CHAPTER IXLOSS AND GAIN

We do not propose to enter into a discussion of the principles which were involved in the Dissolution of the Monasteries, or of the religious and moral loss and gain which ensued. It would be superfluous and profitless. We may, however, attempt to form an idea of the way those who were responsible for the suppression solved the various practical questions which had to be faced in bringing the religious houses to an end, and to estimate the degree of success which attended their efforts. Of course we shall consider only theimmediateresults: the broader and ultimate religious, constitutional, and economic effects are the province of the historian of the epoch and the nation, not of the student of a brief episode in the history of a single locality.

There were many material interests to be considered, for it must not be forgotten that the monks and nuns, friars and canons, were not the only people affected by the changes we have been considering. The King, the clergy, the tenants, the lay people employed, maintained, and assisted at the monasteries, all had interests more or less important.

We may note at the outset that the necessity for taking into consideration the material interests involved was fully recognised. According to the instructionsissued to the suppression officials who dealt with the lesser monasteries, the Superior of each house was to be provided for, but no one else. Accordingly at Trentham we find no record of pensions to any others except the Prior. The rest were to be given the option of receiving “capacities” or of being transferred to other houses. This was following the precedent of earlier dissolutions, and it will be remembered that Dr. David Pole, of Calwich, was ordered to be “translated to some good house of his religion near.”[204]While the work of destruction was yet on a small scale, and its ultimate extension unsuspected, it may have appeared less necessary to conciliate public opinion, by removing occasion for complaints of material and pecuniary loss, than appeared later. As it became evident that the destruction of the monasteries was to become wholesale, and that great numbers of people, not only religious but lay folk, must be affected, it may well have seemed politic and wise to take pains to assure everyone that vested interests would be respected.

Accordingly a different policy was pursued in the later dissolutions. All the religious received payments and most received pensions.

At the suppression of Brewood,[205]Prioress Isabel Launder received a reward of £2 and a pension of £3 6s. 8d.; each of the nuns a reward of £1 and a pension of £1 13s. 4d. At Stafford[206]the payments were as follows:

No explanation is given as to why William Boudon received a smaller “reward” than the rest, and was awarded no pension; but, as we have already noticed, he had not signed the Deed of Surrender on the previous day and perhaps he had to be punished for his recalcitrancy.

At Dieulacres[207]the arrangements were of a similar nature:

To George Ferny no pension was allotted. Pensions to “late monks” of Croxden, Rocester, Tutbury, and Burton are mentioned in subsequent records. In 1553 the payments to late monks of Tutbury appear as follows: Prior Thomas Meverell, £50; ThomasMoreton,aliasSutton, £7; Richard Arnold, £6 13s. 4d.; Thomas Raynard, £6; Robert Stafford, £6; Roger Hilton, £6.

In the pension lists of 2–3 Philip and Mary, Robert Moore, who had been one of the prebendaries of the collegiate church of Burton-on-Trent, appears in receipt of £6; John Carter, a “late canon,” £6; William Sutton, “minor canon,” £6; and William Hether, epistoller, £5; with Thomas Smith, incumbent of a chantry, £1 5s. 9d.

Monks of Burton who were in receipt of pensions in 1540 were as follows: John Pole, Robert Robynson, Robert Heithcott, William Fyssher, John Goodcole, William Symon, and Humphrey Cotton. Of these the following appear in the list of Mary’s reign above-mentioned: William Fyssher, £6; William Symonds, £5; and Humphrey Cotton, 40s. The following also had pensions then: Robert Brocke,aliasBrooke (who succeeded Abbot Edie as Dean), £66 13s. 4d.; John Rudde, £15; Roger Bulle (? Ball) and John Jermy,aliasHeron, £6 13s. 4d. There are “annuities” also to twenty-five others, two of £5, one of £4, one of £3 6s. 8d., two of 53s. 4d., one of 50s., and three of 40s., and so on to 20s., but none of the names are the same as appear inValor Ecclesiasticus, though John Moseley (20s.) may be the son of Richard Mosley, bailiff of Findern and Stapenhill, who received 13s. 4d. in 1535.

