CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF Mrs. W. W. Sogers CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARy 3 1924 087 991 075 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924087991075 SOCIAL ENGLAND Volume 11. of SOCIAL ENGLAND CONTAINS yiiOM THE ACCESSION OF EDWARD I. TO THE DEATH OF HENRy VJI. "The history of social England is a stupendous iindei-taking, and Mr. Traill has realised his heavy responsibilities. Few men ave better titled to edit a work so compiehensive and exhaustive, for his knowledge is exceptionally wide and his intellect is singularly lucid. . . . Naturally it was an important question liow so complicated a theme was to be treated : Mr. Tiuill has decided— as we think, wisely, for what may be defined as an encyclopiiedical social liistnry. There is metliodic^l classification, with a distribution of the subjects among writers whom we may assume to be specialists."— Tke Times. " The utility of such a work is obvious, its interest to all cultivated people enormous, and the scale on which the book is to be written, adequate. "~!/'fte SpBoker. " Mr. Traill has, so far as we can judge from this first instal- ment of his feooiAL England, on the whole been fortunate in procuring the services of a competent band of contributors." — Saturday Eevieic. "Social England is so admirably jdanned ; the experts having charge of several departments are such masters of their subject ; it is so excellently prefaced by Mr. Traill, that for a moment the boundary line between an encyclopaedia and a history seems illusory, and in this case illuded." — National Observer. Volume IV. WILL CONTAIN fROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES I. TO THE DEATH SOCIAL ENGLAND ^ Hcrortt of tfre progress of tire ^People In Religion Laws Learning Arts Industry Commerce Science Literature and Manners from the Earliest Times TO THE Present Day By Various Writers EDITED BY H. D. TRAILL, D.C.L. SOMETIME FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE OXFORD Volume III from the accession of henry VIII. to the death of ELIZABETH New York: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS London : CASSELL and COMPANY, Limited 1895 CONTENTS. CHAPTEE IX. THE OLD ORDER CHAAGED. 1509—1547. PAGE The Reigx of Hknry YIII. (to the Fall of Wolsey) . 1 The Coxstitutiox ixder He>;ry VIII. . . . . G The New Era in Church and State . . .18 The Balance of Cla.sses Changed . . .29 Church History till the Breach with Roue 34 The Suppression of the Monasteries . . 54 The Liberation of the Church from Rome ... 65 The Art of War ....... 70 The Navy ..... 77 The New Learning . . . . . . 85 English Literature ........ 98 Scottish Literature . . . . . . . .107 Music under the Earlier Tudors ..... 112 Agriculture. ...... . . 114 CoMJlERCE AND CURRENCY . . . . . 118 Town Life Unher the Early Tudors ..... 131 Public Health and Medicine ... . . 145 "Manners and Costume. .... . . 153 Authorities. 1509-1547 . • • .167 CHAPTER X. THE NEW FORCES. ]5i7-l.i58. The Reign of Edward VI. . The Reign of M\v.\ ■ ... Church History under Edward VI. . 170 172 175 Vlll CONTENTS. The Catholic Reaction The English Bible .... The Art of War ..... The Navy Discovery and Exploration. 1512-1558 The Educational Reaction . Architecture and Art. 1509-1558 Agriculture ..... The Economic Crisis Pauperism and Poor Laws . Public Health ..... Social Life ...... Scotland from the Earliest Times Ireland from the Earliest Times Authorities. 1547-1558 PAGE 183 193 196 202 209 22S 230 239 241 245 256 261 274 293 302 CHAPTER XL the new order. 1558-1584. England and Europe . Church History ... Architecture and Art Magic, Astrology, and Alchemy Educational Literature The English Drama Earlier Elizabethan Poetry Agriculture . ... Industry and Trade .... Public Health and the Growth of London Elizabethan Society Elizabethan Manners and Costujie Scotland. 1561-1603 .... Ireland. 1558-1584 Authorities. 1558-1584 304 307 318 325 333 338 341 351 359 372 377 383 398 409 411 CONTENTS. ix. CHAPTER XII. THE EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. 158i-1603. FAOi: England and Europe . . 414 The' Armada ....... . . 416 The Results of the Defeat of the Armada . . 418 Ireland ....... . 421 Keligion : Puritanism and Nonconformity . . 42.'i The Religious Struggle . . . . 431 Religion and Literature .... , . 443 The Art of AVar . ....... 4.50 The Navy : and the Elizabethan Seamen . . . 458 Exploration. 1558-1603 . . . .477 Natural Science .... . 508 Music .... . 509 Later Elizabethan Literature . . . . 511 Agriculture . ..... . . 533 Industry and Trade . .... 538 Pauperism and the Poor Laavs of Elizabeth 548 Public Health 558 Social Life ... . ■ 564 Authorities. 1584-1603 . 57ii INDEX . 580 CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS VOLUME. Batbsox, Miss M., Associate and Li'cturer of Newnham CoUegp, Cambridge. Beazley, C. Raymond, JI.A., F.R.C4..S., Fellow of Merton College, Oxford; Author of Henry the XavUjator ("Heroes of the Nations Series"); JamcH I. of Aragon. Brown, Eev. John, D.D., Author of John Ban (/an : His life. Times, Mid Wor]:. Clowes, W. Laiho, Fellow of King's College, London; Gold Medallist U.S. Xaval Institute. CoLviLLE, James, M.A., D.Sc. (Edin.), Examiner in History at Glasgow Univer- sity ; Editor of Spalding's History of English Literature and Shakespeare's Coriolaniis (for schools). OoKBETT, \V. J., il.A., Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Ceei&hton, C, M.A. , M.D., Author of A History of JUpidemies in. Britain. Duff, E. Gordon, B.A., Author of Early Printed Books. Fletcher, C. li. L., M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Examiner in the Honour School of Modem History at Oxford ; Author of Gustavns Adolijhus. Gasquet, Eev. F. A., CD., Author of Henry VIII. and the Enylish Monasteries ; Edward VI. and the Book of Common Prayer : The Great Pestilence ; and The Last Abbot of Glastonbury and his Companions. Hassall, a., ^I.A., Student and Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford, and sometime Examiner in the Honour' School of Modem History ; Author of Bolinybroke (" Statesmen " Series), and Loitis XIV. (" Heroes of the Nations " Series) : Joint Editor of and Contributor to Constitutional Essays; Editor of and Contributor to "Periods of European History." Heath, H. Frank, Ph.D., Strasburg ; Professor of English Language and Literature at Bedford College, London. Hewins, W. a. S., M.A., Pembroke College, O.xford; Author of Enylish Trade and Finance in the 11th Century ; Contributor to the Dictionary of National Biography and Dictionary of Political Economy. Hl'ghes, EEGrNALD, D.C.L., sometime Exhibitioner of St. John's College, Oxford. Hutton, Eev. W. H., B.D., Fellow and Tutor of St. John's College, Oxford, and Examiner in the Honour School of Modem History ; Author of William laud; The Marquess Wellcsky ; and of The Misrule of Henry III., Simon ck Mont fort and His Cause, and St. Thomas of Canterbury, in "'Eng\ii\x History from Contemporary Writers." xii CONTRIBUTORS. Joyce, P. W., LL.D., Commissioner lor the Publication of the Ancient Laws of Ireland ; Author of A Short History of Ireland ; The Origin and His- tory of Irish Xaiiies of Places ; Old Celtic Romances : Ancient Irish Music, etc. MoLLiNGER, J. Bass, il.A., University Lecturer in History, Cambridge; Author of History of the University of Camlridgr, to the Accession of Charles I., Introdi'ction to English History, etc. Omax, C, 3LA., Fellow of AD Souls' College, Oxford; Autlior of The Art of War in the Middle Ages; V'arwick the KingmaTier ; The History of Europe, 476-918, etc. Pkotheeo, E. E., M.A., sometime Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford; Author of Pioneers and Progress of Enylish Farming, etc. RocKSTKO, AV. S., Author of -i General History of Music ; life of Handel ; Life of Mendelssohn : Memoirs of Madame Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt (in con- junction with Canon Scott-Holland) ; A Pecord and Analysis of the Method of the late Madame Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt, etc. Saixt.sbury, {.i., M.A., sometime Examiner in the Mediajval and Modern Languages Tripos at Cambridge ; Author of Marlborough . A Short History of French Literature, etc. Smith, A. L., M.A,, Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford, and sometime Examiner in the Honour School of Modem History at Oxford, and in the Historical Tripos at Cambridge. Steele, R., F.C.S., Librarian of the Chemical Society; Author of Medimval Lore; Editor of The Story of Alexander and Lydgate's Secrees of Old Philosoffres (E.E.T.S.), etc. Symes, Professor J. E., M.A., Principal of University College, Nottingham. Whittakeh, T., B.A., Joint Editor of Croom Robertson's Pemains ; foi-merly Assistant Editor of Mind. SOCIAL ENGLAND. CHAPTER IX. THE OLD ORDER CHANGED. 1509-1547. "If a lion knew his own strength, hard were it for any man to rule him." In these quaint and characteristic words More summed up his own experience of Henry YIII. as a master, and his advice to Thomas Cromwell, a. l. smith. The words are a summary of the whole reign. Henry viii. Year by year the royal power grew stronger, and revealed itself in more starthng forms. Before his death, this king without an army, without an independent revenue, with no open breach in constitutional forms, was exercising over a nation, still proud of its instincts of freedom and jealous of political innovation, a self-willed authority that amounted to a real despotism. Every fresh publication of the State-papers dealing with the time brings out in a clearer light the great abilities and the deeply- marked personal character of the king, the importance of his initiative, his extraordinary power of carrying the nation with him, and the magnitude of the results which he achieved. At his accession there was more than conventional rejoicing. Foreigners saw in it the promise of a golden age for his dominions. England turned gladly from the dynastic troubles and the repressive administration of Henry VII., from a reign of suspicion, extortion, and ignominious inaction, to the young prince, who embodied so brilliantly the learning and culture of his time, its tastes and ambitions, even its ideal of manly vigour and beauty. He was the first king for 110 years Avho had a title 2 SOCIAL ENGLAND. [1509 beyond cavil ; lie had inlierited a treasure -which the Venetian Giustiniani puts at 10,000,000 ducats; by marrying his brother's widow, Katharine of Aragon, he had secured the alhance with Spain; and the arrest and execution of his father's hated ministers, Empson and Dudley, raised the new ruler's popularity to its climax. It was an age of great European wars. In these wars France, full of a restless military class, con- Engiand and tiie g^iQ^^g of }^er new centrahsation and unity. Continent. . . „, t j. ri was the movmg spirit, ihere was much talk of Charlemagne and the Holy Sepulchre ; and more business- like schemes to recover Naples or to rob Venice. But in England the sullen traditions of Cre^y and Agincourt, the ancestral and inveterate hostihty to " our adversary of France," had been quickened to fresh life by French ambition, and were ready at a moment to leap into flame. Henry seized the opportunity in 1511 to join the "Holy League" to pro- tect the Papal territories from French aggressions in Italy. The expedition concerted with Ferdinand to attack the French from the Spanish side was a disastrous failure. Fer- dinand, overreaching himself as ever in his own cunning, infuriated his son-in-law by treating him as a catspaw ; the troops, drinking Spanish wine as if it were beer, fell ill, mutinied, and insisted on a return home. The failure made Henry determine that the campaign of 1513 should be on the Flemish side of France, to get Maximihan's co-operation. It also brought Wolsey to the front, the one man whose organis- ing capacity and omnipresent energy were to give a distinctive impress to the first twenty years of the reign. The autumn of 1513 witnessed the French panic and defeat at the Battle of the Spurs, the capture by Henry in person of Tournajr and Terouenne, and the overwhelming ruin of the invading Scotch host at Flodden Field. James IV. had fallen on the field ; his successor Avas an infant, his widow was Margaret Tudor. Scotland was forced to submit to a peace, and for many years to come Wolsey's skilful management of the Scots' intestine feuds — his "fiddling," as Dacre called it — availed to put an end to all danger in that quarter. It was considered also a master- stroke of policy when, after the most secret negotiations, peace was made with France in 1514, and not only peace but an honourable alliance by the marriage between Louis XII. and THE OLD ORDER CHANGED. 3 1547] Henry's sister Mary. It is true she was seventeen and he about sixty ; but in three months his death set her free again. Vrith Francis I. on the French throne, and Charles now ruhna: bpam as well as the Netherlands, the drama somewhat shifts its actors ; and these three remarkable contemporaries enter upon their historic rivalry. Between Francis and Charles the duel was inevitable and, so to speak, justifiable. But Henry's intervention is less easy to understand. The leading motive of it has sometimes been sought in a desire to appear as the champion of the Papacy, sometimes in a vigilant calculation of the balance of power. But no one motive suffices to explain it. His normal relation to France varied from jealousy and intrigue to open warfare, while the interests of trade and (till 1525 at least) the sense of relationship kept him normally in alliance with Charles. The famous meeting of the French and English kings at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520^ is thoroughly ■^cioth'of gom^' typical of the time, in its almost brutal mag- nificence, in its affectation of an effete chivalry, above all in its barefaced diplomatic futility. Immediately before he met his " dear brother of France," Henry had pledged himself in a personal interview to the emperor; and immediately after the meeting he hurried back to another such interview at Gravelines. Francis knew well that he was being shamelessly tricked; and Henry knew that he knew it. Yet the por- tentous farce which ruined many nobles of both countries was played out with decorous hypocrisy to the end. In 1523 France, weakened in Italy and threatened by the emperor and the Swiss on three sides, seemed to offer a favourable moment for attack. The chief French noble, the Constable Bourbon, had put his sword at the service of the invaders. But, as the penetrating genius of Machiavelli had pointed out, France is a country as hard to hold as it is easy to invade. With one burst of her ancient spirit she shook off all her foes ; and when the rout of her great army and the capture of her king at Pavia in 1525 seemed to lay her again at the mercy of her old foes, Henry thought better of his first vengefid impulse and made a treaty with Louise of Savoy, the Regent. The treaty was renewed in 1527, and was to be cemented by a French marriage for the Princess Mary. No doubt Henry was reluctant to push Charles' aggrandisement any further. B 2 4 SOCIAL ENGLAND. ^^^^^ But he was also beginning to feel his way to that rearrange- ment of his foreign position which the divorce The Divorce f^,^^ Katharine seemed likely to entail. This Question. •' divorce question and the consequent estrange- ment from Charles explain the fact that there was from this time no war with France till near the close of the reign. In 1538 James Y. of Scotland, by his marriage, introduced the Guise influence into his country ; and in 1542, by this influence and the encouragement of the Pope, James was led to a rash invasion of England. It resulted in the English victory of Solway Moss and the death of the Scots king. A Scotch invasion was always the accompaniment of a rupture with France, and in 1544 Henry invaded France and captured Boulogne, which was held till 1550. Dr. Brewer has maintained that all this aggressive foreign policy was needed to rouse England from its ^"^'poucy"''*'^ insular isolation, and that its effect was to raise the country from the position of a third- rate Power to that of one of the iirst rank, making it the arbiter of Christendom. In a .witty French masque, per- formed in Wolsey's presence, the truth was better expressed by representing the function of England as that of "paying the piper." It would be more just to call England the makeweight than the arbiter. Neither its interests nor its resources en- titled it to such an offensive interposition in the strife of two Powers, each vastly its superior in population and revenue, and still more in organisation and military efiiciency. Such a policj' diverted it from its real work, which was to remain, for fifty years to come, the neutralisation of Scotland, the paciti- cation of Ireland, the assimilation of Wales. At best, the more urgent need for the England of the Tudors was the creation of an efficient fleet, towards which not much was done by the king's occasional interest in his dockyards, or the build- ing of a Great Harry (p. 79). The net result of such a policy was the addition of a huge item in the financial wastefulness of the most wasteful reign in English history. It can hardly be denied that Wolsey's administration was, in regard to his foreign schemes, costly, dangerous, and futile, however stimulating it may have been indirectly. Yet AYolsey was beyond all doubt a great man. His com- manding abilities deserved the ascendancy which they won THE OLD ORDER GEANQED. 5 1547] him, not only in the popular imagination, but also in the councils of Europe. But, great as he was even then recognised to be, full justice was ^°^^ ana Ai'ms^''*" not done to him, nor could be done, till modern times. Only with the recent opening of our own and foreign archives has there been disclosed to us the boldness and magnitude of his aims, the comprehensiveness and practical sagacity of his highest conceptions, his almost in- credible industry, and his thorough grasp of details. " Feared by aU, loved by few or by none at all." This is the descrip- tion by a famous contemporary. But a scholar, and a needy one, had a twofold grudge against this cardinal whose interests were practical and whose wealth was already pledged to a great practical scheme. Wolsey was indeed " lofty and sour to them that loved him not." But through all the invectives of his enemies, even throuarh the biting doggerel verse of Skelton, there pierces a reluctant note of admiration. Wolsey was not free from some of the faults of his age — its rather vulgar ostentation, its arrogance and impatience, its unscrupulous- ness as to means, its low standard of private morals. That he had a household of eight hundred and a retinue bearing silver pillars and poleaxes, that he held at once three bishop- rics and one of the richest abbeys, that he humbled the great nobles and bullied ambassadors, that he had, and openly promoted, at least one illegitimate child — these were not traits without precedent in the lives of churchmen, however highly placed. The defects which in a fair historical judgment must weigh more heavily against him are his misapprehension of the conditions before him and of his royal master. He was clear-sighted rather than far-sighted. He saw the need of Church reform; he did not see the speedy and inevitable advent of the Reformation. He saw that the land required a stern enforcement of order, that the lingering feudal spirit must be cowed, that the equity jurisdiction in Chancery needed acceleration and extension, that Parliament was not yet fit to be the direct instrument of government ; but what he failed to see was that there was a spirit in the people which would resent even benefits if conferred without their co-operation, and which would endure a despotic sovereign, but not a despotic minister. In the same way he saw that the royal power expressed and embodied the Avhole nation, 6 SOCIAL ENGLAND. ^^^^^ that the king's glory and the king's will meant at bottom the national glory and the national vAll ; but he failed to foresee how easily and with what callous remorselessness the kmg could strike down in a moment the servant who had so much as crossed him or had merely ceased to be useful. He was the last mediajval minister— the last of a line which goes back to Dunstan, and includes Lanfranc and Roger of SaHsbury, Becket and Langton, Arundel and Beaufort, as well as Fox and Warham; men who typified the mediaeval idea of the Church-State. With him fell the Enghsh Church of the Middle Ages, which had for two and a half The End of the genturics past been too wealthy and privi- leeed not to challenge constant attacks, but too strong to yield to them, and perhaps too corrupt and too ultramontane to be reformed by any but the raost drastic measures. From 1485 to 1529, the date of the Reformation Parliament, A HASSALL *^® couutry was governed to a great extent The Constitution without Parliaments. It is true that as long under Henry viu. ^^ Archbishop Morton was Henry VII.'s chief minister the Lancastrian tradition was carried on, and six Parliaments met in the first twelve years of the reigir. But by Morton's successors a thoroughly Yorkist policy was adopted which continued till 1529, and of this policy ^Yolsey is the chief exponent. He cannot ■ be called a constitutional mmister. Both Henry VII. and Henry VIII., while observing the forms of the constitution, managed to manipulate them to their own ends. Wolsey, on the other hand, paid little attention to constitutional forms. As long as he was in office only one Parliament was summoned, and with that he quarrelled. It was not till 1523, after an interval of eight years, that the necessities of the war with France forced Parliament Henry to summon a Parliament, Various circumstances had enabled Wolsey to carry on the government without having recourse to a parliamentary assembly. Henry VII.'s peaceful foreign policy, combined with his habitual parsimony, had smoothed the way for his son. Then the enormous increase of the king's estates, THE OLD OBBEB CHANGED. 