There were, next, the people who lived by the making and selling
of things no longer wanted under the new order. There were the
makers of ecclesiastical vestments and robes; altar cloths; wax
tapers; instruments required in the celebration of Mass; crosses and
crucifixes; beads, reliquaries, images, and all the “properties”
required for the old Faith. Also all those who sold tapers, beads,
crosses, images, relics, books of hours, mass books, censers and
every kind of church vessel. One has only to look at the shops in the
vicinity of a French cathedral to understand the extent of the business
when not a single cathedral, but a hundred and fifty parish churches,
and monastic chapels, had to be provided for, and when all the people,
with one consent, acquiesced in the doctrines, and practised the ritual
of the Church.
[Illustration: STEPHEN GARDINER, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER (1483(?)-1555)
From an engraving of the portrait in Trinity Hall, Cambridge.]
All these people, thus deprived of their livelihood, were skilled
craftsmen. When their occupation was gone, when embroidered
altar-cloths, copes and vestments stiff with cloth of gold, carven
images, sacred pictures, beads and crosses and crucifixes, were no
longer wanted, what could they do? If, at the present day, any single
branch of industry is suddenly destroyed, what happens? It is too late
for the people concerned to learn another trade. What happened to these
unfortunates it is impossible to guess. One thing we know, namely, in
general terms, that London was in a miserable condition for a quarter
of a century after the Dissolution of the Houses; and we may fairly
conclude that not bad trade alone, but also the great number of poor
and forlorn creatures who had been hurled by the Reformation from
comfort to penury, was one cause of the depression.
Or, if we consider the immediate external effects of the Suppression;
think of the unwonted silence, when all the bells of all the Monastic
Houses were taken down: instead of the melodious pealing from forty
chapels, there was left only the sorry tinkle of the parish bell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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