DURING THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 113 



himself as the most victorious king, though he was outwitted 

 by every European sovereign, made the tool of each in succes- 

 sion, and got nothing by his wars and his waste, except 

 effecting a national ruin which was not retrieved but by the 

 parsimony and the sacrifices of a century and a half. 



The dissolution of the monasteries must have been a prodi- 

 gious wrench to society, as it was a redistribution of one third, 

 unless the facts were exaggerated, of the wealth in the country 1 . 

 What share of it went to Henry, what was spent on new 

 foundations and new projects, and what was resigned to the 

 king's accomplices, the vile crew of courtiers out of whom he 

 made his new aristocracy, has not been determined with any 

 precision. Some of the spoil fell into the hands of men who 

 founded new colleges and schools, generally, as one may see 

 from the journals of the Commons, by acts of Parliament 2 , 

 which are probably long since lost. But the king's share, which 

 must have comprised all the plate and jewels of these founda- 

 tions, was squandered as rapidly and as unaccountably as the 

 bag of gold which in Bunyan's allegory is poured into the cup 

 of Passion. In 1536 the lesser monasteries were suppressed, 

 in 1539 a ^ tne rest went ' I n I 54> tne king got a subsidy. 

 In 1542, he began to incur large debts, and in 1543 his 

 parliament relieved him from all debts which he had incurred 

 by way of loan from his subjects from the first of January in the 

 previous year. But in the same year the king began to debase 

 the currency, and in 1545 and 1546 issued what was, com- 

 pared with the existing currency, an enormous quantity of base 

 coin, to the infinite misery of his unfortunate subjects. 



The monks were unpopular, but not universally. Shortly 

 after the dissolution Henry had to face dissatisfaction every- 

 where, and an insurrection which, under more able leaders, 



1 The Chronicle of Albion, a book printed in the fifteenth century, says that the 

 knights' fees in England were 75,000, of which the men of religion have 27,005. 



2 The motive for these foundations by act of Parliament was probably security for 

 the new endowment. The acts were private and not printed with the statutes of the 

 year. 



VOL. IV. I 



