-1558] EFFECTS OF PROTESTANTISM 473 yeoman and had no lands of his own, only he had a farm of three or four pound by year at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men. He had walk for a hundred sheep; and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able, and did find the King a harness, with himself and his horse, while he came to the place that he should receive the King's wages. I can remember that I buckled his harness when he went into Blackheath field. He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to have preached before the King's Majesty now. He married my sisters with five pound or twenty nobles apiece. He kept hospitality for his poor neighbours, and some alms he gave to the poor. And all this he did off the said farm, where he that now hath it payeth sixteen pounds by year or more, and is not able to do anything for his prince, for himself, nor for his children, or give a cup of drink to the poor." Of course, under such circumstances, the prices of agricultural products rose so that "poor men which live of their labour cannot with the sweat of their face have a living, all kind of victuals is so dear; pigs, geese, chickens, capons, eggs, etc. These things, with others, are so unreasonably enhanced; and I think verily that if it thus continue we shall at length be constrained to pay for a pig a pound.' The same principles which were producing this change in agricultural products were acting on other branches of trade. There too the wholesale dealer was rising, and in both sermons and statutes the evil is pointed out, that poor men should be unable to purchase small quantities, a wholesale seller being able to keep his stock till he could sell advantageously. Efforts were even made to settle compulsory prices, but this was found quite impossible, as was indeed seen by Mason, one of the ablest statesmen of the time, who writes in 1550 to Cecil :-"Never shall you drive Nature to consent that a pennyworth shall be sold for a farthing." No doubt this growing tendency to wholesale dealing was in accordance with the rules of political economy. The land was more profitably farmed as pasture than as ploughland. The wool which was thus grown gave employment sooner or later to the manufactures, which would absorb the surplus agricultural population, and capital which was before hoarded found a profitable investment in land. So too the wholesale dealer in other goods was enabled to purchase in cheap markets, and to keep his goods till he could sell them well, thus increasing the national wealth and equalizing prices. But the commencement of the system which is now accepted uni 1 Latimer's First Sermon before Edward VI. versally, but which then seemed merely the triumph of selfishness, and which could not work fully because attended by many erroneous notions which laid restrictions on the freedom of trade, could not fail to be attended with much misery. Change in the position of the Church. Its greatness under Henry VII. But however great the revolution in the constitution of society and in the economical condition of the kingdom may have been, the Great Revolution, which indeed gives its name to the period, is the change in the position of the Church. In the reign of Henry VII. a foreigner could say, and probably truly, "the clergy are they who have the supreme sway over the country, both in "1 and war. peace The amount of their property was enormous. The same author states that of 96,230 knights' fees, 28,015 belonged to the Church. The number of monasteries was very great. At the time of the dissolution there were 645, and the revenues which are said to have passed into the hands of the Crown are computed at £1,600,000. In addition to this the Church had the advantage of being almost the sole repository of learning. It is true there were some few exceptions. But so completely was it the case that the mere power of reading was regarded as a proof of being in orders, that a criminal, charged with even the gravest offences, might, if he could read, claim to be removed for trial to the ecclesiastical courts. This privilege they had enjoyed since the twenty-fifth year of Edward III., and it did not receive any check till the year 1487, when it was enacted that no layman should be allowed benefit of clergy more than once. He was branded for the first offence, and on any future conviction was punished as a layman. Their superior education naturally threw the chief offices in the administration of the kingdom into the hands of Churchmen. The most trusted ministers of Henry VII. were Morton, eventually Archbishop of Canterbury, and Fox, Bishop of Winchester. Warham, who succeeded Morton, was Chancellor of England; but it was Wolsey, a protégé of Fox, who carried the power of the Church to the highest pitch. Under him it rose to authority and splendour scarcely second to that of the King. Nor was it only by their wealth and learning that Churchmen acquired influence. They had the majority of seats in the Upper House. The decayed state of the temporal peerage has been mentioned. The only class which had not suffered in the civil wars was the clergy. The full number of Bishops (nineteen, and two Archbishops) of course still remained, but besides these, mitred Abbots, to 1 Italian Relation of England, p. 34, -1558] CHANGE IN THE CHURCH 475 the number of twenty-nine, and two or three Priors,1 had seats in the Upper House. The number of spiritual Lords was thus nearly double that of the temporal. In addition to this the Church had a very large portion of the justice of the country in its hands. It could, as we have seen, draw from the King's courts into its own jurisdiction all criminals who could read. It had, moreover, a complete arrangement of courts holding jurisdiction over moral offences, and all the apparatus necessary for exacting dues upon many of the common events of life, such as the making and execution of wills and the burial of the dead. Nor were these privileges used with a sparing hand. There are several statutes limiting the right of clergy, which show distinctly that it had been much abused. They complain that, contrary to promise, no regular agreement had been entered into as to the penalties to be inflicted upon criminals thus taken from the King's justice, and assert that consequently such criminals were constantly discharged by the ordinary, after merely nominal imprisonment, on