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230 YORK.
both at home and abroad. But he was too astute a
man not to see how important a part was being
played by the New Learning which had sprung up,
and he took measures to promote its spread by the
magnificent foundation at Oxford which bore for a
time the name of Cardinal College, and a smaller
one at his native town of Ipswich. The endowments
attached to these foundations were not, however, the
outcome of the cardinal's personal munificence.
They came from another source,—from the suppression
of forty of the smaller monasteries,— "certain
exile and small monasteries, wherein neither God is
served ne religion kept." So Wolsey describes them
in his letter to the king.
But it was no high-handed act of mere arbitrar)-
power. All was done in due form, the dissolution
being sanctioned by two Bulls of Pope Clement VII.,
one dated April, 1524, the second in March of the
following year. A proviso was embodied in them
that the consent of the king, and the representatives
of the founders of the different religious houses,
should be obtained. Letters patent were accordingly
granted by the king, and the suppression was effected.
It was not an act devoid of precedent. Alien
priories in England had heretofore been dissolved,
and, either by royal grant or by purchase, they had, in
more than one instance, come into the hands of ecclesiastics
whose attachment to the church was indubitable,
and their revenues applied to educational purposes.
It was from this source that "William of
Wykeham endowed his colleges at Winchester and
Oxford. Chicheley and Waynflete endowed in like