2. The buildings themselves were all different, and many of them were hundreds of years old. Towers, spires, turrets, gables, gateways, and archways in all styles of architecture abounded. There were, of course, many things in the towns which we should not have liked, but they had a pleasant variety which our modern towns have not. Thousands of streets in our towns are just rows and rows of houses, all alike, all ugly, and very dull and dreary to look at and to live in. 3. In the reign of King Henry VIII all the religious houses were suppressed, and given up into the king's hands. The life that had gone on in them for centuries came to an end. Both in town and country districts there were many people besides those who actually lived in them to whom this made a great difference--people who, in one way or another, got their living out of the monasteries. Shutting up the monasteries threw all these people, so to speak, out of work. That meant a great deal of suffering. [Illustration: Photo. Valentine FOUNTAINS ABBEY, YORKSHIRE, ONE OF THE MONASTERIES RUINED BY HENRY VIII (page 154)] 4. Nowadays, if a factory which has employed a number of people is suddenly closed, it means suffering for those who have been employed there and for their families. Now, though the monasteries did not employ people in the way in which a factory does, it did affect in many ways those who lived and worked and depended on them. 5. In these days, if people are thrown out of employment in one place they are free to go and seek it in another; but that was not the case in the reign of King Henry VIII. If they wandered from their native towns and villages they were treated as vagabonds. It is true that the new persons, to whom the monastery lands were granted, were supposed to do for the people on the land--the poor and the sick--what the monasteries had done for them. But what they were _supposed_ to do and what they _did do_ were very different things. [Illustration: Old Timbered House, at Presleigh, Radnorshire, dated 1616]