"I thank you, my lord, for your good cheer, but I may not endure to have my laws broken in my sight; my attorney must speak with you."
10. Then there was "trouble"; and the earl thought himself very fortunate in getting out of the "scrape" by paying a small fine of £10,000. It was very awkward for a man to be a noble in Tudor times. He never knew exactly where he was. The king might be making a great fuss with him one day, clapping him in the Tower a few days after, and then chopping off his head and ornamenting London Bridge with it.
11. Well, this did away with the necessity for big fortified houses which might contain barracks for soldiers, and so we find that the new houses, built in Tudor times, were less like fortresses than they had been before. More attention was now paid to the size and convenience of the rooms. This sixteenth century was a great time for the building of large houses; indeed, the new nobles had better ideas of what a comfortable house was than the older barons had.
Summary.—In the time of King Edward III many Norman castles were altered so as to be more comfortable dwelling-places. Most of them could hold bands of men-at-arms.
King Henry VII put down these large bands of retainers, and the new nobles whom he made were not allowed to keep up bands of men-at-arms. The need for castle-dwellings was gone. The new nobles were most of them raised from the merchant class. They had great ideas of comfort, and the age of Tudor houses began.
[CHAPTER XXXIX]
THE RUINS OF THE MONASTERIES AND THE NEW BUILDINGS
1. In early Tudor times our towns were much more picturesque than they are to-day. That was chiefly owing to the fact that there were in every town so many religious houses, colleges, and hospitals. These buildings all had grounds of their own in the town, some more, some less; but these open spaces and garden grounds, though they were not open to the public, all helped to make the town airy, and to give variety to the view.
2. The buildings themselves were all different, and many of them were hundreds of years old. Towers, spires, turrets, gables, gateways, and archways in all styles of architecture abounded. There were, of course, many things in the towns which we should not have liked, but they had a pleasant variety which our modern towns have not. Thousands of streets in our towns are just rows and rows of houses, all alike, all ugly, and very dull and dreary to look at and to live in.
3. In the reign of King Henry VIII all the religious houses were suppressed, and given up into the king's hands. The life that had gone on in them for centuries came to an end. Both in town and country districts there were many people besides those who actually lived in them to whom this made a great difference—people who, in one way or another, got their living out of the monasteries. Shutting up the monasteries threw all these people, so to speak, out of work. That meant a great deal of suffering.