[702] Hibbert, The Dissolution of the Monasteries, pp. 209–210.
[703] Ibid., p. 210.
[704] Hist. MSS. Com., C.D. 3218, pp. 322–323 (MSS. of Earl of Leicester at Holkham Hall).
[705] For Whitby and Washerne, see pp. 285 and 194. In 1545 the tenants of the manor of Egglesdon, formerly the property of the monastery of Sion, proceed against Palmer, the grantee, in the Court of Star Chamber for evicting tenants and other oppressions (Leadam, E. H. R., vol. viii. pp. 684–696).
[706] More, Utopia, p. 31 (Pitt Press edition): “Noblemen and gentlemen, yea, and certain abbotts, holy men no doubt ... leave no ground for tillage, they enclose all to pasture.” For a case of claiming a bondman, see Selden Society, Select Cases in the Court of Star Chamber, Carter v. The Abbot of Malmesbury. For conversion of copyholds to tenancies at will, Selden Society, Select Cases in the Court of Requests, Kent and other inhabitants of Abbot’s Ripton v. St. John. The change was alleged to have been made in 1471.
[707] The opposite view is expressed by Gasquet, Henry the Eighth and the English Monasteries, chap. xxii. For a criticism of it see Savine, Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, vol. i. pp. 263–267, and pp. 245–260 for facts as to lay administrators. Hibbert, op. cit., pp. 210–211, who writes of Staffordshire, supports Savine rather than Gasquet. The evidence of Aske cannot be quoted as though what was true of the northern houses were true of all. As a matter of fact, lay estates preserved the old conditions in the north long after the dissolution (see pp. 189–191). The hatred of the new landlords is proof that they were specially detestable, rather than that the monasteries had been above all ordinary economic considerations.
[708] Quoted by Gasquet, op. cit., p. 464, from a document written about 1591.
[709] e.g. Paget’s letter to Somerset, July 7, 1549 (Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials). Neville, De furoribus Norfolcensium Ketto Duce, 1575. The words put into the mouths of the landed gentry by Crowley in The Way to Wealth (E. E. T. S.) no doubt represent their attitude fairly: “Nowe if I should demand of the gredie cormoraunts what they thinke should be the cause of sedition, they would saie, 'The paisent knaves be too welthy, provender pricketh them. They knowe no obedience, they regard no lawes, they would have no gentlemen, they would have all men like themselves, they would have all things commune. They would not have us master of that which is our owne. They will appoint us what rent we shall take for our grounds.... They will caste down our parkes and lay our pastures open.... They wyll compel the Kyng to graunt theyr requests.... We wyll tech them to know theyr betters, and because they would have all in common we will leave them nothing.'”
[710] Appendix to Introduction to The Commonweal of this Realm of England (Lamond), p. lix.
[711] Ibid., p. lxv.: “This was it that byt the mare by the thombe.”