POVERTY OF THE CLERGY	67
duce a popular or democratic form of government both in
church and state. Nevertheless, although the puritan attack
had been repulsed, there resulted merely a sullen truce rather
than a lasting peace. However, this breathing-space gave the
church leaders time to take stock of the position and to try to
set their house in order. There was undoubtedly much room for
improvement.
The poverty of many of the clergy was disgraceful in an age
steadily growing richer, and the ignorance, slackness, and occa-
sional misconduct of a fair number, together with the widespread
pluralism, provided critics with solid ground for complaint.
Churchmen had long been conscious of these evils but had been
unable to remedy them. Whitgift had declared in 1585 that
out of 9,000 benefices more than half had incomes of not more
than £10 and most of these not more than £8,* that the majority
of clerics had no university degree, and that a thousand were
pluralists. Less than 4,000 of the clergy were licensed to preach,
and the remainder were the 'dumb mouths^9 decried by puritans.
Reform was almost impossible without increasing the income
of the church, for the miserable pittance that awaited the parish
priest would hardly warrant the previous expense of a university
education, and pluralism was the only way to attract and retain
learned scholars without private means. Something was done
by a statute passed early in James's reign to prevent the aliena-
tion of episcopal lands, thus stopping the systematic pillage
Elizabeth had allowed Raleigh and other favourites to enjoy.
Decisions in ecclesiastical courts in some cases improved the
incomes of benefices by restoring payment of tithe in kind when-
ever unfair commutations could be legally voided. The close
inspection of impropriations restored to the church a fraction
of the revenues that had been alienated to laymen during the
disorders of the reformation. Such efforts, however, were mere
palliatives, and left the majority of the clergy still scandalously
underpaid.
Simultaneously with these attempts to increase clerical
emoluments, Bancroft tried to improve ecclesiastical discipline-
Hitherto many puritan ministers had dispensed with such ritual
and parts of the Prayer Book as were objectionable to them.
The nature of their scruples is revealed in a petition usually
called the Millenary Petition (1603) because its authors claimed
* R. G. Usher, Reconstruction of the English Church ($910), i. 2x9 i£