and a large number in 1540, the good house of Godstow being the last of the great monasteries to fall. Of the old monastic system this left only the chantries, free chapels, collegiate churches, hospitals, &c., which were gradually absorbed during the succeeding years,' until the necessities of the King prompted a sweeping measure for their destruction. Accordingly in 1545 a bill was brought in placing them all at his disposition, together with the property of all guilds and fraternities. There were some indications of opposition, but the King pleaded the expenditures of the French and Scottish wars, and solemnly promised his Parliament “that all should be done for the glory of God and common profit of the realm," whereupon it was passed." It is computed that the number of monasteries suppressed by these various measures was 645; of colleges, 90; of chantries and free chapels, 2374; and of hospitals, 110.3

A vast amount of property thus passed into the hands of the court. The clear yearly rental of the suppressed houses alone was rated at £131,607 6s. 4d.-an immense sum in those days; but Burnet states that in reality it was almost tenfold the amount. Small as may have been the good effected by these enormous possessions in the hands of the monks, it was even more worthless under the management of its new masters. Henry admitted the heavy responsibility which he assumed in thus seizing the wealth which had been dedicated to pious uses, and he entertained magnificent schemes for devoting it to the public benefit, but his own extravagance and the grasping avarice of needy courtiers wrought out a result ridiculously mean. Thus he designed to set aside a rental of £18,000 for the

1 Rymer, XIV. XV.

2 37 Hen. VIII. c. 4 (Parl. Hist. I. 561).

3 Parl. Hist. I. 537.

4 This may readily be considered no exaggeration. A letter from John Freeman to Cromwell values at £80,000 the lead alone stripped from the dismantled houses (Suppression of Monasteries, p. 290).

support of eighteen "Byshopprychys to be new made."1 For this purpose he obtained full power from Parliament in 1539,2 and in 1540 he established one on the remains of the Abbey of Westminster. Those of Chester, Gloucester, and Peterboro' were established in 1541, and in 1543 those of Oxford and Bristol, and one of them, that of Westminster, was suppressed in 1550, leaving only five as the result. The people were quieted by assurances that taxes would be abrogated for ever and the kingdom kept in a most efficient state of defence; but subsidies and benevolences were immediately exacted with more frequency and energy than ever. Splendid foundations were promised for institutions of learning, but little was given; a moderate sum was expended in improving the sea-ports, while broad manors and rich farms were granted to favourites at almost nominal prices; and the ill-gotten wealth abstracted from the Church disappeared without leaving traces except in the sudden and overgrown fortunes of those gentlemen who were fortunate or prompt enough to make use of the golden opportunity, and who to obtain them had no scruple in openly tendering bribes and shares in the spoil to Cromwell, the omnipotent favourite of the King. The complaints of the people, who found their new masters harder than the old, may be estimated from some specimens printed by Strype."

If it be asked what became of the "holy idle thieves and "sturdy loobies" whom the Beggars' Petition so earnestly desired to be thrown upon the world, the answer may be found in the legislation of Edward VI. It was

'1 Such is the substance of a memorandum in Henry's own handwriting (Suppression of Monasteries, No. 131, p. 263).

2 31 Hen. VIII. c. 9 (Parl. Hist. I. 540).

3 Burnet I. 300.

4 Strype, Eccles. Memor. I. 345.

5 See letters of the Lord Chancellor Audley and the learned Sir Thomas Elyot to Cromwell.-Strype, Eccles. Memor. I. 263-5,

• Op. cit. I, 392-403; II. 258-63,

impossible that the sudden and violent overthrow of a system on which nearly all charitable relief was based could be effected without causing infinite-misery during the period of transition, no matter how tenderly the interests of the poor might be guarded. In the organisation of the Catholic Church all benevolence finds its expression through ecclesiastical instrumentalities, and the immense possessions of the mediæval establishment had been confided to it largely in its capacity of the universal almoner. In seizing these possessions the State was morally bound to assume the corresponding obligations, but time was required for the adjustment, and the greedy rulers, during the minority of Edward VI., were much more intent upon increasing their acquisitions than in listening to the demands of humanity. By his first Parliament, in 1547, an Act was passed confirming that of 1545, concerning the hospitals, chantries, guilds, &c., under which all remnants that had escaped the rapacity of the late sovereign were placed at the mercy of the Protector Somerset and his colleagues of the Council, who speedily absorbed not only them, but everything that could be stripped from the parish churches.1 In the preamble of this Act, one of its objects was specified to be the "better provision for the poor and needy," thus recognising the responsibility of the

...

