This chapter deals with a number of subjects important for the comprehension of English social life. Amid this multiplicity, logical sequence seems preferable to chronological. Sufficient dates are given to guide the reader, who can thus judge roughly for himself how far conditions improved or deteriorated during our period. He will probably conclude that time wrought here its usual effects. Men were struggling onwards to something better, but fitfully and sometimes blindly, as in other ages before or since. Wherever the betterment was only piecemeal or superficial, the old abuses went on wearing deeper and deeper ruts; so that Hildebrand's reforming efforts cannot be fully understood without reference to the state of things in More's age; nor is More's age fully comprehensible except in the light of Hildebrand's struggles.

We have seen how often the better livings either went to influential young men or were absorbed by monasteries and cathedrals who put in vicars, generally at starveling wages. But an even greater abuse was that of pluralism, with its natural consequence of non-residence. It was not only that the fattest benefices were often distributed for unspiritual reasons; this has been the case to some extent in all ages, although the last two or three generations of our own time have made an enormous difference, and the Anglican Church has at last the theory, and to some real extent the practice, that a curate, by efficient work and steady merit, shall within a reasonable time find his way into a benefice.