7 1547] patronage, and ordinary revenues, rendered Henry VIII. for many years absolutely independent of Parliament. There is little doubt that had Henry been satisfied with his life revenue and his unchecked power of exacting money from the rich, he might have continued to rule for most of his reign without having recourse to Parliament, and would have become substantially an absolute sovereign. To appreciate the real meaning of Wolsey's attitude to Parliaments and the danger arising from his unconstitutional views, the distinction between the regular and constitutional sources of income and those royal resources which were unconstitutional must be clearly realised. Henry's regular and constitutional sources of income were indeed considerable. Of the Parliamentary grants, tonnage and poundage, and the subsidy on wool, wool- felts and leather, were granted to him for life in the first Parhament of the reign. Then ^^^^^0^" he could obtain from Parliament a vote of tenths and fifteenths, and subsidies which resembled a gradu- ated income and property-tax, and which were levied for the expedition for 1512 and 1513, and for the warlike prepara- tions in 1523, 1539, and 1543. In addition. Convocation voted taxes in due proportion to those granted by Parliaments. Besides these constitutional taxes, the king could at times fall back on a benevolence, or amicable contribution, such as he attempted to levy in 1525, on heavy loans which were exacted in the years 1522-28, on exactions from the clergy, on sums raised under occasional forfeitures, and, later in his reign, on the plunder of the monasteries. Of these unconstitutional methods of raising money the most important were the loans that were never repaid, and benevolences exacted under the title of free gifts. It was by forced loans and benevolences that the money which was constantly required for the wars Bgjjg.yoiences was collected. In employing these methods for raising money, Henry and Wolsey were but following the example of earlier sovereigns. Richard II. had used forced loans and blank charters ; and these measures— some of the worst in his reign, resembling, as they did, similar acts on the part of Edward II.— were extremely unpopular. They were not repeated by Richard's immediate successors ; and it was not till 1473 that Edward IV. began to collect contributions 8 SOCIAL ENGLAND. ^^^^^ under the inappropriate name of benevolences; and this course was repeated in 1482 in order to raise money for the Scottish war. This collection of a benevolence _ was regarded as an innovation, and as a new method of im- lawful taxation. But Edward IV. was popular, and showed considerable financial ability in the way he requested and extorted "free-will offerings'" from his subjects. Still he was rich both in respect to Parliamentary grants and also by private enterprise, and had no excuse for the collection of benevolences. Though Parliament in 1484 declared benevolences illegal, Richard III. would not forego this easy method of getting money. In spite of the fact that benevolences were un- constitutional, Henry VII. continued to collect them, and his son, as has been observed, followed in his father's steps. The importance of benevolences is at once realised when it is remembered that they "were adopted with the view of enabling the sovereign to rule without that reference to Parliamentary supply and audit which had become the safeguard of national liberty." It seemed quite possible that Henry VIII., with an unchecked power of exacting money from the rich, might have become an absolute sovereign of a Continental type. But benevolences were always unpopular, and their collection required considerable tact. The struggle at Acworth in 1492 was probably caused by the exaction of a benevolence in the previous year. At the same time they were of great value, and the king was not willing to forego them. The Parliament of 1495 passed an Act empowering the Crown to enforce, if necessary by imprisonment, payment by those persons Avho had promised money in 1491 and had not fulfilled their engagements. Hence is was natural, Henry A^III. being in a stronger position than Heniy VII. and far more popular, that Wolsey should have recourse to the system of benevolences; and we do not find that he met with any marked resistance at first. Under the Tudors, beiievolences, as long as they fell on the wealthy classes, were, for very obvious reasons, by no means unpopular with the lower orders. If Henry VIII. and Wolsey had abstained from wars and foreign expeditions, it is quite possible that the king's unchecked power of exacting money, together with his life revenue, would have rendered THE OLD OBBEU CHANGED. 9 1547] him entirely independent of further ParHamentary grants. Forced loans were xexj similar, but they were loans without interest. Though usury was legahsed under Henry VIII., these forced loans were, later in the reign, regarded as a real hardship, because the Iving was on several occasions released from repayment. Queen Elizabeth was far more honest, and consequently her loans were cheerfully provided. As time went on Wolsey's difficulties began : the weight of taxation became oppressive, the royal expenditure increased, and the king's ordinary revenue proved quite unequal to the task of giving England a prominent place in European politics. The expenses of the campaign of 1522 against the French were ditficult to meet, and it became necessary to summon Parlia- ment. Thus the extravagance of the king, and an ambitious foreign policy, combined with the declme in the value of money, owing to the mflux of the precious metals from the American colonies of Spain into Europe (p. 125), compelled Wolsey to deviate from the lines of his domestic policy, and to acquiesce in the summoning of Parliament. He had, on becoming Chancellor in 1515, assumed the entire responsibihty for all affairs of state, and had introduced some order into the finances. "^^^ of ^^23"^''* He had hoped to dispense with ParUament, but the costliness of the French expeditions and the king's debts were matters with which even Wolsey, smgle-handed, could not cope. In April, 1523, Parhament was opened. "Wolsey's whole attitude to this memorable Parliament proves conclusively that he had no regard for constitutional forms, and little appreciation of the influence of precedent. He thought that the sole function of Parliament, if it was summoned, was to grant money for the king's needs. This was not the view held by the members of the Commons, and the whole proceedings of this Parliament, together with the words used by Wolsey in his speech proroguing the Assembly, testify to the existence of a new spirit which was unknown in the previous reign. The famous anecdote of More's conduct as Speaker may or may not be authentic, but at any rate it is valuable as illustrating the temper of the House of Commons. The cardinal, so it is related, made his appearance in the House, and, after a long oration advocating the necessity of a subsidy, asked the 10 SOCIAL ENGLAND. [1509 opinions of various members. His qiiestions being received with " a marvellous obstinate silence, he required answer of Master Speaker." Then More, on his knees, '-excused the silence of the House as abashed by the sublimity of the cardinal's presence among them, and showed him that it was neither expedient nor agreeable with their ancient privileges to comply with the cardinal's demands." This defence of the privileges of the House was unexpected, and "the cardinal, displeased with Sir Thomas More, that had not in this Parlia- ment in all things satisfied his desire, suddenly arose and departed." The story is very characteristic of Wolsey's con- ception of the position of Parliament in the Constitution, and of the duty of its members. The object of the summoning of Parliament being to obtain supplies, Wolsej^ had proposed that Parliament should vote a subsidy of £800,000; and when the Commons de- murred to this proposal, Wolsey had attempted to browbeat them and to set aside their privileges. He did not under- stand the temper of the English people : he failed to naanage the Parliament and to convert it into a " submissive instru- ment" of royal despotism. Parliament, indeed, agreed to give the subsidy, but the payments were to be spread over a period of four years. But what was more important, the members showed, by refusing to debate in his presence, that they would not submit to Wolsey's high-handed dictation, and that if they were to be managed, skill — not force — must be employed. Wolsey had, however, been successful in his immediate object. Parliament had granted the subsidy, which, with a loan which had already been arranged be- fore Parhament met, Avould, it was hoped, prove sufficient for the king's needs. When Parliament was prorogued Wolsey, as Chancellor, thanked the two Houses in the kmg's name for their grant : " Whereas for the furniture of the said war, both defensive and offensive, ye have after long pain, study, travel, great charges, and costs, devised, made, and offered an honourable and right large subsidy which ye have now presented in the name and in behalf of all the subjects of this, his realm, unto his majesty, his Grace doth not only right acceptably and thankfully receive, admit, and take the same, but also therefore giving unto you his most hearty thanks ; assuring the same that his Grace shall THE OLD OEDJEB GHANOED. 11 1547) in such wise employ the said subsidy and loving contribution as shall be to the defence of his realm and of you his sub- jects, and the persecution and pressing of his enemy ; for the attaining of good peace, recovering of his rights, and redress of such injuries as hath been done to you his loving subjects in time past." In these words the Cro\vn assured Parliament that the money should only be used for constitutional pur- poses, and recognised the principle that the king was as much a part of the nation as the Lords and Commons, and that the king's cause was the cause of the nation. The whole affair is a striking example of Wolsey's genius and boldness. A great financial scheme was carried out in the face of strenuous opposition from both clergy and laity alUvO. The taxation was oppressive and general, but the fact that the national prosperity was in no way impaired by it justifies the confidence of the minister, and is a conclusive proof of the wealth and elasticity of the nation. The entire responsibility of these measures was borne by ^Volsey ; Henry VIII. remained in the background, and while Wolsey was wringing supplies from a reluctant Parliament, the Xing was spending whole days in the chase. Henry VIII. was, undoubtedly, personally popular. Wolsey stood between the kin g and his subjects ; he did all the unpleasant work, and willingly bore the odium incurred by the imposition of taxation, while Henry spent the nation's money at his own pleasure. While Wolsey laboured in all things to exalt the royal power, he incurred on all sides great personal unpopularity. Every harsh measure was attributed to him ; every unsuccessful act was visited on his head. He was regarded as the king's chief adviser, and responsible for all the policy of the government. And this, the popular view of Wolsey's position, was undeniably correct. During the cardinal's tenure of office, Henry, though he always made his will felt on critical occasions, was only feeling his way and finding out what he could do. The civil and religious administration was, in reality, concentrated in Wolsey's hands. But though the nation was right in its estimate of the position held by the great minister in the councils of the country, men were unaware that Wolsey was at one with them in desiring peace. It was obvious to him, as it was to them, that a Continental war at that juncture was a mistake — 12 SOCIAL ENGLAND. ^^^^^ that by it agriculture would be interfered with, trade and industry deranged, commerce disturbed. As there was no chance of obtaining in future large supphes from Parliament, a lucrative peace was clearly the best pohcy. Contributions, though readily granted, were not always easily levied. Discontent was rife, a new Par- liament was out of the question ; an arbitrary loan m the present crisis would have caused a violent outcry. Till peace was actually made Wolsey was bound to raise supplies, for the captivity of Francis in Madrid had raised Henry's hopes of conquests in France. For war or for diplomacy a loan was required, and it seemed very improbable that a loan would be successful. In his extremity Wolsey hit upon an expedient which had long been forgotten. He announced that the king proposed to cross the sea and lead an invasion of France in person. For the king's proper Tiie equipment he demanded an amicable loan, andSenfyoieno^" and in 1525 commissioners were appointed in every shire to assess property, and to require that " the sixth part of every man's substance should without delay be paid, in money or plate, to the king for the furniture of his war." This amicable loan raised a storm of opposition; the people cursed the cardinal, and complained that before they had paid the subsidy voted by the Parliament of 1523 they were exposed to a new exaction. The clergy also distinguished themselves by their hostility to the loan. It was argued that coin was scarce in England, that France would be enriched by the money spent there, and that if the king conquered France he would waste his time and his revenues in a foreign kingdom. Most of the counties evinced great unwillingness to con- tribute, and they were encouraged in their attitude by the dogged opposition of the clergy and religious orders. Many hoped that through the resistance of London and other places they would escape from the necessity of paying ; in no case was anything but reluctance shown in considering the king's demand. It became evident that the opposition all over England would become still more fierce if the cardinal's determination to collect the amicable grant was persisted in. The Commission was accordingly withdrawn, and this attempt to raise money on the basis of each man's ratable value was THE OLB OBDEB GHANGEB. 13 1547] abandoned. When the cardinal announced to the mayor and corporation the abrogation of the Commission, he assured them that the king would take nothing from them except a benevolence or free grant. But this new attempt to obtain money by means of a benevolence met with an equal amount of opposition. The mayor and corporation being assembled a second time showed increased boldness, and one of the citizens declared that by the statute of Richard III. no such benevolence could be legally demanded. Wolsey retorted that Richard was a usurper and murderer : of so evil a man how could his acts be good ? " An't please your Grace," was the reply, " although he did evil, yet in his time were many good acts, made not by him only, but by the consent of the body of the whole realm, which is the Parliament." Wolsey was forced to withdraw from his position, leaving each man to " grant privily what he would." But the feeling in the country was as strong as that shown in London. There the popular discontent, fired by the example of the clergy and also of London, and intensified by the bad management of the commissioners themselves, became so threatening that it was evident that the money could not be collected without risk of a rebellion of a very serious character. At one time it seemed as if the main features of the peasant insurrection then raging in Germany might be reproduced in the eastern counties of England. Essex showed little disposition to comply with the demands made by the royal agents, and with Lincolnshire was ready to follow the example of Cambridge, where the town and univer- sity had combined to offer resistance to an unjust exaction. In Suffolk the commissioners were threatened with death; in Norfolk the attitude of the people was still more menacing. When the duke appeared to appease a tumult in Norwich, the leader of the Commons, one John Greene, thus addressed him: — "My lord," he said, "sith you ask who is our captain, forsooth his name is Poverty ; for he and his cousin Necessity hath brought us to this doing. For all these persons, and many more which I would were not here, live not of ourselves, but all we live by tlie substantial occupiers of this county, and yet they give us so little wages for our workmanship that scarcely we be able to live ; and this is penury — we give the time, we, our wives and children. And if they by whom we live be brought in that case that they of their little cannot help us to earn our living, then must we perish and 14 SOCIAL ENGLAND. [15C9 die miserably. I speak this, my lord : the cloth-makers have put all these people, and a far greater number, from work. The husbandmen have put away their servants and given up household ; they say the king asketh so much that they be not able to do as they have done before this time, and then of necessity must we die wretchedly." The period of social change through which England was then passing finds forcible expression in John Greene's words. The growth of corn was less profitable than the growth of wool, the towns were thriving at the expense of the country (pp. 116, 121). The great displacement of labour and the existence of grave dis- content were not incompatible with the increase of England's wealth as a nation. The benevolence was distinctly unconsti- tutional, but the refusal of some and the reluctance of others to advance money towards the king's necessities were due to the temporary exhaustion owing to wars and bad seasons rather than to any desire to oppose a demand because it was unconstitutional. The policy which had resulted in the proposal for an amicable loan certainlj^ did not originate with Wolsey. The king and his companions advocated war, and encouraged the royal extravagance ; Wolsey desired peace and economy. Henrj' dreamt of the conquest of France ; Wolsey saAV clearly that war with France was a mistake, that England's true policy was to counteract the emperor's designs, and that her real strength lay in neutrality and alliance with France. But in carrying out this statesmanlike policy Wolsey ran counter to the wishes of the mass of the nation. The preference he showed for a French instead of an Imperial alliance tended to make him more unpopular. Bad harvests aggravated the discontent caused by war with the emperor, which stopped trade and inconvenienced the merchants. It was true that Henry's anxiety for a divorce led him to desire a French alliance, but on Wolsey, always regarded as the author of all the royal acts, fell, as usual, the brunt of hostile criticism. The whole history of the amicable loan is important for several reasons. On that, as on previous occa- wois^y and tue gj^^^g^ Wolsey assumed the responsibility for a policy to which he was in reahty opposed, and screened the king from the popular odium which he himself incurred. His sense of ministerial obHgation belonged rather to THE OLD ORDER CHANGED. 