_Dissolution of monasteries._--The enormous, and in a great measure ill-gotten, opulence of the regular clergy had long since excited jealousy in every part of Europe. Though the statutes of mortmain under Edward I. and Edward III. had put some obstacle to its increase, yet as these were eluded by licences of alienation, a larger proportion of landed wealth was constantly accumulating, in hands which lost nothing that they had grasped.[98] A writer much inclined to partiality towards the monasteries says that they held not one-fifth part of the kingdom; no insignificant patrimony! He adds, what may probably be true, that through granting easy leases, they did not enjoy more than one-tenth in value.[99] These vast possessions were very unequally distributed among four or five hundred monasteries. Some abbots, as those of Reading, Glastonbury, and Battle, lived in princely splendour, and were in every sense the spiritual peers and magnates of the realm. In other foundations, the revenues did little more than afford a subsistence for the monks, and defray the needful expenses. As they were in general exempted from episcopal visitation, and intrusted with the care of their own discipline, such abuses had gradually prevailed and gained strength by connivance, as we may naturally expect in corporate bodies of men leading almost of necessity useless and indolent lives, and in whom very indistinct views of moral obligations were combined with a great facility of violating them. The vices that for many ages had been supposed to haunt the monasteries, had certainly not left their precincts in that of Henry VIII. Wolsey, as papal legate, at the instigation of Fox, Bishop of Hereford, a favourer of the Reformation, commenced a visitation of the professed as well as secular clergy in 1523, in consequence of the general complaint against their manners.[100] This great minister, though not perhaps very rigid as to the morality of the church, was the first who set an example of reforming monastic foundations in the most efficacious manner, by converting their revenues to different purposes. Full of anxious zeal for promoting education, the noblest part of his character, he obtained bulls from Rome suppressing many convents (among which was that of St. Frideswide at Oxford), in order to erect and endow a new college in that university, his favourite work, which after his fall was more completely established by the name of Christ Church.[101] A few more were afterwards extinguished through his instigation; and thus the prejudice against interference with this species of property was somewhat worn off, and men's minds gradually prepared for the sweeping confiscations of Cromwell. The king indeed was abundantly willing to replenish his exchequer by violent means, and to avenge himself on those who gainsayed his supremacy; but it was this able statesman who, prompted both by the natural appetite of ministers for the subject's money and by a secret