ia, would long since have done the like also in his
kingdom; but, not daring to venture so far without the consent of the
pope, he wrote unto him thereof, and received his answer inhibitory
unto all his proceeding in the same....

I would set down two or three more of the like instruments passed from
that see unto the like end, but this shall suffice, being less common
than the other, which are to be had more plentifully.

As for our churches themselves, bells and times of morning and evening
prayer remain as in times past, saving that all images, shrines,
tabernacles, rood-lofts, and monuments of idolatry are removed, taken
down, and defaced, only the stories in glass windows excepted, which,
for want of sufficient store of new stuff, and by reason of extreme
charge that should grow by the alteration of the same into white panes
throughout the realm, are not altogether abolished in most places at
once, but by little and little suffered to decay, that white glass may
be provided and set up in their rooms. Finally, whereas there was wont
to be a great partition between the choir and the body of the church,
now it is either very small or none at all, and (to say the truth)
altogether needless, sith the minister saith his service commonly in
the body of the church, with his face toward the people, in a little
tabernacle of wainscot provided for the purpose, by which means the
ignorant do not only learn divers of the psalms and usual prayers by
heart, but also such as can read do pray together with him, so that
the whole congregation at one instant pour out their petitions unto
the living God for the whole estate of His church in most earnest and
fervent manner. Our holy and festival days are very well reduced also
unto a less number; for whereas (not long since) we had under the pope
four score and fifteen, called festival, and thirty _profesti_, beside
the Sundays, they are all brought unto seven and twenty, and, with
them, the superfluous numbers of idle wakes, guilds, fraternities,
church-ales, help-ales, and soul-ales, called also dirge-ales, with
the heathenish rioting at bride-ales, are well diminished and laid
aside. And no great matter were it if the feasts of all our apostles,
evangelists, and martyrs, with that of all saints, were brought to the
holy days that follow upon Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, and
those of the Virgin Mary, with the rest, utterly removed from the
calendars, as neither necessary nor