15 1547] the nineteenth than to the sixteenth century. Then, again, the occasion was important in that the rebuff administered to the king was the first he had experienced. Henceforward Henry bore a special grudge to the clergy, whose example of independence was as unexpected as it was effective. Hence- forward, too, the popular hatred of Wolsey, wrongfully regarded as the real author of the Commission, increases in vehemence and in intensity. It is also interesting to notice that the amicable loan had to be withdrawn mainly on account of the opposition which it met with iii Kent. That county had ever taken an independent Hne. The memory of Wat Tyler and Jack Cade still hngered there, and as soon as the loan was resolved upon, Kent at once menaced the Government. This failure to raise money, however, rendered war im- possible and aided Wolsey in carrying out his peace policy. Henry VIII. had just convinced himself that nothing was to be gained from his alliance with Charles V., and henceforth he accepted AYolsey's views of peace with Francis. In 1527 the Treaty of Amiens was signed, and England and France were again alhes. Wolsey could now turn to the many domestic questions which required careful attention. The labour- ing population was discontented, the merchants Domrstic*Poucy. were irritated. The sweating sickness had reappeared (p. 257). The popular dislike of the cardinal was deeper than ever. But, undeterred, Wolsey set to work to carry out necessary internal reforms. Since 1515 these reforms had been thrust into the background, and an ad- venturous foreign pohcy had been einbarked on. For a successful foreign pohcy a strong government at home was necessary, and Wolsey had succeeded in making the mon- archy exceedingly powerful. He had, indeed, no conception ot a strong government of a constitutional type. He found Eno-land in the midst of a political, social, and inteUectual crisis. The nation Avished for a vigorous government capable of putting down anarchy. Henry VII. had made the monarchy strong, Wolsey made the basis of monarchical power still stronger. All classes looked to the king, and Wolsey, con- scious of the necessity of a constructive policy m domestic aifairs, was convinced that the royal power was the only 16 SOCIAL ENGLAND. [1509 possible instrument capable and vigorous enough to carry out reforms. To make that instrument as strong and as efficacious as possible was therefore Wolsey's aim from the first. And, in exalting the king's power, Wolsey was acting in agreement with the general feeling of Englishmen. " For good or evil, England was identified with her king, and it Avas long before it could be otherwise." Though Wolsey was a far greater man than his successors, he was inferior to both Henry and Cromwell in his grasp of the true position of the English monarchy. But his mistakes or shortcomings only bring out the more clearly the real temper of the English people and the problems of the time. In 1628 Wolsey began what might have proved the inauguration of a successful internal policy by suppressing a certain number of the smaller religious foundations ; but in 1529 he fell, before he had had time to carry through any great religious revolution. The history of his ministerial career is most instructive, and constitution- ally of distinct importance. We can, as Ave study it, grasp the salient characteristics of the Tudor monarchy, and discover numerous illustrations which prove conclusively that the Tudor despotism existed because it was popular, and that Parliamentary rights, during the most despotic period of Henry's rule, were not abrogated, but evaded. Wolsey undoubtedly wished to convert Parliament into a submissive instrument of royal despotism. His conspicuous failure with the Parliament of 1523, and the further failure of the amicable loan and benevolence of 1525, must have brought home to him the existence of definite limitations to the monarchical power. He had underestimated the strength of constitutional forms ; he had expected to find the Parlia- ment servile, and ready to submit to his overbearing treat- ment. He had imagined that the nation would contribute willingly to the royal necessities, whereas, though the king might raise money by unconstitutional exactions levied on rich individuals, it was only courting failure to embarrass the bulk of the middle classes, busied with trade, by endeavouring to fix upon them increased burdens. Wolsey would have not only rendered the Crown independent of Parliament ; he even wished to dispense with Parliament itself. His attempt to make the royal power supreme over Parliament failed because he THE OLD ORDER CHAXdEB. 17 1547) did not understand the temper of the Enghsh people. His endeavours to raise money in 1525 failed because he did not see that the king could only do what he liked provided he did not ask for large sums from the middle classes. He did not appreciate that condition of national feeling which was willing to give the king a free hand so long as the pockets of the Commons were spared. In spite, then, of his industry and broad views, Wolsey failed in managing the middle classes, and his failure enabled Parliament and the middle classes to show that they were by no means in a condition of servility. His ministry lay in an exceptional period, when, for the maintenance of order at home and for security from foreign aggression, the nation was wilhng to acquiesce in the temporary evasion of its constitutional rights and in temporary illegal acts. But the royal exactions were not taxes, nor were the royal procla- mations laws. Wolsey's failure taught Henry VIII. a lesson. From 1529 begins a period of government by means of Parliament. Henry YIIL, instead of attempting, like Wolsey, to make the Crown independent of Parliament, " induced Parliament to be a willing instrument of the royal will. ^^'olsey would have subverted the constitution, or at least, would have reduced it to a-hfeless form; Henry YIIL .so worked the constitutional machinery that it became an additional source of power to the monarchy." With ^Volsey's fall the manipulation of Parliament began. This system was introduced under Cromwell's auspices, and by his means the subservience '^^fSiame''nt°" of Parliament was secured. The methods employed were : direct interference with elections, bribery, the creation of boroughs, and the influence of the Court over members of the Lower House. This new policy was attended with decisive success, and the result was that the royal power was established on a " broader and securer basis than Wolsey could have erected." Wolsey's ministry, then, covers the period when the power of the Crown was more free from constitutional limitations than in any previous reign. His term of office saw the attempt made by the royal power under Edward IV. to dispense with Parhaments reach its culminating point. The meeting of the Parliament of 1523 was a definite blow at this G 18 SOCIAL ENGLAND. ^^^^^ unconstitutional system, and with the fall and death of Wolsey that system came to an end. It was not, however, till Elizabeth's reign that Parliament definitely emerged from its position as a tool of the Crown. The Tudor des- potism had by that time done its work : it was a means to an end, and that end was attained. Wolsey's great fault was that he regarded the royal absolutism as an end in itself, and that he never appreciated the fact that it was but a means towards the attainment of a definite end. As soon as England had been safely steered through the political, social, and religious revolutions of the sixteenth century, the necessity for the Tudor rule had passed away. Wolsey was a minister " of an age of grand transitions," and, though his political measures were often shortsighted and his financial pohcy a hand-to- mouth one, he was too great a man to be a mere tool of his despotic master. With AVolsey's fall begins a new phase, not only in the . , onvrxmiT hlstory of the English Church, but in the A. L. SMITH. ■J /. -T-. T n • 1 The New Era in position of Parliament and m the character Church and state. ^^ ^^le king hhnself It was significant that the issue of writs for a parliament in 152!) was held to be a decisive sign of the coming ruin of the minister who during all his years of power had called a parliament but once — in 1523 ; and that assembly he had tried to bully into submis- sion. His method had been to ignore or override parliament ; from 1529 the king rapidly learned that it was nearly as easy, and much safer and more specious, to work with a parliament, to flatter and bribe it, to play upon it and make it his mouthpiece. Above all, it became clear to him that if he was to secure his divorce from Katharine and his marriage with Anne Boleyn, it must be by a rupture with the Papacy and by the nation supporting him in such a course ; and this, again, could only be effected by utilising the national jealousies against the clerical order, and by thus breaking down the power of the Church for resistance. The first step to this was to emphasise the ancient doctrine of Praemunire. This doctrine, implying the denial of any foreign authority over the English Church and the complete subordination of the spiritual courts to the supreme jurisdiction of the Crown, had ,_„ THE OLD ORDER CHANGED. 19, already been asserted in the remarkable case of Doctor Standish in 1515. Accordingly in the Long Parliament of the Reformation ecclesiastical abuses were at once assailed, and by adroit manipulation the king got bills passed against them. In 1531 he forced the clergy to buy off the penalties by paying a fine, set with a show of legal precision, at an exact sum (£118,840 8s. Sd.), and by acknowledging him as " Supreme Head of the Church after Christ " — " a futile reser- vation," as Chapuis, the astute imperial envoy, contemptuously characterises it. In 1532, Henry presenting himself in person both in the Lords and the Commons, forced through both Houses his bill transferring "first fruits" from Pope to king, and later got the Commons to accept as their own the attack on clerical jurisdiction drawn up by himself By 1533 Warham and More had been replaced by Cranmer and Audley; Cromwell was now the chief minister ; the king had already secretly married Anne ; the lords had been brought round to the side of the Boleyns ; and the parliament was coerced into finally ratifying the Statute of ™®^o^f ^"'^ Appeals. The rupture with Piome was thus an accomplished fact. Later parliaments show similar sub- missiveness. They allowed the king to repudiate his debts and to be reimbursed for such as he had already paid ; they gave his proclamations the force of law, adding the suicidal declaration that if this power were not conferred the king would be forced to assume it for himself They legalised the surrender of the monasteries retrospectively. They made it treason to reject a form of oath under the Succession Act, and lett the king to draw up the terms of that oath. They stirred not a finger to save Katharine, or More, or Fisher, any more than to save Anne or Cromwell. They gave Henry the unheard-of right to dispose of the crown by his will. They accepted in 1536 the Statute of Uses (pp. 27, 129), and in 1540 the Statute of Wills, against both of which they had at first protested in 1532. They bowed to the ground when the royal name was mentioned ; they wept aloud when the king himself addressed them. No wonder that some writers have main- tained that in all he did the king was the interpreter of the real wishes of the nation, that the preambles of the statutes are simple statements of facts, that the people desired a dictator. Others represent the nation as submitting, in a c 2 20 SOCIAL ENGLAND. [1509 sort of dream, to acts which none fully realised, and state- ments which none could approve, as intimidated, tricked, and bribed by the deep-laid plans of a wholly conscienceless and masterful ruler. The truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. But the exact discrimination in more than one important point still awaits determination from a further knowledge of foreign and domestic State -papers. Perhaps, in the nature of the case, it can never be finally determined, but will continue to be somewhat differently judged by each inquirer according to his religious and political bias. It is as natural to connect the years 1.529 to 1540 with the name of Thomas Cromwell, as to connect the °^ ^ ^ 'years before 1529 Avith the name of Thomas AVolsey. But, as a matter of fact, when Shakespeare so dramatically makes the fallen minister's loyal champion succeed him at once, he is using some poetic licence. There was an interval of some three and a half years between Wolsey's disgrace and Crom well's rise to the chief position. When Chapuis says " he rules everything," it is towards the close of 1533. This interval, like the time before Wolsey's rise and the time after Cromwell's fall, was occupied by the influence of the great nobles, especially the Howards, the Duke of Norfolk, and the Earl of Wiltshire, Anne Boleyn's uncle and father. But abler heads and tempers more flexible than those of proud nobles were needed to conduct a policy in the critical months when Henry was expecting an invasion by Charles, and a possible rising at home. The man who now stepped to the front, and for six years at least seemed the virtual ruler of England, was one whose career had already had strange experiences, and whose inmost character and aims still remain to some extent a mystery. Thomas Cromwell was at this time about forty-eight years old. He had lived in Italy, the school of courtesy as well as of statecraft ; he had served there as a common soldier and then as a clerk ; he had lived as a merchant in Flanders, and from 1513 was a law-agent in London. The next year he entered Wolsey's service, and conducted the dissolution of some small monas- teries for him. He had become so identified Avith Wolsey's schemes that he must needs stand by his ruined master ; and he did so with great apparent courage. But it is probable o THE OLD ORDER CHAXGED. 21 154-7] that he plaj-ed a double game — winning the king's favour while he facilitated his desions on the cardinal's wealth, saving the victim at the cost of his benefices and his intended colleges. It was his subtle suggestion — for Cardinal Pole's account is too emphatic and circumstantial to be rejected — which encouraged the king to cut the knot of the divorce by getting himself declared Head of the Church. It was, again, his open boast to Pole that he took his views of government, not from the dreams of Plato, but from the practical wisdom of " a deadly book " — ilacliiavelli's " Prince," then just coming into notice. It was by his double dealing, the Commons complained in 1531, that the laity were not expressly included in the pardon granted to the clergy. He was not merely un- rivalled as a bold and original councillor", and as an unerring go-between ; he was also a most adept and indefatigable contriver in finance. This combination of qualities made him indispensable ; and in rapid succession he was made Privy Councillor, Master of the Jewels, Clerk of the Hanaper, Master of the Wards, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Royal Secretary, Master of the Rolls, general Visitor of monasteries ; and, finally, in 1534, the king's vicegerent in all causes ecclesias- tical, with precedence over all prelates and peers. On him rests the immediate, as on Henry the ultimate, responsibility for the scandalous manner in which the suppression of the monasteries was effected and the punishment of the recal- citrant Carthusians (p. 55). By his advice, though with Henry's full complicity, the nobles and gentry were bribed into acquiescence by a wholesale participation in the spoils. It was he who managed the trial and execution of Anne Boleyn, and the shameless persecution of the Princess Mary. Naturally enough, therefore, the "Pilgrimage of 59, Earl of Essex in THE OLD ORDER CHANGED. 25 1547] 1540. The king was disgusted with Anne of C'leves, the " great Flanders mare " ; the Lutheran alhance was needed no more ; Cromwell had accumulated upon himself and diverted from his master as much impopularity as was possible ; his usefulness was over ; he was to be struck down as mercilessly as ho himself had struck down others. Indicted for acts of which it was pretended the king was not cognisant, attainted by Parliament without a trial, refused leave even to speak in his own defence, his last appeals for life left unanswered, he was beheaded 28th July, ] .540. Few, if any, of English ministers had higher abilities than Thomas Cromwell ; perhaps no single one ever wielded wider powers or a more critical in- fluence ; certainly none present so strange a career and so enigmatic a character. This " hammer of monks,'' this icono- clast and destroyer of the Church, caii hardly be credited, nevertheless, with any sincere Protestantism. In life he inveighed against Lutheranism ; at the block he declared he died a true Catholic ; in his will he left money for masses. There were even wild rumours that he was plotting to marry the Princess ilary and to make himself king. We are fain to confess that over the man himself and his fate there still hangs a mystery. After Cromwell's death there was, indeed, no further need of anyone to stand between the king and any possible opposition, for opposition had ceased. ^upreme^" Clergy, lords, commons — all seem to have no will of their own left. Even the influence of the Howards ceased when the immorality of Queen Katherine Howard was dis- covered in 1542, and she was hurried to execution with the same ferocious abruptness as the others. The elastic theory of "constructive treason" undid the protectmg work of Plan- tagenet parliaments. It Avas easy thereby to dispose of the victims to dynastic or personal jealousy ; de la Pole, beheaded in 1513, Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham in 1521, were possible rivals. Henry Courtenay, ilarquis of Exeter, was descended from Edward lY. ; Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, from Edward's brother Clarence. Such pedigrees suggested the scaffold, and the head of the Marquis fell in 1539, of the aged Countess in 1541. Even the Howards could not escape : on trumpery charges, the Duke of Norfolk and his son the SOCIAL ENGLAND. ^^^g Earl of Surrey were imprisoned. Surrey was put to death, and Norfolk only owed his life to the fact that the king died that very morning. This might seem enough The Old Nobiuty ^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^j^^ -^^^ Submission. But they were bribed, too. For example, Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, received no less than thirty grants of monastic foundations m the single county of Lincolnshire. Out of the confiscated Church lands new families were built up by the royal favour. Russell, Cavendish, Seymour, Grey, Dudley, and the New. ^-^^^gy^ (^.gg-|^ Herbert, Fitzwilliam— these are the names that henceforth replace the ilortimers, Bohuns, and Bigods, the Mowbrays and Nevilles, of the ^Middle Ages. So that in this respect as in others Henry VIII.'s reign and Henry YIII.'s personal will have exercised a permanent influence on our national history. But neither intimidation nor corruption exhausts the list of means by which the Tudors controlled the great houses. The State-papers show an intri- cate system of loans, fines, remittances, official appointments, by which an irresistible network of financial obligations was drawn about the embarrassed lords and greater gentry. And in that age of costly pageants and reckless personal expense, of rapid fluctuations in money-values and of fast-changing economic conditions, there Avere few who were not em- barrassed. The similar qiiestion — How the Tudors managed to secure such an astonishing acquiescence on the part mg an eop e. ^^ ^-^^ people at large — must be answered somewhat differently. No doubt it was due in a great measure to the fact that the people desired, above all things, peace and order. They had not forgotten the Wars of the Roses. No doubt, too, the parliamentary struggles and victories of the fourteenth centuiy had been obscured, and Parliament itself discredited, by the humiliating failure of parliamentary government under Henry VI. Moreover, as the nations of Europe passed from the feudal to the modern mould, there was an imperative demand for a strong central power in each to watch over the transition ; and England was now feeling what France and Spain had already experienced. But, true as these considerations are, there were two further factors in the case which historians have been apt to ignore. One is the very real and present sense there was of probable attacks THE OLD OBDEB CHANGED. 