A.D. 1535. But if a to meet, let to a com with Eng in their wish, then the bishop was to urge them CH. 9. to come to some understanding with England on the resolutions which they desired to maintain. September. Let them communicate to the English bishops council is such points as they would stick to without them com relenting;' and the two countries, standing mon undertogether, would be so much stronger to withstand standing their adversaries.' Without definitely promising land. to sign the Confession of Augsburg, Henry held out strong hopes that he might sign that confession, if they would send representatives to London to discuss the articles of it with himself.* The bishop was to apologize for any previous slack- The bishop ness on the king's part in his communications apologize with the elector, and to express his hopes, that for the future their relations might be those of cordial unanimity. He was especially to warn the elector to beware of re-admitting the papal supremacy under any pretext. The English had shaken off the pope, 'provoked thereunto in such wise as would have provoked them rather to have expelled him from them by wrong, than to suffer him so to oppress them with injuries.' If In case they shall require it is not to be doubted, and also, that the King's Majesty shall I durst boldly affirm,' the said receive the whole confession of bishop shall say, ' that the King's Germany as it is imprinted, the Highness will enter the same bishop shall say that when the [league].' But it shall be neKing's Highness shall have seen cessary for the said duke and and perused the articles of the the princes confederate to send league, and shall perceive that to the King's Highness such there is in it contained none personages as might devise, conother articles but such as may clude, and condescend in every be agreeable with the Gospel, article. and such as his Highness ought MS. (and conveniently may maintain, Ibid. Rolls House : was to for all past coolness, Сн. 9. A.D. 1535. And to con ings against in Germany they opened the great gate' to let him in again, he would rebuild the fortresses September. that were thrown down, and by little and little clude with bring all to the former estate again.' Finally, fresh warn with respect to the council-if a council there was to be they must take care that it was held in a place indifferent, where truth might be heard or spoken; 'considering that else in a council, were not the remedy that all good men seek, but the mischief that all good men did abhor.' the pope. These advances, consented to by Henry, were the act of Cromwell, and were designed as the commencement of a Fœdus Evangelicum—a league of the great reforming nations of Europe. It was a grand scheme, and history can never cease to regret that it was grasped at with too faint a hand. The bishop succeeded in neutralizing partially the scheming of the French, partially in attracting the sympathies of the German powers towards England; but the two great streams of the Teutonic race, though separated by but a narrow ridge of difference, were unable to reach a common channel. Their genius drove them into courses which were to run side by side for centuries, yet ever to remain divided. And if the lines in which their minds have flowed seem to be converging at last, and if hereafter Germans and English are again to unite in a single faith, the remote meeting point is still invisible, and the terms of possible agreement can be but faintly conjectured. CHAPTER X. THE VISITATION OF THE MONASTERIES. MANY high A.D. 1535. ANY high interests in England had been CH. 10. injured by the papal jurisdiction; but none had suffered more vitally than those of the monastic establishments. These establishments had been injured, not by fines and exactions—for oppression of this kind had been terminated by the statutes of provisors,-but because, except at rare and remote intervals, they had been left to themselves, without interference and without surveillance. They were deprived of those salutary checks which all human institutions require if they are to be saved from sliding into corruption. The religious houses, almost without exception, Exemption were not amenable to the authority of the bishops. of the The several societies acknowledged obedience only houses to the heads of their order, who resided abroad; control. or to the pope, or to some papal delegate. Thus any regularly conducted visitation was all but impossible. The foreign superiors, who were forbidden by statute to receive for their services more than certain limited and reasonable fees, would not undertake a gratuitous labour; and the visitations, attempted with imperfect powers* by the *The English archbishops were embarrassed by the statutes of provisors in applying for plenary powers to Rome. If they accepted commissions they ac- religious from IO. A.D. 1535. the monas tween theory and fact. The original CH. 10. English archbishops, could be resisted successfully under pleas of exemption and obedience to the rules of the orders.* Thus the abbeys had gone their own way, careless of the gathering indignation with which they were regarded by the people, and believing that in their position they held a sacred shield which would protect them Contrast in for ever. In them, as throughout the catholic teries be system, the sadness of the condition into which they had fallen, was enhanced by the contrast between the theory and the degenerate reality. Originally, and for many hundred years after their foundation, the regular clergy were the finest body of men of which mankind in their chequered history can boast. They lived to illustrate, in systematic simplicity, the universal law of sacrifice. In their three chief vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, they surrendered everything which makes life delightful. Their business on earth was to labour and to pray: to labour for other men's bodies, to pray for other men's souls. Wealth flowed in upon them; the world, in its instinctive loyalty to greatness, laid its lands and its possessions at their feet; and for a time was seen the notable spectacle of property administered as a trust, from which the owners reaped no benefit, except increase of toil. The genius of the age expended its highest efforts to provide fitting tabernacles for the divine spirit which they enshrined; and alike in village and city, the majestic houses of the Father of man 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 28. The statute says that many visitations had been made in the two hundred years preceding the Reformation, but had failed wholly of success. kind and his especial servants towered up in CH. 10. sovereign beauty, symbols of the civil supre- A.D. 1535. macy of the church, and of the moral sublimity of life and character which had won the homage and the admiration of the Christian nations. Ever at the sacred gates sate Mercy, pouring out relief from a never-failing store to the poor and the suffering; ever within the sacred aisles the voices of holy men were pealing heavenwards, in intercession for the sins of mankind; and influences so blessed were thought to exhale around those mysterious precincts, that the outcasts of society-the debtor, the felon, and the outlaw-gathered round the walls, as the sick men sought the shadow of the apostle, and lay there sheltered from the avenging hand till their sins were washed from off their souls. Through the storms of war and conquest the abbeys of the middle ages floated, like the ark upon the waves of the flood, inviolate in the midst of violence, through the awful reverence which surrounded them. 'religion' The soul of religion,'* however, had died The life of out of it for many generations before the Refor- left it in the 14th mation. At the close of the fourteenth century, century. Wycliffe had cried that the rotting trunk cumbered the ground, and should be cut down. It had not been cut down; it had been allowed to stand for a hundred and fifty more years; and now it was indeed plain that it could remain no longer. The boughs were bare, the stem was * To enter 'religion' was the technical expression for taking the VOWS. |