360.  Summary.

In this reign we find that though England lost much of her former political freedom, yet she gained that order and peace which came from the iron hand of absolute power.  Next, from the destruction of the monasteries, and the sale or gift of their lands to favorites of the King, three results ensued: 

1.  A new nobility was in great measure created, dependent on the Crown. 2.  The House of Lords was made less powerful by the removal of the abbots who had had seats in it. 3.  Pauperism and distress were temporarily increased. 4.  Finally, England completely severed her connection with the Pope, and established for the first time an independent National Church, having the King as its head.

Edward VI—­1547-1553

361.  Bad Government; Seizure of Unenclosed Lands; High Rents; Latimer’s Sermon.

Edward, son of Henry VIII by Jane Seymour (S355), died at sixteen.  In the first part of his reign of six years the goverment was managed by his uncle, the Duke of Somerset, an extreme Protestant, whose intentions were good, but who lacked practical judgement.  During the latter part of his life Edward fell under the control of the Duke of Northumberland, who was the head of a band of scheming and profligate men.

They, with other nobles, seized the unenclosed lands of the country and fenced them in for sheep pastures, thus driving into beggary many who had formerly got a good part of their living from these commons.  At the same time farm rents rose in somee cases ten and even twenty fold,[1] depriving thousands of the means of subsistence, and reducing to poverty many who had been in comfortable circumstances.

[1] This was oweing to the greed for land on the part of the mercantile classes, who had now acquired wealth, and wished to become landed proprietors.  See Froude’s “England.”

The bitter complaints of the sufferers found expression in Bishop Latimer’s outspoken sermon, preached before King Edward, in which he said:  “My father was a yeoman [small farmer], and had no lands of his own, only he had a farm of three or four pounds [rent] by year, and hereupon tilled so much as kept half a dozen men; he had walk [pasture] for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine.

“He was able and did find the King a harness [suit of armor] with himself and his horse, until he came to the place where he should receive the King’s wages.  I can remember that I buckled his harness when he went into Blackheath Field.  He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to have preached before the King’s majesty now.  He married my sisters with five pounds [dower] ... apiece.  He kept hospitality for his poor neighbors, and some alms he gave to the poor.

“And all this he did off the said farm, where he that now hath it payeth sixteen pounds a year or more, and is not able to do anything for his prince, for himself, nor for his children, or give a cup of drink to the poor.”  But as Latimer patheticall said, “Let the preacher preach till his tongue be worn to the stumps, nothing is amended."[1]