WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 41 



communication, to such an extent, indeed, that a special 

 rule was made prohibiting "the use of the Latin tongue 

 except under special circumstances." 



' ' As long as the conventual system lasted the only schools 

 for girls in England were the convent schools where, 

 says Robert Aske, 'the daughters of gentlemen were 

 brought up in virtue. ' From an educational point of view, 

 the suppression of the convents was decidedly a blunder/' 

 Thus writes Georgiana Hill in her instructive work on 

 Women in English Life, and there are, we fancy, but few 

 readers of her instructive pages who will not be inclined 

 to agree with her conclusions. 1 Lecky speaks of the dis- 

 solution of convents at the time of the Reformation as ' ' far 

 from a benefit to women or the world. ' ' 2 And Dom Gas- 

 quet declares ' ' that destruction by Henry VIII of the con- 

 ventual schools where the female population, the rich as 

 well as the poor, found their only teachers, was the abso- 

 lute extinction of any systematic education of women for 

 a long period. ' ' 3 



But this is not all. The strangest and saddest result, 

 consequent on the suppression of the convents, was that 

 men were made to profit by the loss which women had 

 sustained. The revenues of the houses that were sup- 

 pressed had been intended for the sole use and behoof of 

 women, and had been administered by them in this sense 

 for centuries. When they were appropriated by Henry 

 VIII, it never occurred to him or his ministers to make 

 any provision for the education of women in lieu of that 

 which had so ruthlessly been wrested from them. Thus the 

 nunnery of St. Radegund, together with its revenues and 

 possessions, was transformed into Jesus College, Cam- 

 bridge, while from the suppressed convents of Bromhall in 

 Berkshire and Lillechurch in Kent funds were secured for 



1 Pp. 78, 79, London, 1897. 



2 History of European Morals, Vol. II, p. 369, New York, 1905. 

 9 Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, London, 1895. 



