Manchurian Books

" At one time they were forbidden to
earn a subsistence as private tutors in families; at others, restricted
from performing any ministerial functions, even so much as administering
the sacrament to dying persons, who yet, by the arbitrary regulations of
many of the new parochial ministers, might not receive it from them,
unless they also first took the covenant.
Dignified clergymen were at this time travelling on foot, nearly
destitute of common necessaries, and relying on the charity of casual
passengers for support[1]. Cathedrals had long been converted into
barracks for horse-soldiers, and bishop's palaces into prisons for the
ejected clergy, whose families, now deprived of the last pittance, and
actually in want of bread[2], became earnest supplicants that the moiety
of the benefices, of which their fathers were deprived, (and which the
Parliament had agreed should be appropriated to their support,) should
be regularly paid. "But these applications oftener produced vexatious
and expensive suits than effectual relief.


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