DURING THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 1OI 



the endowment of such institutions or the extension of old 

 foundations by new gifts was rarely provided for out of lands. 

 The Oxford and Cambridge Colleges of the fifteenth century 

 were chiefly maintained out of impropriated rectories, or 

 suppressed religious houses, as was also the one new and great 

 monastic foundation, that of Sion. The foundation of All 

 Souls' in Oxford was mainly provided from certain alien 

 priories which Chichele purchased from the Crown. That of 

 Lincoln came from the rectorial tithes of certain benefices in 

 the gift of two successive bishops of Lincoln, for it appears that 

 at this time, ecclesiastical corporations had and exercised a 

 large discretion in alienating the property or the patronage of 

 their offices. Jesus College at Cambridge was founded on the 

 site and with the property of a suppressed nunnery. King's 

 College was endowed, as was Eton, with those alien priories 

 which were distributed between these two foundations and the 

 abbey of Sion, and, as I have stated before, Magdalene College 

 included the properties of at least two monastic bodies. 



It appears from the reiterated statements of Gascoigne l that 

 it was very generally held in the fifteenth century, that the 

 Pope was able at his discretion to vary the objects for which 

 monastic endowments had been conferred. Thus we are told 

 that Martin V endowed the University of Pavia with the lands 

 and goods of many such endowed monasteries and five chapels 2 . 

 It appears that the only limit which was put on the power of the 

 Pope in diverting these endowments from monastic to other 

 uses, was that the subsequent use must be in some degree 

 analogous to that for which the gift of lands and goods was 

 originally dedicated. Hence it may be assumed that the first 

 thought of Henry the Eighth in the suppression of the monas- 

 teries was the employment of their estates in the extension of 

 what may be called the machinery of the Anglican establish- 

 ment, and in the foundation of colleges and schools. Henry's 

 new episcopate was only a fragment of a, very large plan, and 



1 e.g. Loci, p. 148. 2 Loci p. 4, 