Ecclesiastics who proved compliant were often well rewarded, as we have seen in the case of David Pole of Calwich. The Abbot of Burton became the dean of the collegiate church which took the place of the Abbey for a few years. At the suppression of Forde Abbeythe Abbot, who had been the royal “Reformator and Inquisitor” of Croxden and many other Cistercian houses, received “fourtie wayne lodes of fyre wood to be taken yerely during his lyfe owte of suche woods being no parte of demaynes of the said late howse as the officers of the Kings courte of the augmentacions or there deputies for the tyme there shall appoynte and assigne ... lxxxli.”[208]

It would be deeply interesting if we could trace the after history of the rank and file of the ejected monks, nuns, and friars. Unfortunately, the materials are of the scantiest.

If the history of the dissolution of the religious houses in France in our own days in any way reproduces that of the dissolution in England in the sixteenth century, many of the religious were obliged to take up secular employment. Did the friars of Stafford[209]make their purchases with the object of carrying on business? Besides “ii brasse pottes” in the kitchen, they bought out of their brewhouse “iii leads”—i.e., pans, “one to brue [brew] in,” and “ii to kele [cool] in” (i.e., “coolers”); besides “fates” (which Cowell’sInterpreterexplains as the vessels, each containing a quarter, used to measure malt), a “bultyng hutch” or sifting tub, and “a knedyng troughe.” The prospect for the nuns must have been terrible.[210]They received very small pensions. They were turned adrift in a world whose moral sense had been shaken by theaccusations lately brought against the inmates of the religious houses, and among people whose betters were described by Legh[211]as living “so incontinently having their concubines openly in their houses, with five or six of their children, putting from them their wyfes, that all the contrey therewith be not a littill offendyd, and takithe evyll example of theym.” The last Abbot of Rocester appears to have continued to live near his destroyed house, if the entry in the earliest volume of the Rocester parish registers—“1576, Aug. 14, Willm. Grafton, prs.... sep.”—records his burial. The last Prior of Trentham was Thomas Bradwall, and a “Thos. Bradwall, s. of John B.,” was buried at Trentham on March 13th, 1567.

Thomas Whitney, the last Abbot of Dieulacres, continued to live in the town of Leek, in Milne Street. In 1541 he was one of the witnesses to the Crown sale of Swythamley, etc., to William Traford of Wilmslow.[212]He made his will in 1558[213]and in it expressed a desire to be buried in Westminster Abbey.

Ample provision was also made for the lay officials: the laity, at all events, were to have no grievances. Of course the chief stewards took care to be compensated. The chief steward of Burton Abbey was George, Earl of Huntingdon, and his annual fee was £6 13s. 4d.; in Mary’s reign his successor, Francis, was in receipt of £3 6s. 8d. At the dissolution of Dieulacres “my lord of Darby, Stuard of the Seid monastery,” whose feehad not been allowed by the Commissioners ofValor Ecclesiasticus, received a pension of £2. William Davenport lost £1 6s. 8d. and received £4;[214]John Cordon, 13s. 4d. and £1; Humfry Whitney, £2 and £3 6s. 8d. Besides these, two other bailiffs, a forester and two stewards, and eleven other men, received “fees and annuities.”

At Stafford Lord Ferrers, the High Steward, was pensioned (40s.) with thirteen other lay officials, including Richard Torner, baker. Rewards were given to twenty-nine “servants,” of whom seven were also pensioned. There were four “plough-drivers” who received 1s. 8d. each, and six women. John Coke, the bailiff of Dudley, held his office by an appointment for life, and at the Dissolution the terms of the agreement were carefully respected, for the grant of the priory and its possessions to Sir John Dudley in March, 1541, was expressly charged with the annual payment of John Coke’s fee of £2. In 1541 there are records of the half-yearly payments (on April 20th and October 4th) to Nicholas Whitney, of Dieulacres, and his wife Mary. The payment appears again in 1542.

The lesser “servants,” labourers, “launders and pore bedewomen,” and the like, were paid off with lump sums, and no further responsibility in their case remained.

