Note (back) — Chapter XIII

Their dissolution is probably to be connected with Cromwell's boast that he would make his king the richest prince in Christendom. That was not its effect, because Henry was compelled to distribute the greater part of the spoils among his nobles and gentry. One rash reformer suggested that monastic lands should be devoted to educational purposes;[957] had that plan been followed, education in England would have been more magnificently endowed than in any other country of the world, and England might have become a democracy in the seventeenth century. From this point of view Henry spoilt one of the greatest opportunities in English history; from another, he saved England from a most serious danger. Had the Crown retained the wealth of the monasteries, the Stuarts might have made themselves independent of Parliament. But this service to liberty was not voluntary on Henry's part. The dissolution of the monasteries was in effect, and probably in intention, a gigantic bribe to the laity to induce them to acquiesce in the revolution effected by Henry VIII. When he was gone, his successors might desire, or fail to prevent, a reaction; something more permanent than Henry's iron hand was required to support the fabric he had raised. That support was sought in the wealth of the Church. The prospect had, from the very opening of the Reformation Parliament, been dangled before the eyes of the new nobles, the members of Parliament, the justices of the peace, the rich merchants who thirsted for lands wherewith to make themselves gentlemen. Chapuys again and again mentions a scheme for distributing the lands of the Church among the laity as a project for the ensuing session; but their time was not yet; not until their work was done were the labourers to reap their reward.[958] The dissolution of the monasteries harmonised well with the secular principles of these predominant classes. The monastic ideal of going out of the world to seek something, which cannot be valued in terms of pounds, shillings and pence, is abhorrent to a busy, industrial age; and every principle is hated most at the time when it most is needed.