KINGTON AND RADNORSHIRE 155 



Returning now to the question of the rights of the people 

 at large to a share in their native land, I would further point 

 out that the enclosure of commons is only one of many acts 

 of robbery that have been perpetrated by or for the landlords. 

 If we go back no further than the reign of Henry VIII. we 

 have the whole vast properties of the abbeys and monasteries 

 confiscated by the king, and mostly given away to personal 

 friends or powerful nobles, without any regard whatever to 

 the rights of the poor. Most of these institutions took the 

 place of our colleges, schools, and workhouses. The poor 

 were relieved by them, and they served as a refuge for the 

 wanderer and the fugitive. No provision was made for the 

 fulfilment of these duties by the new owners, and the poor 

 and needy were thus plundered and oppressed. Under the 

 same king and his successors all the accumulated wealth of 

 the parish churches, in gold and silver vessels, in costly 

 vestments often adorned with jewels, in paintings by great 

 masters, and in illuminated missals which were often priceless 

 works of art, were systematically plundered, court favourites 

 obtaining orders to sequestrate all such " popish ornaments," 

 in a certain number of cases keeping the produce for them- 

 selves, while in others they were sold for the king's benefit. 

 The property thus stolen the Rev. A. Jessopp estimates to 

 have been many times greater than the value of all the abbeys 

 and monasteries of the kingdom! 



If we consider the nature of this long series of acts of 

 plunder of the people's land and other property, we find in 

 it every circumstance tending to aggravate the crime. It was 

 robbery of the poor by the rich. It was robbery of the weak 

 and helpless by the strong. And it had this worst feature 

 that distinguishes robbery from mere confiscation — the plunder 

 was divided among the robbers themselves. Yet again, it 

 was a form of robbery specially forbidden by the religion of 

 the robbers — a religion for which they professed the deepest 

 reverence and of which they .considered themselves the special 

 defenders. They read in what they called The Word of 

 God, " Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay 

 field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed, 



