These German occurrences of 1431 to 1525 point a different moral from that which is very commonly drawn from the events of 1536 to 1540 in England. The Dissolution is often described by popular writers as an unmixed calamity for the poor. But Professors Pollard and Savine, Mr R. H. Tawney and Mr H. A. L. Fisher have done much to put this event in its true proportions; and, serious as the question is in itself, it need not detain us here beyond this single chapter.

We have seen how many lines of evidence tend to suggest that the monk was not essentially different from other landlords; that he was capitalist first, and churchman afterwards. Let me here add the testimony of that friar who wrote Dives and Pauper in Chaucer's day, one of our most valuable witnesses on social questions (Com. IV, c. 7):