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 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: WOLLATON HALL, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE An Elizabethan mansion, built 1590-1. The Italian style is here pervaded by a Gothic influence [See page 142]] It is pretty easy to see how things worked. A wealthy man managed to get a grant of the property of several monasteries at a very cheap rate. He did not want these places to live in; he wanted to make money out of them. The first thing that he did was to strip the buildings of everything which would fetch any money. The lead was usually the most valuable part of what the king had left. The roofs would be stripped, the graves broken open to get at the leaden coffins, and the windows smashed for the sake of the lead. Then the building was left standing a ruin. The poor people of the district had been used to receive food daily at the monastery gate, and no doubt had grumbled at the quality and quantity of the food often enough. But now it was no use going to the monastery gate, for the place was a ruin. They could not go to the new lord's house, for that might be miles away. Even if they did find him, he might be the owner of three or four such ruined monasteries. How could he be quite sure that they were the poor he was bound to relieve? And so the poor folk lost the daily food on which they had depended. Then as regards the land. The new landlord, perhaps, might farm his fields; in which case the rents, instead of going to the monastery, went into his pocket. But he was not always on the spot, and very frequently the land was let out to tenants; an agent or steward collected the rents, and the tenants never saw their landlord. But many of these new owners found that the management of the estates caused them a lot of trouble; and, naturally enough, from their point of view, they wanted to get as much money out of the property as they could at the least cost to themselves.