England's allegiance to Roman Caholicism. But the object could be only gradually accomplished. The noble and other families that had become possessed of enormous portions of monastic properties were naturally indisposed to any religious concessions which might possibly entail the forfeiture of these sacriligeous confiscations. Theological matters necessarily got rather mixed. It was still the law that heretics were to be burnt. As an illustration, one Van Paris, a kind of Unitarian, who for maintaining that God the Father was only God, and that Christ was not very God, was burnt at the stake at Smithfield, though he was admittedly a man of strict and virtuous life.

As the old Catholic service still retained not a few adherents, it was required of all clergy that they should deliver up all antiphonals, missals, processionals, legends, &c. In the churches all altars had to be taken down, and the churchwardens were required to provide in every parish a table decently covered, and to place it in such part of the choir or chancel as should be most meet, so that the minister and communicants should be separated from the rest of the people. This requisition is illustrated in a very interesting old record of the period contained in the accounts of the Rotherham churchwardens :

"It. to Robt. Bate and Thomas Daweson, for helping to take down the hye Aulter stone and other thynges, 3d."

"It. to Ric. Brodhed and John Welles, for two days and a half day working, 3s. 4d.”

Afterwards occur :

"Items for taking down the Tabernay Kyles," "for the carege of all our bokes to Yorke "

(Probably the Roman Catholic Books disused).

Curiously, further in the record, relating to the next reign evidently, we get:

"It. peyd to the meyson for setyng up of the Alters, 2s. 4d.

As to secular matters, the lands of the charities were sold or granted to noblemen and rich members of the laity, and it is said that some of the latter held five or six prebendaries or canonries while the clergy themselves were left in want.

SPOLIATION OF ROTHERHAM College.

As an illustration of the scandalous sequestrations in this reign, let the appalling proceeding at Rotherham be answer

able. Only think, within seventy years-an ordinary lifetime-of its foundation the magnificent college of Archbishop Rotherham was doomed to spoliation and extinction. An enactment of Parliament, under the boy King Edward VI., 1547 to 1553, was passed for the suppression of chantries, &c. On what plea was the noble college foundation to be brought under this decree? Those who sought to possess themselves of the rich spoil and plunder of sacred possessions found an easy excuse. Yes, "Masses for the dead" had been recited by the priests and choristers attached to the college of Jesus. It was a paltry, wretched excuse. The simple object of the inquisitors was sacriligeous plunder and the increase of selfish accumulation. Accordingly, that noble, splendid collegiate provision was doomed, and all the properties, lands, and endowments were unjustly, scandalously handed over to the avaricious clutches of the already enormously enriched Earl of Shrewsbury, and such cheap purchasers as the family of the Swifts. As Prebendary Bennett, of Lincoln, formerly rector of Thrybergh, in his valuable volume on Archbishop Rotherham, no less sternly than truly characterises the enormity :-"It is a flagrant example of the greed and robbery which disgraced the Reformation time,"

THE RETURN OF THE CATHOLIC MASS.

Mary, Henry the Eight's Catholic daughter by Catholic Katherine of Aragon was allowed during the reign of Edward VI. to have the Mass celebrated for her in her private residence. The tragic, and alas futile attempt by the Duke of Suffolk to place his eldest daughter, the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey, as a Protestant Princess, on the throne showed how the nation at large was still prepared to allow an avowed Catholic to occupy the throne. Mary's army enabled her successfully to enter London, and all school boys know how the young, the beautiful, the highly educated Lady Jane Grey was beheaded. One of her Catholic Majesty's first acts was the release of Bishops Bonner, Gardiner, and others from the Tower, where they had been confined for their opposition to church reform in the previous reign. Though Mary at first declared she would not compel her subjects to be of her religion, she took good care to interpret her promise in her own way by

turning all the Protestant clergy out of their pulpits. Of course the Bishops, favoring Catholicism, Bonner, Gardiner, Tonstal, Heath, Day, were restored to their Cathedrals and dioceses. On the other hand the most Protestant Bishops, Cranmer, Latimer, Holgate, were committed to the Tower. Hundreds of the Reformers fled abroad. The Queen was crowned by Gardiner on 1st October, 1553. The Parliament, packed with her adherents, repealed King Edward's laws favoring freedom of worship. Bonner became Mary's chief agent. His and her one object was to root out all Protestant heresy and re-establish the Roman Catholic domination in Church and State. The Mass was ordered to be again celebrated in all churches, and all the Catholic processions and ceremonies, along with the confessional, were again fully revived. A quick trade was done in images, as all those destroyed under the previous regime had to be replaced. Some thousands of the Reform Clergy were ejected from their benefices to make room for avowed Catholic priests. Cardinal Pole was summoned from abroad in the character of the Pope's legate, and actually things went so far, that the two Houses of Parliament begged this legate to receive the kingdom again into the bosom of the Catholic Church. The Cardinal graciously granted the nation "absolution" for its past misdeeds, and abrogated all papal censures. The Pope issued a "Bull" excommunicating all who retained the goods of the church, and the Queen, in her dutiful obedience, surrendered what church property remained with the Crown, but the nobles and other possessors of the rich spoils of the monasteries laid their hands on their swords avowing they well knew how to defend their own properties. The infamous and worst proceeding of this reign was the re-enactment by a slavish Parliament of the statutes for burning heretics. The whole year, 1556, was one continued enforcement of burnings at the stake, in single cases, and companies throughout the kingdom. Bonner could not apparently be satiated with enough of heretical blood. Even women were not spared, and not even infants in the womb. It is also related how in the Isle of Guernsey a woman at the stake was delivered of a child, and that the child was actually thrown back into the flames.