THE MONASTERIES

The suppression of the English monasteries, though in one sense but a single branch of Cromwell’s internal administration, still deserves to be considered in a separate chapter. Of all the changes that followed the breach with Rome, none bears as plainly as this the stamp of Cromwellian origin. The sinister genius of the King’s minister particularly fitted him for this task of destruction, and his title of malleus-monachorum is thoroughly well deserved. Cromwell’s intent in suppressing the monasteries was obviously, like that of all the rest of his internal administration, the strengthening of the Crown: how far his measures were successful in accomplishing what was expected of them must be determined not only from their immediate effects, but also from the developments which later resulted from them.

It has been pointed out in an earlier chapter that the state of the lesser monasteries was far from satisfactory in Cromwell’s time; but that in spite of this, when Wolsey’s agents suppressed a few of them in order to convert their revenues to the use of the Cardinal’s cherished colleges, a loud cry of indignation was immediately raised among the rural population. During his first few years in Wolsey’s service Cromwell had acquired sufficient experience to master at least the elementary principles of monastic confiscation, but before he had gone half as far as he had probably intended, his master’s attainder and his own consequent change of life had temporarily interrupted the work. We have seen that as soon as the King had arbitrarily assumed the Headship of the Church of England, Cromwell immediately cast about for means to secure him in his new position. To this end he had weakened the bishops and also the lesser clergy; the dissolution of the monasteries immediately presented itself to him as a consistent method of following up these measures. It all tended in the same direction of severing England’s connexion with Rome and of establishing the Royal Supremacy. The scheme of suppressing the monasteries also promised great things from a financial point of view; Cromwell could have hit upon no better plan than this to aid him to fulfil his promise to make Henry ‘the richest King that ever was in Christendom.’ If the idea of dissolving the religious houses in order to increase the wealth of the Crown, had occurred to Henry during Wolsey’s administration, he would hardly have dared to carry it out while there was any chance of avoiding a breach with the Pope; but now the course of events had converted the only objection to the plan into an argument in its favour. There was certainly nothing in the conscience of the King or of his minister to deter them from such a step, when so much advantage both political and financial promised to result from it.

In January, 1535, two documents appeared—the first, a royal commission to Thomas Cromwell authorizing him as the King’s Vicar-general to undertake a general visitation of churches, monasteries, and clergy, and to depute others to act as his agents; the second consisting of a series of formal inquiries to be made concerning the state of the religious houses, and royal injunctions for their reform. The latter is written in a strange hand, copiously interlined and corrected by that of the King’s minister[387]. The decrees were quickly put in operation. By the month of August in the same year Cromwell’s two agents, Legh and Ap-Rice, were hard at work among the Wiltshire monasteries, and sent in their reports to their master full of ludicrously pathetic lamentations, when unable to trump up any plausible charges against the monks[388]. Doctor Richard Layton, who had come under Cromwell’s notice at the time of the trials of More and Fisher, sent him a request for employment on the same mission, and eventually got permission to go to Gloucestershire[389]. He had made a preliminary visitation at Bath and Farley, and while there had aroused the jealousy and hatred of Legh, who wrote to Cromwell complaining that he was not sufficiently severe, and urging the necessity of uniformity of action[390]. A great many grumbling letters of this kind were sent to Cromwell by his visitors. Layton and Ap-Rice were not slow to revenge themselves on Legh by reporting to the Vicar-general the pride, arrogance, ‘sumptuus vsage, and roughe fasshyon’ of their hated colleague[391].

