though
we may make some allowance for angry rhetoric, his words have the clear
ring of honesty in them; and he spoke of what he had seen and knew. The
monks, he tells the king, "be they that have made a hundred thousand idle
dissolute women in your realm, who would have gotten their living honestly
in the sweat of their faces had not their superfluous riches allured them
to lust and idleness. These be they that when they have drawn men's wives
to such incontinency, spend away their husbands' goods, make the women to
run away from their husbands, bringing both man, wife, and children to
idleness, theft, and beggary. Yea, who is able to number the great broad
bottomless ocean sea full of evils that this mischievous generation may
bring upon us if unpunished?"[101]

Copies of this book were strewed about the London streets; Wolsey issued a
prohibition against it, with the effect which such prohibitions usually
have. Means were found to bring it under the eyes of Henry himself; and the
manner in which it was received by him is full of significance, and betrays
that the facts of the age were already telling on his understanding. He was
always easy of access and easy of manner; and the story, although it rests
on Foxe's authority, has internal marks of authenticity.

"One Master Edmund Moddis, being with the king in talk of religion, and of
the new books that were come from beyond the seas, said that if it might
please his Highness to pardon him, and such as he would bring to his Grace,
he should see such a book as it was a marvel to hear of. The king demanded
who they were? He said 'Two of your merchants--George Elliot and George
Robinson.' The king appointed a time to speak with them. When they came
before his presence in a privy closet, he demanded what they had to say or
to shew him. One of them said that there was a book come to their hands
which they had there to shew his Grace. When he saw it he demanded if any
of them could read it. 'Yea,' said George Elliot, 'if it please your Grace
to hear it.' 'I thought so,' said the king; 'if need were, thou couldst say
it without book.'

"The whole book being read out, the king made a long pause, and then said,
'If a man should pull down an old stone wall, and should begin at the lower
part, the upper part thereof might chance to fall upon his head.' Then he
took the book, and put it in his desk, and commanded them, on their
allegiance, that they should not tell any man that he