1 1 Edw. VI. c. 14. Dr. Augustus Jessop tells us that "the ring of the miscreants who robbed the monasteries in the reign of Henry the Eighth was the first, but the ring of the robbers who robbed the poor and helpless in the reign of Edward the Sixth was ten times worse than the first. . . . The accumulated wealth of centuries, their houses and lands, their money, their vessels of silver and their vessels of gold, their ancient cups and goblets and salvers, even to their very chairs and tables, were all set down in inventories and catalogues, and all swept into the great robbers' hoard... every vestment and chalice, and candlestick and banner, organs and bells, and picture and image and altar and shrine."-"In three years it may be said that almost all the parish churches in England had been looted; before the end of the king's reign there had been a clean sweep of all that was worth stealing from the parish chests, or the church walls, or the church treasuries. In the next generation there were churches by the score that possessed not even a surplice; there were others that had not even a chalice, and others again, in considerable numbers, that were described as 'ruinated.""-Before the Great Pillage, pp. 39-40, 66 (London

State to replace the assistance which had been afforded by the Church and, the guilds, but Parliament a few weeks earlier had already taken measures, not to relieve the sufferings of the poor, but to repress the vagabondage which had necessarily resulted from the destruction of the monasteries. In this Act the magnitude of the evil is indicated by the rigorously inhuman measures deemed necessary for its abatement. Every able-bodied man, loitering in any place for three days without working or offering to work, was held to be a vagabond; he was to be branded on the breast with a letter V, and be adjudged as a slave for two years to any one who would bring him before a justice of the peace. This substitute for clerical almsgiving was deemed sufficient for the time, and it was not until five years later, in 1552, that a practical effort was made to alleviate the miseries of poverty by a poorlaw, the commencement of a series which has since burdened England with ever-increasing weight.2

The monastic establishments of Ireland shared the same fate. Rymer3 gives the text of a commission for the suppression of a nunnery of the diocese of Dublin in 1535. The insubordination of the island, however, rendered it difficult to carry out the measure everywhere, and finally, in 1541, it was accomplished by virtually granting their lands to the native chieftains. These were good Catholics, but they could not resist the temptation. They joined eagerly in grasping the spoil, and the desirable political object was effected of detaching them, for the time, from the foreign alliances with the Catholic powers, which threatened serious evils.4

1 1 Edw. VI. c. 3.-Parl. Hist. I. 583.

2 5-6 Edw. VI. cap. 2. For the charitable functions of the guilds destroyed under Edward VI. see J. E. Thorold Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages, II. 346-8.

3 Fœdera, T. XIV. p. 551.

4 Froude, Hist. Engl. IV. 543.

It is a striking proof of Henry's strength of will and intense individuality of character, that, in thus tearing up by the roots the whole system of monachism, he did not yield one jot to the powerful section of his supporters who had pledged themselves to the logical sequence of his acts, the abrogation of sacerdotal celibacy in general. While every reason of policy and statesmanship urged him to grant the privilege of marriage to the secular clergy, whom he forced to transfer to him the allegiance formerly rendered to Rome, while his chief religious advisers at home and his Protestant allies abroad used every endeavour to wring from him this concession, he steadily and persistently refused it to the end, and we can only guess whether his firmness arose from conscientious conviction or from the pride of a controversialist.

Notwithstanding his immovable resolution on this point, his power seemed ineffectual to stay the progress of the new ideas. An assembly held by his order in May 1530, to condemn the heretical doctrines disseminated in certain books, shows how openly the advocates of clerical marriage had promulgated their views while yet Wolsey was prime minister and Henry gloried in the title of Defender of the Faith. Numerous books were denounced in which celibacy was ridiculed, its sanctity disproved, and its evil influences commented upon in the most irreverent manner.1 These

1 Thus "An Exposition into the sevenith Chapitre of the firste Epistle to the Corinthians" seems to have been almost entirely devoted to an argument against celibacy, adducing all manner of reasons derived from nature, morality, necessity, and Scripture, and describing forcibly the evils arising from the rule. The author does not hesitate to declare that "Matrimony is as golde, the spirituall estates as dung," and the tenor of his writings may be understood from his triumphant exclamation, after insisting that all the Apostles and their immediate successors were married-"Seeing that ye chose not married men to bishoppes, other Criste must be a foole or unrighteous which so did chose, or you anticristis and deceyvers."

The "Sum of Scripture" was more moderate in its expressions: "Yf a man vowe to lyve chaste and in povertie in a monasterie, than yf he perceyve that in the monastery he lyveth woorse than he did before, as in fornication and theft then he may leve the cloyster and breke his vowe without synne."

Tyndale in "The Obedience of a Cristen Man" is most uncompromising : "Oportet presbyterem ducere uxorem duas ob causas.".. "If thou bind thy