The monks and friars opposed the new learning now extending from Italy to France, to Germany, and to England.  Colet came back from Italy, not to teach Platonic mysticism, but to unlock the Scriptures in the original,—­the centre of a group of scholars at Oxford, of whom Erasmus and Thomas More stood in the foremost rank.  Before the close of the fifteenth century, it is said that ten thousand editions of various books had been printed in different parts of Europe.  All the Latin authors, and some of the Greek, were accessible to students.  Tunstall and Latimer were sent to Padua to complete their studies.  Fox, bishop of Winchester, established a Greek professorship at Oxford.  It was an age of enthusiasm for reviving literature,—­which, however, received in Germany, through the influence chiefly of Luther, a different direction from what it received in Italy, and which extended from Germany to England.  But to this awakened spirit the monks presented obstacles and discouragements.  They had no sympathy with progress; they belonged to the Dark Ages; they were hostile to the circulation of the Scriptures; they were pedlers of indulgences and relics; impostors, frauds, vagabonds, gluttons, worldly, sensual, and avaricious.

So notoriously corrupt had monasteries become that repeated attempts had been made to reform them, but without success.  As early as 1489, Innocent VII. had issued a commission for a general investigation.  The monks were accused of dilapidating public property, of frequenting infamous places, of stealing jewels from consecrated shrines.  In 1511, Archbishop Warham instituted another visitation.  In 1523 Cardinal Wolsey himself undertook the task of reform.  At last the Parliament, in 1535, appointed Cromwell vicar or visitor-general, issued a commission, and intrusted it to lawyers, not priests, who found that the worst had not been told.  It was found that two thirds of the monks of England were living in concubinage; that their lands were wasted and mortgaged, and their houses falling into ruins.  They found the Abbot of Fountains surrounded with more women than Mohammed allowed his followers, and the nuns of Litchfield scandalously immoral.

On this report, the Lords and Commons—­deliberately, not rashly—­decreed the suppression of all monasteries the income of which was less than two hundred pounds a year, and the sequestration of their lands to the King.  About two hundred of the lesser convents were thus suppressed, and the monks turned adrift, yet not entirely without support.  This spoliation may have been a violation of the rights of property, but the monks had betrayed their trusts.  The next Parliament completed the work.  In 1539 all the religious houses were suppressed, both great and small.  Such venerable and princely retreats as St. Albans, Glastonbury, Beading, Bury St. Edmunds, and Westminster, which had flourished one thousand years,—­founded long before the Conquest,—­shared the common ruin.  These probably would have been spared, had not the first suppression filled the country with traitors.  The great insurrection in Lincolnshire which shook the foundation of the throne, the intrigues of Cardinal Pole, the Cornish conspiracy in which the great house of Neville was implicated, and various other agitations, were all fomented by the angry monks.