Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/257

] in complying was the smallness of the pension. The pensions to superiors varied according to the wealth and rank of their houses, from £266 to £6 per annum. The priors of cells received generally £13. A few, whose services merited the distinction, £20. The monks received from £2 to £6 per annum, with a small sum in hand for immediate need. Nuns got about £4.

That was the first and persuasive process; but, if this failed, intimidation was resorted to. The superior and his monks, tenants, servants, and neighbours, were subjected to a rigorous and vexatious examination. The accounts of the house were called for, and were scrutinised minutely, and all moneys, plate, and jewels ordered to be produced. There was a severe inquiry into the morals of the members, and one was encouraged to accuse another. Obstinate and refractory members were thrown into prison, and many died there—amongst them, the monks of the Charter House, London. One Bedyl, a commissioner, writing to Cromwell, speaks of these monks lying in Newgate in this heartless style:—"It shall please your lordship to understand that the monks of the Charter House here at London, committed to Newgate for their treacherous behaviour continued against the king's grace, be almost dispatched by the hand of God, as it may appear to you by this bill enclosed. Wherefore, considering their behaviour, and the whole matter, I am not sorry, but would that all such as love not the king's highness, and his worldly honour, were in the like case. There be departed. Greenwood, Davyo, Salte, Peerson, Greene. There be at the point of death, Scriven, Reading. There be sick, Jonson, Horne. One is whole, Bird." The abbots of Colchester, Reading, and Glastonbury, were executed as felons or traitors.

In 1539 a bill was brought into Parliament, vesting in the Crown all the property, movable and immovable, of the monastic establishments which were already, or which should be hereafter, suppressed, abolished, or surrendered; and, by 1510, the whole of this branch of the ecclesiastical property was in the hands of the king, or of the courtiers and parasites who surrounded him, like vultures, gorging themselves with the fallen carcass. The total amount of such establishments suppressed from first to last by Henry was, 655 monasteries, of which 28 had abbots enjoying a seat in Parliament, 90 colleges, 2,374 chantries and free chapels, 110 hospitals. The whole of the revenue of this property, as paid to superiors of these houses, was £161,000. The whole income of the kingdom at that period was rated at £4,000,000, so that the monastic property was apparently one-twentieth of the national estate; but as the monastic lands were let on long leases, and at very low rents, in the hands of the new proprietors it would prove of vastly higher value.

It is not to be supposed that so violent and wholesale a revolution could take place without much opposition and murmuring. The twenty-eight abbots and two priors of Coventry and of St. John of Jerusalem, who had seats in the House of Lords, were so awed by the brow-beating and execution of such superiors as made any resistance, that they did not dare to open their mouths; but there were not wanting great numbers amongst the people who declared that priors and monks were not the proprietors, but only trustees and tenants for life of this property, which had been bequeathed by pious people of substance for certain purposes, and that, therefore, they had no power to surrender voluntarily this property to the king. To silence these complaints, it was proclaimed everywhere that this property, becoming national, would henceforth put an end to pauperism and taxation; that the king would not have occasion to come to the people to demand any fresh supplies in case of war; that it would enable him to maintain earls, barons, and knights; and to found new institutions for the promotion of education, industry, and religion, more in keeping with the spirit of the age.

But so far was this from being the case, that Henry let the property go amongst his greedy courtiers as fast as it came, and never was so magnificent a property so speedily and astonishingly dissipated. What did not go amongst the Seymours, the Essexes, the Howards, the Russells, and the like, went in the most lavish manner on the king's pleasures and follies. He is said to have given a woman, who introduced a pudding to his liking, the revenue of a whole convent. Pauperism, instead of being extinguished, was increased in a manner which astonished every one. Such crowds had been supported by the monks and nuns, as the public had no adequate idea of, till they were thrown destitute and desperate into the streets and the highways. They had learned to dispense with labour. Such were the daily liberal alms of the monasteries, that they were neither supplied with employment nor anxious for it; and we shall find that they became such a national burden and nuisance as at length, in the reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth, to cause the introduction of our present poor-law system. The aristocracy, in fact, usurped the fund for the support of the poor, and threw them on the nation at large.

Education received an equal shock. The schools supported by the monasteries fell with them. The new race of aristocrats who got the funds did nothing to continue them; and other schools, and even the universities, felt the spirit of the times, which was one of spoliation, but of little inquiry in those ranks which profited by the change. Religion suffered likewise, for the wealth which might have founded efficient incomes for good preachers, was gone into private hands, and the most miserable stipends were paid to the working clergy, and none but poor and unlettered men would accept the miserable pittances.

Those who were become the patrons of country livings, put into them their menials, gardeners, inn-keepers, ignorant monks and friars who had been turned adrift, and many of whom could not read a syllable: or they let the glebes and parsonages, so that the incumbents had neither a roof over their heads nor land to live on. So scandalous, according to Latimer, was the greedy embezzlement by the new aristocracy of the funds for the parochial ministry, that the parish priest was often obliged to keep an ale-house; and we have ourselves seen such an ale-house in Derbyshire, still remaining under the same roof with the church, with a hole in the wall, through which pots of beer could be served even into the church itself during service. The king himself set the example of this odious desecration of the ministry of the church. There is a letter in the "State Papers," from Fitzwilliam to Secretary Cromwell, which gives a striking proof of it. "My lord, one thing there is, that the king's highness willed me to speak unto your lordship in … His grace hath a priest that