CHAP VI ous hands, and therefore the scene revealed is not likely to be represented in too good colours. It is A.D. 1537 at Woburn in 1535, two years before the end. The Abbot "At the time that the monks of the Charter House, with of Woburn's exother traitors, did suffer death, the abbot did call us into the hortation Chapter House, and said these words:- Brethren, this is a brethren perilous time; such a scourge was never heard since Christ's to his passion. Ye hear how good men suffer the death. Brethren, this is undoubted for our offences. Ye read, so long as the children of Israel kept the commandments of God, so long their enemies had no power over them, but God took vengeance of their enemies. But when they broke God's commandments, then they were subdued by their enemies, and so be we. Therefore let us be sorry for our offences. Undoubted He will take vengeance of our enemies; I mean those heretics that causeth so many good men to suffer thus. Also it is a piteous case that so much Christian blood should be shed. Therefore, good brethren, for the reverence of God, every one of you devoutly pray, and say this psalm, "Oh God, the heathen are come into Thine inheritance; Thy holy temple have they defiled, and made Jerusalem a heap of stones. The dead bodies of Thy servants have they given to be meat to the fowls of the air, and the flesh of Thy saints unto the beasts of the field. Their blood have they shed like water on every side of Jerusalem, and there was no man to bury them. We are become an open scorn unto our enemies, a very scorn and derision unto them that are round about us. Oh remember not our old sins, but have mercy upon us, and that soon, for we are come to great misery. Help us, oh God of our salvation, for the glory of Thy name. Oh be merciful unto our sins for Thy name's sake. Wherefore do the heathen say, Where is now their God?" Ye shall say this psalm every Friday after the Litany, prostrate, when ye lie upon the high altar, and undoubtedly God will cease this extreme scourge.' A little later, when the suppression of the small 8 Froude's Short Studies on Great Subjects, ii. 96. VI tried to get tary" sur renders monasteries had been legalized by Act of Parliament, CHAP the good abbot called another chapter, enjoining the monks to sing "Let God arise and let His enemies A.D. 1537 be scattered," and to say at every mass the collect of the Sarum mass, "pro tribulatione cordis," "O God, merciful Father, that despisest not the sighing of a contrite heart, nor the desire of such as be sorrowful," as it stands in our Litany. Thus we hear the dying throbs of that sad devotion which ascended to a righteous Judge from altars that were about to be hewn down, and from the now "misereres " indeed of those stalls which were soon to be burnt for firewood. But long before the severed limbs of this good Visitors abbot were set up as those of a traitor," the visitors "volunhad been doing their work effectually in many of the monasteries which remained after the first Act of Suppression. Their first object was to obtain "surrenders" of the monasteries into the hands of the King, by which means he became the owner of the buildings, lands, sacred vessels, jewels, and everything else that had hitherto been held in trust by the responsible members of each religious house. When this had been secured, the whole community was turned adrift, the church and other buildings dismantled, and all portable articles of value carried up to London. The commissioners had not (as has been having no mentioned before) any legal power to do all this legal against the will of the monks, but an act of surrender suppress signed by the head of the house and a majority of its members placed everything at their disposal. These surrenders were obtained from a large number of the monastic corporations during the years 1537, 1538, 9 The Abbot and the Prior of Woburn were both hung and mutilated as traitors in 1537, when power to CHAP and 1539, and they were all legalized by the second Act of Suppression passed in the latter year. VI A.D. 1537 What A few words further about these "surrenders," many of which still exist among our records. In these sur- most of these documents it is alleged that the houses, really come lands, and goods are voluntarily surrendered to the renders to That of King, with all titles and interests that the monks possessed in them: and that this surrender is made under the conviction that they have been guilty of crimes and vices which make them no longer deserving of their estates and possessions. But there is evidence to show that the voluntary character given to these documents was a legal or illegal— fiction, and this evidence is corroborated by the tone of the documents themselves. It is exceedingly improbable that any but a ready-made instrument of surrender would be couched in such words as these: "Forasmuch as we, the warden and friars of the house of the Stam- St. Francis in Stamford, commonly called the Grey Friars in ford Greyfriars Stamford, in