DISSOLUTION OP THE MONASTERIES. 187 



monastic communities, yet we have lived to see that most effec- 

 tive defender of our branch of the church, Bishop Jewell, speak 

 like a true prophet, in saying that the spirit of sacrilege which 

 consigned the conventual revenues to the grasp of avaricious re- 

 formers and to the parasites of a court * instead of applying them to 

 the erection of schools and to the furtherance of other religious ob- 

 jects, would be *' a plague to posterity, the decay and dissolution of 

 the church of God."t 



The very name of plurality carries its condemnation with it. It 

 is for lay-impropriators to remove a stigma which has been so long 

 and so unjustly fastened upon the church through their means, and 

 which has been a constant source of regret to her friends, and of 

 calumnious invectives to her enemies. Papistical Mary, be it re- 

 membered to her infinite honour, restored, from conscientious mo- 

 tives, the abbey lands which had been attached to the crown, and 

 with them the first-fruits and tenths ; and when her unprincipled 

 courtiers, with a view to frighten her out of this intention, told her 

 that, if such was her will and pleasure, she would impair the dig- 



* Had those, whose fervent but mistaken piety founded these conventual 

 houses, been permitted to revisit the earth about the middle of the sixteenth 

 century, with what affright, horror, and amazement would they have seen 

 the glut of wealth poured into the royal exchequer by their suppression, dis- 

 sipated in such a manner as would have puzzled them to determine whether 

 the reigning prince exhibited, in the disposal of his newly-acquired treasures, 

 the character of the spendthrift, the gamester, the madman, or the profaner 

 of holy things. From authentic documents, we learn that Henry made a 

 grant of a religious house to one who had the good fortune to please his pa- 

 late with a savoury dish of puddings ; to Sir Miles Partridge he lost a fine 

 ring of bells by a single throw of the dice ; while to him whose office it was 

 to set the royal chair at a convenient distance from the fire, the gift or lease 

 of abbey-lands was granted — See Fuller, b. vi., p. 336, 337; Hist, of Abbeys, 

 p. 335. According to that vehement reformer, Bale, a great part of the mo- 

 nastic treasure was turned by Henry " to the upholding of dice-playing, 

 masquing, and banquetting," " yea," he adds, " (I would I could not by just 

 occasion speak it), bribing, whoring, and swearing." — Bale, apud Strype, vol. 

 i., p. 361. 



•f In the memorable sermon preached by this illustrious divine before Eli- 

 zabeth and her Court, in which he so courageously denounces and exposes 

 the ruinous impropriations and other shameful abuses of church-property, 

 after observing that a gentleman cannot keep house unless he have a parsonage 

 or two in farm in his possession, he then exclaims, " O, merciful God ! whereto 

 will this grow at last. If the misery which this plague worketh would reach 

 to but one age, it were tolerable : but it will be a plague to the posterity— it 



will be the decay and desolation of God's church." Jewell's Works, edit. 



1611, Serin, hi., p. 191, 192. 



