name and title of first fruits.

With us also it is permitted that a sufficient man may (by
dispensation from the prince) hold two livings, not distant either
from other above thirty miles; whereby it cometh to pass that, as her
Majesty doth reap some commodity by the faculty, so that the unition
of two in one man doth bring oftentimes more benefit to one of them in
a month (I mean for doctrine) than they have had before peradventure
in many years.

Many exclaim against such faculties, as if there were more good
preachers that want maintenance than livings to maintain them. Indeed
when a living is void there are so many suitors for it that a man
would think the report to be true, and most certain; but when it
cometh to the trial (who are sufficient and who not, who are staid men
in conversation, judgment, and learning), of that great number you
shall hardly find one or two such as they ought to be, and yet none
more earnest to make suit, to promise largely, bear a better shew, or
find fault with the stage of things than they. Nevertheless I do not
think that their exclamations, if they were wisely handled, are
altogether grounded upon rumours or ambitious minds, if you respect
the state of the thing itself, and not the necessity growing through
want of able men to furnish out all the cures in England, which both
our universities are never able to perform. For if you observe what
numbers of preachers Cambridge and Oxford do yearly send forth, and
how many new compositions are made in the Court of First Fruits by the
deaths of the last incumbents, you shall soon see a difference.
Wherefore, if in country towns and cities, yea even in London itself,
four or five of the little churches were brought into one, the
inconvenience would in great part be redressed and amended.

And, to say truth, one most commonly of those small livings is of so
little value that it is not able to maintain a mean scholar, much less
a learned man, as not being above ten, twelve, sixteen, seventeen,
twenty, or thirty pounds at the most, toward their charges, which now
(more than before time) do go out of the same. I say more than before,
because every small trifle, nobleman's request, or courtesy craved by
the bishop, doth impose and command a twentieth part, a three score
part, or twopence in the pound, etc., out of the livings, which
hitherto hath not been usually granted, but by the consent of a synod,
wherein things were decided according t