STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685 .

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and Francis Walsingham, there was no reason for calling awayprelates from their dioceses to negotiate treaties, to super- ■intend the finances, or'to administer justice. The spiritualcharacter not only ceased to be a qualification for high civiloffice, but began to be regarded as a disqualification. Thoseworldly motives, therefore, which had formerly induced somany able, aspiring, and high born youths to assume the eccle-siastical habit, ceased to operate. Not one parish in twohundred then afforded what a man of family considered as amaintenance. There were still indeed prizes in the Church:but they were few; and even the highest were mean, whencompared with the glory which had once surrounded theprinces of the hierarchy. The state kept by Parker andGrindal seemed beggarly to those who remembered the im-perial pomp of Wolsey, his palaces, which had become thefavourite abodes of royalty, Whitehall and Hampton Court,the three sumptuous tables daily spread in his refectory, theforty-four gorgeous copes in his chapel, his running footmenin rich liveries, and his body guards with gilded pole-axes.Thus the sacerdotal office lost its attraction for the higherclasses. During the century which followed the accession ofElizabeth, scarce a single person of noble descent took orders.At the close of the reign of Charles the Second, two sons ofpeers were Bishops; four or five sons of peers were priests, andheld valuable preferment: but these rare exceptions did nottake away the reproach which lay on the body. The clergywere regarded as, on the whole, a plebeian class. And, in-deed, for one who made the figure of a gentleman, ten weremere menial servants. A large proportion of those divineswho had no benefices, or whose benefices were too small toafford a comfortable revenue, lived in the houses of laymen. Ithad long been evident that this practice tended to degrade thepriestly character. Laud had exerted himself to effect achange; and Charles the First had repeatedly issued positiveMacaulay, History. I, 21

CHAP.

III.