182 SOME REMARKS ON THE 



and while surveying the remains of some of those bold projecting 

 towers,* so grand and imposing even in their ruins, t he may not be 

 disposed to reject it altogether as an absurd fiction, that the acts of 

 brotherly love and charityj done within their habitations were the 

 electrical conductors which so long averted from them the thunder- 

 bolt of destruction. Can we wonder, then, at the murmurings, the 

 repugnance, and even recoiling sense of horror, expressed by many 

 an honest head of a house on what he conceived a most criminal 

 sacrilege, on resigning that which the Prior of Henton says " was 

 not his to geve, being dedicate to Allmyghtye Gode for service to 

 be done to hys honour continuallye, with other many good deeds of 

 day lye charite to christen neybours."§ 



These monastic rulers were certainly not such monsters as some 

 of our progenitors have painted them ; since all who know anything 

 of the times we are speaking of, must be distinctly aware, that 

 they were infinitely better landlords and agriculturists than the 

 lay-proprietors of the soil. In the former capacity, they took the 

 most natural way of encouraging husbandry or tillage by being 

 moderate in their rents, and exacting no exorbitant fines upon the 

 renewal of their leases; and in the latter, they made the most effec- 

 tive improvements by causing the woods to be cleared, the marshes 

 to be drained, the commons to be cultivated, orchards, gardens, 



women of lower station — had really no rank which she properly filled ; and 

 a convent was a retreat both honorable and agreeable, from the inutility and 

 often want which attended her situation." — Hist, of England, vol. iv., p. 179. 



* See Remarks on the Ecclesiastical Towers of Norfolk and Suffolk, in 

 Archeeologia, vol. 23, p. 14. 



-f- The fierce puritanism of Mr. M'Crie here flashes broadly and most of- 

 fensively upon many an episcopalian eye. John Knox himself, in his well- 

 known exclamation " that the best way to keep the rooks from returning, 

 was to pull down their nests," could not have more testified his intense 

 hatred to the monastic institutions, than his worthy disciple in the following 

 sarcastic paragraph : — *' If the matter be viewed in this light, antiquarians 

 have no reason to complain of the ravages of the reformers, who have left 

 them much valuable remains and placed them in that very state which 

 awakens in their minds the most lively sentiment of the sublime and beau- 

 tiful, by reducing them to — ruins" — Life of John Knox, vol. i., p. 274. 



J Collier, Wood, Hearne, Drake, Browne, Willis, and others of the class of 

 Romanizing writers, are evidently too favourable to the monastic orders. 

 But those who have heaped obloquy and opprobrium upon them, are com- 

 pelled to allow that, in almsgiving, there was no deviation from the rule of 

 life prescribed by their founders. 



§ See Ellis's Original Letters, vol. ii., pp. 71? 77 : vol. ii., p. 130, second 

 series. 



