44 PROC. COTTESWOLD CLUB vol. xiil. 



offered for sale. As the total revenues confiscated 

 amounted to under ^170,000 a-year,* and out of the 

 proceeds of the sales the debts of every monastery were 

 cleared off, and the pensions provided for the thousands 

 of monks and nuns for life, as well as the incomes of 

 half-a-dozen new bishoprics, and the cost of fortifying 

 places on the south coast, with that of building ships for 

 a navy, it is not easy to suppose any verv large balance 

 left either for the king, or anyone else. 



The dissolution of the monasteries was the snapping 

 of the chain of endeavour to make a system perfect 

 which, on the testimony of the commission of Paul III., 

 was inherently incapable of being perfected. We are 

 sometimes told that the nation suffered great loss by the 

 change. It is not easy to see where the loss comes in. 

 It could not have been in respect of learning or of the 

 general diffusion of knowledge, as is shown by the rise 

 of the Elizabethan era of the national literature, after the 

 monasteries were closed. It certainly was not in respect 

 of the moral example set by the monks ; for on this point 

 the language of Cardinal Pole and of More leaves nothing 

 to be said. 



* Some autliorities give under ;^i43,ooo. Possibly one limine niav represent the 

 gross, and the other the net amount. [See Coxes "Monmouthshire;" chapter on Tintern 

 Abbey.] 



There is a very full article on the History of Monachism in the ninth edition of the 

 " l^ncyclopredia Britannica." It is from the pen of Dr. Littledale, and will be read with 

 interest not only by those who believe, as he does, that the monastic system is founded on 

 aspirations inherent in human nature, but by those who do not agree with him. 



