It is indeed probable, that the blind submission of the people, during those ages, would render the friars and nuns more unguarded and more dissolute than they are in any Roman Catholic country at present; but still the reproaches, which it is safest to credit, are such as point at vices naturally connected with the very institution of convents, and with the monastic life.

The cruel and inveterate factions and quarrels, therefore, which the commissioners mentioned, are very credible among men, who, being confined together within the same walls, never can forget their mutual animosities, and who, being cut off from all the most endearing connections of nature, are commonly cursed with hearts more selfish, and tempers more unrelenting, than fall to the share of other men.

The pious frauds practised to increase the devotion and liberality of the people, may be regarded as certain, in an order founded on illusions, lies, and superstition.

The supine idleness also, and its attendant, profound ignorance, with which the convents were reproached, admit of no question; and though monks were the true preservers, as well as inventors, of the dreaming and captious philosophy of the schools, no manly or elegant knowledge could be expected among men, whose lives, condemned to a tedious uniformity, and deprived of all emulation, afforded nothing to raise the mind or cultivate the genius.
Some few monasteries, terrified with this rigorous inquisition carried on by Cromwell and his commissioners, surrendered their revenues into the king's hands; and the monks received small pensions as the reward of their obsequiousness.

Orders were given to dismiss such nuns and friars as were below four and twenty, whose vows were, on that account, supposed not to be binding.