^7f CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE ^ .\m -I , ^^r PRtNTEOlNu.S A. CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 092 355 654 sVA XI Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924092355654 LoUardy and the Reformation in England MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK . BOSTON • CHICAGO ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO Lollardy and the Reformation in England An Historical Survey BY JAMES GAIRDNER, C.B. HON. LL.D. EDIN. VOL. II MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1908 ' A. ^^n "i \ y /i. / .■^ v"" CONTENTS BOOK III THE FALL OF THE MONASTERIES CHAPTEK I PAGE Further Trials of the Faithful . ... 3 CHAPTEE II Visitation and Suppression of Monasteries . , 44 CHAPTEK III Further Proceedings against Monasteries — and against Superstitions . . . . . .107 CHAPTEE IV German Protestantism and the Act of the Six Articles 170 BOOK IV THE EEIGN OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE CHAPTEE I The Story of the English Bible . . . .221 V vi LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION CHAPTER II PAQB The Making op Formularies .... 304 CHAPTER III Katharine Parr and the New Learning . .357 CHAPTER IV Results under Henry VIII. .... 467 INDEX . . . . . . .483 Lollardy and the Reformation. EEEATA Vol. II Page 85, line 9, after '' Henry YIII." insert a comma. ,, 97-100. Cancel these two leaves. ,, 103, line 8 from bottom, for ** was a dandy, and" read "dressed in indecorous fashion ; " ,, 105-6. Cancel this leaf. ,, 119, lines 23, 24, for " their brother canons " read ** the canons," and in lines 24, 25 strike out " for they belonged . . . (the Augus- tinian)," which is wrong. ,, 157, line 8 from bottom, for " Tyburn" read " Tower Hill." ,, 227, line 20, for "began" read "committed to the press." ,, 227, line 21, for "where" read "but." ,, 257-60 to be cancelled. ,, 261, line 2 from bottom, after "end" place a comma, and for "of" read "1st." ,, 273, lines 29, 30, for "fully . . . that Coverdale" read "gives strength to our surmise that Coverdale went to the Netherlands by the statement that he." ,, 289, line 20, after " For" insert comma. ,, 301, line 5 (first line after quotation), strike out "only." 308. Note correction already made at p. 506 at end of Index. 317, lines 16-19. The sentence "But ... to comply" is not accurate. It should be : — " But this the Elector would not let him do, and when the news of Anne Boleyn's fate reached Germany, he himself cared less about the disappointment. " 317. The footnote 2 should be amplified by adding " Cp. Georg Ellinger's German Life of Melancthon, p. 327." 447, line 6, for " But probably the date is fictitious, and " read " The date, perhaps, may be genuine, but." Index Page 484. Insert entry, "Beach (or Marshall), Thomas, Abbot of Col- chester, ii. 211." ,, 485. "Bible, use of, regulated by Statute." The reference should be "ii. 302," not " i. 302." 485. " Blagge, Sir George." The last reference should be " 477," not "476." 488. Insert "Colchester, Abbot of. See Beach, Thomas." 496. " Malvern, ." His Christian name was "John." 496. " Man, Henry, Prior of Sheen." The number of the volume should be "ii.," not "i." 497. " Marbeck." Before " 377-8 " insert " ii." as number of volume. 497. Insert "Marshall, Thomas, ^ee Beach." 498. "Norfolk, . . . third duke of." In references to Volume II. supply "454." 502. " Saxony " is out of place. 503. Supply "Stoke, John, Abbot of St. Albans, ii. 98." 3 J J5 >> >> 3> }> > J > } ,^J BOOK III THE FALL OF THE MONASTEEIES VOL. II B CHAPTER I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL More's writings, we may well believe, were not altogether inefiective in the discouragement of heresy, although it was so much encouraged by the Court. It was, no doubt, essential to the King's purpose that the Pope and the clergy should be reviled and their . authority impugned as much as possible. But this did not make the divorce of Katharine or the marriage with Anne Boleyn more popular; and the enforce- ment of the Act of Supremacy, though it made resistance hopeless, did not reconcile Henry's subjects to an unprecedented breach in the unity of Christen- dom. On the contrary, it aroused a deep sympathy Resent- with the patient victims of tyranny, of which the ^^Irf , King himself was not by any means unconscious ; and tyranny. the leading note of his whole policy from that time was an effort to convince himself and others that in throwing off his allegiance to Rome he was merely vindicating the independence of his realm, and that he made no breach whatever in the spiritual unity of Christendom. He had his own spiritual advisers in his own kingdom, and whatever was done as regards religion and the faith was done after full consultation with them. Nor did either he or they impugn one vital doctrine. To vindicate this