the law in anything; and Bishop Wakeman of Hereford, at his examination, said with reference to his Concordance, "This man hath been better occupied than a great sort of our priests."
In 1546 the victims of the Six Articles seem to have been more numerous, and the chief sufferer was a zealous lady separated from her husband, and known by her maiden name of Anne Askew. She and three others were tried at the Guildhall for heresy, and confessed opinions about the Sacrament for which they were all condemned to the stake. Two of her fellows next day (one of them, Shaxton, had been Bishop of Salisbury) yielded to the exhortations of Bishops Bonner and Heath, and were saved on being reconciled to the Church; but Anne was ra/dute, and would not be persuaded even by the Council, before whom she disputed for two days when they evidently wished to save her, answering continually in language borrowed from Scripture. She was committed to Newgate and afterwards to the Tower, where she was racked some time before she was burnt at Smithfield. Suspicions seem to have been entertained that she was supported in her heresies by some of the ladies about Queen Catharine Parr, and she was tortured to reveal her confederates; but she denied that she had any. The story of her examination and torture written by her own hand and printed abroad for the English market, certainly added new force to the coming revolution.
There was indeed another great change bearing on religion and social life, though not much on doctrine or ritual-the dissolution of the monasteries. Its immediate effect was to produce a vast amount of suffering. It is true that a considerable number of the monks and nuns received pensions, but very many were turned out of the houses which had been their homes and wandered about in search of means to live. Even at the first suppression Chapuys was told that, what with monks, nuns, and dependents on monasteries, there must have been 20, 000 persons cast adrift; and though this was evidently a vague and probably exaggerated estimate, it indicates at least very widespread wretchedness and discomfort. More permanent results, however, arose out of the prodigious transfer of property, affecting, as it is supposed, about a third of the land of England. It has been doubted whether the monks had been easy landlords; but when the monastic lands were confiscated and sold to a host of greedy courtiers the change was severely felt. The lands were all let at higher rents, and the newly-erected Court "for the Augmentation of the Crown Revenues" did its best to justify its title. Moreover, the purchasers, in order to make the most of their new acquisitions, began to enclose commons where poor tenants had been accustomed to graze their cattle; the tenants sold the beasts which they could not feed, and the cost of living in a few years advanced very seriously. This was one of the main causes of Ket's rebellion in the following reign.
Meanwhile, all over the country men beheld with sadness a host of
