not to touch the poorer laity any more, and bearing even upon wealth with a reserved and gentle hand. Mortuaries were shorn of their luxuriance; when effects were small, no mortuary should be required; when large, the clergy should content themselves with a modest share. No velvet cloaks should be stripped any more from strangers' bodies to save them from a rector's grasp;[1] no shameful battles with apparitors should disturb any more the recent rest of the dead.[2] Such sums as the law would permit should be paid thenceforward in the form of decent funeral fees for householders dying in their own parishes, and there the exactions should terminate.[3]
The carelessness of the bishops in the discharge of their most immediate duties obliged the legislature to trespass also in the provinces purely spiritual, and undertake the discipline of the clergy. The Commons had complained in their petition that the clergy, instead of
- ↑ Hale, Precedents, p. 86.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ 21 Hen. VIII. cap. 6. An Act concerning the taking of mortuaries, or demanding, receiving, or claiming the same.In Scotland the usual mortuary was a cow and the uppermost cloth or counterpane on the bed in which the death took place. A bishop reprimanding a suspected clergyman for his leanings toward the Reformation, said to him:—'My joy, Dean Thomas, I am informed that ye preach the epistle and gospel every Sunday to your parishioners, and that ye take not the cow nor the upmost cloth from your parishioners; which thing is very prejudicial to the churchmen. And therefore, Dean Thomas, I would ye took your cow and upmost cloth, or else it is too much to preach every Sunday, for in so doing ye may make the people think we should preach likewise.'—Calderwood,. vol. i. p. 126.The bishop had to burn Dean Thomas at last, being unable to work conviction into him in these matters.
