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their duty to God and inan, being verily persuaded their estate and safety to be more safe and secure than ever was any condition of people, because their houses were repaired, their rents increased, their churches new builded and beautified, ever to the very day of their general dissolution, which came suddenly upon them, like the universal deluge. For, whilst the religious persons thus flattered and secured themselves, the King obtained the ecclesiastical supremacy into his particular possession, and therewithal had power given him by Parliament, to survey and reform the abuses of all those houses and persons above said but the King, because he would go the next way to work, overthrew them, razed them; many ruins of them remain a testimony thereof to this day: whereat many of the peers and common people murmured, because they expected that the abuses should have been only reformed, and the rest have still remained. The general plausible project which caused the Parliament consent unto the reformation or alteration of the monasteries was that the King's exchequer should for ever be enriched, the kingdom and nobility strengthened and increased, and the common subjects acquainted [acquitted] and freed from all former services and taxes, to wit, that the abbots, monks, friars, and nuns, being suppressed, that then in their places should be created forty earls, threescore barons, and three thousand knights, and forty thousand soldiers, with skilful captains, and competent maintenance for them all, ever out of the ancient churches' revenues, so as, in so doing, the King and successors should never want of treasure of their own, nor have cause to be beholding to the common subjects, neither should the people be any more charged with loans, subsidies, and fifteens. Since which time, there have been more statutelaws, subsidies, and fifteens than five hundred years before. And not long

after that the King had subsidies granted, and borrowed great sums of money, and died in debt, and the forenamed religious houses were utterly ruinated, whereat the clergy, peers, and common people were all sore grieved, but could not help it."*

there was

The sense which we justly entertain of the advantages of the Reformation has accustomed us to shut our eyes to the tremendous evils which must have been produced by the iniquitous spoliations of the days of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. The religious houses, whatever might have been their abuses, were centres of civilization. Leland says, "There was no town at Evesham before the foundation of the abbey." Wherever there was a well-endowed religious house, a large and a regular expenditure, employing the local industry in the way best calculated to promote the happiness of the population. Under this expenditure, not only did handicrafts flourish, but the arts were encouraged in no inconsiderable degree. The commissioners employed to take surrender of the monasteries in Warwickshire reported of the nunnery of Polsworth, that in this town were then forty-four tenements, and but one plough, the residue of the inhabitants being artificers, who had their livelihood by this house." In another place Dugdale says, " Nor is it a little observable that, whilst the monasteries stood, there was no act for relief of the poor, so ampiy

"

Continuation of Stow's 'Chronicle.'

+ Dugdale's Warwickshire,' p. 800.

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did those houses give succour to them that were in want; whereas in the next age, namely 39th of Elizabeth, no less than eleven bills were brought into the House of Commons for that purpose." We have little doubt that the judicious encouragement of industry in the immediate neighbourhood of each monastery did a great deal more to render a state provision for the poor unnecessary than the accustomed succour to those who were in want." The benevolence of the religious houses was systematic and uniform. It was not the ostentatious and improvident almsgiving which would raise up an idle pauper population upon their own lands. The poor, as far as we can judge from the acts of law-makers, did not become a curse to the country, and were not dealt with in the spirit of a detestable severity, until the law-makers had dried up the sources of their profitable industry. Leland, writing immediately after the dissolution of the Abbey of Evesham, says of the town that it is "meetly large and well builded with timber; the market-sted is fair and large; there be divers pretty streets in the town." While the abbey stood there was an annual disbursement there going forward which has been computed to be equal to eighty thousand pounds of our present money.† The revenues, principaily

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+ History of Evesham,' by George May. A remarkably intelligent local guide.

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derived from manors and tenements in eight different counties, are seized upon by the Crown. The site of the abbey is sold or granted to a private person, who will derive his immediate advantage by the rapid destruction of a pile of buildings which the piety and magnificence of five or six centuries had been rearing. More than a hundred and fifty inmates of this monastery are turned loose upon the world, a few with miserable pensions, but the greater number reduced to absolute indigence. Half the population at least of the town of Evesham must have derived a subsistence from the expenditure of these inmates, and this fountain is now almost wholly dried up. In the youth of William Shakspere it is impossible that Evesham could have been other than a ruined and desolate place. Not only would its monastic buildings be destroyed, but its houses would be untenanted and dilapidated; its reduced population idle and dispirited. Its two beautiful parish churches, situated close to the precincts of the abbey, escaped the common destruction of 1539; but till within the last seven years that of St. Lawrence had been long disused, and had fallen into ruin. It is now restored; for after three centuries of destruction and neglect we have begun to cherish some respect for what remains of our noble ecclesiastical edifices.