27 1547) upon England either by France and Scotland, or later on by the emperor ; the other factor is the extraordinary skill with which Henry manufactured public opinion, or at any rate anticipated and magnified it. There still remains enough to admire in what he achieved and presented to the nation as its own deliberate acts. But the State-papers begin to give us some insight into the means by which it was all done. That there were hmits to his power, that the popular spirit of freedom was dormant but not dead, he himself probably saw, and more clearly than ^iie p°p|J1^J Check we can. A good instance is the conduct he statute of uses, pursued in regard to the Statutes of Uses and WiUs (p. 129). The former had been introduced in 1531. It was in strict analogy with the ecclesiastical reforms. By the practice which had grown up of creating " uses," or equitable interests in land, the kinsf lost his succession-dues on estates, just as by the practice of paying " annates," or first-fruits, to the Pope, the king lost his succession dues on benefices. The remedy was to bring uses within the common law, just as the Church jurisdiction had been brought. Similarly, the extra- legal power of devise which had grown up should be allowed as to one-half a man's lands ; to the other half the heir must succeed, and so the king would recover his old feudal rights. It was a great social and legal reform, and a justly-conceived one. But there was great uproar, as Chapuis tells us ; men clamoured that the king was taking half of each man's lands. The king was not of yielding stuff, and he had right and common-sense on his side this time. But he had to postpone the Statute of Uses till 1536, and the Pilgrimage of Grace extorted from him the Statute of Wills in 1540, which gave him far less than he had aimed to get in 1531. For the last seven years of the reign Henry was more than ever his own minister. The parliaments were fewer, of briefer tenure, and more de- ■^Recon^rtion'' ferential than ever. His hold on the people was unshaken. The spoliation side of his Church policy went on sweepingly. The chantries, hospitals, colleges, and gilds were attacked in 1545; the Oxford and Cambridge colleges were some of them dissolved, and all in danger. The scheme of new and sounder foundations was a fraud ; Christ Church, Oxford, and Trinity, Cambridge, were simply the salvage from '28 SOCIAL ENGLAND. [I50y greater Avrocks. In spite of fifteen years of plunder on this Gargantuan scale, despite " amicable loans " and benevolences, pensions from France, and confiscated estates at home, this royal robber, who had inherited the vast treasure laid up by Henry YIL, ended by that financial crime and blunder rarely perpetrated in England, a systematic debasement of the coinage (p. 124). In other respects his policy aimed at an immovable balance between " the rash party ' and " the '^'^K^i^^aTion"' 'lull party," to use his own words. He had become " Supreme Head of the Church," but he remained "Defender of the Faith." With tis last wife, Katharine Parr, there came more Protestan-t influences about the court ; but if Latimer was ,protected in his plain speak- ing, yet Anne Askew was tortured and burned for denying transubstantiation. In the thousand years' record of our English kings, not one is so hard to judge as Henry VIII. The '^^ He^ viiT °^ ^*^°^ *^^ ^^^ people in earlier years, their un- questioned master throughout, who harangues them from a superior height as much of goodness as of wisdom and power, he is apt to strike the modern sense as almost a monster of selfishness, cruelty and lust. It is, indeed, the truth to say that he was revengeful, self-willed, superlatively wasteful, and self-indulgent ; that he was profligate, if not beyond con- temporary rulers, yet with a harder and more unredeemed grossness ; that we never see him touched by gratitude, re- morse, or even misgiving, never see him waver in that belief in himself, that self- worship, which is almost sublime. It is not, perhaps, much defence to point out that this self-worship, coupled with a long tenure of absolute power, did much towards the degradation of his character. Fisher had been his father's counsellor and his own ; More had been his in- timate friend. It is after sacrificing them that his worst deeds are done : the trumping-up of charges against Anne, the heartlessness of taking a new wife the day after Anne's execution, the brutal treatment of Cromwell. The extra- ordinary thing is the ascendancy which he had over the mind the will, almost the conscience even, of the best and greatest men. It must be remembered that he was cultured and learned, many-sided in his interests and his accomplishments, THE OLD ORDER CHANGED. 29 1547] and had tliouglit deeply on the stirring questions of his day. He Avas, in fact, a man of exceptional abilities ; abilities which were predominantly practical. He had a clear and fixed view of what was the wisest policy to adopt, and this view he forced through to the end, often with violence or fraud, with greed or cruelty. The moralist, the religious biographer, the con- stitutional lawyer, will condemn him. Yet in the general verdict of history it must be allowed that much that he did was necessary, much was good, and out of the evil itself came goodness in the final issue. He must be pronounced the strongest, ablest, and most individual personality among all English kings. During Henry VIII.'s reign the tendencies which were visible in his father's lifetime became still more strongly marked and more fully developed. The Balance of The centre of gi-avity in the great ship of classes changed. State permanently shifted. Henry 'N'lII. won and established a dictatorship ; he permanently changed the balance between the Church and State and between the Crown and the Estates of the Realm in accordance with the lines laid down by Henry TIL The clergy, already dependent on the Crown, were forced by circumstances to act in harmony with the will of the king, and offered little or no resistance to the increase of the royal power. But their subservience did not save them from spolia- tion and loss of political influence. By his destruction of the monastic system Henry threw out of Parliament nearly two-thirds of the spiritual baronage, thus revolutionising the balance of forces in the House of Lords. The Church had been, at the time of the accession of the Tudors, the only power which might have resisted the Crown. But, owing to their loss of popularity, the clergy had been compelled to ally themselves with royalty, and when the breach with Eome came, they found that all possibility of taking up an independent attitude was gone. At the same time, they had in no small measure contributed to the growth of the monarchical idea. For royalty had, in great measure through the action of the clergy themselves, become invested with a spiritual influence in the minds of the people, and this remained after the king 30 SOCIAL ENGLAND. 11509 had dismissed his spiritual advisers and changed his religious principles. The royal supremacy was estabhshed, and with the adoption by Henry \'III. of an ecclesiastical headship a gradual change can be observed coming over the composition of the ecclesiastical body itself. After the breach with Kome the clergy and bishops are often married men, taken generally from the middle classes, with whom they sympathise and by whom they are influenced. Thus a complete revolution was effected in the condition and status of the clergy. The ecclesiastical powers hitherto in the hands of the Pope were transferred to the Crown, the episcopal office became for a time subordinate to the king, and the Church, from being an independent rival, sank into a position of subservience from which she was unable to raise herself for many years to come. At the beginning of Henry's reign the number of spiritual peers was forty-nine; after the dissolution of the monasteries it fell to twenty-six. But the growth of the royal supremacy was aided more by the altered position of the nobles than by The Old NoDUlty j.i • n • ^ tt ttttt any other smgle circumstance. Henry \ HI. found no strong baronage to thwart him. The policy of pro- scription had destroyed all that was dangerous in the old nobility. During the Middle Ages the barons had borne the brunt of the conflict for English hberty, and their impotence after the Wars of the Roses cleared the way for the assertion of the monarchical principle. The nation, in its anxiety for order and good government, was content to leave the upper classes at the mercy of the king ; and, taking advantage of this prevailing sentiment, Henry VH. had pursued a policy of levelling class privileges. His Government, carried on for the most part by capable officials whom he could trust, did not necessarily exclude the old nobles from office, but they were placed on the same level as the other officials, and when Henry Xlll. ascended the throne, the power of the old nobles had practically passed away. Henry VH.'s unbending rule had shown the remnant of the old feudal nobility the folly of entering upon rebelHon, and his policy of founding a new race of nobles was adopted and developed with characteristic energy by his son. And the history of this policy of replacing the old by a new race of nobles affords valuable illustrations of the changes takint^ THE OLD ORDER CHANGED. 31 1547] place in social life. Throughout his reign Henry YIII. had numerous opportunities, which he readily seized, of creating a new nobility, absolutely dependent on himself The powers of the Cro^vn were enormous ; its patronage and revenues were inunense. The king had at his own immediate disposal " the stewardships of forests, manors, chaces, castles, fisheries, and mmes ; the coUectorships of customs in A^arious ports ; appointments of ambassadors, commissions in the army and navy." By con- fiscations and by the attainders of the de la Poles, the Salisburys, the Empsons, and the Dudleys, the Crown lands, already increased by the rebellions in Henry VII. 's reign, were vastl}^ augmented, and numerous lucrative posts connected with the royal estates could be bestowed on the king's favourites. Moreover, with the fall of the monasteries an enormous amount of land lay at the disposal of the Crown, and the greater part of it was handed over to Henry's courtiers, who formed a new Court nobility, owing its rise entirel}- to the king's favour, and disinclined as long as Henry lived, to show any political energy. The exclusive road to promotion in the earlier portion of the reign may be said to have lain in personal service to the king. It has been accurately stated that " the Howards, the Brandons, the Jerninghams, the Sidneys, the Plan- tagenets, the Sherbornes, the Fitzwilliams, the Mameys were or had all been Squires or Knights of the Body or Gentle- men of the Chamber." Similarly, all the important offices in the departments of the State and in the army and navy were filled by men who had been in personal attendance on the kiner, who were the servants of the Crown, and as keenly interested in the extension of the royal prerogative as was the king himself An aristocracy was thus in part created of a different kind from the old feudal aristocracy and animated with different sentiments. The latter was taken from the upper ranks of society ; it owed its position, in great measure, to vast territorial possessions, it kept a jealous watch over the powers of the Crown, it acted as a check upon the undue extension of its prerogatives. The former was taken from a lower class ; it owed its elevation to personal ser\'ices rendered to the king, to whom it was completely subservient. It was thus wholly unlike the old haughty nobility, " with its feudal 32 SOCIAL ENGLAND. [1509 grandeur and its sumptuous living." A personal nobility, " indebted for their rank, their emoluments, their importance, and their employment to their personal services about the king — enriched by wardships, by marriages, by forfeitures, by stewardships in the royal demesnes, continually augmented by impeachments of the older houses, owed everything to the king." As time went on, the ranks of the nobility were opened to merchants, lawyers, borough magistrates, and manufacturers — men who, risen from small fortunes, had been enriched by the confiscation of the monastic property. And thus it came about that from the ranks of the courtiers and from the middle classes arose a nobility which owed its position to wealth or to the favour of the king — a nobility which was for many years utterly powerless to check the absolutism of the Crown. The rise and influence of the middle classes in the place of the gentry of race, was in itself a circumstance Midme^c^^sses, ^^l^ich Contributed to the change in the balance of the Constitution. It was no longer race, but wealth, that made the gentleman. Trade owed much to the Tudor kings. Henry VII. had encouraged the commercial classes ; Henry VIII. continued this policy. The old gentry, already impoverished by the civil wars, were, to a great extent, ruined by the extravagance of the Court of Henry VIII. They fell into debt, pawned their estates, and were succeeded by their tenants, or by the opulent merchant class, which derived much of its new importance from the discovery of the New World, from the rapid extension of commerce, and from the increasing taste for luxury. The old nobles and gentry being weak, and no longer possessed of riches or of political influence, the middle classes, with their ever-increasing wealth and importance, naturally could not remain stationary. Their impelling spirit may be described as a restless propensity towards material progress which was determined at all costs to prevail. These new men " scented out needy heirs," they " purchased wards of noble birth " and married them to their sons and daughters. They looked upon farming as a commercial speculation ; their one object was to wring from the land the highest possible return. Henceforward men took rank and exercised authority THE OLD ORDER CHANGED. 33 1547] according to the amount of their incomes, while in con- sequence of this new state of things the land changed hands rapidly, and rich merchants possessed them- selves of estates. The ruin and spoliation of ^ andtheTa^nT^ the feudal families and of the monastic orders, in a similar, though in a less degree, benefited also the yeomen. The improved methods of cultivation and enclosures enabled the farmers to work their land in a profitable manner, and the vigorous parochial system of the Tudors bears evidence of the active part taken by the yeomen in public business. The prosperity and number of the small landowners is a marked feature of rural England in Tudor times ; and in Henry ^'III.'s reign the importance of the yeoman class was clearly recog- nised. With the yeomen farmers and labourers the pushing and covetous race of new landlords were by no means so popular as the old proprietors had been. Still, the growth of the new squirearchy in the sixteenth century did not affect the political equilibrium by doing aAvay with the " yeomanry or middle people, of a condition between gentlemen and cottagers or peasantry." Both subsisted and flourished side by side. All these changes told in favour of the establishment or a strong monarchical power. The country required a firm hand to guide her through ^^'^f^^^^c^o''^^ a religious as well as an agrarian revolution. Parhament was ready to carry out the king's wishes, even at the risk of being accused of subservience. Engrossed in the pursuit of wealth, and as yet unaccustomed to enforce con- stitutional restraints upon a sovereign, the Commons, now brought face to face with the power of the Crown, made no attempt to step into the position vacated by the old feudal nobihty. They were satisfied with Henry's deference to their advice whenever it agreed with his own wishes, and their subservience contributed to complete the change in the balance of the Constitution. The Crown was, in effect, absolute. The spirit of feudaHsm had given way to the mercantile spirit. The various parts of society were linked together by a new principle ; the whole social life of the nation was affected. The breach with Rome coincided in point of time with the social and economic changes, and by aiding in the successful assertion of the absolutist principle D 34 SOCIAL ENGLAND. ^,^^3 rendered the position of the Crown enormously strong, and enabled it to dominate all the remaining political forces m the State. There was no proud baronage to thwart the king ; the clergy were defenceless against his hostility, and the higher ranks were regarded with a jealous eye by the middle classes; Avhile the Commons, thrown out of working order by the absence of political energy in the House of Lords, busied with trade, and dreading a return of discord, were favoured and concihated. The labourers hoped to gain more from the sovereign than from their extortionate landlords. Every class looked to the king, and the royal power was accordingly exalted. As a result of all these changes, English society in Henry VIII.'s reign begins to assume a modern form. The English aristocracy has entirely changed. The development of wealth as a class-test was superseding the old distinctions of birth, and the highest elements of society became ready to receive into their midst and to assimilate the lower elements. The " anarchical autonomy of feudalism " was a thing of the past, its place was being taken by the unity of the State and the authority of law, and a revolution was being carried out affecting every class in the covmtry. The variations in the balance of forces in the State during the last hundred years had been excessive. At one time the pendulum had swung to the side of the nobles, now it swung- to that of the king. Gradually the new nobles would assert their independence, and the Commons would make good their position. In this way a natural counterpoise would be again set up against the overweening power of the Crown, and the political balance Avould be more fairly adjusted. The dividing-line between medi;eval and modern England, it c KAYMOND ^^^^ bceii Said, comes in the reign of Henry BEAZLEY. YII. ; but it is in the life of his son that the ® ^^°^' change becomes apparent, as a revolution — from the age of rights to that of powers, from the Catholic to the Reformed system in Church and State. At the accession of Henry VIII. EngHsh religion did not seem very different from Continental. All °^^5m-i52a ^' Latin Christendom had passed through the common religious decline, and had shared in THE OLD ORDER CHANGED. 