History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French Revolution — Volume 2 — John Shaqi
History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French Revolution — Volume 2MacCaffrey, James
Religion
History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French Revolution — Volume 2
MacCaffrey, James
Catholic Church -- History -- Modern period, 1500-
Besides, if the reports of Leigh and Leyton be compared with the
episcopal visitations of the same houses or with those of the royal
visitors appointed in 1536 to carry out the suppression of the smaller
monasteries, it will be found that in regard to the very same houses
there exists a very open contradiction between their findings.
Unfortunately the accounts of the visitations have disappeared to a
great extent except in case of the diocese of Norwich. In this diocese
the visitations were carried out very strictly and very minutely, and
although some abuses were detected the bishop could find nothing of
the wholesale corruption and immorality discovered a few years later
by the minions of Cromwell. Similarly the commission appointed in 1536
to superintend the suppression decreed in that year, the members of
which were drawn from the leading men in each county, report in the
highest terms of houses which were spoken of as hot-beds of iniquity
only a few months before. Finally, if the monasteries and convents
were really so bad as they are painted, it is a curious fact that
although Leigh and Leyton were empowered by Cromwell to open the doors
to many of the monks and nuns they could find in the thirteen counties
which they visited only two nuns and fifty-three monks willing to
avail themselves of the liberty which they offered.[9]
As a general rule the monasteries were regarded with kindly feelings
by the great body of the people on account of their charity and
hospitality towards the poor and the wayfarer, their leniency and
generosity as compared with other employers and landlords, their
schools which did so much for the education of the district, and their
orphanages and hospitals. Many of them were exceedingly wealthy, while
some of them found it difficult to procure the means of existence, and
all of them suffered greatly from the financial burdens imposed upon
them in the shape of pensions, etc., by the king or by the family by
whom their endowments were provided originally. For this reason some
of the religious houses, imitating the example of the landowners
generally, began to form grazing enclosures[10] out of their estates
which had been hitherto under cultivation, a step that led in some
cases to eviction and in all cases to a great reduction in the number
of labourers employed. Others of them set up tanneries and such like
industries that had been best left to the laymen. These measures led
to ill-feeling and to a certain amount of hostility, but that the
religious houses were not hated by the people is proved to
demonstration by the rebellions which their suppression evoked in so
many different parts of the country.
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