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16, 17. A Papist's Observation. The Conclusion. As for the report of Reynerus, the reader may believe the less thereof for his known engagement to Rome, thus expressing himself: "At the Dissolution, Henry VIII. divided part of the churchspoils among two hundred and sixty gentlemen of families in one part of England; and at the same time Thomas duke of Norfolk rewards the service of twenty of his gentlemen, with the grant of forty pounds a-year out of his own inheritance; and while not sixty of the king's donees had sons owning their father's estates, every one of the duke's hath a son of his own loins, flourishing in his father's inheritance; and I could have set down their several names, had conveniency required it.”

But it is high time for me to put a period to this subject; lest, as the abbeys were complained of to grow so great, that they engrossed the third part of the land; so my discourse of them, infected with the same fault, will be condemned by the reader for the tedious prolixity thereof; the rather, because this old and trite subject is now grown out of fashion, men in our age having got a new object to fix their eyes and observation thereon,-taking notice how such church-lands do thrive, which since hath been derived into the hands of new possessors.

Apostolatus Benedictinorum in Anglid, fol. 227, 228.

THE

CHURCH HISTORY OF BRITAIN.

BOOK VII.

CONTAINING THE REIGN OF KING EDWARD VI.

TO THE

RIGHT HON. LEICESTER DEVEREUX,

MY LORD,

VISCOUNT HEREFORD,

LORD FERRARS OF CHARTLEY, &c.

GREAT was the difference betwixt the breeding of Adonijah and Solomon, though sons to the same father. The former tasted not of reproof, much less of correction; it being never said unto him, "Why hast thou done so?" 1 Kings i. 6.

Solomon had his education on severer principles. He was his parents' darling, not their fondling, Prov. iv. 3. It was after sounded in his ears, "What, my son? and what, the son of my womb?" Prov. xxxi. 2.

Our English gentry too often embrace the first course in breeding their children, whereby they become old men before they are wise men, because their fathers made them gentlemen before they were men; making them too soon to know the great means they are born to, and too long to be ignorant of any good quality whereby to acquire a maintenance, in case their estates (as all things are uncertain) should fail or forsake them. Hence it is, they are as unable to endure any hardship, as David to march in Saul's armour, (for he had never proved it, 1 Sam. xvii. 39,) utterly unacquainted therewith.

But your discreet parents, though kind, were not cockering unto you, whom they sent very young into the Low Countries, where in some sort you earned what you ate in no less honourable than dangerous employment. This hath settled the sinews of your soul, and compacted the joints thereof; which in too. many hang loose, as rather tacked than knit together.

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