Of course many of the bailiffs and stewards continued in their old posts under the new owners. The Dissolution was the reverse of a loss to them. But they had to find sureties and guarantees for their honesty. Forinstance, Humphrey Whitney, of Middlewich, bailiff of “Wycch,” is noted in 1541 as finding sureties to the amount of £120; Roland Heth, of Tutbury, bailiff of Wetton, etc., 100 marks, and of Elkeston, 40 marks; Geoffrey Legh, of Berreston, Salop, bailiff of Great Gate, £120; and William Davenport, bailiff of Abbots Frith, etc., £200. An interesting entry of the same date shows Sampson Erdeswick, of Sandon, becoming sureties for Robert Harcourt, bailiff of lands which had belonged to Ronton Abbey, for 200 marks.[215]

Even if it were intended that the pensions and annuities should be loyally paid the charge was a wise one to incur. It saved appearances by appearing to respect “vested interests”; it effectually prevented agitation against the Government by any who desired to retain their pensions; and it was a charge which would steadily decrease and eventually disappear in the ordinary course of nature.

But it is to be feared that the pensioners were by no means loyally treated as time went on. In a few months a tenth part of all pensions was deducted as a royal subsidy, and two years later a fourth. John Scudamore had the collection of the former sum, and in his “Declaration of Receipts”[216]payments are found from the following: Brewood—Isabel Launder and her three nuns; Croxden—John Orpe and ten others; Dieulacres—Thomas Whitney and others; Hulton—Edward Wilkyns and eight others; Rocester—William Grafton and others; Ronton—Thomas Allen and the curate of Elynhall; Stone—“two curates ofStone”; Trentham—Thomas Bradwall; Tutbury—Roger Hilton and six others. Unfortunately the leaf is mutilated so that the other names in the case of Dieulacres and Rocester are missing.

Moreover, there was unseemly delay in paying the pensions. Receipts dated May, 1541, appear for half-year’s pensions due the previous Lady-Day[217]signed by the following monks of Croxden: Robert Clerke (£10 13s. 4d.), Robert Cade, John Orpe, William Beche, John Thornton, and Richard Meyre. Poor Thomas Whitney, the late Abbot of Dieulacres, had great difficulty in obtaining his pension regularly, and became involved in debt in consequence. We find him writing as follows to Scudamore in December, 1540:[218]

“Upon the letter to my brother to appear before Mr. Auditor and you at Burton-upon-Trent the 13th of this December I prepared to come thither. Coming to Leke on Saturday night I heard you were departed towards Lichfield and Worcestershire, and considering the danger by evil weather and floods I thought best to send my brother after you and spare myself; and I trust you will be good to me for my pension due at Michaelmas last. I had to borrow £8 of my said brother: I beg you to repay him and deliver the rest to my servant, Richard Day. Also I beg you to send by Richard Day the pensions of my poor brethren that are not able to come for them, and let me have letters to the bailiffs to pay my pension regularly.”

Any personal debts which could be fastened on the monks were looked after with relentless persistence: so late as 1542 we find the last Abbot of Hulton being harassed about arrears he still owed.

On the other hand, the debts owing from the monastic estates were slow in finding payment. Dieulacres owed Elizabeth Alenn £22 at its dissolution,and in 1541 and 1542 instalments were still being paid. Such a mode of payment was disastrously slow and unsatisfactory. Henry Hargreaves, of Luddington, to whom Dieulacres owed £29 0s. 4d., and who came first on the list of creditors drawn up by Legh and Cavendish, apparently died without receiving his money, and at the end of 1541 Laurence Hargreaves was glad to compound the old debt for the sum of £20. In the same month Peter Bonye accepted £14 6s. 8d. in discharge of the £20 which was still owing to him from Tutbury Priory. We can well understand that every obstacle would be put in the way of the proving of claims. Richard Corveysor had a patent for £1 6s. 8d. a year granted to him by the Abbot of Dieulacres before the Dissolution, but he did not manage to get it allowed till 1542.[219]

