Page:Landholding in England.djvu/75

 better for the abbey lands; though the Russells, Seymours, Cavendishes, Pagets, Howards, Wriothesleys, Stanhopes, and the crowd of smaller courtiers and gentry who founded families and fortunes on the abbey lands no doubt were. Let us see what Protestants said all the time. I will take three witnesses—all Reformers.



Y first witness is Henry Brinklow, a bitter partisan of the Reformation; once a Grey Friar, who left his order, married, and became a furious denouncer of the Pope and all his works. He wrote what he calls the "Complaint of Roderick Mors." It was written about 1542, and is a remonstrance to Parliament. He complains of "the inordinate enhancing of rents and taking of unreasonable fines," by "them to whom the King hath given and sold the lands of those imps of Antichrist, abbeys and nunneries." If the former holders had not "led us in a false faith, it had been more profitable, no doubt, for the commonwealth, that they had remained still in their lands. For why? They never enhanced their lands, nor took so cruel fines as do our temporal tyrants. For they cannot