perty to the Crown. The fact was not always so; nor was the wrong of the Pope, in alienating the parochial endowments to the religious houses, any justification of the wrong of the King and nation, who diverted them thence to court favourites. Great as the first evil was, it was to the parishes plundered most trifling, when compared with the latter. When the impropriation was made, the parishioners paid their tithes to a clerical body, frequently resident among them, and always obliged to provide for their spiritual care. On the suppression of the monastery they were delivered over to some great man, who glittered at court in gold and silver, the spoils of God's house, and left to the vicar, now burdened with a wife and family, a pittance of fifty, twenty, ten, in some cases four pounds yearly, out of thousands exacted from the parish. No one acquainted with the state and history of our country towns will think this is an exaggerated picture; and in many instances it is in these very parishes that some huge population has arisen, without the means of grace.
Moreover much of the property which was taken from the Church had never belonged to the monasteries at all. The history of Hatton Garden is well known: it was the London residence of the Bishops of Ely, and being wrested from them many years after the Reformation[1],
- ↑ In 1579, twenty-one years after the accession of Elizabeth.