Indeed a keen eye to business was possessed by all the officials concerned, and every care was exercised to make as much as possible out of the monastic property. Just as old debts were often compounded by the acceptance of smaller sums, no doubt in despair caused by long delay, so payments for work done on the estates were often made at less than their proper amount. John Pratye had a lease for two years of Heath Mill (apparently formerly the property of Trentham Priory) and, in 1538, he sent in an account for repairs done, showing payments to various workmen, who are named, amounting to £16 7s. 8d. The bailiff was Robert Whyttworth, and although he passed the account and signed it as correct, John Pratye is found offering to take £10 down in discharge of it. Thedocument affords an interesting illustration of the way the monastic estates were managed when they passed into the hands of the Crown.[220]

There being such difficulty in obtaining the payment of money legally due within anything like reasonable time, it is not surprising to find that speculators arose and did a brisk business. The abuse became so marked that in Edward VI’s reign Parliament had to pass an Act (2–3 Edward VI, Cap. VII) “against the craftie and deceitful buying of Pensions from the late Monasteries,” but without much success in providing a remedy.

Of course the Dissolution entailed a very large material loss to the Church. The gross total income of the monasteries in Staffordshire, as given inValor Ecclesiasticus, was £1,874 0s. 1½d.—an estimate, as we have seen, which was probably below the mark. If it be said that the monks took but little share in the spiritual life of the people and did but little practical work for the Church, we may at least take into consideration the amount they received from tithes, glebe, and voluntary offerings from parishes. They received, as we have seen, £543 6s. 5d. from this source and paid out £19 7s. 10d. Of the former sum practically nothing reverted to its original use, so that, even if the latter continued to be paid, the Church, though it might be no worse off in the matter of tithes than it was before, was at any rate no better. The benefices decreased in value. Ellaston was valued by Strete before the suppression of Calwich at £13 6s. 8d.;[221]inValor Ecclesiasticusit stands at £4 9s. 2d.[222]The Bishop of the Diocese lost £94 6s. 8d. in fees and the Archdeacons £10 13s. 4d. The fees paid to the King amounted to £10 9s. 7d., and would, of course, continue under the new owners.

The total amount of wealth brought to the Royal Treasury is quite incalculable. Besides the whole annual income of the monasteries, there was the value of the contents of the houses, plate, furniture, stores, grain, cattle, etc. The former was enormous, but the latter was no despicable figure. We have figures of some of the sales at the Dissolution:

Besides the above figures we know of much lead at other places. In 1555 Scudamore was being sued for arrears from the sales of lead from Croxden, Rocester, Dieulacres, Tutbury, St. Thomas’s, and Dudley, amounting to close on £500, so that the figure shown in the above table evidently represents but a small proportion of the total amount received from thissource alone. Of course there were considerable deductions for rewards and expenses, but the amount of wealth brought immediately into the Royal Treasury was very large. And a very short time earlier £400 at least had been paid by Staffordshire houses for being allowed to continue.

It is noticeable that nothing is said about the monastic libraries. As a rule, books are almost unmentioned in any of the documents of the Suppression, so that we might suppose the houses were destitute of literature. But the scanty survivals are sufficient to show that the reverse was the fact.

The Annals of Burton are in the British Museum,[223]and so is the Chronicle of Croxden. Various other books from the monastic libraries of Staffordshire have also drifted thither, one of which, a copy of St. Augustine from Burton Abbey, has on the fly-leaf a list of the books in the Library in the thirteenth century.[224]It shows that there were then over sixty volumes, many of which contained several works. These are Commentaries on various books of the Bible, most of the works of the Fathers, sundry books of Sermons and Homilies, Lives of various saints, and several editions of Bede’s History, one of which is in English. There were also copies of the Gospels and of the Psalms in English, an English Hymnary, and an English Homily book. Abbot Geoffrey, the sixth Abbot of Burton, wrote the life and miracles of St. Modwen in a quarto of 167 folios in double columns,[225]and the first Abbotof Croxden himself copied out the greater part of the Bible. A later Abbot of Croxden, in the thirteenth century, bought for the Library an annotated Bible in nine volumes for fifty marks. Abbot William de Over, who was elected in 1297, much enriched the Library. It is evident there were books in considerable numbers in the monasteries, yet they are unmentioned in the records of the dissolution. Very occasionally we find “old books” sold for trivial sums, and one or two Missals are mentioned. At Stafford Robert Dorrington bought two “lots” of “old bokes,” those in the Library at the Grey Friars (with a coffer) for two shillings, and those in the vestry for eightpence; the “old bokes in the quyer” at the Austin Friars sold for sixpence. At Stafford two Missals sold for eightpence and twelvepence each, and at Lichfield one fetched fourpence.

