out a licence.
While the marriage of the clergy was checked, irregular and temporary
connexions were lightly condoned. Discipline generally was lax, and
exhortations against field-sports, tavern haunting and other unclerical
habits seem to have had little effect. Monasticism had declined. Papal
indulgences and relics were hawked about chiefly by friars, though these
practices were discountenanced by the bishops. On the other hand, all
education was carried on by the clergy, and religion entered largely
into the daily life of the people, into their gild-meetings,
church-ales, mystery-plays and holidays, as well as into the great
events of family life--baptisms, marriages and deaths. Many stately
churches were built in the prevailing Perpendicular style, often by
efforts in which all classes shared, and many hamlet chapels
supplemented the mother church in scattered parishes. The revival of
classical learning scarcely affected the church at large. Greek learning
was regarded with suspicion by many churchmen, but the English humanists
were orthodox. The movement had little to do with the coming religious
conflicts, which indeed killed it, save that it awoke in some learned
men like Sir Thomas More a desire for ecclesiastical, though not
doctrinal, reform, and led many to study the New Testament of which
Erasmus published a Greek text and Latin paraphrases.

The Reformation era.

During the earlier years of the 16th century Lollardism still existed
among the lower classes in towns, and was rife here and there in country
districts. Persecution went on and martyrdoms are recorded. The old
grievances concerning ecclesiastical exactions remained unabated and
were further strengthened by an ill-founded rumour that Richard Hunne, a
Londoner who had refused to pay a mortuary, was imprisoned for heresy in
the Lollards' tower, and was found hanged in his cell in 1514, had been
murdered. Lutheranism affected England chiefly through the surreptitious
importation of Tyndale's New Testament and heretical books. In 1521
Henry VIII. wrote a book against Luther in which he maintained the papal
authority, and was rewarded by Leo X. with the title of Defender of the
Faith. Henry, however, whose will was to himself as the oracles of God,
finding that the pope opposed his intended divorce from Catherine of
Aragon, determined to allow no supremacy in his realm save his own. He
carried out his ecclesiastical policy by parliamentary help. Pa