his own house.'

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Schools are not maintained; scholars CHAP have not exhibition. Very few there be that help poor scholars, that set their children to school to learn the Word of God, and to make a provision for the age to come.

It would pity a man's heart to hear that that I hear of the state of Cambridge; what it is in Oxford I cannot tell. . . . I think there be at this day [A.D. 1550] ten thousand students less than were within these twenty years, and fewer preachers."5 It must be remembered that Latimer was by no means a laudator temporis acti; his whole soul was in the Reformation, and these comparisons of the time before and the time after the dissolution were wrung from him by the bitter contemplation of the result as it stood visible to his eyes.

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tion of

One great cause of this decay of learning was also Destruc to be found in the destruction of the monastic libra- books ries. "The English monks," says Fuller, were bookish of themselves, and much inclined to hoard up monuments of learning." But these treasures were scattered and destroyed, and the very time of which so much has been boasted as being that of the "revival of learning" was the time when books, that would now be worth their weight in silver and gold to scholars, were destroyed by the cart-load as utterly worthless, simply because men were too ignorant to appreciate their value. In 1549, John Bale, a vigorous anti-Romanist, but a man of learning, wrote on this subject to Edward VI. :

of this in

"Covetousness," he says, was at that time so busy about The extent private commodity that public wealth in that most necessary ten years and of respect was not anywhere regarded. A number of them which purchased those superstitious mansions, reserved of those library-books some to serve their jakes, some to scour

5 Latimer's Sermons, ii. 92; i. 267, 159, 246.

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Whole libraries wantonly wasted

CHAP their candlesticks, and some to rub their boots; some they sold to the grocers and soap-sellers, and some they sent over sea to the bookbinders, not in small number, but at times whole ships full. Yea, the universities of this realm are not all clear in this detestable fact. But cursed is that belly, which seeketh to be fed with so ungodly gains, and so deeply shameth his natural country! I know a merchant-man which shall at this time be nameless, that bought the contents of twc noble libraries for forty shillings' price: a shame it is to be spoken! This stuff hath he occupied instead of gray paper, by the space of more than these ten years; and yet he hath store enough for as many years to come. A prodigious example is this, and to be abhorred of all men, which love their nations as they should do. Yea, what may bring our realm to more shame and rebuke, than to have it noised abroad, that we are despisers of learning? I judge this to be true, and utter it with heaviness, that neither the Britons under the Romans and Saxons, nor yet the English people under the Danes and Normans, had ever such damage of their learned monuments, as we have seen in our time. Our posterity may well curse this wicked fact of our age, this unreasonable spoil of England's most noble antiquities."6

A relic to show what

Those who have examined the grandest fragment might have that is left of these libraries, the famous MS. closet been of the chapter library at Durham, will feel that

these words of Bale do not at all exaggerate the value of what was lost and as the mind travels from the carefully treasured volumes in that well-kept cathedral to the ruins of Glastonbury or Fountains, it will echo his words with melancholy indignation.

The destruction of libraries, the decay of the universities, and the habits of "unstudiousness' that grew up among the clergy in consequence, were one fruitful source of the subsequent troubles which fell upon the Church from the pestilence of ignorant

Declaration upon Leland's Journal, 1549.

Puritanism which broke out within her walls, and CHAP prostrated her vital powers for so long.

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of social

dissolu

The social results of the dissolution may then be Summary summed up in a few words. A large body of almost results folstarving people was formed by the ruined monks, lowing the and those who had been maintained by them, either tions in labour or charity. Rents were enormously raised by those to whom the monastic lands fell by grant or purchase, the new lay landlords exacting three or four times as much as had been required by the old Church landlords. The poverty of the poor, and the wealth of the rich, drew away class from class, and introduced that disintegration of society which caused so much trouble in the seventeenth century. The schools of the monasteries were not efficiently replaced by the new foundations which were substituted for them, the universities themselves were far less frequented than formerly, and solid learning was replaced by superficial, few devoting themselves to real study. The recuperative power of the English character enabled it to withstand the force of this social convulsion, but not immediately and even when poor-laws were substituted for almsgiving, Elizabethan mansions for monastic houses, classical elegance for scholastic solidity, printed plays and sonnets for manuscript tomes of theology, it did not at once bring conviction to all minds that England had been much of a gainer by the dissolution of the monasteries.

And on the whole question it may be said that we must ever look back with shame on that dissolution, as on a series of transactions in which the sorrow,

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CHAP the waste, the impiety that were wrought, were enough to make angels weep. It may be quite true that the monastic system had worn itself out for practical good; or at least that it was unfitted for those coming ages, which were to be so different from the ages that were past. But slaughter, desecration, and wanton destruction, were no remedies for its sins or its failings: nor was covetous rapacity the spirit of reformation. A blot and a scandal were indelibly impressed upon our history, and every bare site, every ruined gable, is still a witness to what was nothing less than a great national tragedy.

CHAPTER VII

SE

REFORMATION OF LAY GRIEVANCES AGAINST THE

CLERGY

[A.D 1529-A.D. 1535]

VII

EVERAL important subjects have been set aside CHAP in the preceding chapters to prevent the narrative from becoming embarrassed, it being impossible to give clear views of history in the form of annals. The reader is now, therefore, asked to therefore, asked to go back again, and after a cursory review, of earlier events, to trace out a group of laws passed during the ten years which followed the fall of Wolsey, some of which were directly, and some indirectly associated with the progress of the Reformation.

§ 1. ALLEGED EXTORTIONS OF THE CLERGY

In proceeding to do so, it will be right first to Discords observe a strong shadow of discontent with the state between clergy and and administration of ecclesiastical laws which was laity in thrown over the Church in London about the time when Wolsey's power was beginning to expand. The event has been grossly misrepresented for party

London