The books and documents that were important as title-deeds were of course looked after. The original Chartulary of Burton Abbey is still in the possession of the Marquis of Anglesey, and that of Dieulacres is possessed by the Earl of Macclesfield. The Chartularies of Stone and Ronton are in the British Museum.[226]But probably the greater part of the books were treated in a manner similar to that in which Dr. Layton treated the books at the Oxford colleges, and no doubt the description he gave of the result of his visit to New College would apply to most of the monasteries: “We fownde all the gret quadrant court full of the leiffes ... the wynde blowing them into evere corner.”[227]

As might be supposed from the character of the agents employed, much of the spoil did not reach the Royal treasure-house without a good deal of trouble. The lead was to be melted into “plokes” and sows, weighed, and marked with the King’s marks, and delivered under indenture to the constables of neighbouring castles, such as Tutbury. But so long afterwards as the reign of Mary, John Scudamore was being called upon for the settlement of his accounts. The following letter was addressed to him from Westminster on the “laste of February,” 1555:[228]

“After our harty comendacyons, theise maye be to advertyse you that we have perused the indentures made betwyxte Mr. Sheldon and you, and accordynge to the tenure of the same have charged the sayed master Sheldon with all the leade, bell metalle, and redy money mencyoned and conteigned in the sayed indenture, which beynge deducted oute of youer charge, yett there dothe remayne to be aunsweryd by you bothe leade and bell metalle as ffollowythe, that ys to saye for leade att ... Rocestre, vi, ff.; Croxden, xiiii, ff. de.; Delacres, iiii, ff.; Tuttberye, vi, ff., i, quarter;nuper prioratus canonicorum deStafford, xliiii, ff.; ... the celle of Dudley, iiii, ff.; ... ffor the aunswere whereof we requyer you, by the vertue of the kynge and quenes majesties comyssyon to us directed, that wythe as convenyente spede as you may after the receyte hereof sende unto us youre suffycyente deputie to accoumpte byfore us for the same, so as hereuppon their majesties may be satisfyed by you of the dett that shall faul out uppon the same. And bycause we be moche callyd uppon to reporte youer estate and dett herein, we therefore are constrayned the more ernestly to calle uppon you, whome we dought not wylle have such regarde hereunto as bothe their majesties expectacyon herein may be served (as ys mete), as also for the full ende of this charge towardes youer selfe, with which as before the ende ys troublesome and comberous unto you, so will the ende thereof be to youer quyetnes and comforte. Whereof, for that you are ouer oulde ffrende and of oulde acquayntaunce,we thought to advyse you the rather for that commyssyon ys nowe oute for the ende of those causys, of which you nowe may be dyscharged yf the faulte be not in youer selfe. We also advertysse you that Mr. Sheldone wylbe no further charged concernynge the leade and belles within your late circuyte there thenne ys conteyned in the indentures bytwyxte you and hym; and therefore you muste aunswere the reste youer selfe, whereunto we dought not but you wyll have such respecte as we may receyve youer aunswere withe expedycion.”

It is difficult to make any precise estimate of the numbers affected by the Dissolution. In the case of houses the deeds of surrender of which are extant, of course the number of signatories can be definitely stated. The Suppression papers give some further details.Valor Ecclesiasticusgives the stewards and bailiffs, etc., but, as we have seen, cannot be relied upon for completeness. From a comparison of the available data the following table has been compiled:

The recurrence of the same surname among the lists of inmates and employees of the religious houses isworth noticing. At Dieulacres the Abbot, Thomas Whitney, had Humfrey Whitney as bailiff of his lordships and manors in Cheshire, John Whitney as chamberlain, and two other servants who bore his name and were of sufficient importance to be pensioned. At St. Thomas’s the Prior, Richard Whitwell, gave employment to another Richard, an Edward, and a Katharine, who all bore his surname; William Stapulton and Thomas Bagley were canons, and Thomas Stapulton and William Bagley were servants. Among the servants three were named Coke, two Turner, two Beche or Bech (besides one named Bache), and three were named Baker.

