[105] _Id. ibid._ and Append. p. 151; Collier, 167. The pensions to the superiors of the dissolved greater monasteries, says a writer not likely to spare Henry's government, appear to have varied from £266 to £6 per annum. The priors of cells received generally £13. A few, whose services had merited the distinction, obtained £20. To the other monks were allotted pensions of six, four, or two pounds, with a small sum to each at his departure, to provide for his immediate wants. The pensions to nuns averaged about £4. Lingard, vi. 341. He admits that these were ten times their present value in money; and surely they were not unreasonably small. Compare them with those, generally and justly thought munificent, which this country bestows on her veterans of Chelsea and Greenwich. The monks had no right to expect more than the means of that hard fare to which they ought by their rules to have been confined in the convents. The whole revenues were not to be shared among them as private property. It cannot of course be denied that the compulsory change of life was to many a severe and an unmerited hardship; but no great revolution, and the Reformation as little as any, could be achieved without much private suffering. [106] The abbots sat till the end of the first session of Henry's sixth parliament, the act extinguishing them not having passed till the last day. In the next session they do not appear, the writ of summons not being supposed to give them personal seats. There are indeed so many parallel instances among spiritual lords, and the principle is so obvious, that it would not be worth noticing, but for a strange doubt said to be thrown out by some legal authorities, near the beginning of George III.'s reign, in the case of Pearce, Bishop of Rochester, whether, after resigning his see, he would not retain his seat as a lord of parliament; in consequence of which his resignation was not accepted. [107] Burnet, i. Append. 96. [108] P. 268. Dr. Lingard, on the authority of Nasmith's edition of Tanner's _Notitia Monastica_, puts the annual revenue of all the monastic houses at £142,914. This would only be one-twentieth part of the rental of the kingdom, if Hume were right in estimating that at three millions. But this is certainly by much too high. The author of Harmer's _Observations on Burnet_, as I have mentioned above, says the monks will be found not to have possessed above one-fifth of the kingdom, and in value, by reason of their long leases, not one-tenth. But on this supposition, the crown's gain was enormous. According to a valuation in Speed's _Catalogue of Religious Houses, apud_ Collier, Append. p. 34, sixteen mitred abbots had revenues above £1000 per annum. St. Peter's, Westminster, was the richest, and valued at £3977, Glastonbury at £3508, St. Alban's at £2510, etc.