out of the confiscated lands we may conclude this CHAP part of the subject. VI well's Cromwell appropriated to his own share the rich CromPriory of Lewes in Sussex (including its cell of share of Melton-Mowbray in Leicestershire), the Priory of the spoils Michelham in the same county, that of Modenham in Kent, of St. Osythe in Essex, Alceter in Warwickshire, Yarmouth in Norfolk, and Laund in Leicestershire. Sir Richard Cromwell, his nephew, one of the visitors, and great-grandfather of Oliver, received Ramsey Abbey, Hinchinbrooke Nunnery, Sawtry Abbey, St. Neot's Priory, and a house of Austin canons in Huntingdonshire, with Neath Abbey in Glamorganshire, and St. Helen's Nunnery in London. ley's share Lord Audley, Chancellor during the twelve most Lord Audlawless years of Henry's reign, received eight priories and abbeys for his share, and then wrote to Cromwell asking to be allowed to purchase, at a nominal price, the Abbey of Walden in Essex, out of which his descendant in the reign of James I. built the magnificent palace, of which one wing, still magnificent, forms the present mansion of Audley End.* 4 Among Cromwell's private memoranda was one "To remember . . myself for Launde." Illustrating this is a cringing letter from Thomas Frysby, a canon of that abbey, accompanying a present of six cheeses, with a message that Cromwell need not thank the abbot for them, and the following: "Pleaseth it your good Mastership to call to your remembrance when ye lay here with us at Launde Abbey some time ye would take the pain to walk with me or my brethren about our business. It is pretty clear that he acquired a good acquaintance 5 In Lord Campbell's Lives of CHAP Lord Clinton, who afterwards married the misVJ tress whom Henry had cast off for Anne Boleyn, Lord Clin- received thirteen abbeys, including the rich ones of ton's share Croyland and Barking. Cranmer not guilt less The Rus sell spoils The Parr spoils The How ard spoils The Northumber Archbishop Cranmer gave way to the general temptation, begging to have the Priory of Shelford for his brother-in-law, Harold Rosell, clerk of his kitchen, the Grey Friars in Canterbury for Thomas Cobham, another relative, the Priory of Pontefract for John Wakefield, controller of his household, Croxden or Roucester for his "servant," Francis Basset, and Newstead for one Markham. He himself also became the possessor of Kirkstall Abbey, Arthington and Malling nunneries." Lord Russell, afterwards first Earl of Bedford, received the rich abbeys of Tavistock in Devonshire, Woburn in Bedfordshire, and Thorney in Cambridgeshire. Lord Parr, afterwards Marquis of Northampton, appropriated the four priories of Edith Weston, Halsted, St. Mary du Pré, and Pipewell. The Duke of Norfolk laid his hands upon as many as thirteen abbeys, nunneries, and colleges. The Duke of Northumberland, at one time and land spoils another, swept into his estates the lands of eighteen monastic establishments. The Somerset spoils The Duke of Suffolk's The Duke of Somerset emulated the example of the Duke of Norfolk, by appropriating the same number of houses, viz., thirteen. But the most astonishing of all such appropriations thirty mon- was made by the King's brother-in-law, and brother in profligacy, Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. This man, whose life was one scene of shameless living, became asteries Jenkyns' Cranmer, i. 161, 174, 233, 263, 272. the proprietor of no fewer than thirty monasteries, CHAP chiefly in Lincolnshire and Warwickshire." VI Such an enumeration of a few of those who profited by the dissolution of the monasteries reveals something of the rapacity which accompanied this national tragedy. If the new owners of the estates had endeavoured to promote in any degree the religious objects for which they had originally been intended, some excuses might have been offered for them, and their good deeds would have stood, perhaps, in the light of a condonation for what, if it was not sacrilege, was the very nearest approach possible to that crime. But no good deeds are to be told of these None of men. They simply tried to build for themselves houses out of the property once dedicated to God's good with service and if God's service was neglected any- wealth where it was upon the estates thus acquired. The original grantees of the lands seldom, indeed, prospered, and their estates either passed into other families or to distant branches of their own. Cromwell's property was wasted by his son; the Duke of Suffolk's last heirs died, not long after himself, both 8 The absolute inalienableness of Church property was not recognised by the medieval Church: but on their election the heads of monastic and capitular bodies took an oath never to alienate the goods of which they were made trustees. The Council of Carthage [A.D. 398] prohibited alienations except with the consent of the bishops, and subsequent Canon Law still further restricted alienations. But the strictest law on the subject that was ever passed is that laid down in an English Act of Parliament, 1 James I. i., which incapacitates bishops from alienating their lands even to the Crown. the new owners did their VI CHAP in one day; the Russell family has been notorious for its misfortunes; as was, for a long time, that of the Dukes of Norfolk; while the great estates of How ill it the Northumberland house have passed from one branch to another, ever begging an heir from the female line, and very rarely continuing the inheritance by a direct line of sons. fared with their fa milies Some social results solutions It is only within the limits of the present generation that the ancient Church lands confiscated by Henry VIII. have again begun to bear any important share in Church duties: but in the restitutions that are being made of their revenues to sacred objects— tardy and comparatively small as those restitutions are-lies the best ground of hope that the cloud which hangs over their possession is passing away. It may be that the nineteenth century may yet wash away the stains which came upon those lands by the bloodshed and profane lawlessness which attended their alienation from the Church in the sixteenth. The social results which followed up so great a of the dis- convulsion as the suppression of 1100 monasteries in a population not much over three millions, were too important not to be noticed. Most conspicuous of all such results were the increase of poverty, and the decay of learning; both of which are witnessed by bold contemporaries such as Latimer, and by the less partial of historical writers who lived near the time. Increase of mendi. cancy The impoverishment first of the bishops and parochial clergy, and afterwards the total ruin of the monks, created a vast number of beggars, partly through drying up the springs from which charity had hitherto flowed, and partly by throwing many labourers and artizans out of work. The monastic VI of labour ers thrown work establishments maintained a large number of ser- CHAP vants, labourers, workmen, and tradesmen, all of whom would be partly, and some wholly deprived of their accustomed industry and its reward. The effect on many districts was the same in its degree as if all the colleges in Oxford or Cambridge were to be suddenly ruined, the fellows and undergraduates turned adrift without money or goods, and the buildings half-destroyed. A large monastery was a Numbers market for much produce, and an employer of labour in many necessary branches of industry. Although it was the rule of all monks that labour should accompany prayer, their labours were most frequently (at least in later times) the labours of the cloister, not those of the workshop and the field. They studied much, supplied the country with books when printing was yet unknown, composed laborious works on Holy Scripture, theological and secular treatises, and spent their time generally in that kind of brain work which the ignorant put down as unproductive idleness. Many a modern artizan or tradesman, moving in a narrow circle, and used to much muscular exertion, would certainly set down the work of writing these pages as little better than idleness, and claim for themselves the special designation of "working-men." Such was, doubtless, the foundation of those charges of idleness brought against a studious, brain-working class of monks and it was not considered that they who thus held large endowments were by that very brain-work providing manual Monks labourers with the employment which brought them made bread. The brain workers were scattered to the beggars winds without books, money, or means of carrying on their work; and the manual workers who had themselves |