THE RUINS OF THE MONASTERIES AND THE NEW BUILDINGS
1. In early Tudor times our towns were much more picturesque than they
are to-day. That was chiefly owing to the fact that there were in every
town so many religious houses, colleges, and hospitals. These buildings
all had grounds of their own in the town, some more, some less; but
these open spaces and garden grounds, though they were not open to the
public, all helped to make the town airy, and to give variety to the
view.
2. The buildings themselves were all different, and many of them were
hundreds of years old. Towers, spires, turrets, gables, gateways, and
archways in all styles of architecture abounded. There were, of course,
many things in the towns which we should not have liked, but they had a
pleasant variety which our modern towns have not. Thousands of streets
in our towns are just rows and rows of houses, all alike, all ugly, and
very dull and dreary to look at and to live in.
3. In the reign of King Henry VIII all the religious houses were
suppressed, and given up into the king's hands. The life that had gone
on in them for centuries came to an end. Both in town and country
districts there were many people besides those who actually lived in
them to whom this made a great difference--people who, in one way or
another, got their living out of the monasteries. Shutting up the
monasteries threw all these people, so to speak, out of work. That
meant a great deal of suffering.
[Illustration: Photo. Valentine
FOUNTAINS ABBEY, YORKSHIRE, ONE OF THE MONASTERIES RUINED BY HENRY
VIII (page 154)]
4. Nowadays, if a factory which has employed a number of people is
suddenly closed, it means suffering for those who have been employed
there and for their families. Now, though the monasteries did not
employ people in the way in which a factory does, it did affect in many
ways those who lived and worked and depended on them.
5. In these days, if people are thrown out of employment in one place
they are free to go and seek it in another; but that was not the case
in the reign of King Henry VIII. If they wandered from their native
towns and villages they were treated as vagabonds. It is true that the
new persons, to whom the monastery lands were granted, were supposed
to do for the people on the land--the poor and the sick--what the
monasteries had done for them. But what they were _supposed_ to do and
what they _did do_ were very different things.
[Illustration: Old Timbered House, at Presleigh, Radnorshire, dated
1616]
6. It is pretty easy to see how things worked. A wealthy man managed
to get a grant of the property of several monasteries at a very cheap
rate. He did not want these places to live in; he wanted to make money
out of them. The first thing that he did was to strip the buildings of
everything which would fetch any money. The lead was usually the most
valuable part of what the king had left. The roofs would be stripped,
the graves broken open to get at the leaden coffins, and the windows
smashed for the sake of the lead. Then the building was left standing
a ruin. The poor people of the district had been used to receive food
daily at the monastery gate, and no doubt had grumbled at the quality
and quantity of the food often enough. But now it was no use going to
the monastery gate, for the place was a ruin. They could not go to the
new lord's house, for that might be miles away. Even if they did find
him, he might be the owner of three or four such ruined monasteries.
How could he be quite sure that they were the poor he was bound to
relieve? And so the poor folk lost the daily food on which they had
depended.
7. Then as regards the land. The new landlord, perhaps, might farm his
fields; in which case the rents, instead of going to the monastery,
went to him. But he was not always on the spot, and very frequently the
land was let out to tenants; an agent or steward collected the rents,
and the tenants never saw the landlord. But many of these new owners
found that the management of the estates caused them a lot of trouble;
and, naturally enough, they wanted to get as much money out of the
property as they could at the least cost to themselves.
8. Now there was in this sixteenth century still a great demand for
wool, and many of these landlords found it would save trouble to turn
these monastery lands into =sheep-runs=. A very few men could look
after a great many sheep, and there would be no bother about keeping
up buildings and barns. If the people were got off the land, there
would be no poor to bother about relieving. So it came to pass that
much land, which had been cultivated for many centuries, went out of
cultivation, and the people were turned adrift. It was a hard state of
affairs. The rights which they had had to relief from the religious
houses were taken from them, and the means of getting their living also
taken away; they were robbed of their employment, and punished for
wandering, for not working, and for begging.
9. There were, of course, many instances in which the new landlord
came and lived near the old monastery. In some cases the old buildings
were altered and turned into a dwelling-house; in others the building
material was used for building a brand-new house close by. Where this
was the case the old custom of relieving the poor who came to the gate
did not quickly die out.
10. For instance, at Standon in Hertfordshire, there was a house
belonging to the Knights Hospitallers. When the house was dissolved,
much of the property at Standon went to Sir Ralph Sadleir, who had
been secretary to Thomas Cromwell, the "hammer of the monks". He owned
Standon Lordship, and when the poor were no longer relieved at the
Hospitallers' House, in the village, they trooped from Standon up to
Standon Lordship, about fifty of them, every day. That custom of
relieving the poor was kept up there for many years.
=Summary.=--Most of the picturesque buildings belonging to the
religious houses were stripped of all that was valuable and let
go to ruin. The new owners, many of them, lived away from their
property; and, as _wool-farming_ was very profitable then, much
arable land was turned into sheep-runs. That threw many out of
employment, and increased the number of _vagrants_. The new owners
were expected to do for the people on their lands what the monks
had done, but very few of them did so. The custom of relieving the
poor at the gate of the great house was kept up in some few cases,
as at Standon Lordship, in Hertfordshire.