position, while it was necessary, for the sake of his policy, to put to cruel deaths the most saintly men in his kingdom, was of course not 3 4 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m an easy matter ; and, in fact, the very cause which led him on to his peculiar line of action had become the greatest obstacle to its success. " Thou art the cause of this man's death," he might very well say to Anne Boleyn of Sir Thomas More ; only he should have blamed his own infatuated passion rather than the poor weak woman who at first had really with- stood its vehemence for a considerable time. But she, or her influence, was undoubtedly the cause of the death, not only of Sir Thomas More, but of Bishop Fisher and Eeynolds and the three Carthusian priors. Nor was the legal butchery even yet at an end, though the passion for Anne Boleyn had long been on the wane ; for the law, however tyrannical, must be upheld, else respect for him who got it passed would very soon pass away. It was no secret to him, nevertheless, that he had greatly lost the esteem and aflFection of his subjects ; he could not be ignorant of that, when he was ruling by terror and not by love. Yet he could not have imagined — what was unknown till our own day — how privy conspiracy, even among the courtiers whom he least suspected, was endeavour- ing to procure an invasion of the kingdom.^ As a means of establishing better feelings between him and his subjects the sacrifice of Anne Boleyn was sure to take pkce before many years were over. Arrogance Her indiscrctious and her insolences aggravated the Boleyn^ general feeling against her. Even her uncle, Norfolk, spoke of her with utter disgust.^ She hated the Princess Mary, and even ventured to tell the King he would have to get rid of her one day, as he had got rid of Bishop Fisher. '' She will be my death or I hers," she would say ; " but I will take care that she shall not laugh at me after I am dead." ^ This insolence of an upstart for whose sake the old order of Church and State had been completely 1 See L. P., VIII. Pref., pp. ii. iii. 2 i. P., VIII. 1. 3 L, P., IX. 873. CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 5 subverted did not make men warm upholders of change in matters of religion. Even before royal supremacy over the Church had been vindicated by such cruel martyrdoms there was deep disaffection everywhere. Lord Hussey and Lord Darcy had been eager to inform the Imperial ambassador in secret Secret dis- that everybody in England would gladly welcome an ^ueZn! invasion by the Emperor, even to rescue from danger Queen Katharine and her daughter Mary, and restore them to their proper positions as queen and princess. Indeed, Darcy was confident that he could raise the North against the Lutheran policy that the King seemed bent on pursuing ; and if the King of Scots at the same time would invade the northern counties, while the Emperor sent a force to the Thames, it would be so much the better.^ Other noblemen con- firmed the statements of general disaffection ; and even the King's Chamberlain, Lord Sandes, pretend- ing sickness as an excuse for retiring from Court, sent a secret message to Chapuys to say that the King had lost the hearts of all his subjects, and that if the Emperor only knew the state of matters in England he would surely not delay to come to the relief of an oppressed nation.^ Now, if this was the state of matters even before those cruel and savage executions done to vindicate royal supremacy, what was it likely to have been after they had taken place ? Men spoke, of course, with bated breath as far as they dared speak of it at all. England was tongue-tied, and we need look for no direct expression of her feelings; but abroad, we know perfectly well what was thought of those brutalities. The news of the execution of Prior Houghton and his companions seemed very outrage- pubiic ous to the papal nuncio in France, who was infornied ^^^J^|^ ^^ besides that the whole of London was displeased at it.^ home and From Venice, too, the English ambassador reported ^^^°^^- 1 L. P., VII. 1206. 2 z. P., VIII. 48. =» L. P„ viii. 726. 6 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m that it was considered extreme cruelty and against all honest laws of God and men. He had never seen Italians so vehement about anything.