voice against the King’s supremacy whilst the question of the divorce was in progress. The friars did not stay at home like the easy and well-conditioned monks, but had to forage for a living. “Go not from house to house,” though a text uttered, as it might seem, with almost a prophetic reference to them, they found it convenient to overlook. Whatever opinions, therefore, they entertained, they had the power of putting in extensive circulation; now that they were disaffected, this facility became doubly dangerous. Then they were the most vulnerable of the orders; their corruptions were the grossest. Their vagrant habits threw them amongst temptations, whilst they at the same time withdrew them from wholesome restraints. Abroad they were notorious for intrigues in the hospitable families of the peasants and artisans who received them; and at home they had a treasury of lies, very profitable to themselves whilst their credit was good, but more profitable to their enemies when the fictitious nature of the capital with which they traded was exposed. The Rood of Grace, which would hang its lip when silver was offered to it, and shake its beard merrily when the offering was of gold, was for a time an exchequer; but when the profane hand of a Thomas Cromwell had once opened the figure at Paul’s Cross, and displayed to the good citizens of London the wires by which it had been worked, indignation took the place of credulity, and the craftsmen, to whom it had brought no small gain, were justly scandalised. Moreover, the destruction of these lesser houses did not touch in a very tender place the powerful and privileged classes of society. Younger brothers were provided for in the wealthy abbey, but not in the friar’s hostel. It was a war upon the weak (so far as property was concerned,) and at a time when commerce and manufactures had not taught the weak but the many their value and their strength; and therefore it was a step attended with less danger. Lastly, it was a measure that served very well as a feeler for one still greater which was behind, but which was as yet studiously disavowed, the suppression of all the monasteries and convents great and small; it was the bristle which made a way for the thread.