35 1547] the common failure to reform the Church from within. A practical paganism seemed to rule in the hi^-hcv classes of Southern Europe, and a superstitious lethargy had crept over the lower, in every one of the Christian nations, except, per- haps, the Spanish. Devotion was more and more fixed upon the tei-rors of death, and hell, and purgatory. Gerson, and Sigismund, and Pius II. had worked in vain to restore the life of the Church. She was atrophied, said the alarmists, in head and members. The Popedom was vicious or paganised, and Christendom submitted to its rule. Commerce, science, and naval enterprise — the real activities of the age — now went on apart from religious impulse, except, again, in the Spanish peninsula. In England, as on the Continent, Christianity had slowly become debased — not so much by a perversion of true doctrines into false, as by the general Re'^ourreeung decay of zeal and interest. The chantry system, the mass traffic, the monastic decline, the later scholasticism, the widening gulf between clergy and laity, were all, in different ways, evidence of decay, though the gorgeous elaboration of the Church system had never been so great. From the days of Walter de ]\Ierton the energy of the religious leaders had been mainly turned to education. Even bishops* now divided " learned clerks " from " idle monks," and pre- ferred — like Wykeham, "Waynflete, and Fox — to found colleges rather than abbeys. Only eight houses of religion, and nearly seventy houses of learning and charity, had risen between 1399 and 1509, and in the 870 monasteries of earher date numbers had decayed with devotion. A few examples may stand for all. The great Friary at Gloucester, which in 1267 had forty inmates, only sheltered seven in AVolsey's day. The Templars in 1310, and the alien priories in 141-i had gone the way that all were going.t The chantry system— almost unknown before Edward I.— had overgrown the * Cf. Fox, Fisher, and Oldham of Exeter. Fisher is specially notable in this connexion as the real founder, throusfh Lady Margaret, his penitent, of St. John's and Christ's Colleges, Cambridge, and of the' Divinity professor- ships in both universities, as well as the true beginner of Greek study at Cambridge, just as he began it in his old age for himself and others. t Of 1,200 monasteries, etc., founded in England during the Middle Ages, only about half remained for Henry's dissolution. During the thirty years before 15011 not one was founded. D 2 36 SOCIAL EXGLAXD. [1509 cathedral and parochial, and the mass priests whom it pro- duced, thoiip-h sometimes iised as additional curates, or local schoolmasters and. lecturers, lived by abusing the very nrst principles of the Church ; for they sold the Eucharist to those able and willing to buy so many masses for the re- mission of so many dajrs in purgatory ; and though much good work could be done by the chantry priests, and though chantries may have been chapels-of-ease to many parish chvu-ches,* this tendency to supersede | the regular oi-gani- sation by an exceptional one was certainly felt in the time of Wolsey to have over-reached itself, and was one of the first and favourite marks of Protestant attack. But it was not only a practical, but a doctrinal exaggeration. We must connect it with the popular worship, "not of love, but of fear," with the pictures of hell and judgment, and the dance of death, and the material agonies of the damned, if we would understand, for instance, Latimer's horror of the "Devil's satisfactory propitiatory-mass — our old ancient Pur- gatory Pickpurse, that evacuates the Cross and the Supper of the Lord." But to get anything like a general view of English religion in the first half of Henry's reign (] 509-29), during the political supremacy of Wolsey, and while the medireval system was still in name untouched, we iiuist not only look at the proofs of a dying world, but at the preparation for a new and living one. For the historical Christianity of the older time was not destroyed in England by the revolution, but re-formed, and, as on the Continent, religion revived in the two forms of Protest- ant movement and Catholic reaction. Along Avith practical and doctrinal corruptions, along with decay in art and defection in literature, there was a mass of earnest conservatism, which would soon purify the Church from within, once it Avere made intelligent, roused to action by fierce attacks from without. 1. The main body of Englishmen, led by their clergy, still held to the mediaeval faith, as it had been "Conservatives." Anally presented in the thirteenth century— the three creeds and seven sacraments, the ' As in York Cathedral, where Richard III. befran a chantry of 100 priests. t As the parish system had been superseded in past time— especially from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries— by monastic and mendicant orders. TEE OLD OBDEB CHANGED. 37 15471 mysterious presence and sacrifice in the mass, the primacy or supremacy of the Pope, and all the doctrine and discipHne of their mother, the Roman Church — " Plater et magistra omnium ecclesiarum urbis et orbis;" but the Papal privileges were only a tradition by the side of the sacramental system, the belief in Divine action through material forms,* which was the philosophy of Catholicism, the essence of ordinary Christian doctrine at that time. Yet behind this there was, among the more ignorant, a certain backgTound of super- stition, and observers feared that this was on obstacles to a ,1 • n^ ■ ^ 1 ■ Conservative the increase. Une samt, one day, one image, Reformation. was preferred to another, for this boon or for that; some were accused of thinking that the body of Christ could only lie in a round wafer. The doctrine of the sacraments, by which the schoolmen had tried to spiritualise the spiritual gifts of the Divine presence, and which had been endorsed by the Lateran decrees of 1215, was not altogether realised by many, who still talked in the language, not of the thirteenth century, but of the eleventh.f Some of the ceremonies of Lent and Passion-tide seemed to countenance the more gross and material language ; and the gloom of the later Middle Ages naturally passed into the religion of men whose daily toil was one of fearful necessity, and who were often forced to crouch before their lords as those lords crouched before the despotism of the New Monarchy. Local currency was certainly given to pious frauds, t to abuses of the Treasury of Merits, and of * Kg., in lioly places, causing pilgrimages ; in holy earth and water, leading to churchyards and ceremonial sprinklings ; in holy persons, causing relio- worship (and, on another side, the consecration of the ministry in Apostolical Succession) ; in holy words, causing mystical change of suhstantia or essence, as in the Encharist. t Cf- the Lateran Council of 1059, under Nicholas II., and its language about Christ's body in the Eucharistic wafer being ground by the teeth of the faithful. t Beside the well-known rood of Boxley and wonder-working statues and wells, there was the Holy Thorn at Glastonbury, which bloomed at Christmas, and Our Lady's Girdle at Breton, which gave safe delivery in child- birth. Cf. Thos. More's " Adoracion of Ymages." '■ We set every saint in his office and assign him such a craft as pleaseth us— Saint Loy . . a horse leech, Saint Ippolitus ... a smith, Saint Apollonia a tooth drawer. Saint Syth women set to find their keys, Saint Roke we appoint to see to the great sickness, and Saint Sebastian with him. Some saints serve for the eye only, others for a sore breast." . . " As many things as we wish, so many gods have we made," adds Erasmus ("Enc. Mor."). 38 SOCIAL ENGLAND. ^^^^^ the Church's " deposit of power." If only money could be raised, as for the Papal schemes in Koman buildings and temporal aggrandisement, indulgences Avere readily granted for thousands of years from that " fiery furnace that hath burned away so many pence "—along with " canonisations and expectations, pluralities and unions,* tot-quots and dispen- sations, pardons and stationaries, jubilaries and pocularies, nianuaries for relics, pedaries for pilgrims, oscularies for kissers." So, at least, said the Hot Gospellers of the time. But the Church courts and the unemployed and immoral clerffv were the most serious difficulties of a The Church Courts '^■' . ,. . , -ixr i ^„ J„ as Obstacles to conservative reformation, such as \V oisey ae- Keform. s,\xe^, with the great majority of men of the old and new Icarning.t " Is there nought to be amended in the Arches ? " says Latimer in 1536. " Do they rid the people's business, or ruffie and cumber them ? Do they correct vice or defend it ? How many sentences be given there in time, how many without bribes, if men say true ? And what in bishops' consistories? Shall you often see the law's punishments executed, or money-redemptions used instead ? " " For the treatment of such moral evils as did not come under the common law was left to the Church courts : these became centres of corruption which primates, legates, and councils tried to reform and failed, acquiescing j in the failure rather than allow the intrusion of the secular power." § Again, " the majority of the persons now ordained had neither cure of souls nor duty of preaching ; their spiritual duty was to * A list was made by Bishop Gibson, of twenty-three clergymen holding, on the average, eight benefices apiece at the opening of Henry VIII.'s reign. t Cf. Colet's Sermon before Canterbury Convocation, December, 1512. " All evil in the Church is either the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, or the pride of life. . . . We are troubled with heresies, but not so much as with naughty lives. . . No new laws are needed, only let the old ones be observed. . . The Bishops must begin." I Cf. Hunne's case, 1513-1.5, and the king's decision therein: — "You of the spiritualty act expressly against the words of our predecessors, who had never any superior but God. You interpret your decrees at your pleasure, but I will never consent to this, any more than my progenitors.'' On the other hand, "ffarham drew up rules for the reform of Church courts, and in 1518 summoned a special synod at Lambeth to treat " of abatement of divers abuses." § Stubbs, III., 373. THE OLD ORDER CHANGED. 39 1547] say masses for the dead," and, as the result, " histead of greater spirituahty, there is greater frivohty. In the self- indulgent ranks of the lowest clergy there existed, as among the laity, an amount of coarse vice which had no secrecy to screen it or to prevent it from spreading ; " and, though the higher clcrg}- were mostly pure in life, they were violently charged with pride and worldliness. Churchmen like Morton and Wolsey, the prime ministers of the earlier Tudors, appeared to have more of the statesman than of the pastor ; and in the growing prejudice of Englishmen against clerical government, even the abuse of Latimer found a hearing. " Unpreaching prelates . be so troubled with lordly living, so placed in palaces, crouched in courts, ruffling in their rents, dancing in their dominions, burdened with ambassages, moil- ing in their manors and mansions, loitering in their lordships, that they cannot attend " their duties. " Some are in king's matters, some ambassadors, some of the Privy Council, some furnish the court, some are lords of Parliament, presidents, controllers of mints." " .Since priests have been minters," said iin unfair proverb, " money hath been worse." The moral side of the Catholic system had been obscured by the ideal, and the rationale of worship, to some extent, forgotten in ritual developments. Latin, still popularly understood in the four- teenth century, had become a hierarchic and learned language in the sixteenth. Though of untold value in the revival of learning, and in the general intercourse of Unreasonable the educated world, the more rigid con- Ecclesiastical servatives threatened to destroy much of its <"iserva sm. value by refusing to accept its results. For nearly a thousand years Greek thought had been known to the \\'est in Latin versions : now the renewed study of Greek (as in Dean Colet's School at St. Paul's) was challenged as dangerous : " Greek is the tongue of heresy," said Colet's opponents, though Greek was the original tongue of the local Pioman Church and its missal. 2. But it was in this new learning that the chief hope of the historical faith really lay. Christian society „ ^^^^^^^„ was not altogether corrupt and outworn, even after Piers Plowman's vision and Morton's visitation ot St. Albans (Vol. IL, p. 467). The old Church only needed mendinf, not ending, and the reconstructive movement from 40 SOCIAL ENGLAND. [1509 within was led by such men as the Oxford reformers of 1498— by Colet, Erasmus, and More— men who deliberately chose conservative reform against revolution when thej' came to the parting of the ways. In Colet's sermon before the Convocation of 1512, as well as in his Oxford lectures* of 1497, and his oration on Wolsey's Cardinalate, we have, perhaps, the best expression of this temper, and of the party who, by such expression, saved the Church. To keep the Catholic system, but to make of it once more a reasonable service, the friend of every onward movement in society, was their policy. They, Avould fain preserve by adding intelligence to caution. Yet among these, the true reformers, there were two parties. One, represented by Erasmus, cared for knowledge rather as the end and religion as the means : the other, the party of Warham and AA'olsey, of Tunstall and Colet and More, at least believed religion to be the greatest of social forces, if not of human goods, and hoped that learning would refine and invigorate the faith which was the basis of national character. From the latter the churchmen of the Catholic revival drew their leaders, from the former came more and more defection to avowed freethought. But even without the conscious action of reformers, there Earuer Movement ^^^^ ^eeu some signs in the mediasval system towards Reform that it was Coming some Avay to meet the new age. English was displacing Latin in hynms and carols — \\'ynkyn de AVorde's first collection was printed in 1.531 f — and even in some of the processional re- sponses : t authorised private devotions, or primers, had been " wholly in vulgar tongue" since ]410, and more than thirty editions of these were printed as late as the years 1520-47. * On St. Paul's Epistles. f Cf. the " macaronic " hymn : — " Now make us joyc in this feste In quo Christus natus est A patre nnigenitus. Sing we to Him and siiy welcome. Veni, Redemptor gentium." X Cf. the Sarum Verse at sprinkling of holy water, oirca A.D. 147(1 :— " Remeniljer your promise made in Baptism, And Cliri.st's merciful bloodslieddiug, By tlie wiiicli most holy sprinlding, Ye from all your sins have pardon." TEE OLD ORDEB CHANGED. 41 1547) Only the alarm of the Lollards prevented an authorised English Bible long before 1539. '"Tis not much above 100 years," says Cranmer, in his Preface to the Great Bible of that year, "since Scripture hath not been read in the common tongue within this realm." In 1497-98 Colet had lectured in English on the Epistles of St. Paul, and referred his Oxford hearers from all " mystical glosses " back to the true literal sense of the words. Last among its advantages, the Church was in possession of the ground, penetrated men's lives as nothing else could do, and possessed in its 30,000 clergy, its 8,000 parish churches, its 100,000 consecrated buildings, its property equal perhaps to near one-fifth of the national wealth, resources which only needed direction. To pull it down from its privi- leged, wealthy, ultramontane position would be found a hard task ; to remove its candle altogether could not be done, even by Puritanism. 3. But with a sleepy conservatism and a new learning, not • yet alarmed by a new fanaticism, there seemed an opening for the party of revolution. In Kevoiuuonists. the England of Wolsey these men were not yet formidable ; the old Wycliffite movement, though very threat- ening in 141.5, had ceased to stir classes or masses from the reign of Henry VI. For the first forty years of Tudor rule there were few signs of the Protestant upheaval.* The early " Lutherans " of Oxford, and Cambridge, and London mostly recanted or fled over sea, and the prudent leniency of A^'olsey, Warham, and Tunstall deferred the danger till the Governmental struggles broke the English Church from * B.y., up to Wolsey's fall : (1) May 2, 1511, six men and four women, most from Tenterden, brought before Warham and made to abjure. (2) Later in May, in June, July, August, and September of the same year the registers of Fitz-James of London, Xix of Norwich, Long-land of Lincoln, have similar entries. (3) All through March and April, 1.521, Warham keeps urging Wolsey to purge Oxford; in August, 1.321, accordingly takes place the book-burning at St. Paul's. (1) Five "noted Lutherans" are moved by Wolsey from Cambridge to Christ Church (Cardinal College), Oxford, rirc. 1.523. (5) Tyndale's Xew Testaments burnt in Cheapside, 1527. (6) Bilney and Arthur recant before Tunstall, November, 27, 1527. (7) In 1528 appears Simon Fish's "Supplication of Beggars." The London Pro- testants were organised into a "Christian Brotherhood," with a central committee and paid agents for distributing New Testaments, etc. 42 SOCIAL ENOLANB. ^^^^ the comixiunion of Koine, and faith began to follow the changes of jurisdiction. But if tke Lollards had failed in their own daj^ they seem to have prepared the lower classes for some great changes — ■ not in conscious expectation or agitation, but rather in a readi- ness to acquiesce in steps which the mass of Frenchmen and Spaniards refused to take. From year to year, when once men had " leaped out of Peter's bark," England seemed to wake and find itself more and more Protestant. The earlier Puritans threw themselves heartily into the central purpose of the Tudor revolution — the laicising of the Church, the subjection of the clerical estate — and thus gained in great measure their own ends, just where the Presbyterian * doctrin- aires of Elizabeth's day provoked a conflict. Latimer did not, like Cartwright, try to substitute a Genevan Popery for the Roman. He was "shod for the preparation of this gospel" when he " endeavoured to teach and set it forth as our Prince hath devised." Thus the conservatives, the reformers, and the revolution- aries account for all sides of Ensflish religion in the first half of Henry's reign. We need not count the courtiers and the indifferentists as religious forces, though they powerfully aided the action of those forces. For though Cronnvell and Cranmer became two of the Protestant heroes, the mission of both was one of policy rather than of " prophecy " — a mission not to believe or to disbelieve, but to make and to mar. Theirs is essentially a State religion, and their oflices, however sacred, are of uncertain tenure — "quamdiu se bene gesserint." The political rather than doctrinal reformers, Avhose chief interest in the struggle was personal and social, became in time the liberals of the seventeenth century, as the rigid conservatives grew into the Tridentine Romans of 1570 ; as the Oxford reformers grew into the Church of England, and the revolutionist^ into the Puritan Conformists and Non- conformists of lG(i2. Protestantism began as a revolt asfainst the critical and pagan spirit of the Renaissance, and tlien, * The earlier State Protestantism is -svell represented in a book like Jewel's •' Apolofry" (especially Part VI.), speakings for the Church of England in 15C3. before the High Church revival of lr)8!MG40. Jewel, attacking- the Council of Trent, says in effect, '• We [churchmen] can bear our own wrong's. But why shut they out Christian princes from their convocation? For five hundred years the Emperor alone appointed the Church assemblies." THE OLD OBDEB CHANGED. 