That there was ordinarily a bailiff at Brewood Nunnery is shown by the existence in the house of a bailiff’s chamber. It was well furnished at the Suppression, and Robert Baker, who received a “reward” of 13s. 4d., may have been the occupant.

At DieulacresValor Ecclesiasticusgives three bailiffs, etc., but at the Dissolution seven are mentioned, besides a forester; and eleven other men were pensioned. Lord Derby, “Steward of the Monastery and town of Leek,” received a pension at the Dissolution. At StaffordValor Ecclesiasticusgives nine stewards: at the Suppression twenty-nine people were rewarded, which appears to mean thirteen officials (besides the High Steward and including the cook), who were also pensioned, and sixteen others, including four ploughmen and six women. At Hulton Sir Philip Draycot was Chief Steward of the Staffordshire Manors, and Sir Richard Sutton of Cambryngham.

From the names of the holders of the office of Chief Steward it may be presumed that the post was mainly an honorary one. Lord Derby and the Earls of Huntingdon and Shrewsbury are not likely to have presided often in the manor courts or to have taken much active part in the work of administration. In many cases it is even mentioned expressly that there was a deputy steward. Probably the office corresponded somewhat to that of patron of an institution, or Chancellor of a modern University: the holder lent the house the prestige of his name, attended on special occasions, and was expected to use his influence when necessity arose. It is to be feared the Chief Stewards did nothing to help the monasteries in their hour of need: many of them only used whatever knowledge they possessed of the monastic affairs to obtain a good share of the spoil. The Earl of Shrewsbury, Chief Steward of Tutbury, was also Chief Steward of the Abbeys of Shrewsbury, Buildwas, Lilleshall and Wenlock in the adjoining county of Salop, of Beauchief in Derbyshire, St. Werburgh (Chester), Vale Royal and Combermere in Cheshire, Welbeck in Nottinghamshire, and Wilton in Wiltshire. Thomas Cromwell was steward of five monasteries and of New College, Oxford.

The duties of the bailiff were to supervise the work on the estates. The steward presided in the courts. Sometimes one man was both bailiff and steward. The auditors verified the accounts of the bailiffs and stewards and collectors. The collectors gathered the rents and tithes, and as the latter were often paid in kind, the work was onerous. That so much of the financial and secular work of the monasteries was in lay hands musthave immensely simplified the work of dissolution. The extent and value of the property were well known, and as the tenants came into contact with lay administrators much more frequently than with the “religious” owners, the change when laymen supplanted the latter as possessors of the estates came with much less of a shock than would otherwise have been the case. The change, indeed, probably seemed slight to the tenants. They had known little and seen little of the “religious,” especially in places at a distance from the house, and the same bailiff usually continued in his office at the change of ownership.

Rents were probably not much raised. When the allotments ofValor Ecclesiasticuscan be definitely identified with those of the post-dissolution valuations the rents are generally unchanged, and in any place where they appear to be larger in the latter, the increase is probably due as much to deliberate suppression of part in the earlier returns, as to increased strictness by the new owners.

For a similar reason the transfer of the tithes to lay hands was easier than would seem to have been likely. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been a bold step to have transferred to laymen payments definitely apportioned for religious purposes. But to the ordinary people the tithe had long ceased to wear an ecclesiastical dress. The vicars who had lost it had been denouncing it roundly for many years. It was regularly received by lay officials—often the collectors of the ordinary secular rents,—for the collecting of it was inevitably a matter of difficulty and much haggling, and needed expert knowledge. The benefits resultingfrom it appearednilto the payers, for it was taken away from the parish to the monastery, which was often far distant. Moreover, the tithes were sometimes actually leased to laymen. Thus “the whirligig of time brought in its revenges.” The spiritual character of tithes was lost, and they were transferred to, and remained in, lay hands without difficulty. There was, however, no spiritual gain from the change. The lay owners of livings were found appointing clergy of even lower calibre than the monasteries had placed in their appropriated benefices; they often appointed their servants, men who by habit and training were utterly unfitted for the position, and not seldom on the understanding that much of the endowment should be surrendered.

