The King took the lands for himself and sold them
at the best possible price he could get to the capitalists of his day, who happened to be our moderately old nobility in the making. The Dukes of Devonshire and of Bedford no doubt bought in a glutted market, but they paid cash for what they got. This fact is not altered by the legal custom, when the King was the vendor, of describing him as "granting unto the aforesaid William Russell," or whoever it might be, such-and-such manors, lands, and hereditaments. There may have been sacrilege and plunder on the part of Henry VIII., as there may be now on the part of the present Government, but there was certainly nothing that could be se described in purchases for a " valuable consideration." To add to the absurdities of
the controversy, we actually witnessed a Liberal newspaper tactfully alluding to the old tradition that the holders of Abbey lands were and are all accursed. The Liberal journalist in question forgot to add the delightful retort made by the man who was told that almost all the original holders of Abbey lands had died violent deaths. " So did almost all the Apostles." A man must have indeed a feeble brain or con- science, however high his Church views, who worried himself because his ancestors bought lands from Henry VIII.
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