best part of what
they had lost; besides that, engaging the clergy to renew no leases, was
a thing entirely in their own power, and this in forty years time would
raise their revenues to be about ten times their present value." These
two expedients for increasing the revenues of the Church, he represents
as pernicious designs, fit only to be practised in times of Popery, and
such as the laity ought never to consent to: Whence, and from what he
said before about tithes, his Lordship has freely declared his opinion,
that the clergy are rich enough, and that the least addition to their
subsistence would be a step toward Popery. Now it happens, that the two
only methods, which could be thought on, with any probability of
success, toward some reasonable augmentation of ecclesiastical revenues,
are here rejected by a Bishop, as a means for introducing Popery, and
the nation publicly warned against them. The continuance of the Statute
of Mortmain in full force, after the Church had been so terribly
stripped, appeared to Her Majesty and the kingdom a very unnecessary
hardship; upon which account it was at several times relaxed by the
legislature. Now as the relaxation of that statute is manifestly one of
the reasons which gives the Bishop those terrible apprehensions of
Popery coming on us; so I conceive another ground of his fears, is the
remission of the first-fruits and tenths. But where the inclination to
Popery lay, whether in Her Majesty who proposed this benefaction, the
parliament which confirmed, or the clergy who accepted it, his Lordship
hath not thought fit to determine.

[Footnote 30: Page 39.]

The other popish expedient for augmenting church-revenues, is "engaging
the clergy to renew no leases."[31] Several of the most eminent
clergymen have assured me, that nothing has been more wished for by good
men, than a law to prevent (at least) bishops from setting leases for
lives. I could name ten bishoprics in England whose revenues one with
another do not amount to L600 a-year for each; and if his lordship's,
for instance, would be above ten times the value when the lives are
expired, I should think the overplus would not be ill disposed toward an
augmentation of such as are now shamefully poor. But I do assert, that
such an expedient was not always thought popish and dangerous by this
right reverend historian. I have had the honour formerly to converse
with him; and he has told me several years ago, that he lamente