Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/498

 deserted buildings with ruined walls, where formerly rich and poor used to receive hospitality on their travels; where gentlemen could obtain loans on easy terms or deposit precious documents, as in places more secure than their own homes; where the needy always found relief and shelter, and where spiritual wants were attended to no less than physical. The blank was felt particularly in solitary and mountainous districts, where the monks had assisted travellers, often commercial travellers and " baggers of corn, 1' whose services were most useful to the country side, with men and horses to pursue their journeys in safety. "Also the abbeys," said Aske, "was one of the beauties of this realm to all men and strangers passing through the same; all gentlemen much succoured in their needs with money, their younger sons there succoured, and in nunneries their daughters brought up in virtue, and also their evidences (i.e. title-deeds) and money left to the uses of infants in abbeys' hands-always sure there. And such abbeys as were near the danger of seabanks great maintainers of seawalls and dykes, main-tainers and builders of bridges and highways [and] such other things for the commonwealth."

What arts and industries disappeared or were driven into other channels on the fall of the monasteries is a matter for reflexion. Rural labour, of course, still went on where it was necessary for the support of life; but some arts, formerly brought to high perfection in monastic seclusion, were either paralysed for a time or migrated into the towns. Sculpture, embroidery, clockmaking, bellfounding, were among these; and it is needless to speak of what literature owes to the transcribers of manuscripts and the composers of monastic chronicles. True, monasticism had long been on the decline before it was swept away, and monastic chronicles were already, one might say, things of the past; but it was in monasteries also that the first printing-presses were set up, and the art which superseded that of the transcriber was cherished by the same influence. Finally, the education of the people was largely due to the convent schools; and there is no doubt that it suffered very severely not only from the suppression of the monasteries, but perhaps even more from the confiscation of chantries which began at the end of the reign, for the chantry priest was often the local schoolmaster. Nor did the boasted educational foundations of Edward VI do much to redress the wrong, for in truth his schools were old schools refounded with poorer endowments.

Still more did the higher education of the country suffer; for the monasteries had been in the habit of sending up scholars to the universities and often maintained some of their own junior members there to complete their education. After the Suppression, consequently, university studies went gradually to decay, and few men studied for degrees. In the six years from 1542 to 1548 only 191 students were admitted bachelors of arts at Cambridge and only 173 at Oxford. The foundation