No. 4.] MONKS IN AGRICULTURE. 17 



clustered around the monasteries arose in England South- 

 ampton, Peterborough, Bath, Colchester, Oxford, Cam- 

 bridge, Ely and many others. 



In the earlier days the monks had always taken the lead 

 in farming, and if improvements were introduced it was 

 sure to be the monks who were the pioneers. How useful 

 the monasteries had been and what an important factor they 

 were is perhaps best seen from the effect their dissolution 

 had upon the laboring classes. Henry VIII. suppressed 

 six hundred and forty-four monasteries, ninety colleges, two 

 thousand three hundred and seventy-four free chapels and 

 one hundred and ten hospitals. These held one-fifth of all 

 the land in the kingdom and one-third the national wealth. 

 At the same time nearly one hundred thousand male persons 

 were thrown out of employment. "It is possible," says 

 Symes in Traill's " Social England," " that the relieving of 

 a large number of persons from the obligations of celibacy 

 partly accounts for the great increase of the population 

 which undoubtedly took place in Henry's reign. Moreover, 

 experience proves that people reduced to poverty and des- 

 peration often show extraordinary recklessness in bringing 

 people into the world." However that may be we find the 

 population from the reign of Henry VII. to the death of 

 Henry VIII. increasing from two and one-half millions to 

 four millions. But this change in population without cor- 

 responding distribution of wealth, this transference of one- 

 third the national wealth, was attended by another still more 

 disastrous effect, and that was " the change in the charac- 

 ter of the demand for labor, which reduced to the ranks 

 of the unskilled those Avhose skill was no longer in de- 

 mand." The land taken up by the king was bestowed upon 

 his nobles and favorites, and these, desirous of securing 

 immediate and larger profits, enclosed inmiense areas and 

 turned to the breeding and pasturing of sheep. It was 

 the substitution of pasture for tillage, of sheep for corn, 

 of commercialism for a simple, self-sufficing industry, of 

 individual gain for the old agrarian partnership in which 

 the lords or abbots, the parsons, yeomen, farmers, copy- 

 holders and laborers were associated for the supply of the 



