s was done of the church your mother's tenderness unto you,
considering your imbecility and weakness after so sore a sickness that
you had in the schism, at the which time your appetite served you to
no meat, but to that fruit that came from the lands of the church; and
by that you lived, which she was content you should keep still, and
made promise it should not be taken from you. And so it was left in
your hand, as it were an apple in a child's hand given by the mother,
which she, perceiving him to feed too much of, and knowing it should
do him hurt if he himself should eat the whole, would have him give
her a little piece thereof, which the boy refusing, and whereas he
would cry out if she would take it from him, letteth him alone
therewith. But the father, her husband, coming in, if he shall see how
the boy will not let go one morsel to the mother that hath given him
the whole, she asking it with so fair means, he may peradventure take
the apple out of the {p.279} boy's hand, and if he cry, beat him
also, and cast the apple out of the window."

[Footnote 591: "Three years and more after the
restoration of the people to the church," the
legate says in the body of the letter. The date of
it will be December, 1556, or December, 1557, as
the three years are calculated from the restoration
of Orthodoxy, or from the reunion with Rome.]

The maternal tenderness, under this aspect of the secularisation, had
been more weak than wise.

"As the English laity had dishonoured the ministers of the church
above all people," continued the legate, "so must they now honour them
above all people, remembering Christ's words--'He that despiseth you
despiseth Me.' They must obey the priests, therefore, implicitly; they
must be careful to pay their tithes honestly; what they denied their
priests they denied their God; and they must show their repentance
especially where they had especially offended, touching the injuries
they had done to the ministers of God, whom God had set over them, to
be honoured as they would their natural father."

"And this," he said, coming to the heart of the matter, "this you
cannot do if you favour heretics, who being the very enemies of God
and man, yet specially their enmity extendeth against priests. Here is
another point that you must show worthy of a repentant mind: that
whereas you have s