43 1547] passing into its stage of warfare Avith Catholic authority, alUed itself for a time, and for a definite purpose, with the free thought it had risen up to combat. Thus the alliance of civilisation with the Christian faith, which had been the aim of the conservative reformers, Avas broken by the divisions Avithin the religious Avorld itself: thus, Avhile part of the new learning remained the friend of the Church and recreated Catholicism, Roman and Anglican, the other part gradually lost all sympathy Avith theological interests, and gave itself to art, hterature, and science. But as yet, in Wolse3''s day, this noAv learning seemed far more likely to control Latin Christendom than, in any sense, to be put under the ban of the Church. The histories of Church and State are interAvoven in the reign of Henry YIII. in a special sense. Never before or after is the union, the sub- c™ and state ordination, so complete. The Church-State on its religious side becomes the State Church, the highest department of the ciA'il service of the pontiff-king. Only after his death, and then only very partially, does religion slowly regain some independence of action. But for his first twenty years (1509-29) he alloAvs his father's system to continue. Wolsey, the greatest of Church statesmen, is the successor of Morton and Fox ; the king himself is a far keener churchman than any Tudor before him, studying Avith eager personal interest, that systematic theology* Avhich Julius 11. and Leo X. Avere only supposed to know and to protect. Anti-clerical feeling Avas latent, but the agitation for Church disendoAvment, so marked in the Parliaments of 1395, 1404, and 1410, had not been rencAved since Henry Y. The Lollard movement had died of inanition. Thus the official history of religion under Henry VIL contains no heresy trials — only a restriction of the rig-hts of sanctuary and benefit of clergy, an increased authority given to the bishop over clerical offenders, and Cardinal Morton's slight attempt — in advance of \Volsey— to visit and reform the monasteries. -f- » AVriting in l.-)31, apparently with A\^o]sey's help, " The Assertion of the Seven Sacraments." His favourite author was St. Thomas Aquinas, t Bringing about the disclosures at St. Albans. U SOCIAL ENGLAND. [1509 For the first six years of the new reign Warham held the great seal— fifth of the Tudor bishop-chancellors, " the Arch- bishop " of Erasmus and Grocyn and Colet. It was with a letter of Erasmus that Holbein presented himself at Lambeth to see England and to paint the Primate's likeness. To Warham it was said all men were as brothers in the ncAV love of Imowledge ; he only made difference between the friends and foes of Christian learning ; but he was rather fitted for a patron of scholars than for a leader of Church and State, and between 1513-15 the reins slipped from his hands into those of Thomas Wolsey, once the Boy Bachelor of Magdalen, now the Cardinal Archbishop of York, who as Chancellor and Legate a Latere gathered up all the civil and spiritual power of England into his own hand, and so became the central figure in the last days of the old regime. To understand Wolsey's position and aims was not in the power of the later partisans, with their division of the world into godly and Papist. His wars and intrigues, his taxes and personal pomp, his Roman connection, his attempts on the Papacy, his all-absorbing power in England, enraged for various reasons the innovating party in religion, the liberal party in politics, the dominant party in Lombard Street.* He meant, they said, to slave for the king till he had made his fortune and his master's and then escape to the Papal Court — to the chair of St. Peter, if he could. His own defence was ignored, that he wished for the universal See to reform universal Christendom. He disappointed the party of the new culture, who looked to him for more liberal measures in government and religion. He crushed Bible-reading, and so incurred the hatred of all Protestants, learned and un- learned alike. His long tenure of power began to tell upon him, as upon every minister. Each year there was a greater burden of failures, while men took the ordinary success for granted. The agrarian discontent, so serious later, began to show itself There was " sore grudging and murmur- ing among the people " at the benevolence of 1525 : it was worse, said the Kentish squires, than the taxes of France ; and England, if she paid, would be bond, not free. * Though a word of praise for Wolsey's commercial policy cannot well be left out of even the most cursory notice of Wolsey's life and work (c/. Cotton MSS.). THE OLD ORDER CHANGED. 45 15471 But it was by the loss of personal favour tliat Wolsey fell, as he had risen. Henry's will had set him in power, and that will could have kept him there. For nearlj- twentj^ years the Butcher and his dog had ruled,* said his enemies, looking on at Buckingham's ruin ; but the servant was only there to satisfy his lord, who " for any part of his appetite would put the half of his realm in danger." As the cardinal, like More, was too great a man to be the mere tool of an irrespon- sible will, that will destroyed him, and with him, for a time, the cause of conservative reform. Revolution came in with his successor, Thomas Cromwell. Like the body of the clergy, Wolsey was felt, or said, to be " but half an English subject " ; like them, the prtemunii'e, from which he had been practically, if not legally, exempted, was used against him. AVhen the seals were taken from him in 1529, the Church was left " at the foot of a dynasty that had learnt to kick over and trample upon it." But what had Wolsey done — how had things moved — in these twenty years (1509-29) ? There had , -^ ■', , ^ ./,,.. Wolaey's Work, been no open breach, no violent religious re- vival, but the Protestant movement had begun abroad, and had also begun to touch England from Germany ; the new learning was passing into the religious revolution ; the fifteenth- century division of Christendom into fully-organised nations was becoming a division into warring Churches ; and, as the Papacy became more and more of a petty Italian State, and less of an (Ecumenical arbitrator, clerical power became more and more isolated, while the Crown grew stronger. The Tudors had not started with a design of secularising, but they had chosen their ministers from among churchmen, and made bishops of their ministers, till the bishops forgot that they were anything but ministers. Yet Wolsey, though many thought he had forgotten his profession, was still able to show at the end of life the example of a Grosseteste ; and, in estimating his policy, it will be fair to call it essentially that of a churchman— the last great champion of the mediteval system. He aimed first of all at reform of the English Church, by * The butcher (Henry), the dog (Wolsey)— as Charles V. meant simply— are confused by Polydore Vergil, who starts the tale of Wolsey's birth from a butcher's family. 46 SOCIAL ENGLA2^n. [1509 cautiously converting the monastic into an educational sys- tem, by enlarging- the Episcopate, by a strict His Foundations. , ... /. , i ■ i i and constant visitation of the parish clergy, and by restating and guarding the constitutional position towards Rome. With doctrinal alterations, even with such practical reforms as the use of English for Latin, Wolsey does not concern himself. He seems to believe that all will come right if the old and new learning are once united, as Colet had tried to do in his school at St. Paul's, as Colet's lifelong friend tried at Ipswich and Cardinal College. Ii:i these two foundations Wolsey followed the plans of Merton, and of Wykeham — of Merton, in the general idea of reformation through education ; of Wykeham, in the plan of a great country school as the necessary feeder of a university college. In 1524-25 his Oxford house of learning was endowed and opened; in 1528 the cardinal himself drew up the rules* for the Ipswich school, in Latin, prescribing the course of study for each of the eight classes into which he divided his boys. For this project he adopted a plan of uniting smaller monas- teries with the larger, and devoting the funds thus gained to the new work of teaching ; he even schemed to commute the payment of annates by a plan which would not only have satisfied the king's needs for a time, but have added funds for scholarship, and relieved the irritation with Rome. His school and his professorships were suppressed, and his college refounded and curtailed by the master who plundered him. His schemes appeared to fall with his power, and yet after he had surrendered every- thing and retired to his " benefice of York," he was more dreaded than before. The reason was plain : in the North he acted the bishop as well as he had acted the statesman at Court, and he was rallying all the countryside round himself, and the cause of the Church in him, when the iinal order came for his arrest : — " Who less beloved than my lord Cardinal before he came ? Who more, after he had been there, and of ntter enemies made them all his * Still extant, and reprinted in 1825. Wolsey's foundation at Oxford provided for a dean, a sub-dean, (iO canons of the First Order, 40 of the Second, 13 chaplains, 12 clerks, l(i choristers, with lecturers on Divinity, Canon Law, Physic, Philosophy, Logic, and Humanity ; and four censors, three treasurers, four stewards, 3il inferior servants, 1S() students. THE OLD OBBER CHANGED. 47 friends .' He gave bishops a right good example to -win men's hearts. There were few holy days but he would ride five or six miles, now to this parish church now to that, and there cause one or other of his doctors to make a sermon unto the people. He sat amongst them, and said mass before all the people ; ... he saw why churches were made ; ... he began to restore them to their proper use. He brought his dinner with him, and bade divers of the parish to it. He inquired if there was any debate or grudge between any. If there were, he sent after dinner for the parties to the church and made them all one." * His journey northward from his Nottingham palace at Southwell to " Cawood by York," was the progress of a popular leader ; the first day, from " eight till tAvelve and from one to four," he stood confirming the children brought to him as he passed, till " constrained by very weariness to sit down in a chair." Next morning, "or ever he departed," he confirmed one hundred children more, and " at a stone cross near Ferry bridge there were assembled two hundred others, for whom he alighted, and never removed his foot till he had confirmed them alL" At Cawood, "he lay with love of worshipful and of simple, exercising himself in charities and keeping open house for all comers, having also, to rebuild the castle, above three hundred artificers daily in wages," and preparing for his enthronement in York Cathedral, " not going upon a way of scarlet cloth like our predecessors (as he warned the Chapter) but right simplily upon the vamps of our hosen." At this moment came his arrest. He was hurried up to London to answer for the social success of the last few months ; but the countryfolk in York and Doncaster ran after him, when taken from them, cursing his enemies : " The foul evil talce them — a very vengeance light on them — God save your grace." Utterly broken in mind and in body, ^^'olsey could get no further than Leicester — " a very wretch replete with misery," but who at the last realised that religion and despotism, the old Church and the new monarchy, might not always be friends. " Every man layeth the burden from him ; I am con- tent to take it on me, and to endure the fame and noise of the people for my good will towards the king ; but the Eternal God knoweth all." * '• Remedy for Sedition," published 1536 [of. Cavendish's Life of Wolsey). 4S SOCIAL EXGLANB. [1509 The fall of Wolsey is not only a political tragedy, it is tlie sign of a social revolution nigh at hand ; Wolsey, and the it is a proximate cause of the Reformation in Course of the England. The leader of the Church interest Reformation. , ? , , _ . . i p i had barred, by his control or the executive, the entrance of foreign Protestantism. Lutherans he had gently but firmly kept under, as a new tj'^pe of Lollard, as political mcendiaries. By his favour with the Crown he had kept all aristocratic control and influence from the king ; by his position alike in Rome and Westminster, he had been able to supersede the Pope till men could not bear the old foreign interference. The Legate-Chancellor prepared the law, the Church, the nobles, the gentry and commons of England for the new monarchy of Henry VIII.; and "the nation which trembled before Wolsey learned to tremble before the king who could destroy Wolsey at a breath." This was the under- lying social fact of his rule, and his fall, taking away all check on the royal will, opened the door for foreign influence. Court factions, and a new national position, just so far as that royal will chose to go, and the nation, which it so AvonderfuUy reflected, chose to follow. Wolsey had trained the king in tact, in statesmanship, in knowledge of politics and of life, till "he could manipulate the very prejudice and ignorance of the people to his own purposes."* From 1529 Henry YIII. is his own sole minister ; no man could tame him. We are now on the eve of the Reformation Parliament and its evolution of the modern Church- The Causes of State System of England. The separation the Eellglous ^ ^•' ,, ^ ^ . ,. V. t i Kevoiution. ivoxa Rome, the reconstruction of English religion, if it began with the personal matter of the king's divorce, is carried through with something of the quiet power of a force of Nature, and we must clearly separate (1) the personal, (2) the intellectual, and (3) the social causes of the revolution (1529-36). 1. Among the first came the king's scruples about his " incest " with his brother's wife, his passion 1. Personal <• a -n i i ■ t for Anne Roleyn, his disgust at Roman eva- sion, his disappointment with AVolsey as an instrument, his necessary abatement of strict orthodoxy through his * Stubbs, "Lectures on Medieval and Modern History," p. 332. THE OLD ORDER CHANOED. 4-9 1547] connection with the hereticising Boleyns. The Defender of the Faith and Assertor of the Seven Sacraments gradually came to see in the disloyalty of a Papist something worse than Lutheranism. Wolsey, ruined ]mrtly for " Popery," partly for insufficient diplomatic conscience, was replaced bj' the agnostic Cromwell, who neither feared God nor regarded men by the side of his personal interests. Warham, a little later, replaced by Cranmer, More and Fisher by Audley and Wriothesley, (^Hieen Catherine by Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour — who can deny that the changed personnel of the Court acted as a part cause of the social change ? 2. The intellectual preparation for some great change is evident in the groups of classical enthusiasts J Ti 1 i? 1 1 T i ^1 2. Intellectual, and liberal reiormers who had not yet been called to choose between the Church and science, and to this influence must be added that of the books and tracts which had been pouring out of Germany since 1517. After Wolsey 's removal, these became the favourite reading of " earnest" people, as the wider schemes of social reformers — of More's Utopia, for instance — were forgotten in men's concentration on the religious struggle. S. Of social preparation for the Reformation in England there was little in active, conscious movement ; enough in passive indifference to, or dislike of, foreign bishops, in the dogged national pride and independence of character, in the popular love of English speech and ways and government. Catholicism without the Pope was the latent wish of most Englishmen, and Henry succeeded by interpreting into fact just so much and no more. He struck the true average, and that average backed him against the Pope and the clergy, against all tendencies to go back into " Papism," against the reaction caused by the monastic dissolution. There was not only a social aversion to Pome, there was the old Lancastrian layman's feeling of rebellion against anything of sacerdotal dominion. The bishops' courts, the privileges of sanctuary and of clergy, had all been "blown upon'' under Henry VII. ; and now the vast wealth and separate Parliament of the clerical estate, its alleged control of one- flfth of English land, its dominance in the peerage (where the spiritual lords still numbered forty-eight out of eighty-four). 50 SOCIAL ENGLAND. [1509 its hold on political power through the almost unbroken succession of clerical ministers * as chancellors, keepers, and presidents of council, all provoked the cry " Restraui." Want of governance had been the complaint under the House of Lancaster ; now it was plainly seen by the king that the clergy, by their local power as well as by their foreign allegiance, were " but half our subjects." Nobles, gentry, merchants, lawj^ers, thus invited by the Crown, made good speed to the feast. The wealthiest corporation in the realm was to be despoiled ; this added zest to the thought of freedom from restraint. For however much the Church, in and out of England, had sunk from the thirteenth century, it was still the most powerful and penetrating discipline in society ; men met with its prohibitions and canons, felt its help or its hindrance in every walk of life. The king himself was a spiritual subject of the servants of God ; now the mass of Englishmen helped to raise him to a lay popedom. The English Reformation was the overthroAv of sacerdotal- ism as a form of government. Beginning, cuaracteristics of not with doctrine, as foreign Protestantism ^^ br'O'.q.n but ivit'.l'i mri^rJipi-in in England. tue Keformation began, but with jurisdiction, it followed " no law but that of its own development," and resulted in a revolution which cannot be classified; for, in spite of its religious form and dress, it was in essence political and social, and, as a middle class movement, is connected with the Long Parliament of 1640, and with the dynastic change which we call so oddly " the Revolution." The immediate eli'ect of the breach with Rome, the im- position of the royal supremacy on the Church of England, the subjection of Convocation to impotence, and the disso- lution of the monasteries, Avas " not to vary," as Henry said, "in any jot from the faith catholic," but to sever English Christianity from the older Western federation, and to inter- weave Church and State so closely that the Church became the nation in one of its aspects, but without power of independent action, controlled by that same nation in another aspect, by the lay power represented in Parliament and the king. Here was the secret of the permanence of the English Reformation— in the social victory of the great lay classes * Specially In the Tudor Period. THE OLD ORDER CHANGED. 51 1547J over tlie clerical estate, and their resolution to keep tlie upper hand. So the reaction, when it comes in 1539, in 1553, is limited in the nature of things, ilary herself flinches before the question of the abbey lands. The poorer classes are at least Catholic in sympathy, and both upper and middle classes will sometimes profess repentance, but they will not disgorge. For all interests were committed to the main work of Henry A'JII. Edward's doctrinal changes and practical misrule made men willing to return to the older faith ; but at the restoration of religious property and priestly power they stopped. Rome was finally rejected because she never forgot a claim or relinquished a possession that had once been hers. The lay power in the State — this, and not reformed doctrine, or liberty of conscience, or a vernacular prayer-book, or Catholic antiquity — was the ultimate social principle of the struggle. These other ideas had their place; but they all rested upon that of mastery — who is to rule ? The new position of the Church was seen in the empha- sised, half-spiritual dependence of the bishops on the Crown, in the attempt to treat them as royal nominees, appointed on good behaviour, during the soA'creign's lifetime, and so bound to sue out new commissions at his death, ordained, translated, and deposed at his will. The same appears in the treatment of the lower clergy, in the pulpit-tuning of Cromwell's regime, in the wholesale revocation of preaching licences, in the destruction of the monastic life. Again, in the fine of 1531, in the transfer ot annates from the Pope to the king, and in the general Church plunder of these years — perhaps equal to £4,000,000 in modern value — the clergy paid a direct compulsorj' tribute. It was no " amicable loan " or " benevolence " ; it was the submission to the altered balance of power. Lastly, a regal papacy was evolved out of a royal suprem- acy. The "headship'" clause of 1531, the articles of 1532 on Church legislation, the supremacy. Restraint of Appeals in 1533, the Act of Supreme Head, together with the Acts of Succession and Treason in 1534, and the king's commission to revise canon law in 1536, give us the stages of this development. " For subordinate purposes, such as dispensations and faculties, Henry alloAved Cranmer as Primate to hold a quasi-legatine E 2 52 SOCIAL ENGLAND. [1509 authority under himself in Chancery, but in all such matters he was the fountain both of power and justice ; and by appointing Cromwell as A'^icar-General, with authority and precedeiice over all prelates and nobles, he exactly repro- duced the Pope's exercise of direct powers through a Legate a Latere." In the same way it is by royal letters patent that the English Bible is printed, and the new bishoprics created * (1539). Even the theological training of the people is under- taken by the king, who approves or dictates the " Institution " and "Erudition " " of a Christian Man " in 1537 and 1543 : " for the King's Majesty hath the care of his subjects' souls as well as of their bodies." The last twenty years of Henry's reign fall into two periods ; one of anti-clerical, anti-Roman ''^'^?