and the Dispersion of the Religious; in favour of denying the authority of the Pope; eager for the free readings of the Holy Scriptures in the vulgar tongue and for the right of that private interpretation which seems so easy to the illiterate. As regards ritual, the changes, as will be explained later, were gradual; the introduction of distinctive Protestant doctrine was not brought about in a day; the genesis of the Puritanic spirit does not belong to the Revolution under Henry. [Illustration: MARTYRS AT SMITHFIELD E. Gardner’s Collection.] Let us endeavour to realise something of the extraordinary change which the Suppression of the Houses brought about in London. Fortunately the work was carried on by successive Acts, covering a period of fifteen years or so; it was not until 1548, for instance, that the whole of the chantries, colleges, etc., were suppressed. The point of departure is, naturally, the expulsion and the dispersion of the Religious of all Orders. At this point most historians stop. Yet this was only the beginning. Consider, then, the number of those turned out of the London Houses. We may arrive at an approximation of the number by the following considerations. There were 202 Houses, not counting Friaries, dissolved in 1538–1540. They contained, in all, 3221 Monks and Canons. This gives an average of 16 Brethren to each House. Now there were in London some twenty Houses great and small—say from St. Peter’s, Westminster, to Jesus Commons. In the same proportion there would thus be 300 Monks and Canons. In the same proportion, also, there would be about a fourth of that number of Nuns. Now, these monks and nuns were not sent out into a cold world empty-handed. Not at all. They received pensions. The nuns of St. Helen’s, for instance, received pensions of £2:14:4 each. The chantry priests of the same place, whose stipends had been £6:13:4 and £7 respectively, obtained pensions of £5 each. We must, in fact, put aside altogether the generally received notion of the Dissolution as an Act which drove thousands of holy men and women out of their homes—abodes of piety and virtue—to starve. There was no starvation at all: the pensions though small were intended to be sufficient; we have therefore the fact that some 400 Religious of London were made to lay down the habit of their Profession and to go forth into the world on pensions large enough to maintain them. What became of them? Many of the older monks and nuns doubtless felt acutely the change of habit; the loss of the former life—its quiet, its self-centred interests, its community; some of the younger men, we cannot doubt, willingly turned themselves to secular pursuits; some lived quietly, keeping up privately, two or three together, some manner of religious life; some were concealed in the country and a few, perhaps, in town, and led the life of the Rule in a clandestine manner; some, again, the restraint of their vows