40 PROC. COTTESWOLD CLUB vol. xiii. 



is that of their actual state at the period of their dissolu- 

 tion in England. School-books for the most part tell us 

 that although there were " irregularities " among them, 

 their dissolution was an irreparable loss to the country, 

 being due to the caprice and greed of Henry VIII.: 

 some of the " Extension " lecturers incline to the same 

 view.* The truth is that both the school-books and the 

 lecturers are so taken up with the misdeeds of Henry VIII. 

 that they have no time to touch upon certain facts with 

 which Henry had nothing to do. But these facts are of 

 great interest and value for forming a right judgment on 

 one of the most important events in our national history. 

 Much exception, for example, is taken to the bias of the 

 commission appointed by Henry's government to en- 

 quire into the state of the monasteries. But this was not 

 the only commission appointed; nor was England the only 

 country in which the enquiry was made. Pope Paul III. 

 cannot be accused of bias against the monasteries ; yet 

 complaints against them reached him, in such force and 

 from such a variety of sources, that he appointed a com- 

 mission to enquire into their condition generally. Its 

 members were exclusively Cardinals : among them were 

 Reginald Pole, who can hardly be suspected of playing 

 into the hands of Henry VIII., and Cardinal Caraffa, 

 afterwards Pope Paul IV. No writer, or lecturer, who 

 deals even briefly with the dissolution of the monasteries, 

 has any right to omit mentioning this commission, and 

 the substance of its official report to the Papal See, 

 deHvered in 1538, at the very period of the dissolution 

 in this country, which was from 1536 to 1539. It says : — 



* It is due to the Extension lecturers to mention that some of them do not consider 

 that the cloister produced the purest and most perfect of the characters of the Tudor 

 time. They award this distinction to Thomas More, the active statesman, the father of 

 a family, and the writer of the remarlcable letter which is given a few pages further on 



