but they were unequal to it for more than a generation.  The discipline of Catholicism was assisted by superstition,—­it remained vigorous for many hundreds of years, but it languished at last; and although there was so great virtue in a living idea, that its forms preserved the reverence of mankind unabated, even when in their effect and working they had become as evil as they once were noble; yet reverence and endurance were at length exhausted, and these forms were to submit to alteration in conformity with the altered nature of the persons whom they affected.

I have already alluded to the abuse of “benefit of clergy;"[344] we have arrived at the first of those many steps by which at length it was finally put away,—­a step which did not, however, as yet approach the heart of the evil, but touched only its extreme outworks.  The clergy had monopolised the learning of the middle ages, and few persons external to their body being able to read or write, their privileges became co-extensive, as I above stated, with these acquirements.  The exemption from secular jurisdiction, which they obtained in virtue of their sacred character, had been used as a protection in villainy for every scoundrel who could write his name.  Under this plea, felons of the worst kind might claim, till this time, to be taken out of the hands of the law judges, and to be tried at the bishops’ tribunals; and at these tribunals, such a monstrous solecism had Catholicism become, the payment of money was ever welcomed as the ready expiation of crime.  To prevent the escape of the Bishop of Rochester’s cook, who was a “clerk,” parliament had specially interfered, and sentenced him without trial, by attainder.  They now passed a general act, remarkable alike in what it provided as in what, for the present, it omitted to provide.[345] The preamble related the nature of the evil which was to be remedied, and the historical position of it.  It dwelt upon the assurances which had been given again and again by the ordinaries that their privileges should not be abused; but these promises had been broken as often as they had been made; so that “continually manifest thieves and murderers, indicted and found guilty of their misdeeds by good and substantial inquests, and afterwards, by the usages of the common lawes of the land, delivered to the ordinaries as clerks convict, were speedily and hastily delivered and set at large by the ministers of the said ordinaries for corruption and lucre; or else because the ordinaries enclaiming such offenders by the liberties of the church would in no wise take the charges in safe keeping of them, but did suffer them to make their purgation by such as nothing knew of their misdeeds, and by such fraud did annull and make void the good and provable trial which was used against such offenders by the king’s law; to the pernicious example, increase, and courage of such offenders, if the King’s Highness by his authority royal put not speedy remedy thereto.”