accept as proven Father Gasquet's pious and laborious rehabilitation.1 All contemporary All contemporary authorities agree that the pre-Reformation Church was steeped in worldliness. The English monasteries were not likely to have improved since Archbishop Morton described their condition, half a century earlier, as similarly deplorable, or Wolsey at a later period; nor is there any ground for imagining them as better than their Continental brethren, whose lapses were the subject of bitter reprehension by censors of their own faith. The Franciscan, Dr. Thomas Murner, who was subsequently one of Luther's most vituperative opponents, in his Narrenbeschwerung assumes as a matter of course that all parish priests kept concubines, and all priests and monks meddle with men's wives, while in the nunneries she who has most children is reckoned the abbess.2 A more sober witness is Abbot Trithemius, whose description of the houses of his own Benedictine Order we have seen above. Scarce anything, indeed, can be conceived worse than the condition of the German convents as detailed in a document drawn up by order of the Emperor Ferdinand in 1562, to stimulate the Council of Trent to action. In Italy there is ample evidence that the regular Orders were no better; and as for France, it is sufficient to refer to the description, by the Council of Paris in 1521, of the entire absence of discipline in capitular and conventual life. In fact, the whole conventual system was so corrupt that, as we shall see, the cardinals whom Paul III. in 1538 charged to draw up a plan of reform for the Church proposed to abolish all the conventual Orders, in order to relieve the people of their evil

4

1 Gasquet's Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries, Chap. IX.

2 Th. Murner's Narrenbeschwerung, Ed. Scheible, Stuttgart, 1846.

3 Le Plat, Monumentt. Concil. Trident. V .244-5.

4 Pastor, Geschichte den Päpste, III. 126 (Ed. 1895).

5 Concil. Parisiens. ann. 1521, cap. 2, 3, 4 (Labbe et Coleti Supplem. V, 518-19).

1

example, and to place the nunneries under episcopal jurisdiction. That public opinion in England took the same view of the monastic establishments would appear from the travels of Nicander Nucius, who visited England about 1545, and who, in relating the story of their suppression, gives as damaging an account of their morality as Bishop Burnet or any of those who have been classed as their special defamers.2 The impartial student may therefore not unreasonably conclude that, in view of the state of monastic morals everywhere else in Christendom, the assertion that England was an exception requires stronger evidence than has been produced.

That a portion at least of the people were eager for the secularisation of the religious houses is apparent from the virulence of the assault upon them in the notorious document known as "The Beggars' Petition." It calculates that, besides the tithes, one-third of the kingdom was ecclesiastical property, and that these vast possessions were devoted to the support of a body of men who found their sole serious occupation in destroying the peace of families and corrupting the virtue of women. The economical injury to the Commonwealth, and the interference with the royal prerogative of the ecclesiastical system, were argued with much cogency, and the King was entreated to destroy it by the most summary methods. That any one should venture to publish so violent an attack upon the existing Church, at a time when punishment so prompt followed all indiscretions of this nature, renders this production peculiarly significant both as to

1 Alius abusus corrigendus est in ordinibus religiosorum quod adeo multi deformati sunt ut magno sint scandalo sæcularibus ex emplumque plurimum noceant. Conventuales ordines abolendos esse putamus omnes. . . . Abusus alius turbat Christianum populum in monialibus quæ sunt sub cura fratrum conventualium, ubi plerisque monasteriis fiunt publica sacrilegia, cum maximo omnium scandalo.-Le Plat, Monumentt. Concil. Trident. II. 601-2 (Lovanii, 1782).

2 Travels of Nicander Nucius, pp. 68-71 (Camden Soc.).

the temper of the educated portion of the people and the presumed intentions of the King.1

Whether the reports of the visitors were true or false, they served the purpose of those who procured them. The Parliament which met 4 February, 1536, was composed almost exclusively of members selected by the court and presumably submissive to the royal will. Yet, when a bill was introduced suppressing all houses whose landed revenues did not exced £200, it seems to have taken the House by surprise. There were hesitation and delay, and tradition relates that it required the personal urgency of the King, accompanied by threats and the reading of the reports of the visitors, to obtain its enactment. To justify

1 As published in the Harleian Miscellany, "The Beggars' Petition "bears the date of 1538, but internal evidence would assign it to a time anterior to the suppression of the monasteries, and Burnet attributes it to the period under consideration, saying that it was written by Simon Fish, of Gray's Inn, that it took mightily with the public, and that when it was handed to the King by Ann Boleyn, “he lik'd it well, and would not suffer anything to be done to the author" (Hist. Reform. I. 160). Froude, indeed, assigns it to the date of 1528, and states that Wolsey issued a proclamation against it, and further, that Simon Fish, the author, died in 1528 (Hist, Engl. Ch. VI.), while Strype (Eccles Memorials I. 165) includes it in a list of books prohibited by Cuthbert, Bishop of London, in 1526. In the edition of 1546, the date of 1524 is attributed to it.

The tone of that which was thus equally agreeable to the court and to the city may be judged from the following extracts, which are by no means the plainest spoken that might be selected.

