Well, this did away with the necessity for big fortified houses which might contain barracks for soldiers, and so we find that the new houses, built in Tudor times, were less like fortresses than they had been before. More attention was now paid to the size and convenience of the rooms. This sixteenth century was a great time for the building of large houses; indeed, the new nobles had better ideas of what a comfortable house was than the older barons had. [Illustration: _Part of the House called Plas Mawr, Conway, Wales_ _It illustrates the architectural change from the mediæval fortress to the Tudor mansion which took place in the sixteenth century_] CHAPTER XXXIX The Ruins of the Monasteries and the New Buildings In early Tudor times our towns were much more picturesque than they are to-day. That was chiefly owing to the fact that there were in every town so many religious houses, colleges, and hospitals. These buildings all had grounds of their own in the town, some more, some less; but these open spaces and garden grounds, though they were not open to the public, all helped to make the town airy, and to give variety to the view. 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 and picturesque appearance which our modern towns have not. Thousands of streets in our towns are just rows and rows of houses--brick boxes with slate lids--all alike, all ugly, and very dull and dreary to look at and to live in. 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, and created what we call a "very difficult problem". That meant a great deal of suffering. 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.