V 1. In 1531 the clergy in Convocation petitioned CHAP the King for an Act of Parliament by which the payment of annates should be abolished; suggesting A.D. 1534 that if the Pope resisted the operation of such an act England should withdraw from obedience to Rome. This declaration was nearly contemporaneous with the recognition of the royal supremacy by Con vocation. 2. A provisional act was passed in consequence, embodying the wishes and the suggestions of the clergy. This Act [23 Hen. VIII. cap. 20] did not come into operation for nearly three years, the King meanwhile endeavouring, but in vain, to bring about an amicable arrangement on the subject with the Pope. 3. In 1532-3, an act was passed abolishing the appellate jurisdiction of the See of Rome, and vesting it in the archbishops, bishops, and other ordinaries of the Church of England. But by the "Act of Submission," which shortly followed, a final appeal was permitted to the King in Chancery. 4. In 1534, the influence of the Pope in the appointments to English sees, and the profits which he derived from it, received its final death-blow from an act [25 Hen. VIII. cap. 20] which forbad the payment of first-fruits to him, and defined the manner in which bishops were in future to be appointed, by a nominal election of the person nominated by the King in letters missive accompanying the congé d'élire. 5. In the same year an act was passed [25 Hen. VIII. 21] confirmed by another in 1536, by which, although all that had been done by the Pope in previous times was allowed to stand for the sake of 278 PAPAL JURISDICTION FINALLY ABOLISHED CHAP the vested interests involved, no further authoritative documents from him were to run in England. V A. D. 1534 6. Finally, the Convocations of Canterbury and York, the Universities, and all the clergy of England endorsed as they had suggested-the Acts of the State, by declaring that "the Bishop of Rome has no greater jurisdiction conferred on him by God in this kingdom of England than any other foreign bishop." Thus the jurisdiction of the Pope was finally abolished in this country, being transferred in spiritual things to the local episcopate, in temporal things to the crown. What is called "Roman Catholic Emancipation" has led to a restoration of it, by sufferance of Parliament, over that part of the nation which belongs to the Roman Catholic sect, but the Church of England has rejected it once and for ever. CHAPTER VI WHE THE DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES [A.D 1535-A.D. 1545] VI be said JHEN Henry VIII. took upon himself to shut CHAP up all monasteries throughout the land, to appropriate their possessions, and to turn their inmates adrift, he accomplished his work in a tyrannical, unjust, cruel, and covetous manner. Most of the persons whom he used as his agents in the business were unprincipled men, for whom not a What is to word of good can be justly said; and most of those against the who encouraged and assisted the King in the dis- mode of solution did so for selfish objects, and for selfish objects alone. If the results of the dissolution had been wholly good, the manner in which those results were attained must still have been condemned as base, criminal, and sacrilegious; and the character of the men by whom they were brought about could not have been redeemed from just odium and abhorrence by them. dissolution that is to Yet the dissolution of the monasteries was not Not all without justification, and if the truth is to be told on be justly one side, it must be told on the other also. It is true that as the monastic principle is entirely said CHAP monastic system 280 MONASTIC SYSTEM ORIGINALLY ADMIRABLE a reasonable one, so its practical development in England had been attended with very noble results. That development was in itself a sign that a living Merits of and active Christianity was at work in the land; and there never was a finer human institution than that of the Benedictine order, which maintained civilization, saved learning from destruction, and raised glorious edifices, where a never-ceasing round of praise and prayer was offered to the Divine Majesty. And what the Benedictines were on a large scale, other communities of the religious often were on a smaller one. In theory the lives of all monks and nuns were spent in praying to God, and in working for Him; and there is good reason to believe that thousands upon thousands made their practice as consistent with their theory as human imperfection would allow. The idea that monastic institutions Absurd to were essentially opposed to good morals and a high essentially tone of Christianity, is one of those foolish notions which got hold of the popular mind in days when partisan falsehoods and profligate ribaldry were looked up to as authoritative evidence; but it is one of those notions which must vanish away as soon as historical truth is brought to light. suppose it evil But best systems wear out It is quite possible, however, that there may be a point at which the best of human institutions cease to be a benefit to society, at least in the form in which they were originally founded. To put this in an extreme form, it would have been folly to have maintained an order of Knights Templars after pilgrimages to the Holy Land had been discontinued; or to maintain the numerous mediæval hospitals which were provided for lepers in an age when that fearful disease had become almost extinct. teries VI It may be said, indeed, that such orders as that of CHAP the Benedictines had nothing of this special character about them, but were suited to all ages; and that it is doubtful whether an active Christianity could ever exist without some such association of men and women into praying and working communities. But, Monasallowing this to be true, it still only goes to the ought not extent of suggesting what many good men main- all to have tained at the time of the Reformation, who yet solved thought that the monastic system had outgrown its proper bounds, namely, that the dissolution of religious houses went too far, and that some should have been left in every diocese as houses for contemplative devotion, and as centres of active work. been dis became too numerous The excessive number of monasteries was, in fact, But they the cause of their ruin. A small number existed before the Norman conquest, but nearly twelve hundred (including one hundred hospitals) were founded between that epoch and the Reformation, and as some of them were very large, it is manifest that they must have reached an unreasonable disproportion to a population which never exceeded four and a half millions. During the three hundred years between the Conquest and the end of Henry's III.'s long reign, about eleven hundred of these institutions were founded, but not more than fifty in the two centuries and a half which ensued before the Reform- and their ation; the annual proportion during the latter period at last being therefore less than one-twentieth of that stopped in of the former. These facts show that there was a quence vast number of these institutions existing in the Middle Ages, and that for some reason or other the establishment of them had conspicuously slackened foundation conse |