Why, sir, in England and Wales alone, there were of these
institutions of different sizes; I mean monasteries, and
chantries and chapels, and great hospitals; considerably
upwards of three thousand; all of them fair buildings, many of
them of exquisite beauty. There were on an average in every
shire at least twenty structures such as this was; in this
great county double that number: establishments that were as
vast and as magnificent and as beautiful as your Belvoirs and
your Chatsworths, your Wentworths and your Stowes. Try to
imagine the effect of thirty or forty Chatsworths in this
county the proprietors of which were never absent. You
complain enough now of absentees. The monks were never non-
resident. They expended their revenue among those whose
labour had produced it. These holy men too built and planted
as they did everything else for posterity: their churches were
cathedrals; their schools colleges; their halls and libraries
the muniment rooms of kingdoms; their woods and waters, their
farms and gardens, were laid out and disposed on a scale and
in a spirit that are now extinct: they made the country
beautiful, and the people proud of their country."
"Yet if the monks were such public benefactors, why did not
the people rise in their favour?"
"They did, but too late.
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