The bad character of Cromwell’s agents, and the devices to which they were forced to have recourse in order to extort from the monks the information they desired, furnish ample proof of the unfairness of many of the reports which they made. The ‘Commissioners found means,’ as it has been significantly stated, ‘to make divers monasteries obnoxious[392].’ Cromwell had taken special pains that the efforts of his agents should not be hindered by any external interference: it was to this end that he had issued the Prohibitory Letter to the bishops in the month of September[393]. Legh, Layton, and Ap-Rice were left a perfectly clear field, and devoted themselves to examining into the monastic discipline, and to inducing discontented monks to accuse their fellows. The arrogant Legh was especially efficient in this particular, as is shown by the letters Cromwell received from the monasteries he had visited. One monk wrote to the Vicar-general that the inmates of his house cared nothing for true religion, but came to mattins ‘as dronck as myss and [played] sume at cardes, sume at dyyss[394]’—and finally imparted the significant piece of information that Cromwell’s visitors had ordered him to write these opinions to head quarters. Another, John Placett by name, sent cringing letters to the Vicegerent, begging that his zeal in advancing the new doctrines and in reporting those who opposed them, might be rewarded by official exemption from rising at midnight and from observing the customary fasts[395]. Epistles of this sort form the bulk of Cromwell’s correspondence during the years 1535 and 1536. The chief reason why the Vicar-general did not protest against this flood of defamatory information, which through the efficiency of the zealous Legh continually poured in upon him, lay probably in the fact that along with these reports there came also letters of a somewhat different nature which afforded him excellent opportunities for private gain. ‘I submytt myselfe,’ wrote the Abbot of Rewley, ‘fulle and holle to your mastershipp, as all my refuge, helpe, and socor is yn yow, glad of my voluntarye mynde to be bounde in obligacion of one hunderd powndes to be payed to your mastershipp, so that our house may be savyd[396].’ We may well believe that this proposal did not fall on deaf ears. Though we do not possess the reply of Cromwell in this particular case, the letters which he sent to the Priors of St. Faith’s and of Coxford in the same year, indicate that he was as willing to accept bribes from the heads of monasteries as from any one else[397].

Less crafty but scarcely less efficient than the untiring Legh was his brutal colleague Layton. The Sussex monasteries which he visited in October, 1535, were so unfortunate as to incur his particular displeasure. He does not appear to have troubled himself, like Legh, with devising means to make the monks accuse one another: he reported everything to head quarters on his own responsibility, and wrote to Cromwell how at one place he found the abbot the ‘varaste hayne betle and buserde and the aranttes chorle’ he ever saw, while at another he swore that his master would scarcely believe ‘quanta sit spurcities.’ He concluded with two philosophic reflections that ‘sacerdotes omnes non creati ex natura angelica, sed humana,’ and ‘that the blake sort of dyvelisshe monkes ... be paste amendment[398].’ He possibly bore a personal grudge against these southern houses; at least this seems a likely explanation of the fact that later investigation showed them to be no worse than ordinary, and especially popular with their neighbours[399]. Layton, however, found willing listeners to his accusations in the King and Cromwell, and a commission was sent down to confiscate the property of the monasteries of Dover, Langdon, and Folkestone, and to take the surrender of these houses into the King’s hands. It was the first step of the great devastation which was to ensue during the following four years.

The next scene of the visitors’ operations was in the northern counties. Early in 1535 Layton had taken occasion to inform Cromwell that he and Legh were particularly competent to carry on the work there. ‘Ther ys nother monasterie, selle, priorie, nor any other religiouse howse in the north,’ he wrote, ‘but other doctor Lee or I have familier acqwayntance within x or xii mylles of hit.... We knowe and have experiens bothe of the fassion off the contre and the rudenes of the pepull ... ther is matter sufficient to detecte and opyn all coloryde sanctitie, all supersticiouse rewlles of pretensyde religion, and other abusys detestable of all sorttes[400].’ Cromwell certainly had no reason to be dissatisfied with the results which his agents had already accomplished, and doubtless welcomed their zeal to continue their labours in a new field. With most astounding rapidity the visitation was carried through: all the houses in the north had been reported on by the end of February. There was certainly an object in having the work completed so quickly, for Parliament had already met, and was prepared to take action on the ‘comperta’ or catalogue of offences sent in by Cromwell’s agents. The extraordinary hurry in which the latter part of their task was accomplished, and the suspicious uniformity of the offences reported, furnish a last and most cogent reason for doubting the truth of the statements of the visitors. There must of course have been some immorality in the monasteries: the abbots and heads of houses were elected by the monks themselves, who were sure to have an eye to their own ease, and would tend to choose those whose discipline was lax. But it must be a prejudiced person indeed who will accept word for word the catalogues of the religious persons reported guilty of the lowest and most degrading forms of vice, which Legh and Layton seemed to delight in sending to their master. Parliament, however, was too completely in Cromwell’s hands fairly to judge of the character of the visitors, or of the circumstances under which they drew up their ‘comperta,’ and the report was strong and clear; so it was not long before the first Act for the dissolution of the smaller monasteries was passed. The statute declared that ‘all Relygeous Houses of Monkes Chanons and Nonnes, whiche may not dyspend Manors, Landes, Tenementes, & Heredytamentes above the clere yerly Value of ij C li. are geven to the Kinges Highnes, his heires and successours for ever[401].’ Another Act was passed at the same time establishing a Court of Augmentations of the King’s revenue[402]. Power was given to this court to collect the spoils, lands, and buildings of the suppressed abbeys, and dispose of them in the way most profitable to the Crown. It consisted of a chancellor, treasurer, solicitor, and thirty subordinates. The chief persons in it were friends and hirelings of Cromwell’s. In April commissions were sent to the principal men in every county[403], authorizing them to inquire further into the state of each house, to make inventories and estimates of their property, and to ascertain the number of monks who desired ‘capacities’ for entering secular life, and the number who intended to remove to some other religious house. It is significant that the reports of these men, concerning the character and morality of the inmates, are uniformly of a more favourable description than those of Layton and Legh.