The information which is available for Staffordshire throws little light on the much-discussed question of monastic charity. All that we know is that eight bedeswomen were maintained at Dieulacres, and that doles were systematically distributed at Burton, Rocester, and Tutbury. The latter were endowed and so were obliged to be recorded by the Commissioners ofValor Ecclesiasticus, but the fact that the women at Dieulacres were not mentioned shows how narrowly the official instructions were interpreted. The single instance is sufficient to show that becauseValor Ecclesiasticusis silent in the majority of cases we are not justified in drawing a positive conclusion that in them no charity at all was dispensed. Indeed, one is tempted to go further and to argue that it is incredible that no otherendowedalms (which the instructions permitted to be reckoned) existed in the county. Atany rate this much may be said: that if the charity of which we have positive proof represents all that was distributed by the Staffordshire houses the strictures which have been so often passed on the monks for excessive and demoralising almsgiving are quite undeserved: the monasteries of Staffordshire, at any rate, were not “nurseries of dishonest mendicancy.”

Probably, however, the truth lies midway between the two extremes. The scanty records no doubt indicate that doles played no important part in the monastic system, and the definite details which are given of the extent and nature of those mentioned seem to show that charity was practised with care and judgment. The cessation of the doles would not be much felt, for they came only on stated days and at long intervals. They had not helped much to solve the problem of poor-relief while they lasted: their abolition did not add greatly to its difficulty. There was no marked increase in the number of the poor in need of relief. The ejected monks and nuns, being usually, as we have seen, pensioned more or less adequately, need not have added to the number of destitute paupers. Lay officials, servants, labourers and the like, doubtless continued, in the great majority of cases, their old occupations under new conditions.

It is probably true that the new owners were harder masters than the monks had been. But the monks seldom came into direct personal contact with their labourers. The bailiffs and stewards had managed the estates for the religious, just as they continued to do under the new owners. But the bailiffs and stewards probably had a much freer hand in the old days thanin the new. The whole spirit of the estate was changed. Instead of landlords who had held the property from time immemorial, who could afford to let a bad year be set off against a good, and who were, from the very fact of old possession, indifferent or tender-hearted according to the point of view we take of their conduct, the landlords were now men whose whole conduct shows them to be possessed of keen business instincts and intent on turning their new property to the fullest account. It is impossible to think they would be influenced by any feelings of sentiment or sympathy.

The first Act of Dissolution ordered that the new owners were “to kepe or cause to be kept an honest contynewell hous and houshold in the same cyte or precynct, and to occupye yerely as moche of the same demeanes in plowyng and tyllage of husbondry, that ys to saye as moche of the seid demeanes which hath ben commonly used to be kept in tyllage by the governors, abbottes, or pryours of the same howses, monasteryes, or pryoryes.” But how far this wise and equitable provision was carried, or even intended to be carried, into effect has been seen by the deliberate arrangements which were made with the purchasers of the Friaries at Stafford and Lichfield, to take down, deface, and remove most of the buildings, even though it might be the work of three years. The new owners, indeed, seldom occupied the lands themselves. The greater ones sublet them, and lesser and greater alike speculated briskly with them. Sutcote, the “server of the Kingis Grace Chamber,” who obtained the Cistercian Nunnery at Brewood, just over the Staffordshire border, in a high-handed manner, had no sooner doneso than he “offered hyt to dyvers to selle for suche a price that no man will gladly by hit at hys hand.” Trentham was only surrendered in 1536, yet in December, 1538, the Duke of Suffolk obtained by exchange a grant of the rents and reversions reserved upon the Crown leases there, and many cottages, lands, and advowsons; and at the same time procured a license to alienate. He sold it in 1540 to James Leveson, who had been so large a purchaser at the sales of the goods of the houses. The enterprising Leveson, in his turn, had no sooner secured Rushton Grange from the spoils of Hulton Abbey in 1539 than he sold it again to Biddulph of Biddulph. There is ample evidence to show he was a man who did a regular business in buying and selling monastic property of all kinds. It is evident that any inquiry into the original grants of the lands of the religious houses would throw little light upon the permanent results of the transfer of the monastic property. It would indicate at least who were the shrewdest bargainers and the readiest speculators.

