stand I upon these things, who have rather to complain of
the injury offered by some of our neighbours of the laity, which daily
endeavour to bring us also within the compass of their fifteens or taxes
for their own ease, whereas the tax of the whole realm, which is commonly
greater in the champagne than woodland soil, amounteth only to 37,930
pounds ninepence halfpenny, is a burden easy enough to be borne upon so
many shoulders, without the help of the clergy, whose tenths and subsidies
make up commonly a double, if not treble sum unto their aforesaid
payments? Sometimes also we are threatened with a _Melius inquirendum_, as
if our livings were not racked high enough already. But if a man should
seek out where all those church lands which in time past did contribute
unto the old sum required or to be made up, no doubt no small number of
the laity of all states should be contributors also with us, the prince
not defrauded of her expectation and right. We are also charged with
armour and munitions from thirty pounds upwards, a thing more needful than
divers other charges imposed upon us are convenient, by which and other
burdens our ease groweth to be more heavy by a great deal (notwithstanding
our immunity from temporal services) than that of the laity, and, for
aught that I see, not likely to be diminished, as if the church were now
become the ass whereon every market man is to ride and cast his wallet.

The other payments due unto the archbishop and bishop at their several
visitations (of which the first is double to the latter), and such also as
the archdeacon receive that his synods, etc., remain still as they did
without any alteration. Only this I think he added within memory of man,
that at the coming of every prince his appointed officers do commonly
visit the whole realm under the form of an ecclesiastical inquisition, in
which the clergy do usually pay double fees, as unto the archbishop.

Hereby then, and by those already remembered, it is found that the Church
of England is no less commodious to the prince's coffers than the state of
the laity, if it do not far exceed the same, since their payments are
certain, continual, and seldom abated, howsoever they gather up their own
duties with grudging, murmuring, suit, and slanderous speeches of the
payers, or have their livings otherwise hardly valued unto the uttermost
farthing, or shrewdly cancelled by the covetousness of the patrons, of
whom some do bestow advo