™?L^*^*^' movement from 1529-39, one of seeming 1529-1547. '-> Catholic reaction (1539-47). It will be necessary to summarise the history of Church and State during these years, noting the central interest in the struggle of clergy and laity, and then perhaps the changes of the time will find their best illustration in the history of religious usages. First, in 1529 (November 3), a new era begins with the Reformation Parliament. In the same year ^■,^n^»^»n'^°^^ the Probate Act, the Mortuaries Act, and the Movement. ^ ^ ' _ ' ^ Pluralities Act are passed into law, receiving the Royal assent December I7th, in spite of the opposition of Fisher to the two former, by which some of the fees paid to the clergy were " revised." On November 30th, 1530, Wolsey dies at Leicester Abbey, and in December of the same year the whole body of the clergy are declared to be involved in his prtemunire. On January 16th, 1531, the king's pardon is granted to the province of Canterbury on a fine of £100,000 ; on February 7-llth, the article of Royal Supremacy is proposed in Convocation, amended by Warham's rider, " as far as Christ's law alloweth," and unanimously adopted. On May 4th, the Province 'of York buys the pardon for £18,000, and the same submission to Hemy's protectorate ; but next year the attack is renewed in Parliament. ■' Westminster, Oseuey (Oxford), Chester, Gloucester, Bristol, Peterborough. A Bull for erecting six new bishoprics had been obtained from Home ia 1532. THE OLD OHDEB CHANGED. 53 1547) In the legislation of 1532 Benefit of Clergy is limited to the higher orders (" sub-deacon at least "), and a supplica- tion is presented against clerical legislation by the ordinaries (March 18th). On April 30th the Papal authority is first distinctly touched in the Act for Restraint of Annates, which, however, is not even conditionally ratified till July 9th, 1533,* but is kept in reserve and held over the Court of Rome to " compel them to hear reason." On August 23rd Warham's death enables the king to place a creature of his own, Thomas C'ranmer, in the primacy, and to obtain from the chief of his clergy a formal sentence of divorce from Catherine, and of sanction for his new marriage with Anne (May 23-June 1, 1533). So far there had been no formal breach with Rome, but only with the clerical ascendency in the State— even the Annates Bill had not yet ""^ ^Ro^t'^*'' been confirmed ; but in June, 1533, the king received certain news of the impending Papal decision, given on July 11th against the divorce. Accordingly he appealed from the Pope to a General Council (June 29) and summoned Parliament for the session of 1533-4 to pass the Restraint of Appeals, the Restraint of Annates, and the Act against Dispensations and Peter's Pence. This, with the submission^ of the clergy to a State revision of the canon law, and the Act of Succession, completed the rough work of the Judicial revolution. What followed was the result of the foiu- anti- Roman and the nine anti-clerical Acts of the past five years. * Two days before the Papal decision against the diToroe — " illud bene- diotum Divortium." t The exact share of Convocation in the work of the Reformation Parlia- ment is hard to fix. Latimer says in a sermon (June 6, 1536), preached before Convocation : — " What have ye done these seven years, that England hath been the better of a hair .' Two things only : one, that ye burned a dead man ; the other, that ye went about to burn one being alive." Yet, on the other hand it was maintained (e/. Fuller, V. 188) that " nothing was done in the Reforma- tion but what was asked by Convocation, or grounded on some act of theirs precedent," and the list of measures taken in Convocation gives us :— (1), in l.")3-t, a declaration that the Bishop of Rome hath no greater authority in England tha,n any other foreign bishop, and a Petition for an authorised English Bible; (2), in 1536, a complaint of forty-nine popular errors and the passing of Ten Articles of Religion " to stablish Christian quietness ; " <3), in 1531), the Six Articles approved; (4), in 1542, the "First Book of 'Homilies" introduced and authorised; (5), in 1543, the "Erudition" confirmed ; (6), in 1544, the English Litany authorised. 54 SOCIAL ENGLAND. [1509 The meaning of the whole movement, " to make this reahn of England an empire governed by one lord," was gathered up in the Act of the King's Supreme Headship (November S, 1534), and in the proclamation of the new title (January 15, 1535). The Primate passed from a Legate of the Apostolic See into a Metropolitan ; the new State authority over Church law was expressed in the commission of thirty-two actually appointed for the revision of canons in 1536, and the several great Acts of Spoliation completed the destruc- tive Avork. For before the end of 1534 the annates, now definitely taken from the Pope, were given to the Crown, and the suppression of the smaller monasteries in 1536, and of the greater in 1539, provided the sinews of Avar for later struggles. The suppression of religious houses in England was not effected by one act of legislation, nor accom- Tiie Suppression phshecl at one time. Several events led up to, of the and prepared the way for, the first Act of Parliament by which the lesser monastic establishments were dissolved. Rightly or wrongly, the general body of conventual ecclesiastics were regarded as against Henry in his quarrel with Rome, and their convents were described as so many "garrisons of the Pope "in England. In the matter of his divorce from Katherine, too, the king had reason for thinking that some of the relisfious bodies were in practical sympathy with the queen and opposed to his wishes. The Friars Observant — the strictest and most respected branch of the Franciscan Order — Avere the first to ^oire^antr'' experience the resentment of Henry. Two of these friars Avere implicated Avith the " Holy Maid of Kent," and suffered Avith her at Tyburn on 20th April, 1534.. Tavo others. Friars Peto and ElstoAv, had in their church at GreeuAvich, and in the royal presence, boldly attacked his marriage Avith Anne. By the early summer of 1534, Parliament, under the skilful management of CromAvell, had proved itself so pliable to Henry's Avill that he Avas able to proceed against the GreeuAvich friars. They Avere called upon to profess their adherence to the royal supremacy, to reject Papal authority, and to take an oath of allegiance to THE OLD ORDER CHANGED. 55 1547] Queen Anne. Numerous attempts were made to bend these friars to the royal will, but in vain ; and the suppression of the entire Order of Observants followed quickly upon their refusal of the articles proposed by the king's officials. Before the end of August, 1534, the seven houses of English Ob- servant Friars had been emptied of their members, and about two hundred were thrown into prison. Before the final dispersion of the Franciscan Observants the Crown had commenced its conflict with the Carthusian Order. These secluded reli- gious had taken no active part in the thorny questions which surrounded the divorce, but yet their influence, which, owing to the undoubted sanctity of their lives, was considerable, was unquestionably exercised against Henry's rejection of Papal supremacy. In the spring of 1.534, therefore, the troubles of the monks of the London Charterhouse commenced. The king was by this time fully committed to the breach with Rome, and had already made up his mind to override all opposition to this determination. The London Carthusians had the highest reputation for strictness of life, whilst a fearless superior, Prior John Houghton, presided over them. Chauncy, one of his subjects, says : " He was admired and sought after by all, and by his community was most beloved and esteemed." Early in April, 1534, the royal officials visited the monastery and demanded the signatures of the fathers to the oath of succession. First at a private interview and then publicly in Chapter, Houghton refused, saying " he could not understand how it was possible that a marriage ratified by the Church and so long unquestioned could be undone." To this view the whole community adhered. Prior Houghton and Humfrey Middlemore, the pro- curator of the convent, were quickly committed to the Tower; there they remained for some weeks. Then, persuaded by the arguments of some who visited them, they consented to take the oath " as far as it was lawful." Six months later, on January 15th, 1535, the new title of "Supreme Head" was, by decree of Council, incorporated in the king's style, and in April Prior Houghton, Robert Laurence, the prior of the Charterhouse of Beauvale, and Augustine ^^'ebster, prior of Axholme, in Lincolnshire, anticipated the coming of the Royal Commissioners, and in a personal interview with Cromwell, 56 SOCIAL ENGLAND. (1509 declared that they could never take the required oath. Thej- were forthwith sent once more to the Tower, and on the 2Stli of April were indicted for that they " did, on 26th April, 27 Henry VIII., at the Tower of London . . openly declare and say, 'the king, our sovereign loi"d, is not supreme head in earth of the Church of England.'" They were found guilty of this new form of verbal treason, and executed at Tyburn on the 4th of Ma}^ of this same year, ] 535. Over the gateway of the Charterhouse in London the arm of Prior Houghton was fixed as a warning to his brethren. A week or two later three more were lodged in prison, where, as the historian Stow relates, they " first stood in prison upright chained from the neck to the arms, and their legs fettered with locks and chains, by the space of thirteen days," when they were executed. For two years the rest of the communitj^ were kept with great strictness in their house, whilst every effort was made to induce them to comply with Henry's demand. Most of them continued unshaken in their determination, and in May, 1536, those who held out were sent to other houses. At length, in May, 1537, the Commissioners attended at the Charterhouse to demand the oath. Twenty took it, but ten still resolutely refused and were carried off to prison, Avhere, in a few weeks, as Stow says, nine of their number died "with stink and miserably smothered." The tenth lingered on in prison till 4th August, 1549, when he was hanged at Tyburn. The twenty members who had taken the oath on the promise of a pension, surrendered their house to the king. They con- tinued, however, to live there until the 15th of November, 1539, when they wore forcibly expelled, the monastic buildings lieing subsequently granted out as a place to store royal tents and engines of war. Meantime, preparations were being pushed on for a measure of more general suppression of reli- ?isi?atTon^^ gious houses. By the middle of 1534 Com- missioners were at work in all parts of England tendering the new oath of supremacy, which, in the minds of king and minister, was to be accounted the touch- stone of loyalty and religion. Lord Herbert states that the scheme for the dissolution of monasteries was discussed at a meeting of the Council, where it met with considerable opposi- tion. The disapproval of the measure must have convinced THE OLD ORVEB CHANGED. 67 1547] the king of tlie need of caution. In the authority to visit all monasteries formerly subject to the Pope, which Parliament had bestowed upon the king two years previously, Henry, or more probably Cromwell, was not slow to recognise a valuable aid to attain the desired end. A general visitation of all religious houses was consequently determined upon. The chief visitors — Legh, Layton, Ap Rice, London, and Bedyll — were armed with the most complete authority, and their own letters are sufficient evidence that they fully understood that the purpose of the visitation was to find a suitable pretext for suppression, or by their vexatious injunctions to compel sur- render. The visitors passed very rapidly from place to place in the autumn of 1535 and till the meeting of Parliament in February, 1536. The reports, or comjjerfe.s as they were called, which the agents furnished to Cromwell seem to show that by no means all the monastic houses had been inspected. Suffi- cient had, however, been done to serve the royal purpose, and, true or false, their tales were used to induce Parliament to suppress the lesser religious establishments and to hand over their possessions to the king. The comperta or compertes, together with the various letters written by the visitors whilst on their rounds, are the chief grounds of accusation against the character of the monks. It should in fairness be borne in mind that they do not profess to be more than reports, and there is no evidence of any investigation ; whilst, as Mr. Gairdner, the historian of this period says, " considering the rapidity with which the work was done, the investigations could hardly have been very judicially conducted." It may be admitted that the sum- mary of Avhat was alleged against the moral state of many religious houses, even, be it remembered, some of the greatest in the kingdom, presents a black enough picture. Still, it should be remembered that the whole of the charges rests upon the worth of the visitors' word alone. In March, 1536, Parhament passed the Act by which the smaller monasteries were dissolved. The pre- ,^^ Dissolution amble of the measure itself contains practically of the smaller „ . . . n (• ,1 Houses. all that is known of its origin and ot the motives which induced the House to pass it. From this it would seem that the Bill was promoted by the Crown, and was accepted on the assurance of the king that evil lives were 58 SOCIAL ENGLAND. [1509 being led in religions honses where the nnmber of inmates was less than twelve. Of this, says the preamble, Henry had "knowledge ... as well by the compertes of his late visitation as by sundry credible informations." And as a further reason, it was stated that the religious in the smaller monasteries would be useful to swell the ranks of " divers and great solemn monasteries of this realm (wherein, thanks be to God, religion is right well kept and observed)," and which "be destitute of such full numbers of religious persons as they ought and may keep." Acting upon this declaration, " the Lords and Commons by a great deliberation finally resolved " that the king should take possession of all monasteries which possessed an income of less than £200 a year ; so " that his highness may . . dispose of them, or any of them, at his will and pleasure to the honour of God and the wealth of this realm." To deal with the lands, movables, and other possessions which would come into the king's hands by this measure of suppression, Parliament sanctioned the creation Au^eSil «f -^ special court, called the "Court of Augmentation." The institution of this has been regarded by historians as an indication that, at the time of the dissolution of the lesser monasteries, Henry contemplated further and more extensive measures in regard to ecclesiastical property. It was constituted, with Sir Eichard Rich as first chancellor and Sir Thomas Pope as treasurer, on the 24th of April, 1536. As a first step to the taking possession of the monastic possessions, it became necessary to determine which houses came within the pecuniary limit of £200 a year. With this object, the royal commission was directed to some of the leading men in each county to make a survey of the various houses within the limits of their respective districts ; and on the very day when the Court of Augmentations was finally organised, instructions were issued for the guidance of these Commissioners. As regards the religious, the directions were simple. The officer was " to send those that will remain in the religion to other houses with letters to the Governors, and those that wish to go to the world to my lord of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor." To the latter class "some reasonable reward," according to the distance of the place appointed, was TEE OLD ORDER CHANGED. 59 1547] to be given. The superior alone was to have any pension promised to him, and he was to go to the Chancellor of the Augmentations for it. The rest of the instructions were chiefly concerned in the preservation of the property for the king. It is somewhat difficult to estimate with any certainty the number of religious houses which passed into the king's hands by the operation of the Act '^''|uppre*sBion*''^ of Dissolution. The authority of Stow, how- ever, is usually relied upon for the statement that " the number of these houses then suppressed were 376, the value of their lands then £32,000 and more by year." Besides this, there was the money received for the spoils of the houses, consisting of money, plate, and jewels sent by the Commissioners into the king's treasury, and the proceeds of the sales of lead, bells, cattle, furniture, and even buildings. These " Robin Hood's pennyworths " are supposed by Lord Herbert to have brought more than £100,000 into the royal purse. Judging by the paltry sums realised by the sales of monastic effects and by the totals acknowledged to have been received by the Augmentation Office officials, this sum would appear altogether too high. The number of persons affected by these first systematic suppressions was very considerable. Besides the monks and nuns Avho were turned out of ''^^ASe^^ea^^ their houses, and the servants, farm labourers, and others to whom they gave employment and means of subsistence, there must have been a vast number of men and women whose livelihood more or less depended upon the inmates of the dissolved religious establishments. Putting this latter class altogether on one side, StoAv's estimate of " 10,000 people, masters and servants, (who) lost their livings by the putting down of these houses at that time," may be taken as fairly correct. From such of the particulars given by the Royal Commissioners as are still extant, it may be roughly calculated that over 2,000 monks and nuns were dispossessed, and that there were between 9,000 and 10,000 people directly dependent on the monasteries dissolved. It will be readily believed that the work could not have been accomplished without entailing considerable hardship upon many of the inmates thus renclered homeless. Thus, a nun of Arden, EHzabeth Johnson, was allowed a pittance 60 SOCIAL ENGLAND. [1509 " because she is helpless and deaf, and is said to be over eighty years of age," and William Coventiy, of Wombridge Priory, had the sum of £6 Ss. 4d. given him on his dismissal, " because he is sick and decrepid;" whilst two nuns of Esholt, in Yorkshire, were said to be disabled by infirmities, and were passed over to the care of their friends. The Northern disturbances in the autumn of 1536 and the spring of the following year (p. 22), somewhat tii^^Ke?ctio°n cbecked the progress of the dissolutions. But once the insurgents had been finally crushed and all fear of domestic danger was over, Henry used the rising as a pretext to efl'ect further suppressions. Hitherto the attainder of a bishop or abbot for treason had not been held b\- English law to affect the propert}' of the diocese or abbey over which the attainted superior ruled. The king, however, now determined to include the forfeiture of the possessions of the corporation in the punishment awarded to the head for real or supposed treasonable practices, and in this way several large and important religious establishments passed into the royal hands. Thus, upon the executions of the Abbots of ^\laalley and Sawley in March, 1.537, the king's ofiicials, acting upon his express orders, took possession of the houses and property; and in the same way the abbeys of Barlings, Jervaulx, Kirksted, and Woburn, with the priory of Bridlington, were brought into the kinti's hands under the law of attainder ; whilst by threats and judicious management, the Earl of Sussex obtained the surrender of the great abbey of Eurness, in Lancashire. The autumn of l.