305: "A very rational doubt yet remained, how
religious persons could alienate and transfer to the king a
property, of which they themselves were only tenants for
life: and an act of parliament was framed in order to remove
all future scruples on this head, and 'settle rapine and
sacrilege,' as Lord Herbert terms them, 'on the king and his
heirs for ever.'----It does not appear to have been debated,
in either house, whether they had a power to dispossess some
hundred thousand persons of their dwellings and fortunes,
whom, a few years before, they had declared to be good
subjects: if such as live well come under that
denomination."--"Now," says Sir Edward Coke, "observe the
conclusion of this tragedy. In that very parliament, when
the great and opulent priory of St. John of Jerusalem was
given to the king, and which was the last monastery seized
on, he demanded a fresh subsidy of the clergy and laity: he
did the same again within two years; and again three years
after; and since the dissolution exacted great loans, and
against law obtained them."--_Life of Reginald Pole_; vol.
i., p. 247-9: edit. 1767, 8vo. Coke's 4th _Institute_, fol.
44.]

LATIMER, more hasty and enthusiastic than his episcopal brethren, set
all the engines of his active mind to work, as if to carry the point
by a _coup de main_; and although his resolution was, perhaps, upon
more than one occasion, shaken by the sufferings of the innocent,
yet, by his example, and particularly by his sermons,[306] he tried
to exasperate every Protestant bosom against the occupiers of
monasteries and convents.

[Footnote 306: "It was once moved by LATYMER, the good
bishop of Worcester, that two or three of these foundations
might be spared in each diocese, for the sake of
hospitality. Which gave the foresaid bishop occasion to move
the Lord Crumwell once in the behalf of the _Priory of
Malvern_." Strype's _Ecclesiastical Memorials_, vol. i.,
259. Latimer's letter is here printed; and an interesting
one it is. Speaking of the prior, he tells Cromwell that
"The man is old, a good housekeeper, feedeth many; and that,
daily. For the country is poor, and full of penury." But the
hospitality and infirmities of this poor prior were less
likely to operate graciously upon the rapacious mind of
Henry than "the