. But what 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