once more, stimulated, no doubt, afresh by the CHAP exhausted condition of the royal treasury. VI monas They appear to have acted under their former com- A.D. 1537 mission, and it must be remembered that no powers Visitation were added to it by the act which had legalized the of large suppression of the smaller monasteries. Short as the teries time had been for it was only about eighteen months since the commissioners had begun to move-all those smaller monasteries were now institutions of the past, and nothing remained to witness to their former condition but a few broken walls and the roofless, unglazed churches on which the moss was already beginning to grow. A few more years and the broken walls had so multiplied, the moss so grown, that men began to persuade themselves picturesque decay was a better condition for churches than one of stability and beauty. But much was to be done yet before irreligion could gain this triumph. So the visitors went forth again, armed with moral and physical powers of destruction; their way being already smoothed by spies, tempters, treacherous hypocrites, and a blood-stricken panic. now, of them In their previous visitation of 1535-36, the commissioners had made a show of reforming the religious houses: but in the following years they seem No preto have nearly cast off even this thin veil of reforming tence, intentions, and to have proceeded steadily onwards, reforming taking possession at once of all they could lay their hands on, and where they could not immediately gain the resignation of a monastery or nunnery (for they had no legal power to suppress), setting a train which must be certain to end in the desired explosion at a future day. The monks knew well what must come, and in the CHAP general panic there were many endeavours to meet, VI and, if possible, to ward off the extreme violence of A.D. 1537 the anticipated storm. A few of the heads of the Conceal religious houses concealed their valuables in the hope ment of of better times, but the visitors seldom failed to by monks ferret out the hidden stores. Layton and Legh, for treasures example, wrote to Cromwell respecting the Abbot of Fountains, "six days before our access to his called theft monastery he committed theft and sacrilege, confessing the same. At midnight caused his chaplain to steal the sexton's keys, and took out a jewel, a cross of gold with stones. One Warren, a goldsmith of the Cheap, was with him at that hour, and there they stole out a great emerald with a ruby; the said Warren made the Abbot believe the ruby to be but a garnet, and so for that he paid nothing, for the emerald but twenty pounds. He sold him also their plate without weight or ounces." It is evident the abbot was endeavouring to secure the property of the house but he was deprived, and shortly afterwards executed, for complicity in Aske's rebellion, while the visitors recommend as his successor a monk of the house, who offered to give Cromwell six hundred marks directly after his appointment, and a thousand pounds to the King within three years by way of first-fruits. conveyed Property Others, again, made over their lands and houses to laymen to laymen, in the hope of receiving them back from by monks them when the storm had blown over; but the legal 9 Supp. Monast., Camd. Soc., p. 100. From a letter of Thomas Parry to Cromwell [Ellis' Orig. Letters, III. iii. 235] it appears that "one Bestyan, a jeweller, who as I heard say is in London in some family of the Strangers there," went about among the monasteries offering to buy their precious stones. From the above it would appear that this Bestyan was not the only shrewd diamond merchant who did this. VI subtleties by which such conveyance was effected CHAP could not stand in the face of an Act of Parliament, and all such bargains were annulled, unless made A.D. 1537 under the King's license, by the Act of Suppression of 1539 the Abbey of Sibton, sold to the Duke of Norfolk in 1536; and that of Cobham, sold to Lord Cobham, being the only exceptions allowed by the Act. Cromwell to save houses But the character of Cromwell seems to have Bribery of been well known to the head officers of the religious by monks houses, and there was a general feeling that the last and nuns hope offered them was an appeal to his inordinate their avarice. The Prior of Durham writes a grave letter to him, saying, that whereas the Monastery of St. Cuthbert had hitherto paid him an annuity of five pounds, he and his brethren would now increase it to ten pounds.1 The Prioress of Catesby tells him, that if he can persuade the King to spare that house for the sake of two thousand marks, which she offered through the Queen, and at the same time to get her interest for the money (by way of stipend), he shall have a hundred marks to buy him a gelding, and the prayers of herself and her sisters.2 Richard, Abbot of Leicester, was "informed it should be your pleasure that I should send forty pounds to your mastership. oxen, and The said forty pounds I have sent you by money, this bearer."3 John, his successor, sends his "right sheep honourable and most assured good lord" a brace of fat oxen, and a score of fat wethers." He had accepted office subject to a yearly tax of two hundred and forty-two pounds, and was a thousand pounds in debt, so this present of fat oxen and sheep was a 1 Ellis' Orig. Letters, III. iii. 44. 2 Ibid., 50. 4 Ellis' Orig. Letters, III. ii. 313. VI Advowson, cor rody, and 6 CHAP liberal one. The Abbot of Michelney is importuned by Cromwell for forty pounds promised to him, and A.D. 1537 replies that he had already paid him a hundred pounds through a commissioner, Dr. Lee.5 Poor Abbot Whiting of Glastonbury sends the same inrangership exorable extortioner an advowson, and a corrody of five pounds a year, together with some appointments, that of Master of the Game, and Keeper of the Park of Northwood." The Abbess of Godstow offers her "poor little fee," and makes him Steward of the Abbey for life, and uses all womanly arts to conciliate the dreadful devastator, but in vain after all. The Abbess of Shaftesbury tries to ransom her house by a payment of five hundred marks to the King and one hundred pounds to his vicegerent;1 and her neighbour, the Abbot of Cerne, follows suit with a similar offer.2 Cranmer offers unto "his grace the King two or three hundred pounds on behalf of the brethren of Christ Church, Canterbury, gave Cromwell the same profitable appointments that he held from the Abbot of Glastonbury,' and sent him periodical "fees" of twenty5 and forty pounds, the see of Canterbury itself not being powerful enough to contend against this covetous man's extortionate demands. The bribes taken, but nothing gained 3 6 Such are a few of the instances in which the dying monasteries endeavoured to buy life for a short time longer at the hands of as ruthless and imperturbable a statesman as ever carried out a policy of confisca He ac CHAP tion. But the endeavours were hopeless. cepted the gifts, appointments, money, cattle, every- AD. 1537 thing that he could get, but went on unchangeably in the course originally marked out until the last scrap of monastic property had been gathered into the King's coffers, or appropriated to himself, his relatives, and the courtiers who formed his party." forebod But let it not be supposed that because such appeals were made to the covetousness of Henry and his chief minister, there were no thoughts of a higher kind in these religious houses. Solemn forebodings Solemn came upon some of their inmates, such as might for of the naturally arise in the minds of men whose field of monks vision was not a wide one, whose reading was chiefly associated with Holy Scripture, and to whose quiet lives the disturbances of the visitation must have seemed like the powers of evil let loose upon them. Then the stronger souled men betook themselves to preparation for violent deaths, if death should so come, as it did to many of them and they tried to calm the agitated and unsettled minds of their weaker brethren by special devotional exercises suited to times of trouble. The curtain is lifted from an interior where this was going on after that fearful slaughter and starvation by which the brethren of the Charter House, to the number of about forty resolute and uncompromising men, had been exterminated. It is lifted by unfriendly and treacher 7 Among Cromwell's own memoranda is one relating to such appropriations :-"Item, to remember Warner for a monastery. Item, Dr. Carne. The Lord Grey Wilton. Ralph Sadler. Nicholas Rusticus, Mountgrace. Mr. Gostwick for one monastery. Mr. Kingsmill for Wharwell. John |