The process of the surrender immediately followed the first visit of the Commissioners. They sent in their report to the Court of Augmentations, which then issued its final orders for the dissolution of the house, and its conversion to the King’s use. A ‘receiver’ was appointed to plunder the church, and sell the lead, bells, &c. An interesting letter, from an agent of Cromwell’s to his master, sheds some light on the usual methods of these officials. ‘We ar pluckyng down an hygher vaute,’ writes the receiver, ‘borne up by fower thicke and grose pillars xiiij fote fro syde to syde, abowt in circumference xlv fote ... we browght from London xvij persons, 3 carpentars, 2 smythes, 2 plummars, and on that kepith the fornace. Euery of these attendith to hys own office: x of them hewed the walles abowte, amonge the whych ther were 3 carpentars: thiese made proctes to undersette wher the other cutte away, thother brake and cutte the waules[404].’ Coupled with reports like this, came curiously confused accounts of the saleable articles of the house, which had been disposed of, such as

It will be noticed that the sums for which these articles were sold, were very small. It is said that not more than £100,000 were obtained from the sale of the jewels, plate, lead, bells, and other valuables, which were seized in the first suppression of the monasteries. The annual incomes of the three hundred and seventy-six houses which were suppressed, however, probably amounted to about £32,000, a sum which was quite sufficient to render the measure a successful one from a financial point of view.

In spite of the Act of Parliament, which declared that the monks were either to be pensioned, or else moved to some other religious house, there is no doubt that great misery and wretchedness invariably accompanied the dissolutions. Chapuys writes: ‘It is a lamentable thing to see a legion of monks and nuns, who have been chased from their monasteries, wandering miserably hither and thither, seeking means to live, and several honest men have told me, that what with monks, nuns, and persons dependent on the monasteries suppressed, there were over 20,000, who knew not how to live[406].’ The Act for the protection of the exiled inmates cannot have been at all strictly enforced, and there were certainly many monks, to whom no homes or means of living were assigned. Sir Henry Ellis has printed a document, concerning the dissolution of some of the monasteries, which was written in 1591 by one whose father and uncle witnessed the scenes he describes. It tells how ‘it would have made an heart of flint to have melted and wept to have seen the breaking up of the House, and their sorrowful departing; and the sudden spoil that fell the same day of their departure from the House. And every person had everything good cheap; except the poor Monks, Friars, and Nuns, that had no money to bestow of any thing.’ The people entered the church, ‘and took what they found, and filched it away.... It would have pitied any heart to see what tearing up of the lead there was, and plucking up of boards, and throwing down of the sparres; ... and the tombs in the Church (were) all broken, ... and all things of price either spoiled, carped away, or defaced to the uttermost[407].’ Nor is this tendency of the people of the neighbourhood to plunder in the least to be wondered at. They knew that as the monasteries were to be pulled down they would lose all the old charities, easy rents, and other advantages to which they had so long been accustomed, and they naturally wished to make good the loss. Cromwell probably did not object to this ruthless waste as much as one would expect, for he saw that if he attempted to stop it, the feeling against the suppression would be so strong, that it would be impossible to continue it. As it was, the famous rebellion of the Pilgrimage of Grace, which broke out in the northern counties, just as the first houses were being suppressed, gave him a terrible warning of the general unpopularity of the change. The insurrection, however, was soon quelled, and Cromwell’s genius was able to turn it to his own advantage, and make it the pretext for carrying out the scheme which had probably been part of his original plan, namely the suppression of all the monasteries; a step which, without some valid excuse, he would have hardly dared to take.

