they should receive the blessed Sacrament of the altar, and monish them to learn the same more perfectly by the next year following, or else like as they ought not to presume to come to God's board without perfect knowledge of the same; and if they do, it is to the great peril of their souls: so you shall declare unto them, that you look for other injunctions from the king's highness by that time, to stay and repel all such from God's board, as shall be found ignorant in the premises; whereof you do thus admonish. them, to the intent they should both eschew the peril of their souls, and also the worldly rebuke that they might incur hereafter by the same. 1538. tural ser Item, that you shall make, or cause to be made in the said 6. Scripchurch, and every other cure you have, one sermon every mons to be quarter of the year at the least, wherein you shall purely and preached, and supersincerely declare the very gospel of Christ, and in the same stition to exhort your hearers to the works of charity, mercy, and be disfaith, specially prescribed and commanded in Scripture, and couraged. not to repose their trust or affiance in any other works devised by men's phantasies beside Scripture; as in wandering to pilgrimages, offering of money, candles, or tapers to images or relics, or kissing or licking the same, saying over a number of beads, not understood or minded on, or in such-like superstition, for the doing whereof you not only have no promise of reward in Scripture, but contrariwise, great threats and maledictions of God, as things tending to idolatry and superstition, which of all other offences God Almighty does most detest and abhor, for that the same diminishes most His honour and glory. candles, &c., to be Item, that such feigned images as you know in any of 7. Images, your cures to be so abused with pilgrimages or offerings of anything made thereunto, you shall for avoiding that most taken detestable offence of idolatry forthwith take down and away with delay, and shall suffer from henceforth no candles, tapers, ceptions, or images of wax to be set afore any image or picture, but certain ex and in struction 1538. concern ing their use and only the light that commonly goeth across the church by the rood loft, the light before the Sacrament of the altar, and the light about the sepulchre, which for the adorning abuse to be of the church and divine service you shall suffer to remain ; given. still admonishing your parishioners that images serve for none other purpose but as to be books of unlearned men that cannot know letters, whereby they might be otherwise admonished of the lives and conversation of them that the said images do represent; which images, if they abuse for any other intent than for such remembrances, they commit idolatry in the same to the great danger of their souls: and therefore the king's highness, graciously tendering the weal of his subjects' souls, has in part already, and more will hereafter travail for the abolishing of such images, as might be occasion of so great an offence to God, and so great a danger to the souls of his loving subjects. 8. Provision to be made non-resi dent. Item, that all in such benefices or cures as you have, whereupon you be not yourself resident, you shall appoint where the such curates in your stead, as both can by their ability, and clergy are will also promptly execute these Injunctions and do their duty; otherwise that you are bound in every behalf accordingly, and may profit their cure no less with good example of living, than with declaration of the word of God; or else their lack and defaults shall be imputed unto you, who shall straitly answer for the same, if they do otherwise. 9. Duly Item, that you shall admit no man to preach within any licensed benefices or cures, but such as shall appear unto you your preachers only are to to be sufficiently licensed thereunto by the king's highness. officiate. or his grace's authority, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the bishop of this diocese; and such as shall be so licensed you shall gladly receive to declare the word of God, without any resistance or contradiction. 10. Clergy Item, if you have heretofore declared to your parishioners to recant anything to the extolling or setting forth of pilgrimages, teaching feigned relics, or images, or any such superstition, you shall erroneous 1538. about pil now openly, afore the same, recant and reprove the same, showing them, as the truth is, that you did the same upon no grimages, ground of Scripture, but as one being led and seduced by a relics, imcommon error and abuse crept into the Church, through the ages, &c. sufferance and avarice of such as felt profit by the same. who with these In junctions Item, if you do or shall know any man within your parish, 11. Those or elsewhere, that is a letter of the word of God to be read stand the in English, or sincerely preached, or of the execution of tenor of these Injunctions, or a fautor of the Bishop of Rome's pretensed power, now by the law of this realm justly to be prerejected and extirped, you shall detect and present the same to the king's highness, or his honourable council, or to his vicegerent aforesaid, or the justice of peace next adjoining. sented. a