VI not break their profession; for it would have made a heart of CHAP flint to have melted and wept to have seen the breaking up of the house and their sorrowful departing."4 And even one of the visitors bears witness to the same effect:· "Divers of the friars are very loath to forsake their houses, and yet they be not able to live; for I think, for the more part of them, if all their debts should be paid, all that is in their houses is not able to do it." "There was an Anchoress with whom I had not a little business to have her grant to come out, but out she is."5 A.D. 1537 of "sur The real fact is, that these contemptible docu- Character ments are cut-and-dried forms which were placed de before the monks for signature without any regard to their knowledge of the contents. It is quite probable that some, in their utter despair, grew indifferent to everything, as old people will, and when they were told to sign their names to a document did so. Those also who had already charged their brethren with vice and crime, at the instigation of Cromwell and the visitors, and in the hope of reward, would, of course, do so without any scruple. But many houses would have nothing to do with the surrender, and gave the visitors much trouble: some refusing to the last. The difficulty thus created was sometimes got over by displacing a refractory abbot, and Refractory substituting one who would be pliant enough for the tuned out visitors' purpose, as in the case of the monastery of Evesham, from which Abbot Lichfield was thrust out to make room for Abbot Hawford, a young monk, who surrendered the house directly, and thus obtained a pension of two hundred and forty pounds Ellis' Orig. Letters, III. iii. 32. Y 5 Ibid., 190. abbots abbots re warded CHAP a year, and was afterwards made Dean of Worcester." VI Sometimes pliant bishops were made abbots for A.D. 1537 the same object, or abbots rewarded with bishopPliant rics on their engagement to surrender, as it is plain from the dates was the case with More, Bishop of Colchester; Holgate, Bishop of Llandaff; Hilsey, Bishop of Rochester; Holbeach, Bishop of Bristol ; and Barlow, Bishop of St. David's. Where actual disloyalty could be directly or constructively proved, the Crown made short shrift about surrenders, as in the case of those houses which were implicated in the Pilgrimage of Grace: the monks were tied up to the nearest beam, the abbots condemned to the halter and the butcher's knife (on what Cromwell called "sorted" evidence), and the property at once confiscated. it But after all the care taken by the visitors to make appear that these surrenders were voluntary, there were bold men who sent up their protest to headquarters, and so left it on record for posterity as strong evidence of the falsehood by which the commissioners' proceedings were characterized. Such a protest is that of the Abbot of Vale Royal. "My good Lord," he wrote to Cromwell, "the truth is, I nor my said brethren have never consented to surrender our monastery, nor yet do, nor never will do by our good wills, unless it shall please the King's grace to give us commandment so to do, which I cannot perceive in the commission of Master HolFalsified croft so to be. And if any information be given surrenders unto his Majesty, or unto your good Lordship, that we should consent to surrender, as is above said, I assure your good Lordship upon my fidelity and Ellis' Orig. Letters, III. iii. 249. VI truth, there was never none such consent made by me, CHAP nor my brethren; nor no person nor persons had authority so to do in our names. A.D. 1537 Let it not be supposed then that the documents called surrenders really speak the truth as to the spirit in which the monks quitted their monasteries. A judicial mind, otherwise well-informed as to the history of the transactions they profess to represent, must reject them at once, and will have little hesita- Surrenders tion in saying that they have the nature of malicious unreliable forgeries, got up by such profligate and unscrupulous men as London, Layton, and Legh. Much more historical vraisemblance is there in the letter which a Somersetshire prior, the Prior of Hinton, wrote to his brother Alan Horde of the Middle Temple, announcing that at last he and his brethren were ready to give way. His letter is preserved among the Cottonian Manuscripts, and is as follows: "Jhus. generally documents "In our Lord Jhesu shall be your salutation. And where ye marvel that I and my brethren do not freely and voluntarily give and surrender up our house at the motion of the King's A prior's commissioners, but stand stiffly, and, as ye think, obstinately feelings in our opinion; truly, brother, I marvel greatly that ye think rendering so; but rather that ye would have thought us light and hasty in giving up that thing which is not ours to give, but dedicate to Almighty God for service to be done to his honour continually, with other many good deeds of charity which daily be done in this house to our Christian neighbours. And considering that there is no cause given by us why the house shall be put down, but that the service of God, religious con 7 Supp. of Monasteries, Camd. Soc., p. 244. This letter was written on Sept. 9, 1539. The forged Act of Surrender, profess- VI CHAP versation of the brethren, hospitality, alms-deeds, with all other our duties, be as well observed in this poor house as in A.D. 1537 any religious house in this realm or in France; which we have trusted that the King's grace would consider. But because Such was the real character of the acts by which the commissioners obtained possession of the monasteries. It can hardly be considered that the "sur renders" were more satisfactory, as regards justice Parallel of and constitutional law, than would be the uncondia supposed tional surrender of all the rectories, their churches, surrender their lands, tithes, secular and ecclesiastical furniture, modern What fol surrenders into the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, for the use of the present sovereign of England. But comparatively few of the monasteries were able to hold out against the various influences which were brought to bear upon them; and although some still remained to be disposed of when the second Act of Suppression was passed in the year 1539-40, most of them had by that time succumbed. And after the "surrender came the razing," lowed the which must have left a very conspicuous trail of material desolation along the course of the commissioners' travels. Piteous as it is to think upon their stones and to see them in the dust, even when we forget how Fountains, or Whitby, or Tynemouth, or Valle Crucis, or Tintern, or Glastonbury, or Read NINE TONS OF GOLD AND SILVER PLATE TAKEN 341 VI of valu ing, or Bury St. Edmund's came to be what they CHAP are, it is still more piteous when we come to see that but for wanton waste and lawless avarice they might A.D. 1537 still be what Westminster, or Beverley, or Chester, or Peterborough are at the present day. Wherever the visitors came they first packed up and sent away Taking all the valuables which they could find, Cromwell's possession private instructions being evidently in agreement ables with one of his memoranda still preserved. "Item, to remember all the jewels of all the monasteries in England, and specially for the cross at Paul's, of emeralds. Item, to remember my Lord of Canterbury, his best mitre to be demanded in the lieu of the King's legacy." 8 Scarcely a letter of the visitors. but contains some such announcements as "I have of these three houses 800 ounces of plate. "We have taken in the said monastery" (Bury St. Edmund's) "in gold and silver 5000 marks, and above, over and besides a well and rich cross with emeralds, as also divers and sundry stones of great value." 1 The household stuff and ornaments (Leicester), "which amount unto of the church 66 228 pounds. The plate. is valued at by weight 190 pounds." 2 In the account-roll of the King's Amount of plate apjewel-keeper, the quantity of plate thus set down is propriated 14,531 ounces of gold, 207,635 of silver-gilt, and by the King 67,000 ounces of silver, or about nine tons of gold and silver plate. In the same document is entered about £80,000 which had been received in money for other goods belonging to the monasteries.3 8 Ellis' Orig. Letters, II. ii. 120, from Cotton. MS., Titus, b. i. 9 Ibid., III. iii. 185. 1 Supp. of Monast., Camd. Soc., p. 144. 2 Supp. of Monast., Camd. Soc., p.163. 3 Printed for the Abbotsford Club by Mr. Turnbull |
