Bonaventura, the General of the Franciscan Order in its earliest days, and its palmiest, for the first years of a monastic order were always its best years—­this mendicant, their pride and their glory, tells us that within fifty years of the death of its founder there were many mendicants roaming around in disorderly fashion, brazen and shameless beggars of scandalous fame.  This unenviable record was kept up down to the days of Wyclif, who charged the begging friars with representing themselves as holy and needy, while they were robust of body, rich in possessions, and dwelt in splendid houses, where they gave sumptuous banquets.  What shall one say of the hysterical ravings against Henry of the “Holy Maid of Kent,” whose fits and predictions were palmed off by five ecclesiastics, high in authority, as supernatural manifestations?  What must have been the state of monasteries in which such meretricious schemes were hatched, to deceive silly people, thwart the king and stop the movements for reform?

Moreover, the various attempts to reform or to suppress the monasteries prior to Henry’s time show he was simply carrying out what, in a small way, had been attempted before.  King John, Edward I. and Edward III., had confiscated “alien priories.”  Richard II. and Henry IV. had made similar raids.  In 1410, the House of Commons proposed the confiscation of all the temporalities held by bishops, abbots and priors, that the money might be used for a standing army, and to increase the income of the nobles and secular clergy.  It was not done, but the attempt shows the trend of public opinion on the question of abolishing the monasteries.  In 1416, Parliament dissolved the alien priories and vested their estates in the crown.  There is extant a letter of Cardinal Morton, Legate of the Apostolic See, and Archbishop of Canterbury, to the abbot of St. Albans, one of the mightiest abbeys in all England.  It was written as the result of an investigation started by Innocent VIII., in 1489.  In this communication the abbot and his monks were charged with the grossest licentiousness, waste and thieving.  Lina Eckenstein, in her interesting work on “Woman Under Monasticism,” says:  “It were idle to deny that the state of discipline in many houses was bad, but the circumstances under which Morton’s letter was penned argue that the charges made in it should be accepted with some reservation.”  In 1523, Cardinal Wolsey obtained bulls from the pope authorizing the suppression of forty small monasteries, and the application of their revenues to educational institutions, on the ground that the houses were homes neither of religion nor of learning.

What Henry did, every country in Europe has felt called upon to do in one way or another.  Germany, Italy, Spain, France have all suppressed monasteries, and despite the suffering which attended the dissolution in England, the step was taken with less loss of life and less injury to the industrial welfare of the people than anywhere else in Europe[J].