Speed.
*** See note M, at the end of the volume.
Great murmurs were every where excited on account of these violences; and men much questioned whether priors and monks, who were only trustees or tenants for life, could, by any deed, however voluntary, transfer to the king the entire property of their estates, In order to reconcile the people to such mighty innovations, they were told that the king would never thenceforth have occasion to levy taxes, but would be able, from the abbey lands alone, to bear, during war as well as peace, the whole charges of government.[*] While such topics were employed to appease the populace, Henry took an effectual method of interesting the nobility and gentry in the success of his measures:[**] he either made a gift of the revenues of convents to his favorites and courtiers, or sold them at low prices, or exchanged them for other lands on very disadvantageous terms.
He was so profuse in these liberalities, that he is said to have given a woman the whole revenue of a convent, as a reward for making a pudding which happened to gratify his palate.[***] He also settled pensions on the abbots and priors, proportioned to their former revenues or to their merits; and gave each monk a yearly pension of eight marks: he erected six new bishoprics, Westminster, Oxford, Peterborough, Bristol, Chester, and Glocester; of which five subsist at this day: and by all these means of expense and dissipation, the profit which the king reaped by the seizure of church lands fell much short of vulgar opinion.

As the ruin of convents had been foreseen some years before it happened, the monks had taken care to secrete most of their stock, furniture, and plate; so that the spoils of the great monasteries bore not, in these respects, any proportion to those of the lesser.
* Coke's 4th Inst.fol.

44.
** Dugdale's Warwickshire, p.

800.
*** Fuller.
Besides the lands possessed by the monasteries, the regular clergy enjoyed a considerable part of the benefices of England, and of the tithes annexed to them; and these were also at this time transferred to the crown, and by that means passed into the hands of laymen; an abuse which many zealous churchmen regarded as the most criminal sacrilege.
The monks were formerly much at their ease in England, and enjoyed revenues which exceeded the regular and stated expense of the house.

We read of the abbey of Chertsey, in Surrey, which possessed seven hundred and forty-four pounds a year, though it contained only fourteen monks: that of Furnese, in the county of Lincoln, was valued at nine hundred and sixty pounds a year, and contained but thirty.[*] In order to dissipate their revenues, and support popularity, the monks lived in a hospitable manner; and besides the poor maintained from their offals, there were many decayed gentlemen who passed their lives in travelling from convent to convent, and were entirely subsisted at the tables of the friars.