If the abbeys went down, the king would never want any taxes again

On the dissolution of the monasteries

Preachers were moreover commissioned to go over the country in the early autumn, in order, by their invectives, to educate public opinion against the monks. These pulpit orators were of three sorts:

"railers", who declaimed against the religious as "hypocrites, sorcerers, and idle drones, etc.";

"preachers", who said the monks "made the land unprofitable";

 and those who told the people that, "if the abbeys went down, the king would never want any taxes again."

This last was a favourite argument of Cranmer, in his sermons at St. Paul's Cross.