, that no man should run
wrongfully into obloquy for their just punishment."[391]

[Sidenote: P