ombs. Here, in spite of
such denials, the most offensive pictures shall continue to be left in
the shade; and persons who wish to gratify their curiosity, or satisfy
their unbelief, may consult the authorities for themselves.[483] I shall
confine my own efforts rather to the explanation of the practical, and,
in the highest sense of the word, political abuses, which, on the whole,
perhaps, told most weightily on the serious judgment of the age.

[Sidenote: The abbeys intended for the benefit of the poor.]

[Sidenote: Fraudulent neglect of duty.]

[Sidenote: Illegal division of profits.]

[Sidenote: Dishonest administration of the lands.]

[Sidenote: Neglect of hospitality. Neglect of the poor.]

[Sidenote: Simony and profligacy.]

The abbeys, then, as the State regarded them, existed for the benefit of
the poor. The occupants for the time being were themselves under vows of
poverty; they might appropriate to their personal use no portion of the
revenues of their estates; they were to labour with their own hands, and
administer their property for the public advantage. The surplus proceeds
of the lands, when their own modest requirements had been supplied,
were to be devoted to the maintenance of learning, to the exercise of a
liberal hospitality, and to the relief of the aged, the impotent, and
the helpless. The popular clamour of the day declared that these duties
were systematically neglected; that two-thirds, at least, of the
religious bodies abused their opportunities unfairly for their own
advantage; and this at a time when the obligations of all property were
defined as strictly as its rights, and negligent lay owners were
promptly corrected by the State whenever occasion required. The monks,
it was believed, lived in idleness, keeping vast retinues of servants to
do the work which they ought to have done themselves.[484] They were
accused of sharing dividends by mutual connivance, although they were
forbidden by their rule to possess any private property whatever, and of
wandering about the country in the disguise of laymen in pursuit of
forbidden indulgences.[485] They were bound by their statutes to keep
their houses full, and if their means were enlarged, to increase their
numbers; they were supposed to have allowed their complement to fall to
half, and sometimes to a third, of the original foundation, fraudulently
reserving the enlarged profits to themselves. It was thought, too, that
they had racked th