Note 105 — Chapter II

Id. ibid. and Append. p. 151; Collier, 167. The pensions to the superiors of the dissolved greater monasteries, says a writer not likely to spare Henry's government, appear to have varied from £266 to £6 per annum. The priors of cells received generally £13. A few, whose services had merited the distinction, obtained £20. To the other monks were allotted pensions of six, four, or two pounds, with a small sum to each at his departure, to provide for his immediate wants. The pensions to nuns averaged about £4. Lingard, vi. 341. He admits that these were ten times their present value in money; and surely they were not unreasonably small. Compare them with those, generally and justly thought munificent, which this country bestows on her veterans of Chelsea and Greenwich. The monks had no right to expect more than the means of that hard fare to which they ought by their rules to have been confined in the convents. The whole revenues were not to be shared among them as private property. It cannot of course be denied that the compulsory change of life was to many a severe and an unmerited hardship; but no great revolution, and the Reformation as little as any, could be achieved without much private suffering.