Cromwell vicegerent-Visitation of the Monasteries-Delinquencies of monastic inmates, in some cases-Official corruption-Examples of duty performed by male and female heads of houses-Dissolution of the smaller monasteries-Parliamentary attempts to regulate prices and the quality of manufactures-Such endeavours futile or injurious-Death of Queen Catherine-May-day at Greenwich-Previous summoning of a special Commission -Arrests-Queen Anne imprisoned in the Tower-Her deportment--Her letter to the King-Cranmer's letter to him-True bills found against Anne, her brother, and four others-Trial of the four commoners-Trial of Anne Boleyn and Lord Rochfort-Execution of the five men pronounced guilty-Account of the execution of Anne by an eye-witness -Marriage of Henry to Jane Seymour-General remarks on the question of Anne Boleyn's guilt or innocence-Parliament and a new law of succession-The Princess Mary. THOMAS CROMWELL has not suffered the grass to grow under his feet since he went to the king, in 1529, to "make or mar it." During seven years of momentous change, from the position of the servant of a fallen mastervery likely himself to be hanged, as some men said he has been raised through a succession of offices-master of the jewels, chancellor of the exchequer, secretary of state-to wield the most potent ecclesiastical authority as the king's vicegerent. The archbishops and bishops may direct the consciences of the clergy. Cromwell will look after their revenues. It has been truly observed that "Cromwell, after the fall of his master, Wolsey, gained on the affections of Henry VIII. till he acquired as great an ascendancy, and nearly as much power, as the cardinal had possessed during the preceding part of the reign; and, whatever office he happened to hold, he was looked up to as the mover of the entire machine of the state." This 366 VISITATION OF THE MONASTERIES. [1535. observation is founded upon the whole tone of official correspondence from 1531 to 1540, when this powerful minister fell from his slippery elevation.* In that department of the British Museum called "the Cottonian Library," -a most valuable collection of MSS. made by Sir Robert Cotton early in the seventeenth century-there is a volume of letters and documents which furnish the most minute information as to the Visitation of the Monasteries, -the measure which preceded their dissolution. In the Chapter-house at Westminster were formerly many bundles of documents known as the Cromwell Papers; † from which the volume in the British Museum was probably a selection. At various times some of these most curious papers have been published. They exhibit, not only the means of forming a correct estimate of many of the real bearings of the great ecclesiastical revolution, but furnish many incidental views of a condition of society which was soon to be swept away, and leave no traces but ruined walls and sculptured columns, where the ivy creeps and the bat hides. The first Statute for the dissolution of the smaller monasteries, which immediately follows the visitation of 1535-6, says, of "the small abbeys, priories, and other religious houses of monks, canons, and nuns," that "many continual visitations have been heretofore had, by the space of two hundred years and more." ‡ Wolsey, as we have seen, suppressed some of these houses; and his servant Cromwell had experience of the mode of conducting such operations. But Wolsey applied their revenues to noble uses. How Cromwell applied them we feel to this hour-every time that a church is to be built, or a school founded, by voluntary aid. In the height of summer in 1535, three learned doctors set forth upon excursions into various parts of England, each having in his pocket a commission from the "vicegerent of the king in all his ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the realm." Dr. Layton is a most amusing correspondent of the vicegerent; and many a hearty laugh must there have been between the minister and "sundry divers fresh and quick wits, pertaining to his family; by whose industry and ingenious labours divers excellent ballads and books were contrived and set abroad concerning the suppression of the pope and all popish idolatry."§ Dr. Layton has capital stories to tell of the prior of Maiden Bradley, in Wilts, about his relics; and of his less ancient realities, namely, six children, of whom his sons "be tall men waiting upon him." || The worthy commissioner sent some of the curiosities to Cromwell, such as "Mary Magdalene's girdle." Articles of more intrinsic value were in his keeping: "I have crosses of silver and gold, some which I send you not now, because I have more that shall be delivered me this night by the prior of Maiden Bradley himself." The visitors anticipated that clause of the Act for the Suppression, which gave the king "all the ornaments, jewels, goods, and chattels" of the heads of the monastic houses, from the 1st of March, 1535. This was a large power to be entrusted to the visitors, and they never neglected to exercise it. They had rougher work to perform, which Dr. Layton, $ Fox, "Martyrs," quoted in Dr. Maitland's "Essays on the Reformation," p. 237. 