"§ 13. Yea, and what do they more? Truly, nothing but apply themselves by all the sleights they may to have to do with every man's wife, every man's daughter, and every man's maid; that cuckoldry should reign over all among your subjects; that no man should know his own child; that their bastards might inherit the possessions of every man, to put the right-begotten children clean beside their inheritance, in subversion of all estates and godly order.

"§ 16. Who is she that will set her hands to work to get three-pence a day and may have at least twenty-pence a day to sleep an hour with a friar, a monk, or a priest? Who is he that would labour for a groat a day, and may have at least twelvepence a day to be a bawd to a priest, a monk, or a friar?

"§ 31. Wherefore, if your grace will set their sturdy loobies abroad in the world, to get them wives of their own, to get their living with their labour, in the sweat of their faces, according to the commandment of God, Gen. iii., to give other idle people, by their example, occasion to go to labour; tye these holy, idle thieves to the carts to be whipped naked about every market-town, till they will fall to labour, that they may, by their importunate begging, not take away the alms that the good Christian people would give unto us sore, impotent, miserable people your

bedemen."

2

Gasquet, op.

cit., pp. 311-12.-Gairdner, Calendar, Vol. X. p. xlv.

it, the preamble recites that "manifest sin, vicious, carnal and abominable living is daily used and committed commonly in such little and small abbeys, priories and religious houses of monks, canons and nuns, where the congregation of such religious persons is under the number of twelve persons," and that this increases in spite of continual visitations during the past two hundred years, so that the only hope of amendment is to transfer their inmates to the "diverse and great solemn monasteries of this realm wherein (thanks be to God) religion is right well kept and observed." The distinction between the "great solemn monasteries," which were praised, and the small ones, which were reviled, was a trifle illogical, but probably no one ventured to criticise the inconsistency, and the bill was passed.

Three hundred and seventy-six houses were swept away by this Act, and the "Court of Augmentations of the King's Revenue was established to take charge of the lands and goods thus summarily escheated. The rents which thus fell to the King were valued at £32,000 a year, and the movable property at £100,000, while the commissioners were popularly supposed to have been "as careful to enrich themselves as to increase the King's revenue." Stokesley, Bishop of London, remarked, concerning the transaction, that "these lesser houses were as thorns soon plucked up, but the great abbeys were like petrified old oaks; yet they must needs follow, and so would others do in Christendom before many years were passed." But Stokesley, however true a prophet in the general scope of his observation, was mistaken as to the extreme facility of eradicating the humble thorns. The country was not so easily reconciled to the change as the versatile, more intelligent, and less reverent inhabitants of the cities. Henry, unluckily, not only had not abrogated

1 27 Henry VIII. cap. 28.

Purgatory by proclamation, but had specially recommended the continuance of prayers and masses for the dead,1 and thousands were struck with dread as to the future prospects of themselves and their dearest kindred when there should be few to offer the sacrifice of the Mass for the benefit of departed souls, to say nothing of those which had been paid for and not yet celebrated. The traveller and the mendicant, too, missed the ever open door and the coarse but abundant fare which smoothed the path of the humble wayfarer. Discontent spread widely, and was soon manifested openly. To meet this, most of the lands were sold at a very moderate price to the neighbouring gentry, under condition of exercising free hospitality to supply the wants of those who had hitherto been dependent on conventual charity.

2

The plan was only partially successful, and soon another element of trouble made itself apparent. Of the monks whose houses were suppressed, those who desired to continue a monastic life were transferred to the larger foundations, while the rest took "capacities," 3 under promise of a reasonable allowance for their journey home.

3

1 Articles devised by the Kinges Highnes Majestie, ann. 1536 (Formularies of Faith, Oxford, 1856, p. XXXI.).

2 Burnet, I. 193-4, 222-4;-Parl. Hist. I. 526-7. To our modern notions, there is something inexpressibly disgusting in the openness with which bribes were tendered to Cromwell by those who were eager to obtain grants of abbey lands (Suppression of Monasteries, passim). On the other hand, the abbots and abbesses who feared for their houses had as little scruple in offering him large sums for his protection. Thus the good Bishop Latimer renders himself the intermediary (16 Dec., 1536) of an offer from the Prior of Great Malvern of 500 marks to the King and 200 to Cromwell to preserve that foundation; while the Abbot of Peterboro' tendered the enormous sum of 2500 marks to the King and £300 to Cromwell (Ibid. 150, 179). The liberal disposition of the latter seems to have made an impression, for, though he could not save his abbey, he was appointed the first Bishop of Peterboro'-a see erected upon the ruins of the house.

3 "They be very pore, and can have lytyll serves withowtt ther capacytes. The bischoypps and curettes be very hard to them, withowtt they have ther capacytes." -The Bishop of Dover to Cromwell, 10 March, 1538 (Suppression of Monasteries, p. 193). These "capacities" empowered them to perform the functions of secular priests. The good bishop pleads that certain poor monks may obtain them without paying the usual fee.