“A number of them which purchased these superstitious mansions (the monasteries) reserved of their library books, some to serve their jakes, some to scour their candlesticks, and some to rub their boots, some they sold to the grocers and soap sellers; and some they sent over sea to the bookbinders--not in small number, but at times whole ships full. ... I know a merchant man, which shall at this time be nameless, that bought the contents of two noble libraries for forty shillings a piece. A shame it is to be spoken. This stuff hath he occupied instead of grey paper by the space of more than these ten years, and yet he hath store enough for as many years to come.” It is true the monks were accused of leading idle lives; but to the unlearned, especially those who get their bread by physical labour, the student poring over his books is always “a drone.” It may be most true that the monastic system, so serviceable in the middle ages, the only shelter for peaceful men in the midst of bloodshed and strife, the only refuge for learning amongst the densely ignorant, had had its day; that the hospitals, the almshouses, the workhouses, the schools and colleges, do all the work they once did, and do it better, that in the ages, then to come, they could have filled no useful purpose had they survived. Well! supposing this granted, does it in any way justify the cruelty of the suppression? The judicious Hallam well observes, that “it is impossible to feel too much indignation at the spirit in which these proceedings were conducted.” Had vested and life interests been respected, had the admission of further novices been prohibited, and the buildings themselves, when no longer needed, utilized as hospitals and colleges, and the like; whatever men might think of the change, they would at least admit the moderation of the government; but what consideration can justify the intolerable barbarity of the persecutions. Two questions may be asked, first, what became of the monks, nearly a hundred thousand, in a population of some three millions, who were thus, with the most meagre of pensions, cruelly turned out of house and home.