66 Suppression of the Monasteries," p. 58. 1535.] DELINQUENCIES OF MONKS. 367 at any rate, appears to have set about with hearty goodwill, however odious that work may seem to our more fastidious notions of the office of a gentleAt Langdon, in Kent, was a small abbey, founded in 1192. It had several doors besides the front gate-" starting-holes" as the commissioner calls them. Dr. Layton comes suddenly upon Langdon, with his retinue; and descending from his horse orders his servants "surely to keep all back-doors and starting-holes." The abbot's lodging joined upon the fields and wood; and there the commissioner knocked and knocked, but heard nothing, "saving the abbot's little dog that, within his door fast locked, bayed and barked." The valiant doctor of law seized a pole-axe, and dashed the abbot's door in pieces; "and about house I go with the pole-axe in my hand, for the abbot is a dangerous desperate knave, and a hardy." Out of one of the startingholes "rushed a tender demoiselle," who was conveyed to prison at Dover; "and I brought holy father abbot to Canterbury, and here in Christchurch I will leave him in prison."* There are too many such stories in these letters. But we have one painful feeling in reading them-even more painful than the exposure of hypocrisy and licentiousness-the tone in which these matters are spoken of. We heartily agree in the opinion of one who, in common with all earnest men, hates scoffers :-"One would think that the sight of such an abomination of desolation as they professed to see, must have filled all who had anything like the love of God in their hearts, or even the fear of God before their eyes, with grief and consternation." † Dr. Layton and Dr. Legh have gone together to Fountains Abbey. They write that the abbot is defamed by the whole people for his profligate life, and for his dilapidation of the house and wasting of the woods. Before the commissioners came he possessed himself of a jewel, and a cross of gold; and sold them, with plate of the house, to a goldsmith of Cheap. The commissioners properly compelled the abbot to resign. He joined the Yorkshire insurrec * "Suppression of the Monasteries," p. 75. + Maitland, p. 225. 368 OFFICIAL CORRUPTION. [1535. tion in 1536, and was hanged. A writer who derives this relation from the same source as ourselves, says that "tourists, who in their day-dreams among these fair ruins are inclined to complain of the sacrilege which wasted the houses of prayer," may study with advantage the account of the "moral ruin," of which "the outward beautiful ruin was but a symbol and a consequence.' ."* May we not add that the historian, who presents this account of the low morality of the ancient clergy, might have also given us the following glimpse of the noble aims of the new statesmen? To Cromwell, the learned commissioners wrote, in the same letter which describes the frauds of the abbot, these significant words :-" There is a monk of the house, called Marmaduke, to whom Mr. Timms left a prebend in Ripon church, now abiding upon the same prebend, the wisest monk within England of that coat, and well learned-twenty years officer and ruler of all that house,-a wealthy fellow, which will give you six hundred marks to make him abbot there, and pay you immediately after the election." That this mode of propitiating favour was perfectly understood before the final destruction of the monastic houses was resolved upon, may be inferred from a letter of Latimer, of all men; who does not hesitate to write to Cromwell to avert the suppression of the priory of Great Malvern, by saying, "If five hundred marks to the king's highness, with two hundred marks to yourself for your good will, might occasion the promotion of his intent, at least way for the time of his life, he doubteth not to make his friends for the same." But, however Latimer, in common with other honest men, might have compromised with the political corruption of the time, he appears at this stage of the Reformation, and indeed at a later period, not to have thought that an unmixed good was to be attained by the total annihilation of the religious houses. Pleading for this prior of Great Malvern, he says, "He would be an humble suitor to your lordship, and by the same to the king's good grace, for the upstanding of his foresaid house, and continuance of the same to many good purposes; not in monkery, he meaneth not so, God forbid; but any other