, in
1489. In this communication the abbot and his monks were charged with
the grossest licentiousness, waste and thieving. Lina Eckenstein, in her
interesting work on "Woman Under Monasticism," says: "It were idle to
deny that the state of discipline in many houses was bad, but the
circumstances under which Morton's letter was penned argue that the
charges made in it should be accepted with some reservation." In 1523,
Cardinal Wolsey obtained bulls from the pope authorizing the suppression
of forty small monasteries, and the application of their revenues to
educational institutions, on the ground that the houses were homes
neither of religion nor of learning.

What Henry did, every country in Europe has felt called upon to do in
one way or another. Germany, Italy, Spain, France have all suppressed
monasteries, and despite the suffering which attended the dissolution in
England, the step was taken with less loss of life and less injury to
the industrial welfare of the people than anywhere else in Europe[J].

[Footnote J: Appendix, Note J.]

Hooper, who was made a bishop in the reign of Edward VI., expressed the
Protestant view of Henry's reforms in a letter written about the year
1546. "Our king," he says, "has destroyed the pope, but not popery....
The impious mass, the most shameful celibacy of the clergy, the
invocation of saints, auricular confession, superstitious abstinence
from meats, and purgatory, were never before held by the people in
greater esteem than at the present moment." In other words, the
independence of the Church of England was secured by those who, if they
were not Roman Catholics, were certainly closer in faith to Rome than
they were to Protestantism. The Protestant doctrines did not become the
doctrines of the Church of England until the reign of Edward VI., and it
was many years after that before the separation from Rome was complete
in doctrine as well as respects the authority of the pope.

These facts indicate that there must have been other causes for the
success of the English Reformation than the greed or ambition of the
monarch. Those causes are easily discovered. One of them was the
hostility of the people to the alien priories. The origin of the alien
priories dates back to the Norman conquest. The Normans shared the
spoils of their victory with their continental friends. English
monasteries and churches were given to foreigners, who collected the
rents and other kinds of income. T