“And whereas we doo here that a grete nombre of abbyes shal be punnyshid, subprest, and put downe, bicause of theire myslyvyng, and that all abbyes and pryoryes under the value of £200 be at oure moste noble prynces pleasure to sub-presse and put downe, yet if it may pleas youre goodnes we trust in God ye shall here no compleyntes agaynst us nother in oure lyvyng nor hospitalitie keepyng. In consideracion whereof if it may please youre goodnes in oure great necessitie to be a meane and sewter for youre owne powre pryory, that it may be preserved and stand, you shal be a more higher ffounder to us then he that first foundid oure howse.” When the conventual system came to an end, the relation of women to the Church was materially changed. They were no longer the Church’s administrators and her authorized servants. And while they could not, as before, dispense its alms and hospitality, or impart the knowledge they had acquired in the cloister, they themselves were deprived of its protecting care. At the time of the dissolution of the monasteries the “religious” women did not exceed 1560,[28] but to a large number of others the cloister was a temporary retreat, a possible home, a refuge in time of distress. The effect upon women of the sweeping away of monastic institutions may be considered from various points of view--from the educational, social, as well as the religious side. It may be regarded as the work of a reformer or of a destroyer. Mr. Lecky describes it as “far from a benefit to women or the world.”[29] But that it greatly affected the position of women there can be no question. It loosened, although it did not sever, the close tie which had bound women to the spiritual authority as to a foster-mother. The Anglican Church stood in a different relation, socially speaking, to the people. It was a less personal relation. And the Protestant clergy did not make use of women in any special way as the instruments of the Church. As will be seen later on, the tendency during the first two centuries of the religious revolution, as it may be termed, was to ignore women as workers. The Roman Church, while it plainly proclaimed women to be inferior morally, and by inference intellectually, to men, availed itself to the full of their capacities. Until modern times, the Protestant Church went on its way regardless of the fact that a great unused power was lying close at hand. It was in movements outside the Church that the religious emotion in women first found vent in the Protestant era. CHAPTER VI. THE CHURCH AS A SOCIAL FACTOR. Influence of the Church on women in social life--The twofold conception of womanhood--Canon and Civil Law--Effect of ecclesiastical celibacy.