"
The problem is reduced to this, Was the Reformation desirable? Is
Protestantism a curse or a blessing? Would England and the world be
better off under the sway of medieval religion than under the influence
of modern Protestantism? If monasticism were a fetter on human liberty
and industry, if the monasteries were "so many seminaries of
superstition and of folly," there was but one thing to do--to break the
fetters and to destroy the monasteries. To have succeeded in so radical
a reform as that begun by King Henry, with forty thousand monks
preaching treason, would have been an impossibility. Henry cannot be
blamed because the monks chose to entangle themselves with politics and
to side with Rome as against the English nation.
_Results of the Dissolution_
Many important results followed the fall of the monasteries. The
majority of the House of Lords was now transferred from the abbots to
the lay peers. The secular clergy, who had been fighting the monks for
centuries, were at last accorded their proper standing in the church.
Numerous unjust ecclesiastical privileges were swept aside, and in many
respects the whole church was strengthened and purified. Credulity and
superstition began to decline. Ecclesiastical criminals were no longer
able to escape the just penalty for their crimes. Naturally all these
beneficent ends were not attained immediately. For a while there was
great disorder and distress. Society was disturbed not only by the
stoppage of monastic alms-giving, but the wandering monks, unaccustomed
to toil and without a trade, increased the confusion.
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