impartial persons to survey his bishopric, and complains that he finds great disorder in his cathedral church, which he says is ' a very nursery of blasphemy, whoredom, pryde, superstition, and ignorance.'
Another bishop, John Best, of Carlisle, reporting[1] the state of his diocese, also to Cecil, a month later, says that the priests are 'wicked imps of antichrist, for the most part very ignorant and stubborn, past measure false and subtle.' The use of the word antichrist, and the general terms in which the accusation is couched, raises a doubt in this last case whether it may not be a mere charge of addiction to Popish practices, which, considering the date, and that many of the men so charged must have held their cures through Henry, Edward, and Mary's reigns, would hardly be surprising; but Bishop Scory's case cannot admit of the doubt—the charges are too specific.
Finally, the case of Nicholas Udal already referred to (see p. 54, above—note) shows that the general tone of morality of the period was a very low one.
That the low tone was not confined to the Catholic clergy is unhappily proved by Latimer's reproofs of it, by the history of Bishop Ponet, and by the constant complaints of the covetousness of the Elizabethan bishops, and their unscrupulous dealing with the property of their sees.
In this, as in the last two notes, I do not profess more than to have given a few samples of the prevailing opinion of the times on the subject with which they deal,
- ↑ State Papers, Eliz. vol. xviii. 21.