The act for the suppression of the smaller religious houses (27th Henry VIII.) recites that "manifest sin, vicious, carnal, and abominable living, is daily used and committed amongst the little and small abbeys, priories, and other religious houses." But in suppressing and confiscating all such small houses, whose annual expenditure is not two hundred pounds, the same statute affirms that, in the "great solemn monasteries of this realm, thanks be to God, religion is right well kept and observed." The smaller houses were destroyed, according to the statute, through the ardent desire of the King's most royal majesty for the increase, advancement, and exaltation of true doctrine and virtue in the said church." And yet, in four years, the "great solemn monasteries of this realm, wherein, thanks be to God, religion is right well kept and observed," were also utterly suppressed and annihilated, under the pretence that they had been voluntarily surrendered to the King. It was the policy of the unscrupulous reformers-who, whatever service they may ultimately have worked in the destruction of superstitious observances, were, as politicians, the most dishonest and rapacious-it was their policy, when (to use their own heartless cant) they had driven away the crows and destroyed their nests, to heap every opprobrium upon the heads of the starving and houseless brethren, of whom it has been computed that fifty thousand were wandering through the land. The young Shakspere was in all probability brought into contact with some of the aged men who had been driven from the peaceful homes of their youth, where they had been brought up in scholastic exercises, and had looked forward to advance in honourable office, each in his little world. Some one of the Grey Friars of Coventry, or the Benedictines of Evesham, must he nave encountered, hovering round the scenes of their ancient prosperity; sheltered perhaps in the cottage of some old servant who could labour with his hands, and upon whom the common misfortune therefore had

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fallen lightly. The friars of the future great dramatist would, of necessity, be characters formed either out of his early observation, or moulded according to the general impressions of his early associates. In his nature life the race would be extinct. These his dramatic representations are wonderfully consistent; and it is manifest that he looked upon the persecuted order with pity and with respect. It was for Chaucer to satirize the monastic life in the days of its greatness and abundance. It was for this rare painter of manners to show the grasping, dissimulating friar, sitting down upon the churl's bench, and endeavouring to frighten or wheedle the bed-ridden man out of his money :

"Thomas, nought of your tresor I desire

As for myself, but that all our covent
To pray for you is aye so diligent."

The ridicule in those times of the Church's pride might be salutary; but other days had come. The most just and tolerant moralist that ever helped to disencumber men of their hatreds and prejudices has consistently endeavoured to represent the monastic character as that of virtue and benevolence. One of Shakspere's earliest plays is Romeo and Juliet; and many of the rhymed portions of that delicious tragedy might have been the desultory compositions of a very young poet, to be hereafter moulded into the dramatic form. Such is the, graceful soliloquy which first introduces Friar Lawrence. The kind old man going forth from his cell in the morning twilight to fill his osier basket with weeds and flowers, and moralizing on the properties of plants which at once yield poison and medicine, has all the truth of individual portraiture. But Friar Lawrence is also the representative of a class. The Infirmarist of a monastic house, who had charge of the sick brethren, was often in the early days of medical science their sole physician. The book-knowledge and the expe

rience of such a valuable member of a conventual body would still allow him. to exercise useful functions when thrust into the world; and the young Shakspere may have known some kindly old man, full of axiomatic wisdom, and sufficiently confident in his own management, like the well-meaning Friar Lawrence. In Much Ado about Nothing, it is the friar who, when Hero is unjustly accused by him who should have been her husband, vindicates her reputation with as much sagacity as charitable zea! :

"I have mark'd

A thousand blushing apparitions start
Into her face; a thousand innocent shames
In angel whiteness bear away those blushes;
And in her eye there hath appear'd a fire,
To burn the errors that these princes hold
Against her maiden truth :-Call me a fool;
Trust not my reading, nor my observations,
Which with experimental seal doth warrant
The tenor of my book; trust not my age,
My reverence, calling, nor divinity,

If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here
Under some biting error."

In Measure for Measure the whole plot is carried on by the Duke assuming the reverend manners, and professing the active benevolence, of a friar; and his agents and confidants are Friar Thomas and Friar Peter. In an age when the prejudices of the multitude were flattered and stimulated by abuse and ridicule of the ancient ecclesiastical character, Shakspere always exhibits it so as to command respect and affection. The poisoning of King John by a monk, "a resolved villain," is despatched by him with little more than an allusion. The Germans believe that Shakspere wrote the Old King John, in two Parts. The vulgar exaggeration of the basest calumnies against the monastic character satisfies us that the play was written by one who formed a much lower estimate than Shakspere did of the dignity of the poet's office, as an instructor of the people.

A deep reverence for antiquity is one of the clearest indications of the int mate union of the poetical and the philosophical temperament. An able writer of our own day has indeed said, "In some, the love of antiquity produces a sort of fanciful illusion: and the very sight of those buildings, so magnificent in their prosperous hour, so beautiful even in their present ruin, begets a sympathy for those who founded and inhabited them.”* But, rightly considered, the fanciful illusion becomes a reasonable principle. Those who founded and inhabited these monastic buildings were for ages the chief directors of the national mind. Their possessions were, in truth, the possessions of all classes of the people. The highest offices in those establishments were in some cases bestowed upon the noble and the wealthy, but they were open to the very humblest. The studious and the devout here found a shelter and a solace. The learning of the monastic bodies has been underrated; the ages in which they flourished have been

• Hallam's 'Constitutional History of England.'

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