But, taking all things into consideration, we may perhaps say that the social effects of the Dissolution were probably not great. Things went on in much the same way as before. Rents and tithes had to be paid to the same collectors and with much the same result. The same bailiffs and stewards generally managed the estates. Even if the new owner desired to raise the rents it would not be easy to make any sudden change in the country districts. In the towns the change would be more marked. Burgage rents could be more easily raised than those of farms andcrofts, and the new owners would certainly insist on punctuality much more strictly than the “religious” had done: payments would no longer be allowed to fall into arrear.

But the amount of town property which the monks held was small. In proportion to their whole rent-roll the part which came from the towns was a mere fraction, and except such cases as Burton-on-Trent and Stafford, both of which had “monasteries” at their gates, all the houses were at a distance from the towns. In the towns accordingly it is not probable that the monks and canons were familiar figures. They played no great part in town life. The friars were the religious orders of the towns. But in Staffordshire, and indeed throughout the country, the property the friars possessed was insignificant. As we have seen it was so trifling that the Staffordshire Commissioners in 1535 did not trouble to send in any return of it. The Suppression officials only found £2 rents at Newcastle-under-Lyme, £2 4s. 8d. at the Austin Friars and £1 6s. 8d. at the Grey Friars of Stafford. We are told, also, that the Grey Friars had “in the fields six lands yearly, worth 16d.,” which apparently means six allotments in the Common Fields. They also had a close with an orchard worth 5s. The town property being so small the rent-collectors of the new owners would not find much scope for activity and strictness.

Seldom, indeed, has a great Revolution been accomplished with so little commotion and disturbance. Not only did no foreign complications ensue, but even in England itself there was very little to disturb public serenity. The Pilgrimage of Grace did not awakean echo even in so near a county as Staffordshire:[229]not a single riot is recorded, and for ordinary people the change passed, apparently, almost unnoticed. A few almsfolk and poor bedeswomen suffered, but that seemed to be all.

The reason is, as we have seen, partly because the monks, as such, played a very small part in public life—they were landlords and landlords only; and partly because the change of landlords was managed by the Government with consummate skill and infinite worldly wisdom. They made sure that everyone worth considering should profit by the transaction, and in Tudor times such a policy was sure to succeed.

For the age was one in which expediency had supplanted principle, and worldly prosperity was the one thing that mattered. The Dissolution of the Monasteries was to a very large extent prompted by cupidity. Their wealth was an irresistible attraction to the Government; to emphasise their shortcomings was a useful after-thought, and the question of justice was hardly raised by anyone. In all the correspondence connected with the fall of the Staffordshire houses there is no hint of immorality or even unworthiness. Indeed, the rights and wrongs of the business are never alluded to: the one and only topic is the personal gain for which the petitioners hoped, and the pecuniary inducements they tried to hold out to persons in authority in the hope of gaining their help. But, in the irony of fate, circumstances proved too strong for the Government, whose cupidity was largelydisappointed. Begun as a source of new supplies for a prodigal king, as the work progressed it developed into a huge scheme for the wholesale bribery of the classes which had political power.

Thus, the Dissolution of the Monasteries served rather to illustrate the power of the monarchy than materially to increase its wealth. The confiscated possessions were dissipated in innumerable directions, and the royal treasury received but little permanent enrichment. Had anything like the greater proportion of the wealth of which the Church was deprived been retained by the Crown, the throne would have been rendered independent of Parliament and the constitutional victory over the Stuarts might not have been won.

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