memory it
recoils."[1] The obligation it is under to Henry VIII is that through
his influence--no matter what the motive--England was lifted up out of
the old medieval ruts, and placed squarely and securely on the new
highway of national progress.

[1] W. Stubbs's "Constitutional History of England."

360. Summary.

In this reign we find that though England lost much of her former
political freedom, yet she gained that order and peace which came from
the iron hand of absolute power. Next, from the destruction of the
monasteries, and the sale or gift of their lands to favorites of the
King, three results ensued:

1. A new nobility was in great measure created, dependent on the
Crown.
2. The House of Lords was made less powerful by the removal of the
abbots who had had seats in it.
3. Pauperism and distress were temporarily increased.
4. Finally, England completely severed her connection with the Pope,
and established for the first time an independent National Church,
having the King as its head.

Edward VI--1547-1553

361. Bad Government; Seizure of Unenclosed Lands; High Rents;
Latimer's Sermon.

Edward, son of Henry VIII by Jane Seymour (S355), died at sixteen. In
the first part of his reign of six years the goverment was managed by
his uncle, the Duke of Somerset, an extreme Protestant, whose
intentions were good, but who lacked practical judgement. During the
latter part of his life Edward fell under the control of the Duke of
Northumberland, who was the head of a band of scheming and profligate
men.

They, with other nobles, seized the unenclosed lands of the country
and fenced them in for sheep pastures, thus driving into beggary many
who had formerly got a good part of their living from these commons.
At the same time farm rents rose in somee cases ten and even twenty
fold,[1] depriving thousands of the means of subsistence, and reducing
to poverty many who had been in comfortable circumstances.

[1] This was oweing to the greed for land on the part of the
mercantile classes, who had now acquired wealth, and wished to become
landed proprietors. See Froude's "England."

The bitter complaints of the sufferers found expression in Bishop
Latimer's outspoken sermon, preached before King Edward, in which he
said: "My father was a yeoman [small farmer], and had no lands of his
own, only he had a farm of three or four pounds [rent] by year, and
hereupon tilled so much as kept half a dozen men; he had