^ At Rome, of course, it was most deeply felt of all ; and it aroused a feeling not only of indignation against the tyrant, but also of such admiration for his victims that some of the cardinals said that they envied such a death. ^ Such was the feeling for the first martyrs of the new Act, even before the further butcheries of More and Fisher. Yet in England men could say nothing. The King's power was irresistible ; and if he insisted on vindicating his ecclesiastical supremacy by such savage methods, what was to be done ? It was a perplexing question. A whole nation could not be expected to imitate the example of Eeynolds, and Hale, and the three Carthusian priors, and Bishop Fisher, and Sir Thomas More. How many could calmly face the prospect of strangulation, the ripping knife, the block, to yield their testimony to the belief that there was a law above the laws of Parliament and the wiU of a despotic king? The great majority could retain that belief, yet give a qualified oath with which the authorities were con- tent. Even Morels noble-hearted daughter, Margaret Roper, did that, and would have persuaded her father to do it too. What was compulsory surely could not be wrong, especially with the reservation, " as far as lawful." Even Convocation had made a somewhat similar reservation when it acknowledged the royal supremacy, though the reservation was afterwards treated as nil by Parliament, which cited the acknow- ledgment without the qualification as a warrant for '' the Act of Supreme Head." Churchmen might repent too late the concessions that they had made ; but Convocation, under Warham's guidance, had not really sanctioned in full the supremacy which Henry claimed. There was something, no doubt, in the 1 Z. p., VIII. 874. ^ L. P., VIII. 786, 807. CH I. FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 7 way they recognised it, too much akin to that religion of casuistry by which Henry himself would fain have justified his divorce ; and, indeed, it was the reli- gion of casuistry which now was on its trial. But what else but casuistry was at the bottom of this whole divorce question, which ended in acts of schism? The supreme authority of the Koman pontifi" was an authority to determine cases of conscience before an external tribunal. Sweep away the casuistry of the canon law and the Pope's authority was gone. Put down the Pope's authority by the strong hand, and casuistry might still fairly plead that the subjects of a realm could not be condemned for doing the best they could under trying circumstances. Besides, royal authority, as well as papal, had always been regarded as sacred, and it was hard to leave it to the individual to draw the line between them. So when the King's authority came in conflict Questions with the Pope's, very serious and perplexing questions °^ ^^^" were raised, even in regard to ethics. Prior Houghton himself sought the best advice, and Father Fewterer, the head and confessor of the great monastery of Sion, was entirely against his yielding to royal supremacy. But when he saw the result of the counsel he had given him. Father Fewterer deeply reproached himself. '' I beseech you to forgive me, most gentle brethren," he said, when on his death- bed, to eight of the remaining Charterhouse monks, who, indeed, had been sent to him on purpose that he might cure their obstinacy : ** I am guilty of the death of your reverend Father, of which I was the cause ; for I encouraged him in his resolution to die in the cause for which he suffered, and for which you are brought hither. Now, however, I am of another mind, and I perceive that the cause is not one for which we are bound to sufi*er death." ^ The Carthusians had remained singularly steadfast 1 Chauncy's Historia aliquot Martyrum Anglorum (ed. Doreau), p. 114. science. 8 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. hi even after the awful death of their venerated prior. The daily services continued as of old in that quiet retreat outside the city and Smithfield. The convent, indeed, could not think of proceeding to elect a new Efforts to prior ; ^ for even on the day of Prior Houghton's remfinhfg martyrdom they were visited by Thomas BedyU, clerk Charter- of thc Couucil, who brought with him a bundle of books monks to ^^^ '' annotations," written against the primacy of "the conformity. Bishop of Romc " and even of St. Peter, showing that all the Apostles were equal by the law of God. He con- versed for an hour and a half with the vicar and procur- ator of the House (Fathers Humphrey Middlemore and William Exmew, two of the three who were after- wards tried with Fisher and suffered three days before him), and he left the books and annotations for the edification of the convent to bring them to conformity; but the vicar and procurator sent back the books next day without any message either by word or writing. BedyU was then confined to bed by a fever, and, sending for the procurator to come and speak to him, asked whether he and the vicar and others had examined the books. The procurator said that he and the vicar and Newdigate (the third of the above- mentioned trio) " had spent the time upon them until 9 or 10 of the clock at night, and that they saw nothing in them whereby they were moved to alter their opinion." BedyU pointed out the danger of this opinion, '' which was like to be the destruction of them and their house for ever," but they