The Dissohition of the Monasteries. 277 



Clarke in liis history of titlies,^ cites no less tlian eight pre- 

 cedents for constitutional interference with this class of the 

 Church's possessions, each one of which must have appeared 

 to the nation as steps paving the way for some such whole- 

 sale act of confiscation as was now contemplated. We might 

 have expected that the ecclesiastical interests would have 

 long since taken the alarm and attempted measures to avert 

 the catastrophe. If these premonitory symptoms of the 

 State's hostile attitude had not caused apprehension, there 

 were such statutes, as those of Mortmain, of Provisors, and of 

 Premunire, to demonstrate how determined the nation was to 

 curb any foreign participation in the control either of its faith 

 or wealth. The Act of 1533 restraining appeals to Rome, 

 and that of 1534 transposing the king for the pope as Head 

 and Almoner of the English Church, placed Henry VHI. in 

 closest contact with the monastic endowments. That fourth 

 decade of the sixteenth century was fraught with danger to 

 the alien clergy. In 1535 a Royal Commission had furnished 

 Henry with complete details of the revenues of all ecclesias- 

 tical benefices, and in 1536 the edict had gone forth which 

 began the work of dissolution. 



In a history of this kind it is unnecessary to inquire further 

 into the causes which resulted in the confiscation of English 

 land valued at over a million pounds rental.^ If we accept 

 Hume's authority, this colossal spoliation involved one- third 

 of the kingdom ; or, if we are only content with the lowest 

 computation, it exceeded one-fifth. Henry VIII. must have 

 possessed a prodigious capacity for getting rid of money in 

 order not only to fritter away the vast fortune inherited from 

 his miserly father, but stow out of sight the proceeds of his 

 huge burglary on Church property ; and it is hardly credible 

 that scarcely half a dozen years after, this sovereign was 



' Rev. H. W. Clarke, A History of Tithes, p. 178. 



^ The clear yearly value was rated at £131,607, but was in reality, if 

 we believe Burnet, ten times as great, the courtiers undervaluing those 

 estates in order to obtain grants or sales of them more easily. Hallam, 

 Hist, of Engl., ch. ii. 



