e used for anti-national purposes, as also
that it was the confiscation of wealth which never acted secretly and
which had no interest, as have our chief moneylenders, in political
corruption. It was a vast undertaking and, in the truest sense of the
word, a revolutionary one, such as Europe had not seen until that
moment, and perhaps has not seen since.

It was effected with ease, because there did not reside in the public
opinion of the time any strong body of resistance.

The change of religion, in so far as a change was threatened (and upon
that the mass of the parish priests themselves, and still more the
mass of the laity, were very hazy), did not affect the mind of a
people famous throughout Europe for their intense and often
superstitious devotion; but in some odd way the segregation of the
great communities, their vast wealth, and perhaps an external
contradiction between their original office and their present
privilege, forbade any united or widespread enthusiasm in their
defence.

Englishmen rose upon every side when they thought that the vital
mysteries of the Faith were threatened. The risings were only put down
by the use of foreign mercenaries and by the most execrable cruelty,
nor would even these means have sufficed had the rebels formed a clear
plan, or had the purpose of Henry himself in matters of religion been
definite and capable of definite attack. But the country, though ready
to fight for Dogma, was not ready to fight for the monasteries. It
might, perhaps, have fought if the attack upon them had been direct
and universal. If Henry had laid down a programme of suppressing
religious bodies in general, he probably could not have carried it
out, but he laid down no such programme. The Dissolution of the
smaller houses was imagined by the most devout to be a statesmanlike
measure. Many of them, like Medmenham, were decayed; their wealth was
not to be used for the private luxury of the King or of nobles; it was
to swell the revenues of the greater foundations or to be applied to
pious or honourable public use. But the example once given, the attack
upon the greater houses necessarily followed; and the whole episode is
a vivid lesson in the capital principle of statesmanship that men are
governed by routine and by the example of familiar things. Render
possible to the mass of men the conception that the road, they
habitually follow is not a necessity of their lives, and you may exact
of them almo