As for the object which the Act itself alleged to have been the motive for the destruction of the Chantries, namely the desire on the part of the government to devote the revenues to the foundation and improvement of grammar schools, it was forgotten as soon as parliament had separated. Strype[123] is obliged to confess that the Act was "grossly abused, as the Act in the former King's reign for dissolving religious houses was. For though the public good was pretended thereby (and intended too, I hope), yet private men, in truth, had most of the benefit, and the King and Commonwealth, the state of learning, and the condition of the poor, left as they were before, or worse. Of this, great complaints were made by honest men: and some of the best and most conscientious preachers reproved it in the greatest auditories, as at Paul's Cross, and before the King himself. Thomas Lever, a Fellow, and afterwards Master of St John's College in Cambridge, in a sermon before the King, in the year 1550 showed 'how those that pretended, that (beside the abolishing of superstition) with the lands of abbeys, colleges, and chantries, the King should be enriched, learning maintained, poverty relieved, and the Commonwealth eased, purposely had enriched themselves.... And bringing in grammar schools, which these dissolved chantries were to serve for the founding of, he told the King plainly ... many grammar schools, and much charitable provision for the poor, be taken, sold and made away; to the great slander of you and your laws, to the utter discomfort of the poor, to the grievous offence of the people, to the most miserable drowning of youth in ignorance.... The King bore the slander, the poor felt the lack. But who had the profit of such things, he could not tell. But he knew well, and all the world saw, that the Act made by the King's Majesty and his Lords and Commons of his Parliament, for maintenance of learning and relief of the poor, had served some as a fit instrument to rob learning, and to spoil the poor.'" The measure was indeed an act of spoliation devoid either of excuse in its cause or benefit in its results. The suppression of the Monasteries could doubtless be amply excused, but no real justification is possible for this attempted wholesale seizure of institutions founded and maintained for the benefit of the poor, for the relief of suffering, and for the regulation of industry and police. As regards the last--the regulation of industry and police--the attempt was to a certain extent foiled, but in other respects it succeeded only too well. Even on the Gilds which escaped its effects were disastrous. Their spiritual aspect was taken away; their prestige and authority very materially lessened. For they completely changed their nature. Instead of being brotherhoods of workmen,--masters, journeymen, and apprentices,--striving together for the common good, they now became simply leagues of employers, companies of capitalists. The new powers