Cardinal Wolsey (who was intended by the “mitred Peacock”), in the height of his pride and vastness of his undertakings, intending to erect two colleges, one at Ipswich, where he was born, the other at Oxford, where he was bred; and finding himself unable to endow them at his own charge, he obtained licence of Pope Clement VII. to suppress forty small monasteries in England, and to lay their old lands to his new foundations, which was done accordingly, and the poor people that lived in them were turned out of doors. Many of the clergy were very much against this action of Wolsey, especially John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, alleging for the same an apologue of Æsop, that “the iron head of the axe craved a handle of the wood of oaks, only to cut off the boughs of the trees: but when it was a complete axe it felled all the wood;” applying it, that the suppressing of those smaller houses would prove destructive to all the rest, which came to pass accordingly; for King Henry, seeing the cardinal’s power to extend so far as to suppress these lower shrubs, he thought his prerogative might stretch so far as to fell down the great trees; and soon after dissolved the priory of Christ Church, near Aldgate, in London (now known by the name of Duke’s Place), the richest in lands and ornaments of the priories in London or Middlesex; which was a forerunner of the dissolution of the rest; and that not long after came to pass. By the “Great Court,” is meant the Parliament, the supremest court of England; which, in the twenty-seventh year of King Henry’s reign, to support the king’s states, and supply his wants, conferred on the crown all religious houses which were not able clearly to expend above two hundred pounds a year; the great ones not long after following the same fortune of the smaller, which was not done (though attempted) by any king before. By the dissolution of these houses, many thousands were driven to seek their fortunes in the wide world, and became utterly exposed to want; when monkish profession was without possession, many a young man proved an old beggar, and many forced to fast for want of victuals, who formerly had it provided for them to their hands. The great riches and pride of the monks and friars, was, no doubt, the main cause of their overthrow; for whatsoever was the pretence, questionless profit was the rope which pulled these religious houses down.