CHAP themselves worse than they were, though it was a needless Strife and ill-feeling measures How successful the secret agents were in stirring stirred up up internal disorganization, in kindling animosities, by these in exaggerating grievances, and generally setting brother against brother, is shown by some of the letters written to Cromwell by discontented monks. The informers mostly betray themselves as men who are making accusations in the hope of reward and the accusations themselves are of a kind which does not carry conviction of their truth, reminding the reader of documents strangely common in those days, such documents as the confessedly false indictments drawn up against Wolsey. Men seem to have felt that they ran a risk like that of the Spartan legislators, that if they failed the rope was already round their necks ready for use, and that they must provide against failure by heaping charge upon charge in the hope that some, at least, would be incapable of positive disproof. It is melancholy to think that human nature is capable of such treachery and untruth, and it adds to our sadness to find it among those whose duty and special call it was to live in a loving and peaceful brotherhood. But weak and treacherous inventors of scandal are to be found at all times; and they were to be found among the monks of the 7 Fuller's Ch. Hist., ii. 215, ed. 1837. sixteenth century, as they were found among the CHAP laity of the same period, and of our own.8 VI tions of Another still more serious charge against Crom- A.D. 1536 well and the King is that they had agents who Wicked went among nuns with the express purpose of tempta seducing them, and thus giving ground for their fered to expulsion from the nunneries. This charge is also recorded by Fuller in the following words : "The papists do heavily complain (how justly God alone knoweth) that a third sort of agents were employed, to practise on the chastity of the nuns, so to surprise them into wantonness. Some young gallants were on design sent to some convents, with fair faces, flattering tongues, store of gold, and good clothes, youth, wit, wantonness, and what else might work on the weaker sex. These having with much craft screwed themselves into the affections of nuns, and brought them to their lure, accused them afterwards to the king's commissioners for their incontinence: a damnable act, if true. But still the papists go further, complaining of false returns, that many of these inveiglers of nuns met with impregnable pieces of chastity, neither to be battered by force, nor undermined by fraud, who despairing to lie with their bodies, did lie on their reputations, making their fames to suffer in those false reports which they returned to the king's commissioners. 8 Among such "approvers" may be mentioned the Abbot of Warden, [Suppn. of Mon., p. 53], Richard Zouche [Id. 51], Richard Beerley, monk of Pershore [Id. 133], and a monk of Wigmore, whose articles of indictment against his abbot are printed by Mr. Froude in "Short Studies of Great Subjects," vol. ii. p. 78. With his usual amusing haste Mr. Froude settles one article of this indictment in his own way by saying that the abbot had stolen jewels from his own convent to buy a faculty for conferring holy orders, "though he had never been conse- the nuns. CHAP And the following story is, I assure you, traditioned with very much credit amongst our English Catholics : VI A.D. 1536 This ac count far from im "Two young gentlemen, whose names for just cause I forbear, went to a nunnery within twelve miles of Cambridge, in the nature of travellers on the highway; who being handsomely habited, and late at night, were admitted into some out-lodgings of that nunnery. Next day their civil addresses to the abbess were received with such entertainment as became the laws of hospitality. Afterwards producing or pretending a commission to visit their convent, they abode there certain days; and how bad soever they were, met with no counterpart to embrace their wanton proffers. However, at the return they gave it out, that nothing but their weariness bounded their wantonness, and that they enjoyed those nuns at their own command. "One of the aforesaid gentlemen, with great grief and remorse of heart, did in private confess the same to Sir William Stanley, knight, afterwards employed in the Low Countries; avowing that nothing in all his life lay more heavy on his conscience than this false accusation of those innocents: and the said Sir William told this passage to a noble Catholic still alive." This story has been discredited, chiefly because it rests on the authority of "Papists" and "Catholics;" probable and Fuller himself adds that if this was the Sir William Stanley who gave up the city of Daventer to the Spaniards, its credit may be justly suspected, as "one so faithless in his deeds may be presumed false in his words. But the story has too much vraisemblance to be set aside in this curt manner and in addition to this, the tone of Layton's letters to Cromwell are of such a kind as to make one fear that some nuns were indeed thus wickedly seduced, and others not less wickedly accused falsely. Those, however, who duly appreciate the character of their countrywomen, will also believe that among these evil-intreated "innocents," there were not a few who 9 Fuller's Church Hist., ii. 216, ed. 1837. VI passed through the scorching fire of temptation CHAP scatheless under the protection of their Heavenly Bridegroom; for the English daughters of the nine- A.D. 1536 teenth century whom we see around us are sisters to the English nuns of the sixteenth of whom we know only by vague tradition. tuned teries It was a great object with the King and Cromwell to obtain voluntary surrenders of the monasteries (or surrenders which should appear to be voluntary) from those in whom they were vested: and also to gain over the secular clergy and the laity to an approval of such surrenders. The great Reformation weapon Pulpits of "pulpit-tuning" was efficiently used by Cromwell against for securing the lower ranks of the laity, the monaspreachers who were sent about the country to assert the royal supremacy constantly representing the monks as disloyal to the crown and useless to the people at large and just as "leading newspapers" can convince large numbers in the present day even against the evidence of their reason and almost of their senses, so the preachers moulded public opinion pretty much to any form that they would when they preached hard enough. For the higher ranks of the Laity laity there was the temptation of sharing in the con- with large fiscated lands, a temptation which had astonishing spoil influence upon them, and which became all the stronger when the appetite of the courtiers had been whetted by gifts from the lands of the lesser monasteries. The secular clergy were promised a general restoration to their hands of the rectorial tithes which had been "appropriated" by the monastic houses; although, in the end, most of these monastic "appropriations" were turned into lay "impropriations,” and 1 Dugdale's History of Warwickshire, p. 802. bribed shares of VI CHAP the secular clergy gained nothing whatever. As for the monasteries themselves, Cromwell had promises A.D. 1536 to offer them also, immunity from dissolution for those who were unwilling to be dissolved, and large &c. pro- pensions or preferments for those who would surrender willingly." Pensions, mised to monks Little power left to resist When such measures were taken, and when, as Bishop Burnet says, "all the abbots were now placed by the King, and were generally picked out to serve his turn," it is not to be supposed that any very strong power of resistance remained in the monasteries which were left standing after the first suppression. The clean sweep which had been made of so many ancient rights, did, in fact, throw the clergy and the monks into an utter panic; and the great body of the latter, especially, were ready to go down like unarmed peasantry before a troop of Cossacks. There are periods when stupendous changes "After my hearty commendations. Albeit I doubt not, but having long since received the King's Highness' letters wherein his Majesty signified unto you that using yourselves like his good and faithful subjects, his Grace would not in any wise interrupt you in your state and kind of living and that his pleasure was, in case any man should declare anything to the contrary, you should cause him to be apprehended and kept in sure custody till further knowledge of his Grace's pleasure; you would so firmly repose yourselves in the tenor of his said letters as now his words; nor any voluntary surrender made by any governor and company of any religious house since that time shall put you in any doubt or fear of suppression or change of your kind of life and "olicy. Yet his most excellent Majesty knowing as well that on the one side fear may enter upon a contrary appearance where the ground and original is not known, as on the other side, that in such cases there cannot want some malicious and cankered hearts that upon a voluntary and frank surrender would persuade and blow abroad a general and a violent suppression; to the intent you should safely adhere to the sense of the said letters by his Highness already addressed unto you, and like good subjects ensue the purport of the same in the apprehension and detention of all such persons that had brought or would instil the contrary: whereas certain governors and companies of few religious houses have lately made free and voluntary surrenders into his Grace's hands: hath commanded me for your reposes, |