the county of Lincoln, do profoundly consider that the perfection of Christian living doth not consist in the 'dome' ceremonies, wearing of the grey coat, disguising ourselves after strange fashions, docking and becking, in girding ourselves with a girdle full of knots, and other like papistical ceremonies, wherein we have been most principally practised and misled in times past; but the very true way to please God, and to live a true Christian man without all hypocrisy and feigned dissimulation, is sincerely declared unto us by our Master, Christ, His Evangelists and Apostles. Being minded therefore to follow the same; conforming ourselves unto the will and pleasure of our supreme head under God in earth, the King's majesty, and not to follow henceforth the superstitious traditions of any 'forincyall' potentate or power, with mutual assent and consent, do submit ourselves unto the mercy of our said sovereign head. And with like VI mutual assent and consent, do surrender and yield up unto CHAP the hands of the same all our said house of Saint Francis in Stamford, commonly called the Grey Friars in Stamford, A.D. 1537 with all lands, tenements, gardens, most humbly beseeching his most noble Grace to dispose of us and of the same as best shall stand with his most gracious pleasure. And farther, freely to grant unto every one of us his license under writing and seal, to change our habits into secular fashion, and to receive such manner of livings as other secular priests commonly be preferred unto," &c., &c.1 Still more wanting in probability is it that the members of any monastery would knowingly and voluntarily put their hands to a document in which the Prior and Convent of St. Andrew of Northampton are made to confess themselves guilty of evil living in such terms as the following: drew's North ampton "But as well we as others our predecessors, called religious That of persons within your said monastery, taking on us the habit of St. Anoutward vesture of the said rule, only to the intent to lead our Priory, lives in the idle quietness, and not in virtuous exercise, in a stately estimation and not in obedient humility, have under the shadow or colour of the said rule and habit vainly, detestably, and also ungodly employed, rather devoured, the yearly revenues issuing and coming of the said possession in continual ingurgitations and farcings of our carrion bodies, and of others the supporters of our voluptuous and carnal appetite, with other vain and ungodly expenses: to the manifest subversion of devotion and cleanness of living. . . . Which our most horrible abominations2 and execrable persuasions of your Grace's people to detestable errors, and our long covered hypocrisy cloaked with feigned sanctity: we revolving daily, and continually pondering in our sorrowful hearts, and thereby perceiving the bottomless gulf of everlasting fire ready to devour us if, persisting in this state of living, we should depart 1 Fuller's Ch. Hist., ii. 223, ed. 1837. 2 Lest the omitted passage should be misinterpreted, it should be VI CHAP from this uncertain and transitory life, constrained by the intolerable anguish of our conscience, called as we trust by the A.D. 1537 grace of God who would have no man to perish in sin: with hearts most contrite and repentant, prostrate at the noble feet of your most royal Majesty, most lamentably do crave of your Highness of your abundant mercy, to grant unto us most grievous against God, and your Highness, your most gracious pardon for our said offences, omissions, and negligences, committed as before by us is confessed, against your Highness, and your most noble progenitors." Such docu ments transpa rently After which follows the resignation itself, signed by the prior, sub-prior, and eleven brethren." Credulous writers have actually taken such overdone documents as true confessions of the enormities worthless alleged against the monks; and not only have supas evidence posed them to be unanswerable as to the criminality of the persons signing, but also to be irrefutable evidence as to the utter impurity and rottenness of the system for many previous generations. But one who wrote almost at the time of the suppression, and from the account of relatives who had witnessed it, tells us how the visitors made their appearance at Roche Abbey, and it will be seen that the statement is, at least in this instance, wholly inconsistent with such confessions as the above, such servile aspirations after the King's pardon, and such earnest desire to be released from the monastic life. "So soon," he says, "as the visitors were entered within the gates, they called the abbot and other officers of the house, and caused them to deliver up to them all their keys, and took an inventory of all their goods; and when they had so done, turned the abbot with all his convent and household forth of the doors. Which thing was not a little grief to the convent, and especially such as with their conscience could 3 Fuller's Ch. Hist., ii. 225, ed, 1837. |