CHAP these royal precedents were far from justifying the VI course taken by Henry VIII. On the other hand, there were certain principles of the English law which seem to have been well established, and well known. (1) The Crown had a right to all ownerless lands, and to all confiscated lands, as ultimate lord of the fee. (2) "According to the most ancient laws mitted of the kingdom, whatever possessions or revenues ation were conferred on the Church or a religious house, Yet the law per such alien Hence a quasi legal go on under terms and conditions, or for a certain and determined use, if the receivers neglected to observe, fulfil, or execute, the use, cause, condition, or terms of the primary donation, then the collators or their heirs by reason of such defect or failure might re-enter, and possess the said lands and revenues."2 Though there is no evidence whatever that Henry VIII. had VIII. desired anything else than to increase his power and replenish his treasury by the suppression ground to of religious houses, yet it is clear that he wished to keep up a semblance of constitutional justice, and these principles and precedents may thus be taken for what they are worth, and as far as they will go, in his justification. The personal character of this monarch is far from being of paramount importance as a matter of research in the history of the Reformation: but having asserted that the true faults of the monastic system formed no part of Henry's real reasons for opposing and destroying it, there seemed a necessity for pointing out the probable grounds 1 To these royal precedents may be added that of Henry's contemporary, Philip, Landegrave of Hesse, who confiscated monasteries in 1526, and with some of their endowments founded the University of Marburg. Probably he did this 2 by the advice of Luther: by whose upon which he did proceed. And these ante- CHAP cedent considerations being brought to a close, we may now resume the thread of the history, and follow out in detail the course of the dissolution. VI dissolved houses for The steps which had been taken by Cardinal Wolsey Wolsey towards the suppression of a large number religious of monasteries, were taken with the object of making good of their estates and possessions more practically useful Church to the Church, and so long as he was in power, the King was not able to lay his all-grasping hands upon any portion of those possessions. On the ruin of Wolsey, Henry immediately swept them all into his coffers as if they had been the private property of the Cardinal, and were so forfeited to the crown. He doled out, indeed, some fragmentary scraps of what he had appropriated, towards the meagre completion of Christ Church; but the far greater part he used for his own purposes. The spoil thus acquired, from this and other sources, by the destruc- Henry tion of his great minister, sufficed to eke out the meet his King's vast expenditure for a year or two; but he extravasoon began to be pinched again for a revenue pro- penditure portionate to his extravagance. He had, indeed, passed through a kind of parliamentary insolvent court in 1530, and added to his many extortionate acts that of repudiating all his debts. He had also appropriated the annates and first-fruits which used 3 By an Act of Parliament [21 Hen. VIII. c. 26], entitled " an Act for the releasing unto the King's Highness of such sums of money as was to be required of him by any of his subjects for any manner of Loan, by his letters missive, or other ways or manners whatsoever." 3 VIII. to gant ex VI CHAP previously to the repudiation of the papal supremacy to be paid to the Pope. Furthermore, he had the £24,000 a-year fine which the clergy paid to him as a composition for his pardon on account of a crime which they had never committed, and this sum His great probably amounted to nearly a quarter of a million of our money. But notwithstanding these extraChurch al- ordinary windfalls, and the ordinary immense wealth ready of the crown during his reign, the King began to feel about for further augmentations of his revenue as soon as the exhaustion of the five years' extortion drew near. revenue from the insufficient up the quired 4 Since the fall of Wolsey, his former secretary, for making Thomas Cromwell, had been the King's chief adviser, funds re- and the attack upon the monasteries was suggested by him as a means of overcoming the principal difficulty of his government, that of providing funds to meet the unbounded and licentious extravagance of the court. The precedent set by Wolsey was technically adhered to, though with a totally different object. Wolsey had caused a visitation of the monasteries to be made, with the view of ascertaining their real condition and devising measures for their reformation. Out of this visitation, no doubt, arose his plans for the dissolution of small monasteries, that they might be converted into colleges and bishoprics. Acting on this precedent, the smaller Wolsey's monasteries were first attacked by Henry VIII. and precedent of visita- his obsequious tool, Cromwell; the dissolution being tion preceded by a general visitation, that it might not seem so much an act of mere tyrannical violence as it really was. In the first Act of Suppression [1535-6] the clergy are said to be still "in debt" to the King on account of this fine VI which ies visited By the 20th clause of an act of 1533, "concerning CHAP Peter's-pence and Dispensations" [25 Hen. VIII. c. 21], the right of visitation had been transferred from A.D. 1535 the Pope to the King, who was thus empowered to Act under issue commissions under the Great Seal for visiting monaster"monasteries, colleges, hospitals, priories, houses, and places religious, exempt." Commissioners thus appointed were intended to occupy the same legal position as those who had acted under the authority of Wolsey when he himself was acting with the King's license as legate a latere of the Pope; and it is not unlikely that Cromwell had gone round the country in this capacity, as well as to Ipswich, when in the service of Wolsey. If so, he thus acquired much information respecting the condition of the religious houses, which would well qualify him for taking the lead in their destruction. The first royal commissions under this act were for Earliest the visitation of the Charter House monks in London, visitations and the Observants at Richmond and Greenwich, all of whom had been accused of complicity in the treason of "the Maid of Kent," and of opposing the King and his divorce, and in his assumption of the supremacy. But the commission for a general visi- General tation of all the monasteries was not issued, or at least not put in force until the autumn of 1535.5 No copy of the commission itself is known to be in existence, but the "Articles of Enquiry," and the "Injunctions" which the commissioners carried with them, may still be seen in the British Museum library. The names of the commissioners can be 5 Lord Herbert (p. 424) gives two speeches for and against the dissolution which appear to be intended as representing the dis cussions of the Privy Council on 6 Cotton. MSS. Cleop. E. 4, fol. visitation VI visitors CHAP partly gathered from their letters, of which a large number remain, and of which many have been printed A.D. 1535 in recent times. They appear to have been Dr. Names of John London, Dr. Thomas Legh, John Ap Rice, Thomas Bedyll, Henry Polsted, John Anthony, Dr. Richard Layton, Edmond Knyghtley, John Lane, George Gyffard, Robert Burgoyn, John Williams, Richard Pollard, Philip Paris, John Smyth, William Hendle, Richard Bellasys, Richard Watkyns, William Parr, Robert Southwell, Thomas Mildmay, William Petre, and Richard Yngworth, Suffragan Bishop of Dover. But these were probably put into the commission at various dates between 1535 and 1538, and the most active all along appear to have been London, Legh, Layton, Ap Rice, and the Bishop of Dover all of whom had, as well as some of the others, been employed already by Cromwell in some or other of the unclean transactions which he had to manage. Character of visitors 8 What these men were is sufficiently evident from their letters, and from the disgraceful facts that are known respecting several of them. Fuller sums up their character in a few pithy words, "They were men who well understood the message they went on, and would not come back without a satisfactory answer to him that sent them, knowing themselves were likely to be no losers thereby." The general impression of contemporaries was that they were men of no principle, sent out with certain nominal objects 7 In Ellis' Orig. Lett., III. iii., and Wright's Letters relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries, a Camden Society volume. 8 Layton and Ap Rice (Notary Public) are among the Commis sioners sent to interrogate Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More when in the Tower, June 14, 1535. St. Pap., i. 431. Fuller's Ch. History, ii. 214. ed. 1837. |