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. 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." 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." 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 son, 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 Advow. pounds through a commissioner, Dr. Lee. 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 ;' 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 twenty 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 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 Ellis' Orig. Letters, III. ii. 334. 6 Ibid., 350. Ibid., iii. 6. • Ibid., 116. 77. Ellis' Orig. Letters, III. iii. 231. 3 Jenkyns Life of Cranmer, i Ibid., 277, 280. • Ibid., 298. CHAP tion. But the endeavours were hopeless. He ac- VI cepted the gifts, appointments, money, cattle, every- A.D. 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.7 forebod. ings of the 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 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 CHAP 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 of Woburn's ex to his "At the time that the monks of the Charter House, with other 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 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 • Froude's Short Studies on Great Subjects, ii. 96. VI 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. tried to get tary" sur 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 tender 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 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 legal power to |