title equally well chosen? Is not the Church smitten with poverty? Have
not ten thousand of our brethren been driven from their homes to beg or
to starve? Have not the houseless poor, whom we fed at our gates, and
lodged within our wards, gone away hungry and without rest? Have not the
sick, whom we would have relieved, died untended by the hedge-side? I am
the head of the poor in Lancashire, the redresser of their grievances,
and therefore I style myself Earl of Poverty. Have I not done well?"

"You have, lord abbot," replied Father Eastgate.

"Poverty will not alone be the fate of the Church, but of the whole
realm, if the rapacious designs of the monarch and his heretical
counsellors are carried forth," pursued the abbot. "Cromwell, Audeley,
and Rich, have wisely ordained that no infant shall be baptised without
tribute to the king; that no man who owns not above twenty pounds a year
shall consume wheaten bread, or eat the flesh of fowl or swine without
tribute; and that all ploughed land shall pay tribute likewise. Thus the
Church is to be beggared, the poor plundered, and all men burthened, to
fatten the king, and fill his exchequer."

"This must be a jest," observed Father Haydocke.

"It is a jest no man laughs at," rejoined the abbot, sternly; "any more
than the king's counsellors will laugh at the Earl of Poverty, whose
title they themselves have created. But wherefore comes not the signal?
Can aught have gone wrong? I will not think it. The whole country, from
the Tweed to the Humber, and from the Lune to the Mersey, is ours; and,
if we but hold together, our cause must prevail."

"Yet we have many and powerful enemies," observed Father Eastgate; "and