^oN, and the first half of the following year, Avitnessed the destruction of the Ensiish TtiG FriEirics. ... friaries. For some reason or other these houses, although they had but small incomes, had not been dealt with under the Act of Parliament dissolving the lesser monasteries. At the time of their fall, the friars were reduced to a state of great poverty, and this may have secured for them a temporary respite. The total number of their establishments in England was about two hundred. Of these the Franciscans had sixty, the Dominicans fifty-three, the Austin friars forty- two, and the Carmelites six-and-thirty. The rest were held by the Trinitarians and other less important bodies of friars. At the time of their destruction, although reduced by various THE OLD OBBETi CHANGED. 61 1547] circumstances, the friars numbered probably about eighteen hundred. From Michaelmas, 1537, to the same date in the following year, the work of dissolving the monastic houses was pushed on Adgorously. During that time many of the larger establish- ments either surrendered to the king, or in some other way passed into his hands. Legally, Henry had a right only to those monasteries with a yearly income of less than £200 ; biit after the failure of the Pila'rimaaf'e of Grace, the work of sjeneral suppression was actively commenced. It was of course necessary that the surrender of those abbeys which did not come within the operation of the Act of Dissolution, should at least appear to be voluntary, and every pressure was brought upon the monks and nuns to induce them to resign their possessions. The secret instructions given to the agents employed were precise : they were to take s^r°nder " the consent of the head and convent by way of their fair surrender under their convent seal to the same. If they shall willingly consent and agree," the Commissioners are directed to promise them pensions and other rewards. But " if they shall find any of the said heads and convents, so appointed to be dissolved, so wilful and obstinate that they will in no wise submit themselves to the King's Majesty," or " resign at the King's wish," the Commissioners are then to take possession of everything, and neither give pensions nor any part of their household goods to "such obstinate and wilful persons, till they shall know further of the King's pleasure." Meantime, however, whilst the secret instructions to the agents leave no room for doubt as to the royal intentions, by express direction of the rulers, the idea of any general attack upon the monastic system was not only kept in the background, but actually and publicly repudiated by both Henry and his agents. The monasteries stood alone. Singly they were approached with proposals for surrender, with a pittance for their members ; or seizure, should they refuse, with poverty and possible punishment. Most of the houses made choice of the former alternative, and in the years 153N and 1539 surrenders, which can hardly with truth be called voluntary, were obtained. In this way, some 150 monasteries of men and perhaps fifty convents of women passed into the royal possession. 62 SOCIAL ENGLAND. [1509 Early in 1539 it became necessary to obtain approval from Parliament for what had been done. There is thtEndowme°nt°.^ evidence to prove that Henry at first thought of pledging himself to devote the appropriated property to public purposes. A draft of a projected Act in the king's writing suggests that the wealth of the religious corporations might with advantage " be turned to better use (as hereafter shall follow), whereby God's Word might the better be set forth, children brought up in learning, clerics nourished in the universities, old servants decayed have livings, almshouses for poor folk to be sustained in, readers of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin to have good stipends, daily alms to be administered, mending of highways, exhibitions for ministers of the Church," and considerable additions made to the existing bishoprics. Whatever inducements were put before the Parliament to win its consent to the king's proposals, nothing in the nature of public benefits is suggested in the Act itself, which for the second time dealt with the monastic property. It was introduced to the House on the 13th of May, 1539, and six days later became law. In no sense can this measure be considered properly as one dissolving or suppressing any religious houses. Its object was to secure to the king the property of such monasteries as had "by any means come into his hands by supersession, dissolution, or surrender since the "ith of February," 153G. Unlike the Act of 1586, this one does not allege any reasons, but simply states that " sundry abbots, priors, abbesses, prioresses, and other ecclesiastical governors and governesses of divers monasteries . of their own free and voluntary minds, good wills and assents, without constraint, co-action, or compulsion of any manner of person or persons," have resigned their possessions into the king's hands. These, therefore, Henry and his heirs are to hold for ever, and this permission was to extend to all houses subsequently surrendered or dissolved. By the autumn of 1539 comparatively few religious houses still remained in the possession of the monks. Me^s^el Monastic buildings in county after county ^vcre laid desolate by the royal agents, and the rehgious one after another expelled from their homes. Where resistance was offered, the ready process of attainder, with its accompanying confiscation, which, as Hallam says, "against THE OLD ORDER CHANGED. 63 1547J every form of received law," followed tlie treason, supposed or real, of the head of the corporation, was at hand to effect what threats or promises had been unable to accomplish. Under the working of this mysterious law of attainder, the abbots of the three great Benedictine houses of Glastonbury, Colchester, and Reading were executed, and their possessions seized for the Crown. From notes in Cromwell's own hand it seems clear that some time between the passing of the Act regarding the monasteries in April, 1539, and September in the same j'ear, these abbots must have been sounded, and it had been found that compliance was not to be expected from them. Immediate action was taken ; on the 19th of this latter month the royal agents appeared at Glastonbury, and having cross-examined the abbot, Richard Whiting, and ran- sacked his apartments for compromising documents, they sent him up to prison in the Tower of London. Immediately they proceeded to "despatch" the monks "with as much celerity" as possible, and by October the 24th, whilst Abbot Whiting re- mained still untried in the Tower, the rich plate of the abbey was handed into the royal treasury among the possessions of ■' attainted persons and places." Before the abbot left his prison his case was virtually concluded, and Cromwell could note: " Item: The Abbot of Glaston to be tried at Glaston and also executed there." The Church historian Collier is prob- ably correct when he Avrites of the three abbots : " To reach them . . the oath of supremacy was offered, and upon their refusal they were condemned for high treason." The result of the trial at Wells was, upon Cromwell's own shovvinsr, a foreofone conclusion, and the abbot's execution at Glastonbury, upon Tor Hill, with two of his monks, on November the 15th, 1539, finally placed the rich possessions of the abbey at the king's disposal. On the same day Hugh Cook, the Abbot of Reading, and two priests suffered death in front of the abbey gateway, whilst a fortnight later, on the 1st of December, 1539, Thomas Marshall, or Beche, the last Abbot of Colchester, was likewise executed. Within six weeks of his death the monastic buildings of St. John's Abbey had been dismantled, and workmen were busy stripping the lead from the roof of the church, melting it into pigs with the carved Avoodwork of the choir, and breaking up the bells that the metal might be conveyed away in barrels jfor sale. 64 SOCIAL ENGLAND. [1509 By the beginning of 1540 the work of suppressing the rehgious houses in England was practically over. Between 1538 and 1540 probably about 250 of the greater houses of men and women had passed into the king's possession. It has been estimated, from an examination of available sources of information, that the entire number of monks, canons, friars, and nuns dispossessed from first to last was probably in excess of eight thousand, whilst there must have been at least ten times that number of people more or less dependent upon them. Most, but by no means all, of the disbanded religious obtained some kind of pension. As regards ''^fJ'^f^*™*"* the smaller houses, which alone had been of tne Inmates. ^ ' dissolved by Act of Parliament, only the superior received any annuity. The friars, as a rule, obtained nothing, and as regards the rest of the monks and nuns, only such as resigned their houses in compliance with the royal wishes were promised annual pittances. Those who resisted or objected obtained nothing. Thus no monk at monasteries like Kirksted, Jervaulx, or Whalley in the north, or Glaston- bury, Reading, Colchester, or Woburn in the south, obtained anything. Moreover, even a surrender does not always appear to have afforded any sure title to such a payment. Thus, to take an example, Furness Abbey was dissolved, apparently without the monks having obtained any promise of a pension. On dismissal from their cloister each received forty shillings, and to three, "who were sick and impotent," an extra twenty shillings was given. The following year the late abbot was provided with the profits of a rectory, which formerly belonged to his house : but, as far as appears, none of the thirty monks who were living at Furness at the surrender ever obtained anything for their somewhat tardy compliance with Henry's desires. It is not easy to determine with anything like accuracj' the value of the property which passed into '^'"R^^te"^^ the royal possession by the dissolutions, Speed has put the total annual value of the lands and benefices at £171,-312 4s. 3^d., and a modern calcu- lation places it at £200,000 in round numbers. The existing accounts, however, show that Henry never derived anything like so large a benefit from the spoliation. Gratuitous grants, THE OLD ORDER CHANGED. 65 15471 speedy sales of lands, and other such things, quicklj'- reduced the capital value of the prize, so that in no single year did the income from the confiscated property exceed £45,000. The worth of the gold and silver plate received by the treasurer, and estimated by him at the melting price, was more than £85,000, or very nearly a million sterling of our money. Of the other spoils some of the richest were pre- served and forwarded to London for the king's use ; whilst the greater part were sold for what the things Avould fetch at the small auctions held all over the country in the cloisters or chapter-houses of the deserted monasteries. In round figures the money received by the king in this way from 1536 till his death was some £1,423,500, or between foiu-teen and fifteen millions sterling of the present money. Besides this sum, however, there was the Avorth of the vestments and other ecclesiastical furniture reserved for the king's use, and, what Cromwell evident^ prized more than the rich plate itself, the countless precious stones and jewels from all the churches and shrmes of the English monasteries. Out of the vast plunder obtained by the Dissolution there Avas some attempt made to refit the Church for the new time. First in 1534, °BEAzfEY^° twenty-six suffragan sees were indicated;* The Disposal of then, after the final monastic dissolution of °°^° 1539, eighteen new dioceses were promised ; at last six were founded — Chester, Peterborough, Gloucester, Oxford, Bristol, and Westminster. Out of Wolsey's benefactions Cardinal College alone emerged from the wreck with diminished resources and the glory of a royal re-creation. To the end of his hfe, after his first taste of spoil in 1529, Henry's needs and avarice seemed to grow together. In 1545, less than six years after the last of the religious houses had been seized, the endowments of the universities, of all colleges of priests, and of all the chantries and guilds were put at the * Thetford, Ipswich, Colchester, Dover, Guildford, Taunton, Southampton Shaftesbury, Melton, Marlborough, Bedford, Leicester, Gloucester, Shrews- bury, Bristol, Penrith, Bridgwater, Nottingham, Grantham, Hull, Hunting- don, Cambridge, St. Germains (in Cornwall), and the Isle of Wight, with two others— in place of the Roman Bishops "in partibus." Seven were appointed, but the movement soon dropped, to be revived in the present reign. 66 SOCIAL ENGLAKD. [1509 Crown's me-rcj^ : commissioners were appointed to visit them, and only the king's death seems to have delayed their action till the neAV reign. As most of the landed spoil fell to the nobles and gentry, and most of the movables soon passed out of Henry's coffers, after meeting the calls of the moment, every great lay interest was thus united in the attack on Church property, which continued to the death of Edward VI. But it would be a mistake to treat this whole period (1529- 53) as on a level. For the first ten years of the revolution, as we have seen, the work is mainly destructive ; for the next ten there is a distinct movement towards reconstruction, ending m the Prayer-Book of 1549. After the final statute of 1537 had been passed against the Pope's authority, em- bodying and supplementing all former Acts, and after the Great, or approved, English Bible had been published in 1539, the movement towards foreign Protestantism is roughly checked. The German and Lutheran marriage with Anne of Cleves is annulled ; Cromwell, who had hoped by this to "bring the king to such a pass that he should not be able to resist," is thrown as a sop to the conservative or Catholic party whom he had ridden so hard, and the Act of Six Articles reaffirms transubstantiation, the celibacy of the clergy, the obli- gation of vows of chastity, and auricular confession — adding, more cautiously, that communion in both kinds was not necessary, and that private masses were both lawful and useful. The Howard marriage (July 28, 1540) seemed to bind the king to the reaction as the Bullen and Seymour marriages of 1533 and 1536 had bound him to the revolution ; but even as early as 1536 Henry's proclamation ordering the English Bible, "of the largest volume," to be set up in churches, shows his dislike of doctrinal change and of Protestant agitation. " The Scriptures are not to be read at the time of the mass, or for disputation or exposition of mysteries therein con- tained." The unauthorised versions, with their controversial prefaces and notes, are discouraged, and in 1539 superseded by the State revision of Tyndale's ti-anslation of 1525 (p. 195); while, in 1542, Edmund Bonner, as Bishop of London, is allowed to forbid " all crowding to read, or commenting on what is read." The more , Henry learned of the Lutheran or of the Zwinglian system, the less he liked either. In the same way, the Ten Articles of 1536 arc explained THE OLD ORBEE CHANGET). 67 1547] in the " Cliristian Man's Institution" and " Erudition " of 1537- 43, which states the Catholic doctrine without change upon baptism, penance, the Eucharist, and justification, but explains the " right use of images, honouring of saints, ceremonies, and purgatory," denounces many abuses, and defines the " fundamentals of religion," as comprehended in the Bible, the three creeds, and the decrees of the first four councils — Niciea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon. Again, in 1545, Shaxton, ex-Bishop of Sarum, is forced to admit all the disputed points in the mediteval sense; in 1540 Latimer is sent to the Tower ; Cranmer about the same time, and again in 1545, is accused of heresy, and, from the time of Cromwell's fall, the party of which he was becoming the official chief, is clearly in opposition, while the conservatives, under Gardiner, are in power and favour at the Council. Eor, whatever were the king's personal leanings, doctrinally he sympathises to the end with the highest Churchmanship. Yet the tendency to treat all the Church system as of political obligation is found even here ; tenets are " charitable," " com- fortable," "godly"; ceremonies are "laudable" or "instructive." " In all disputes," says the proclamation of 1544, " recourse must be had to the Catholic Church ; . . . therefore all books contrary to the doctrine now and to be set forth are forbidden ; . . . but it is to the King, by Scripture, that all power is given of determining causes, of correcting heresies, errors^ and sins." Whatever the truth may be of Henry's supposed* con- version in his last illness, the doctrinal position of the earlier time is maintained in all his official acts till the end in 1547, and the English Prayer-Book of 1549 is only the result of Henry's reconstructive policy, which aimed at purifying and popularising the Catholic system, as he finally conceived it. This policy had already given the English people an English Litany in 1544, an English Primer in 1545, t with versions of matins and evensong, and parts of other services | — and in * After his marriage to Catherine Parr, he may have been influenced by her Protestant sympathies. She procured a translation of Erasmus's "Paraphrase, " which was afterwards ordered, by Edward's injunctions of 1.3i7, for use by the clergy. + Or Layman's Book of Derotions, the authorised edition, following Marshall's irregular one (15::!.'). + On the English Liturgy of 1D44, cf. the king's letter to Cranmer styling F 2 68 SOCIAL ENGLAND. ^^^^^ 1546 had directed Cranmer to "pen a form for the altering of the mass into a comnuinion," just as in 1535 and 1542 the name of the Pope and all " apocryphas, feigned legends, and nnscriptural saints, had been " put out of the service-books and calendars, newly castigated and reformed." In the same spirit, and with the apparent support of the Church leaders, Henry had steadily pressed English Bibles. ^.^^. ^ ^.^^.^^^^^ English Bible. Tyndale's original version of 1525, though its text was largely used in most that fohowed it, was put out of court by its " glosses " and con- troversial turns of sense. The achievement of this purpose will be traced in detail later (p. 193). Thus before 1547 Henry YIII. had completed an English Bible and begun an English Prayer-Book ; in 1531 Wynkyn de Worde printed the first collection of English carols, and soon after this Miles Coverdale compiled the first Enghsh hymn- book. The use of the vulgar tongue was one of the very few matters that seemed to have really united the sympathies of conservatives and Protestants in Plenry's Council. Apparently both parties would have also agreed on some revision of ritual and popular religious custom, but they could not agree where to stop. Among the superstitions questioned or rejected thus early were pilgrimages and their objects — the relics "^Reii^o woS^ so vehemently attacked by Colet, Erasmus, and More — the older forms of veneration of images, and of invocation of saints, pardons, indulgences, and the purgatorial abuses. The shrine of St. Thomas the Martyr at Canterbury, as the monument of a priest who successfully defied a king and a Henry, and which for its wealth and fame had become the great English religious spectacle,* was plundered it "The Common Prayer of Procession," and addinfr "that from henceforth general processions be had in aU cities, towns, churches, and parishes, with g-odly prayers and suffrages in our native En