it is by all these limitations,
concerns only the land held at the moment of the Dissolution. Scores
of holdings, such as those of Lechlade, which was dissolved in
Catholic times, Windsor, which was exchanged as we have seen at the
time of the Conquest, I omit and confine myself only to the lands held
at the time of the Dissolution.

Yet these lands--though they concern only eight monasteries, though I
mention only those actually upon the banks of the river, and though I
omit from the list all small payments--put before one a series of
names which, to those familiar with the Thames, seems almost like a
voyage along the stream and appears to cover every portion of the
landscape with which travellers upon the river are familiar. Thus we
have Shifford, Eynsham, South Stoke, Radley, Cumnor, Witham, Botley,
the Hinkseys, Sandford, Shillingford, Swinford, Medmenham, Appleford,
Sutton, Wittenham, Culham, Abingdon, Goring, Cowley, Littlemore,
Cholsey, Nuneham, Wallingford, Pangbourne, Streatley, Stanton
Harcourt; and all this crowd of names upon the upper river is arrived
at without counting such properties as attached to the great
monasteries within towns, as, for example, to the monasteries of
Oxford. It is true that not all these names represent complete
manorial ownership. In a number of cases they stand for portions of
the manor only, but even in this list ten at least, and possibly
twelve, stand for complete manorial ownership. Then one must add
Sonning, Wargreave, Tilehurst, Chertsey, Egham, Cobham, Richmond, Ham,
Mortlake, Sheen, Kew, Chiswick, Staines, etc., of which many of the
most important, such as Staines, are full manorial possessions.

It is clearly evident, from such a very imperfect and rapidly drawn
list, what was the economic power of the great houses, and one may
conclude, even from the basis of such imperfect evidence, that the
directing force of economic effort throughout the Thames Valley was to
be found, right up to the Dissolution, in the chapter houses of
Reading, of Chertsey, and of Westminster, of Abingdon and of the
lesser houses.

In a word, the business of Henry might be compared to what may be in
future the business of some democratic European Government when it
lays its hands upon the fortunes of the great financial houses, but
with this double difference, that the confiscation to which Henry bent
himself was a confiscation of capital whose product did not leave the
country, and could not b