2 So History of the English Landed Interest. 



people's minds that sometliing was being done in the pre- 

 scribed direction. In reality the bulk of the spoil fell into 

 the hands of sycophant courtiers or capitalist tradesmen. The 

 endowments of episcopal sees did not escape the avarice of 

 these legalised robbers. Statesmen built houses with the 

 material of razed churches.^ The great wooden barns and 

 cowsheds in the southern counties ^ still betray the use put to 

 the timbers of ruined monasteries, and even the chestnut 

 principals of "Westminster Abbey might have been torn off for 

 similar purposes, had not the alarmed Chapter averted this 

 act of Vandalism by grants of lands,^ which greatly reduced 

 their future income. But the indigent poor suffered the most ; 

 those in the rural districts by the cessation of monastic charity, 

 those in the towns by that later confiscation of the guild lands. 

 The soil still supplied the tithes impropriated by the new 

 owners, who in many instances were not themselves landlords. 

 Henceforth it was charged a second time over for the support 

 of the nation's pauper population. It has been contested that 

 the tithe never wholly performed this task ; that the unequal 

 distribution of the monasteries over the land could merely 

 relieve the demands of poverty in certain localities ; that the 

 system encouraged and caused pauperism, and that, even while 

 the monasteries were standing, legislation was at work to 

 formulate a new system.^ 



All this, though strictly true, does not surely shake the 

 position of those who contend that the present system of 

 parochial relief was a necessity consequent on the dissolution 

 of the monasteries. The portion of the tithe devoted to poor 

 relief was no more and no less sufficient than the modern poor 

 rates. It might with justice be urged that the latter are by far 

 less able to cope now with the national poverty than was the 

 former in Elizabethan times. Town pauperism, no doubt, drew 

 the bulk of its relief in Tudor days from the guild charities ; 



' Somerset House was thus built. 



^ I have myself seen the queer-shaped rafters, with their old mortica 

 holes, in many an old Dorsetshire bam. 

 ^ Hallam, Hht. of Engl., ch. ii. 

 * Compare Hallam, Hist, of Engl. ^ ch. ii. 



