Protestantism in England From the Times of Henry VIII - James Aitken Wylie

Act was passed; and the number of spiritual peers
was in excess of the lay members in the Upper
Houses.[19] In Yorkshire, where the monks had
many sympathizers, who regarded the dissolution
of their houses as at once an impiety and a robbery,
this much-needed reformation provoked an
insurrection which at first threatened to be
formidable, but was eventually suppressed without
much difficulty.
Some few of the monasteries continued to the
close to fulfill the ends of their institution. They
cultivated a little learning, they practiced a little
medicine, and they exercised a little charity. The
orphan and the outcast found asylum within their
walls, and the destitute and the decayed tradesman
participated in the alms which were distributed at
their threshold. The traveler, when he heard the
vesper bell, turned aside to sleep in safety under
their roof, and again set forth when the morning
star appeared. But the majority of these places had
scandalously perverted their ways, and were simply
nurseries of superstition and indolence, and of all
the evils that are born of these two. Nevertheless,
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