showed themselves quite unmoved and ready to meet the fate that they were soon to undergo. Worse stUl, when he asked the procurator whether the rest of the brethren were of like opinion, he said he was not sure, but believed that they were all of one mind. BedyU then told him he believed they were inspired by ''the spirit which appeared before God and said ^ L. P.f VIII. 585 is out of place. It was in 1536 that Father Trafiford was forced upon the convent as prior. CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 9 he would be a false spirit in the mouths of the prophets of Achab," and he wrote to Cromwell with remarkable unction : — Finally, I suppose it to be the will of God that as their religion had a simple beginning, so in this realm it shall have a stra?ige end, procured by themselves and by none others. And albeit they pretend holiness in this behalf, surely the ground of their said opinion is hypocrisy, vain- glory, confederacy, obstinacy, to the intent they may be seen to the world, or specially to such as have confidence in them, more faithful and more constant than any other." ^ These disgraceful words are at least a tribute to the high repute in which the Carthusians were held for constancy to their profession. The King undoubtedly felt that if he could only succeed in getting such men on his side he need hardly fear serious opposition from any other quarter. And a curious report got abroad shortly after this that the King himself had The King gone in disguise to the Charterhouse to persuade the ^^^J'^ monks to compliance — a statement which, strange visited the though it be, seems really to be tolerably well authen- house^^' ticated. For not only was it believed by Francis L, Wmseif. who told it as a fact to the papal nuncio at his Court, but the same nuncio read a statement to the like effect in a letter shown him by the Imperial ambassador at the time.^ It seems also to be corroborated by some later traditions to be mentioned presently, notwith- standing an important discrepancy. For it would appear that there was at least one of those Carthusian monks on whom the King might hope to bring his own personal influence to bear. Sebastian Newdigate had been, in past years, a gentleman of his privy chamber, " and not a little favored by him '' — in so much that his sister, Lady Dormer, greatly feared that he would be corrupted by a dissolute Court. But when he himself perceived its moral dangers, to which the ^ Wright's Suppression of the Monasteries, pp. 40, 41. 2 Z. P., VIII. 837. lo LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk, m King's determination to seek a divorce fully opened his eyes, he resolved to take refuge in a monastic life under the habit of a Carthusian.^ Coming to the Charterhouse, therefore, with the memory, doubtless, of pleasant hours of social intercourse in the past, the King seems to have made one effort to rescue at least Newdigate from the awful fate by which he was determined to vindicate his law of supremacy. But not only had the sunshine of royal favour lost its power over Newdigate's mind, but the terrors of Prior Houghton's fate were counterbalanced to him by the prospect of that ** crown of life " which faith- fulness unto death would secure for him. The Carthusian Chauncy, who lived through those terrible days and reproached himself afterwards for not having had the courage to be a martyr like some of his brethren, says that three weeks after the slaughter of Prior Houghton and his fellows, some ignoble men got authority from the King's Vicar- General Cromwell still further to afflict the monks, Seizure of and scizcd the persons of Middlemore, Exmew, and tti^^eemore jsf^wdigate, whom they threw into a prison reeking thusians. with filth, whcrc they were bound with iron chains about their necks and legs to posts and pillars.^ Chauncy's narrative, though written from memory many years after, is for the most part minutely accurate, and bears the test of comparison with con- temporary documents to a degree almost beyond expectation. But one little point is here omitted, and its omission really attests his accuracy still further. Three weeks from the date of Prior Houghton's martyrdom bring us to the 25th day of May; and from the indictment of Middlemore, Exmew, and Newdigate it is clear that they were taken from the Charterhouse to Stepney, where Cromwell had a ^ See the Life of Jane Dormer (edited by J. Stevenson), pp. 19-23. 