In 1537 the visitors began to go to the larger monasteries, and intimidate their inmates into surrender, mainly by threatening them with punishment for complicity in the rebellion which had just been put down. An excellent example of the way in which this was done, is given by the story of the suppression of the two large Cistercian abbeys in Lancashire, Whalley and Furness[408]. John Pasleu, Abbot of Whalley, had been executed in March, 1537, by the Earl of Sussex for his treason in taking part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. The Earl was commended for this action by the King, who further desired him with ‘good dexteritie’ to ‘laye unto the charges of all the monkes there their grevous offences, ... and therwith assaye their myndes, whither they woll conforme themselfes gladly for the redubbing of their former trespaces to goo to other houses of their cote ... or rather take capacities and soo receyve seculer habite[409].’ The Abbot of Furness was doubtless threatened with death if he refused to surrender his house, for a month after the execution of his brother at Whalley, he signed a document, by virtue of which he handed over to the King his abbey, and all its lands and possessions, ‘knawyng the mysorder and evyll liff both unto God and our prynce of the bredren of the said monasterie[410].’

Another method of intimidation was to threaten punishment for superstition and image worship. Against the latter Henry’s minister was particularly zealous. Some of the images were very valuable, and could be sold for a high price. Two of the most extraordinary of the venerated relics found in the ‘defacement’ of the monasteries have become famous to posterity, under the names of the Rood of Grace, and the Blood of Hailes. The former was a wonder-working crucifix, held in great veneration at Boxley Abbey, which Geoffrey Chambers[411], an agent of Cromwell’s, found full of ‘certen ingynes and olde wyer wyth olde roton stykkes in the backe of the same, that dyd cause the eyes of the same to move and stere in the hede thereof lyke unto a lyvelye thyng[412].’ It was seized and exhibited, first in Kent, and then in London, and the ‘abusion thereof dyvulged.’ The Blood of Hailes was a phial of liquid, which a tradition of three centuries asserted to have been the blood of the Saviour[413]. The head of the monastery brought it to Cromwell in great perplexity, swearing that he was willing to suffer the most shameful death, if the phial had been meddled with in his day. A commission, appointed to inquire into it, took the liquid out of the phial, and found it to be a thick, red, sticky substance. They then gave it back to the abbot, to keep until he heard the King’s pleasure concerning it. Meantime Bishop Hilsey had preached a sermon in denunciation of the fraud, in which he asserted that a former abbot had told his paramour that the phial contained only drake’s blood; but he was later compelled to take back this last statement, as a result of the Commissioners’ inquiry. What ultimately became of the Blood of Hailes has remained a mystery, but it is noteworthy that Cromwell was so annoyed, at having unearthed a relic which proved valueless from a financial point of view, that when the ‘bluddy abbot,’ as Latimer called him, came to consult him about it, he was forced to pay £140, his best mitre, cross, and ‘another thyng or two,’ to make good the amount which Cromwell had expected to obtain from the relic. The iconoclastic zeal of the Vicar-general varied in proportion to the value of the image[414].

The first Act of dissolution had only given to the King the monasteries of which the annual income was less than £200. But now that Cromwell, on the plea of complicity in the late rebellion, had contrived to bring in all the larger religious houses, so that a general suppression had in fact begun, a fresh Act was needed to legalize his proceedings. So in the spring of 1539, a new statute was passed for the dissolution of all monasteries and abbeys[415]. But long before this the main part of the work had been accomplished. When the monks refused to be terrorized into submission, attainder and death invariably followed. It is but justice to Cromwell’s agents to say, however, that their methods of intimidation were so highly effectual that attainder was the exception, and surrender the rule. The Commissioners may well have been surprised that any of the abbots dared to stand out against them.

