on so deeply in debt to the
neighbouring gentry that their lay creditors saw no hope of recovering
their claims except by extensive foreclosures.[956] There had certainly
been a good deal of private spoliation before the King gave the practice
a national character. The very privileges of the monasteries were now
turned to their ruin. Their immunity from episcopal jurisdiction
deprived them of episcopal aid; their exemption from all authority,
save that of the Pope, left them without support when the papal
jurisdiction was abolished. Monastic orders knew no distinction (p. 341)
of nationality. The national character claimed for the mediaeval Church
in England could scarcely cover the monasteries, and no place was
found for them in the Church when it was given a really national garb.

[Footnote 955: See Fortescue, _Governance of
England_, ed. Plummer, cap. xviii., and notes, pp.
337-40.]

[Footnote 956: _E.g._, Christ Church, London, which
surrendered to Henry in 1532, was deeply in debt to
him (_L. and P._, v., 823).]

Their dissolution is probably to be connected with Cromwell's boast
that he would make his king the richest prince in Christendom. That
was not its effect, because Henry was compelled to distribute the greater
part of the spoils among his nobles and gentry. One rash reformer
suggested that monastic lands should be devoted to educational
purposes;[957] had that plan been followed, education in England would
have been more magnificently endowed than in any other country of the
world, and England might have become a democracy in the seventeenth
century. From this point of view Henry spoilt one of the greatest
opportunities in English history; from another, he saved England from
a most serious danger. Had the Crown retained the wealth of the
monasteries, the Stuarts might have made themselves independent of
Parliament. But this service to liberty was not voluntary on Henry's
part. The dissolution of the monasteries was in effect, and probably
in intention, a gigantic bribe to the laity to induce them to
acquiesce in the revolution effected by Henry VIII. When he was gone,
his successors might desire, or fail to prevent, a reaction; something
more permanent than Henry's iron hand was required to support the (p. 342)
fabric he had raised. That support was sought in the wealth of the
Church. Th