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.
In the hastiness of the overthrow some conventual
books were destroyed, or stolen, or sold off at low prices.
In a few places damage was done even before the actual
dissolution. At Christ Church, Canterbury, for example,
the drunken servants of a royal commission carelessly
brought about a fire, almost entirely destroying the
library of Prior Selling,[1] which he probably designed to
add to the collection of his monastery.
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