History of the English People, Volume IV | Page 4

under the minority of
Edward and the unpopularity of Mary. To this revival of a spirit of
independence the spoliation of the Church largely contributed. Partly
from necessity, partly from a desire to build up a faction interested in
the maintenance of their ecclesiastical policy, Cromwell and the king
squandered the vast mass of wealth which flowed into the Treasury
from the dissolution of the monasteries with reckless prodigality. Three
hundred and seventy-six smaller houses had been suppressed in 1536;
six hundred and forty-five greater houses were surrendered or seized in
1539. Some of the spoil was devoted to the erection of six new
bishopricks; a larger part went to the fortification of the coast. But the
bulk of these possessions was granted lavishly away to the nobles and
courtiers about the king, and to a host of adventurers who "had become
gospellers for the abbey lands." Something like a fifth of the actual land
in the kingdom was in this way transferred from the holding of the
Church to that of nobles and gentry. Not only were the older houses
enriched, but a new aristocracy was erected from among the dependants
of the Court. The Russells and the Cavendishes are familiar instances
of families which rose from obscurity through the enormous grants of
Church-land made to Henry's courtiers. The old baronage was thus
hardly crushed before a new aristocracy took its place. "Those families
within or without the bounds of the peerage," observes Mr. Hallam,
"who are now deemed the most considerable, will be found, with no
great number of exceptions, to have first become conspicuous under the
Tudor line of kings and, if we could trace the title of their estates, to
have acquired no small portion of them mediately or immediately from
monastic or other ecclesiastical foundations." The leading part which
these freshly-created peers took in the events which followed Henry's
death gave strength and vigour to the whole order. But the smaller
gentry shared in the general enrichment of the landed proprietors, and
the new energy of the Lords was soon followed by a display of political
independence among the Commons themselves.

[Sidenote: Results of the Religious Changes.]
While the prodigality of Cromwell's system thus brought into being a
new check upon the Crown by enriching the nobles and the lesser
gentry, the religious changes it brought about gave fire and vigour to
the elements of opposition which were slowly gathering. What did
most to ruin the king-worship that Cromwell set up was Cromwell's
ecclesiastical policy. In reducing the Church to mere slavery beneath
the royal power he believed himself to be trampling down the last
constitutional force which could hold the Monarchy in check. What he
really did was to give life and energy to new forces which were bound
from their very nature to battle with the Monarchy for even more than
the old English freedom. When Cromwell seized on the Church he held
himself to be seizing for the Crown the mastery which the Church had
wielded till now over the consciences and reverence of men. But the
very humiliation of the great religious body broke the spell beneath
which Englishmen had bowed. In form nothing had been changed. The
outer constitution of the Church remained utterly unaltered. The
English bishop, freed from the papal control, freed from the check of
monastic independence, seemed greater and more imposing than ever.
The priest still clung to rectory and church. If images were taken out of
churches, if here and there a rood-loft was pulled down or a saint's
shrine demolished, no change was made in form of ritual or mode of
worship. The mass was untouched. Every hymn, every prayer, was still
in Latin; confession, penance, fastings and feastings, extreme unction,
went on as before. There was little to show that any change had taken
place; and yet every ploughman felt that all was changed. The bishop,
gorgeous as he might be in mitre and cope, was a mere tool of the king.
The priest was trembling before heretics he used to burn. Farmer or
shopkeeper might enter their church any Sunday morning to find mass
or service utterly transformed. The spell of tradition, of unbroken
continuance, was over; and with it the power which the Church had
wielded over the souls of men was in great part done away.
It was not that the new Protestantism was as yet formidable, for, violent
and daring as they were, the adherents of Luther were few in number,
and drawn mostly from the poorer classes among whom Wyclifite

heresy had lingered or from the class of scholars whose theological
studies drew their sympathy to the movement over sea. It was that the
lump was now ready to be leavened by this petty leaven, that men's
hold on the