The whole truth about the later days of the monasteries will never be known. Many of the original sources of our knowledge are tainted with partisanship and religious rancour and flagrant dishonesty. What does seem to be true is that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries monastic influence grew slowly weaker, although the system may not have been degenerate in itself. The cause is to be found in the very prosperity of monachism, which brought to the religious houses wealth and all its responsibilities. Wealth always imposes fetters, as every rich man, from Seneca downwards, has declared with unctuous lamentation. But
TWELFTH CENTURY ILLUMINATION FROM BURY ST. EDMUNDS ABBEY
THE MINIATURE IS ON SPECIAL VELLUM STUCK ON TO THE LEAF. MS. 2 FO. 281 B. C.C. COLL. CAMB.]
what first strikes the student who compares early English monachism with the later is, that whereas the monks of the first period were most concerned with their monastic duties, their religious observances, and their scribing and illuminating, the monks of the later period, and especially during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were immersed in business, in the management of their wealth, the control of large estates. The possession of wealth led in one direction to excessive display, and to purchasing land and building beyond their means; a course which monks might easily persuade themselves was progressive and exemplary of true religious fervour, but which attracted to them envious eyes. Heavy subsidies to the Crown and the Pope oppressed them. Then again, many houses indulged in unwise and excessive almsgiving, which the monks might well believe to be right, but which brought them only the interested friendship of the needy. And in the management of their estates much litigation obstinately pursued caused internal dissension, was costly, and gained them only bitter enemies. Had the monasteries been allowed to exist, probably these evils would have cured themselves. But, owing to these evils,--to the decline of monastic influence of which they were the cause,--the Dissolution, once decided upon, could be carried out with terrible swiftness and completeness; no influence nor power which the religious could wield was able to delay or avert the blow struck by the king. Within a few years over one thousand houses were closed and their lands and property confiscated.