From 1537 to the end of 1539, the story of the suppression of the monasteries is simply a catalogue of houses surrendered or confiscated, on more or less unjust pretexts. So rapidly and thoroughly did Cromwell and his Commissioners accomplish the work, that by the end of December no monastery in the country had been left untouched, except Westminster Abbey, and a few other larger houses. The climax of cruelty and injustice was reached in the executions of the Abbots of Glastonbury and Reading. Cromwell’s famous remembrance concerning the latter was literally obeyed. There was no pretence of a fair hearing of his case. He was sent down ‘to be tryed and excecutyd,’ as Cromwell had ordered it[416]. The punishment of the Abbot of Glastonbury was, if possible, even more unjust. Though weak and broken with age and illness, he was arrested and sent up to the Tower, simply on the charge of having in his monastery a book against the King’s divorce, divers pardons and bulls, and a printed life of Becket[417]. It is stated that on examination Cromwell discovered that he had lent money to the rebels in the Pilgrimage of Grace, but it mattered little whether this serious charge was proved or not. His execution was determined on long beforehand, and his rich and ancient abbey was plundered immediately after his arrest. His fate was sealed long before his mock trial at Wells took place; the verdict of the ‘worshypfull jury’ was of course ‘guilty,’ and he was executed two days later on Glastonbury Tor[418].

Hand in hand with the suppression of the monasteries came the fall of the various houses of the friars. This had probably been a part of Cromwell’s scheme from the very first; it will be remembered that several houses suffered in the early part of his ministry, as a penalty for permitting their inmates to preach against the King’s divorce. A sort of preliminary visitation had been carried on in 1534, at Cromwell’s command, by his agents Browne and Hilsey[419]: but a far more energetic person was found in Richard Ingworth, Bishop of Dover, who, on the 6th of February, 1538, was commissioned by the Vicar-general to carry on a second investigation, in which he was to visit all the houses of the various orders of friars in England, to examine into and correct abuses, and to expel and punish the guilty inmates[420]. As he refers to the King’s Vicegerent, as his ‘synguler helper for XII yeres past[421],’ there is reason to think that he had been an intimate of Cromwell’s before the latter had entered the royal service: it is possible that they had worked together in the suppression of the monasteries which furnished funds for Wolsey’s colleges. A greater traveller than Ingworth could scarcely have been found in those days. The number of houses he visited during the first six months of 1538 is perfectly amazing, but with all his energy, Richard of Dover was far less efficient than his terrible master. When he hesitatingly wrote to Cromwell to ask whether he should meddle with the White Friars of Winchester, he received a smart rebuke for his doubts, and was told that though he had changed his friar’s habit, he had not changed his friar’s heart[422]. The Vicar-general found it necessary to give him a coadjutor, and chose a singularly apt man for his purpose in Dr. John London, Warden of New College, Oxford, who received a special commission with the mayor and two others to ‘loke vpon’ the friars of that town[423]. The friars gave the Commissioners more trouble than the monks. They seemed to have secret ways of learning when the visitors were going to arrive, and either carefully hid, or else sold all their valuables beforehand, a fact which affords the most probable explanation of the amount of poverty reported by the visitors. Still the houses fell without ceasing; if not by voluntary surrender, by compulsion. Nor did the visitors hesitate in the case of nunneries, to resort to the most shameful devices to elicit a surrender. London’s conduct was so disgraceful, that Cromwell was obliged to recognize the justice of the complaints of the Abbess of Godstow against him, and ‘steye his procedinges[424].’ ‘Doctor Londone,’ wrote the abbess to the Vicar-general, ‘whiche ... was ageynste my promotyon and hathe ever sence borne me greate malys and grudge like my mortall enmye, is sodenlie cummyd unto me withe a greate rowte with him, and here dothe threten me and my susters, sayeng that he hathe the kynges commyssyon to suppres the house spyte of my tethe[425].’ It appears that London himself wrote to Cromwell the day after to beg him to favour the abbess and her sisters[426]. Did he perhaps feel that he had gone too far, or are we to infer that his usual methods were even more brutal than this?