the payment of bribes; while the first step of what can be spoken of as Reformation was the Act limiting exorbitant fees upon wills, and the abuse of mortuaries, or presents for the dead. It is in fact true that in the domestic government, by means of their majority in the House; in foreign affairs, because they alone were, generally speaking, fitted for diplomacy; even in war, because of their ability as organizers ; in every branch of social life by their wealth, their judicial power, their rights with regard to the common and necessary events of life, and most generally by their claim to spiritual dominion by the confessional, penance and absolution, it is true to say that the Churchmen at the close of the fifteenth century were by far the most influential class in the kingdom. The case was different when, on the passing of the first Act of Uniformity (1548), not only had the management of Contrast temporal affairs passed from their hands, but points of in 1548. doctrine and religious faith were discussed in Parliament and settled by the laity of England. This great change had taken place in the short period which had elapsed since the fall of Wolsey. He had himself been somewhat answerable for it. He was too great and farseeing a man to admire or tolerate great abuses or great ignorance, and, stickler though he was for the authority of the Church, he did not scruple to form plans of reformation to attempt to improve the general 1 The number of Abbots and Priors somewhat varied, but there were never less than twenty-five Abbots and two Priors. education of the country, or to employ largely able laymen in the service of the State. In fact, the great statesmen who managed the affairs of England, both at home and abroad, till the close of Elizabeth's reign, may be said to have sprung from his school. Steps of this change. It was impossible that with regard to learning, at all events, the Church should uphold its monopoly. The revival of literature in Europe had been wholly secular. Greek poetry, Greek philosophy, and Greek morality had been regarded as dangerous by the Church, and although there were some eminent exceptions, scholarship had passed chiefly into the hands of the laity, and the Humanists, as they were called, were looked at but coldly by the stricter moralists of the Church. It was not without difficulty that the study of Greek had been admitted at the English Universities. Here again Wolsey had sided with the Reformers. His appreciation of the necessity of learning was great. He founded a school at his native town, Ipswich, and began a gigantic project for the formation of a great College, called the Cardinal's College, at Oxford, of which Christ Church is all that remains, but which would, if it had been completed, have incorporated several other colleges. Upon the suppression of monasteries it was intended that much of their revenue should be given to education; and though Latimer could still complain of the unfitness of the nobility for the duties of statesmen, and of the necessity of employing Churchmen for the purpose, the very fact that he mentions it proves that a change had taken place. The list of the Privy Council in 1552 contains but two clerical names, and the well-known statesmen and diplomatists, such Popularization as Paget, Mason, Cheyne, Sadler, Cecil, and others, were of learning. all of them laymen of the middle class. The best-known Sir Anthony Winkfield, K.G.-Mr. Comp- Sir Thomas Cheyne, K.G. --Mr. Treasure Mr. Secretary Cecil. Sir Philip Hobbey. Sir Robert Bowes. Sir John Baker. Judge Montague. 1 -1558] POPULAR LEARNING 477 names, however, among the English scholars, are Sir Thomas More and Roger Ascham. The first of these, a lawyer, and Chancellor of England after the fall of Wolsey, was a man whose probity and high and simple character, joined with his learning, gave him a European reputation. It was chiefly to visit him that Erasmus, the great scholar of the age, came to England, and his death, under the ruthless sentence of Henry VIII., caused a thrill of emotion throughout Europe. His influence upon learning was however chiefly indirect. The whole man is so interesting, his political life so consistent, his character, though instances of religious persecution can be brought against him, on the whole so liberal and generous, the description of his household at Chelsea given us by his son-in-law and by his friend Erasmus so attractive, and his death-scene so dignified and touching, that it is probably as a man rather than as a scholar that he plays so large a part in the memories of Henry VIII.'s reign. Of his works some historical fragments, and his "Utopia," or modern republic, are the only ones much esteemed now. Roger Ascham was a very different man; an amiable and careless scholar, he was at one time Professor of Greek at Cambridge, several times employed as secretary to foreign ambassadors, but is better known as the tutor and Latin Secretary to both the Queens, Mary and Elizabeth. His principal works are "Toxophilus," an essay on shooting, expressly intended to improve English prose, and "The Schoolmaster" which is full of learning and good sense. But more important than any individual scholars to prove the diffusion of learning, are the facts which are known about the education of so many of the prominent people (especially ladies) of that time. The instructions of Thomas Cromwell to the tutor of his son are still extant. They are almost too onerous. The boy is to be trained in physical exercises as well as intellectual, but when occasion occurs, the two are to be combined, and the conversation, even when riding to the meet, is to be adroitly led to classical and instructive subjects. Such over-zealous care did not produce the desired effect, any more than the similar anxiety of Lord Chesterfield; but the fact that a shrewd man like Cromwell insisted upon such a training for his son, speaks largely for the general feeling on the subject. The precocious ability of Edward VI., the classical and other varied attainments of Lady Jane Grey and of Queen Elizabeth, although it is true that these instances are only drawn from the very highest rank, point to the same fact. The establishment of great schools bears even stronger witness in the same direction. By a strange contradiction of circumstances, while the support of learning at the Universities was decreasing, |