hospitals, chantries, free chapels and collegiate churches, fell into the king’s hands.  By the year 1545, the ruin was complete.  The monastic institution of England was no more.  The total number of monasteries suppressed is variously estimated, but the following figures are approximately correct:  monasteries, 616; colleges, 90; free chapels, 2,374; and hospitals, 110.  The annual income was about one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, which was a smaller sum than was then believed to be in the control of the monks.  Nearly fifty thousand persons were driven from the houses, to foment the discontent and to arouse the pity of the people.  Such, in brief, was the extent of the suppression, but a little reflection will show that these statements of cold facts convey no conception of the confusion and sorrow that must have accompanied this terrific and wholesale assault upon an institution that had been accumulating its possessions for eight hundred years.  At this distance from those tragic events, it is impossible to realize the dismay of those who stood aghast at this ruthless destruction of such venerable establishments.

The Effect of the Suppression Upon the People

For months the country had seen what was coming; letters from abbots and priors poured in upon the king and parliament, begging them to spare the ancient strongholds of religion.  The churchmen argued:  “If he plunders the monasteries, will not his next step be to plunder the churches?” They recalled what Sir Thomas More had said of their sovereign:  “It is true, his majesty is very gracious with me, but if only my head would give him another castle in France, it would not be long before it disappeared.”  Sympathy for the monks, an inborn conservatism, a natural love for ancient institutions, a religious dread of trampling upon that which was held sacred by the church, a secret antipathy to reform, all these and other forces were against the suppression.  But the report of the visitors was appalling, and the fear of the king’s displeasure was widespread; so the bill was passed amid mingled feelings of joy, sympathy, hatred, fear, anxiety and uncertainty.  The bishops were sullen; Latimer was disappointed, for he wanted the church to have the proceeds.

Outside of Parliament there was much discontent among the nobles and gentry of Roman tendencies.  Even the indifferent felt bitter against the king, because it seemed unjust that the monks, who had been sheltered, honored and enriched by the people, should be so rudely and so suddenly turned out of their possessions.  A dangerously large portion of the people felt themselves insulted and outraged.  At first, however, there were few who dared to voice their protests.  “As the royal policy disclosed itself,” says Green, “as the monarchy trampled under foot the tradition and reverence of ages gone by, as its figure rose, bare and terrible, out of the wreck of old institutions, England simply held her breath.  It is only through