22 The Fall of the Friars’ Houses and Alien Priories in Wilts. 
institution by looking at it in its highest—its ideal—embodiment. 
One must admit that both monks and friars degenerated greatly 
from their ideal (an ideal, be it remembered, far beyond what most 
men now think even of attempting), and as the ideal of the friar 
was, as we judge now, higher than that of the monk, so the de- 
generation in his case was more complete. The friar, often a 
wanderer, owning no allegiance, save to the head of his order, and 
through him to the Pope, easily degenerated into the pardoner— 
the scandal of his order, and the butt of every medizeval satirist. 
The degeneration began when the friars ceased to live on alms 
and began to gain their living by begging, for this career presented 
to anyone who was too lazy to work the readiest means of obtaining 
a livelihood. Armed with the power of dispensing or withholding 
pardon, tempted to use his powers for his own convenience and 
profit, owning no jurisdiction within the realm save to the superior 
of his own order, small wonder if the wandering friar was a constant 
thorn in the side alike of the diligent and of the easy-going parish 
priest, small wonder if he converted his spiritual power into an 
engine for extracting from the terrified housewife the good things 
in her larder. 
In the bill for the suppression of smaller houses no mention had 
been made of friaries: a fact partly, no doubt, accounted for by 
their insignificant size and poverty of income. But when the 
extinction of the smaller houses, and the ease with which the larger 
came into his hand, together with the complete suppression of the 
Pilgrimage of Grace, convinced the King that England lay helpless 
in his grasp, then the fall of the friars was decided on. After all, 
the sites on which their houses stood, being—as I said before—in 
towns, had a peculiar value, and were much sought after; even if 
the other revenues of the houses yielded little or nothing to the 
royal treasury; while the fact that the various orders of friars 
formed in a special sense the outposts of the Papal army, confirmed 
Henry VIII. in his determination to be rid of them. 
It may now be convenient to mention here the various houses of 
friars in Wiltshire in 1538. They were four in number, and in- | 
cluded representatives of three out of the four great orders existent 
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