parish Item, that you, and every parson, vicar, or curate within 12. Parish registers this diocese, shall for every church keep one book or to be kept register, wherein ye shall write the day and year of every and enwedding, christening, and burying made within your parish trusted to for your time, and so every man succeeding you likewise; chest. and also there insert every person's name that shall be so wedded, christened, or buried; and for the safe keeping of the same book, the parish shall be bound to provide of their common charges one sure coffer with two locks and keys, whereof the one to remain with you, and the other with the wardens of every such parish, wherein the said book shall be laid up; which book you shall every Sunday take forth, and in the presence of the said wardens, or one of them, write and record in the same all the weddings, christenings, and buryings made the whole week before, and that done, to lay up the book in the said coffer as before; and for every time that the same shall be omitted, the party that shall be in the fault thereof shall forfeit to the said church three shillings and fourpence, to be employed on the reparation of the same church. Item, that you shall once every quarter of a year read these 1538. and the and the other former Injunctions given unto you by the 13. These authority of the king's highness, openly and deliberately before all your parishioners, to the intent that both you may be the better admonished of your duty, and your said parishioners the more incited to ensue the same for their part. previous Injunc tions to be read quarterly. 14. Tithes and clergy Item, forasmuch as by a law established, every man is to be paid, bound to pay his tithes, no man shall, by colour of duty who neomitted by their curates, detain their tithes, and so redub glect their duty to be one wrong with another, or be his own judge; but shall reported. truly pay the same, as has been accustomed, to their par 15. Clergy are not to alter fasts as pre scribed without authority. sons and curates, without any restraint or diminution; and such lack or default as they can justly find in their parsons and curates, to call for reformation thereof at their ordinaries' and other superiors' hands, who upon complaints and due proof thereof shall reform the same accordingly. Item, that no parson shall from henceforth alter or change the order and manner of any fasting day that is commanded or services and indicted by the Church, nor of any prayer or divine service, otherwise than is specified in the said Injunctions, until such time as the same shall be so ordered and transposed by the king's highness's authority, the eves of such saints whose holy days be abrogated only excepted, which shall be declared henceforth to be no fasting days; excepted also the commemoration of Thomas Bekket, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, which shall be clean omitted, and instead thereof the ferial service used. 16. Knelling of 'Aves' to be aban doned. 17. Of suffrages Item, that the knelling of the 'Aves' after service, and certain other times, which has been brought in and begun by the pretence of the Bishop of Rome's pardon, henceforth be left and omitted, lest the people do hereafter trust to have pardon for the saying their Aves' between the said knelling, as they have done in times past. Item, where in times past men have used in divers places in their processions to sing Ora pro nobis to so many saints that they had no time to sing the good suffrages following, as Parce nobis Domine, and Libera nos Domine, it must be taught and preached that better it were to omit Ora pro nobis, and to sing the other suffrages. 1538. in the Litany. junctions All which and singular Injunctions I minister unto you, The preand to your successors, by the king's highness's authority to ceding Inme committed in this part, which I charge and command to be observed. you by the same authority to observe and keep, upon pain of deprivation, sequestration of the fruits, or such other coercion as [to] the king's highness, or his vicegerent for the time being, shall be seen convenient. LXIV. ACT FOR THE DISSOLUTION OF THE 31 HENRY VIII, CAP. 13. DURING the years 1537, 1538, and the early part of 1539, numerous further suppressions or surrenders had taken place; these were covered, at the close of the session in 1539, by the following Act, which vested all monastic property in the king. [Transcr. Statutes of the Realm, iii. 733.] 1539. of divers Where divers and sundry abbots, priors, abbesses, prior- The heads esses, and other ecclesiastical governors and governesses of religious divers monasteries, abbacies, priories, nunneries, colleges, houses hospitals, houses of friars, and other religious and eccle- have, since Feb. 4, 27 siastical houses and places within this our sovereign lord the Hen. VIII, king's realm of England and Wales, of their own free and voluntarily voluntary minds, good wills and assents, without constraint, ed their coaction, or compulsion of any manner of person or persons, religious since the fourth day of February, the twenty-seventh year of houses and the reign of our now most dread sovereign lord, by the due posses surrender respective |