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 generation which saw them. The new landowners were men who thought only of riches, and turned out the tenants of the old monks by the score, and by the hundred. A swarm of beggars was let loose over the country, beggars to whom the monks had given daily doles of bread and beer. Savage laws of whipping and forced labour had to be passed to keep these men in order. Moreover, since the discovery by the Spaniards of rich gold and silver mines in America, money had come into Europe in great floods, and this had sent up the price of all goods at a fearful rate; all trade seemed uncertain; great fortunes might be suddenly made, and as suddenly lost. So the strong and the clever (and often the wicked) prospered, and the weak and the old-fashioned people were ruined.

The six years’ reign of the boy Edward VI (1547–53) only made all this social misery worse. Every one had been afraid of Henry VIII; no one was afraid of a child of ten, though he was a clever and strong-willed child. The result was that the government became a nobles for scramble for wealth and power among the new nobles, the Seymours, Dudleys, Russells, Herberts, Greys and many more who had been enriched with abbey lands. It was the fear of losing these lands and the desire of confiscating for themselves what remained of Church property that drove these men, quite against the wishes of sober people, to force on a reformation of the teaching of the Church. The result in the long run was good, because the Protestant faith did then first get a lawful footing in England; but the result for the moment was bad, because moderate men began to mistrust a Reformation which seemed to be bound up with greed for spoil and with contempt for all the past traditions of