ways as should be thought and seem good to the king's majesty, as to maintain teaching, preaching, study with praying, and, to the which he is much given, good housekeeping, for to the virtue of hospitality he hath been greatly inclined from his beginning "§ In a sermon before Edward VI. Latimer says, "Abbeys were ordained for the comfort of the poor." That the monastic establishments might have been retained, or their revenues applied, for purposes of Christian education, was the opinion of the more conscientious reformers. That retreats for females, set apart from the world to do offices of piety and charity, would be institutions compatible with the most enlarged freedom of religious opinion, is not disproved by any allega tions of the laxity of some nunneries, when thousands of helpless beings were turned forth, under vows of chastity, into a world for the struggles of which they were so unfitted. The abbot of Faversham, who had been in his office from the time of Henry VII., was threatened with removal on account of his advanced age. The old man had some ideas of what his duties were, when he wrote, "If the chief office and profession of an abbot be, as I have Froude, vol. ii. p. 423. § Ibid., p. 149. "Suppression of the Monasteries," p. 101. 1536.] DISSOLUTION OF THE SMALLER MONASTERIES. 369 ever taken it, to live chaste and solitarily, to be separate from the intromeddling of worldly things, to serve God quietly, to distribute his faculties in refreshing of poor indigent persons, to have a vigilant eye to the good order and rule of his house and the flock to him committed in God, I trust, your favour and benevolence obtained (whereof I right humbly require you), I myself may and am as well able yet now to supply and continue these parts as ever I was in all my life."* Let us not, in charity, believe that all these men were of lying tongues and evil lives. Let us not imagine that all nuns were sensual and ignorant. The very commissioners themselves speak of many nunneries as above all suspicion. The prioress of Catesby is represented as a wise, discreet, and very religious woman; her nuns devout and of good obedience. "The said house standeth in such a quarter, much to the relief of the king's people, and his grace's poor subjects there likewise more relieved."+ If we may form an opinion from the preamble of the statute of 1536, by which religious houses not above the yearly value of two hundred pounds were given to the king, the framers of the act, and the parliament which assented to it, intended the suppression of the monasteries there to stop. The statute proposes that the members of the smaller houses shall be removed to "divers great and solemn monasteries of this realm, wherein, thanks be to God, religion is right well kept and observed." This was deliberately asserted, after the visitation had been proceeding for more than six months. The statute of 1539, simply entitled, "An Act for dissolution of Abbeys," swept the whole monastic system away, without assigning any reason beyond the flagrant untruth, that the abbots, abbesses, and other governors of the houses, "of their own free and voluntary minds, goodwills, and assents, without constraint, coaction, or compulsion," had since the 4th of February, 1536, assigned their possessions to the king, and renounced all title to the We merely notice this final act of confiscation here; and pass on to the general course of our narrative. same. The act for the dissolution of the smaller religious houses was passed in March. The parliament was dissolved on the 4th of April. It had existed for seven years, during which it had assisted in some of the greatest changes of internal policy which England had ever witnessed. It had laboured, too, as previous parliaments had laboured, in devising remedies for social evils, after the prescriptive fashion of believing that laws could regulate prices, and that industry was to be benefited by enacting how manufacturers should tan leather or dye cloth, and what trades should be carried on in particular towns. It is held to be evidence of the calmness with which the statesmen of this parliament proceeded in their great work of ecclesiastical reform, that they passed "acts to protect the public against the frauds of money-making tradesmen; to provide that shoes and boots should be made of honest leather; that food should be sold at fair prices; that merchants should part with their goods at fair profits." Such battles against "those besetting basenesses of human nature, now held to be so invincible that the influences of them are assumed as the fundamental axioms of economic science," are declared to be more glorious "than even the English constitution or the English * "Suppression," &c. p. 104. VOL. II. Ellis, First Series, vol. ii. p. 72. BB |