180 SOME REMARKS ON THE 



in arduous study and patronized those who trod in their footsteps ; 

 thus illustrating the enlightened and munificent spirit with which 

 they appropriated their vast revenues,* to seize upon which by law 

 — for under the sanction of law Henry did his most barefaced 

 exactions — was, beyond all dispute, the chief inducement for him 

 and his subservient peers to make their imperfect profession of 

 protestantism. It was certainly from no particular admiration of 

 the conventual houses that Williams, the Speaker of the House of 

 Commons, assured Elizabeth that the demolition of the monasteries 

 had effectuated the ruin of an hundred flourishing schools,t and 

 thus ignorance had overspread the land. 



Now, admitting the immensity of monastic wealth, yet if we are 

 candid, if we come to the consideration of the question impartially, 

 and without any wrong bias, we must at least admit that a great 

 portion of it was expended in the exercise of beneficence, and the 

 prosecution of apparently disinterested views. Accumulative proof 

 no doubt we have, that a superior form of religion grew out of the 

 confiscation of monastic property, and which has consecrated, so to 

 speak, the movements of Henry against it. But while to the ken 

 of the Reformed Catholic, the superstitious pageantry and formalities, 

 the idolatry of saint and relic worship, the ritual disfigured by 

 mummery, the pious frauds and lying wonders performed within 

 the walls of the religious houses, present only objects of rational 

 aversion,:}: still should there be a gentleness and candour infused 



* Speed computes the yearly value of the religious houses suppressed in 

 England and Wales, which Camden, in his Britannia, atfirms to have been 

 C41 at .£101,000., composing, as Lord Herbert remarks, above a third part of 

 the ecclesiastical revenues of the kingdom. Burnet, however, asserts, u that 

 the clear annual value, cast up in an account he had seen, to be at <£131,G07. 

 6s. 4d., as the rents were then stated, but was at least at ten times so much 

 in true value." — Hist. Reform., vol. i., p. 538. This statement must surely 

 be exaggerated ; though it is highly probable that the rapacious and artful 

 courtiers may have undervalued those estates, in the hopes of obtaining 

 grants or sales of them more readily. 



+ See Strype, Annal. Reform., sub ann. 1562, p. 212. 



% We have the high authority of Mr. Kinsey for asserting that monkery 

 still produces its usual fruits in Portugal. From many others given by this 

 writer, take the following instance of impious jugglery practised by the 

 monks on the credulous superstition of the people : — "This feast of Nossa 

 Senhora da Conceicao da llocha was announced on the previous night by a 

 grand display of fireworks and an extensive illumination. From the top of 

 the stone cross above the church, the patriots had contrived to make a fiery 

 dove — representing the third person of the Trinity — suddenly descend upon 

 a castle composed of rockets and other combustibles and ignite them. They 



