back; and in more senses than one it paved the way for the general dissolution. Here and there in the country active resistance to the work of destruction was organized, and in the case of Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, and the North generally, the popular rising of the "pilgrimage of grace" was caused in the main, or at least in great measure, by the desire of the people at large to save the religious houses from ruthless destruction. The failure of the insurrection of the "Pilgrimage of Grace" was celebrated by the execution of twelve abbots, and, to use Henry's own words, by a wholesale "tying-up" of monks. By a new and ingenious process, appropriately called "Dissolution by Attainder", an abbey was considered by the royal advisers to fall into the king's hands by the supposed or constructive treason of its superior. In this way several of the larger abbeys, with all their revenues and possessions, came into Henry's hands as a consequence of the "Pilgrimage of Grace." The Parliament of 1536, it will be remembered, had granted Henry the possession only of the houses the annual value of which was less than 200 pounds. What happened in the three years that followed the passing of the At was briefly this: the king was ill satisfied with the actual results of what he had thought would prove a veritable gold mine. Personally, perhaps, he had not gained as much as he had hoped for from the dissolutions which had taken place. The property of the monks somehow seemed cursed by its origin; it passed from his control by a thousand-and-one channels, and he was soon thirsting for a greater prize, which, as the event showed, he was equally unable to guard for his own uses. By his instructions, visitors were once more set in motion against the larger abbeys, in which, according to the Act of 1536, religion was "right well kept and observed." Not having received any mandate from Parliament to authorize the extension of their proceedings, the royal agents...