2 Chauncy's Historia aliquot Martyrum Anglorum, p. 107. The statement is confirmed by a fragment among the collections of Camden and Stow. See L. P., VIII. 895. See also what the Bishop of Faenza says, No. 846. CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL ii mansion, on the 25tli day of May, and there each of them, in reply, of course, to a question put to them all, declared severally, ''I cannot, nor will, consent to be obedient to the King's Highness as a true, lawful, and obedient subject, to take and repute him to be Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England under Christ." These are the words charged against them when they were brought to trial on the 11th June;^ and it must have been immediately after this repudiation of royal supremacy that they were thrown into the Marshalsea prison — for that was their place of con- finement.^ There, in their horrible dungeon, chained in an upright position, which allowed no rest for the body, they spent dismal days and nights for a whole fort- night ; and it was there, according to later tradition, that the King went to visit them in disguise. So it is stated in the Life of Jane Dormer^ and also in the MS. of Father Transam belonging to the English Carthusians now at Parkminster,^ both of which, though written in the middle of the seventeenth century, appear to be generally trustworthy. It is not likely, however, that the nuncio in France, writing at the time, was misinformed about the place ; for though it is probable enough that the news of an incident which took place after the 25 th May in London would have reached Abbeville, where the nuncio was with the French Court, before the 6th June, and that the place might have been misreported, yet it is much more credible that the King should have visited the Charterhouse than have entered a noisome prison to reason with a man who was actually sufier- ing from the horrors of such a constrained position. After a fortnight of this misery it must have been a real relief to the three monks to be transferred, as 1 X. p., VIII. 886. 2 Life of Jane Dormer, p. 27, where, besides the place of confinement being named, it should be noted that the date is given quite accurately, 25th May. 3 See Hendriks, pp. 99, 170, 310. 12 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m they were apparently, on the 8th June, to the Tower, even though they were to be brought thence three days later in the custody of Sir Edmund Walsingham to their trial at Westminster. That took place on the 11th, and as juries by this time knew that they could only refuse to convict at their own peril, sentence was Their mar- passcd the samc day. They were executed at Tyburn tyrdom. ^^^j^ ^j^^ usual barbarities on the 19th. Bishop Fisher had been condemned just two days before, and was to suffer on the 22nd. It would have been strange if these severities had produced no effect, especially as there were one or two weak brethren in the community to whom the rigour of the discipline had been almost too great a trial in times less exceptional. Their grievances presently were to find freer utterance. But the spirit of the brotherhood as a whole was singularly maintained. One John Whalley was put for a time in possession of their house, a man not long afterwards made pay- master of the King's works at Dover, and a little later Master of the Mint. A preacher named Eastell had been sent to persuade the monks, but they had laughed at him. Whalley thought he knew better how to con- vert them. First, he tells Cromwell, get some honest, loyal, and learned men to stay with them ; then get Roland Philips, the famous preacher, vicar of Croydon, Dr. Buckmaster, and others *' of the popish sort," to preach to them in open audience against their super- stitions, but not to be suffered to speak to any of them alone. After which Archbishop Lee of York, Bishop Gardiner of Winchester, Bishop Tunstall of Durham, and other bishops of similar proclivities, should likewise preach to them. The undoubted attachment of such men to the old order of the Church would add force to their advocacy of royal supremacy, to which they themselves had consented.^ 1 Willingly or uii\villingly, the whole bench of bishops had taken the oath of supremacy between the 10th February and the 1st June {L. P., viii. 190, CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 13 This advice seems to have been acted on to some extent, but the vicar of Croydon's sermon does not appear to have given complete satisfaction, for it ''touched in parable" the King and Cromwell and the Archbishop of Canterbury.^ But the Archbishop of York (Lee) made himself serviceable otherwise than by preaching to the London brethren (if, indeed, he ever did so). For in July he was in the North and called before him the Prior of Mountgrace, one of the houses of the Order in Yorkshire, whom he found ** very con- formable," and much comforted to hear that by that time the London Charterhouse and other houses of his religion were '^stayed." The Archbishop was also of opinion that Dr. Horde, Prior of Hinton, a man considerably esteemed throughout the Order, who had apparently acknowledged the royal supremacy, should be sent to all the different houses to persuade them. But this advice seems not to have been taken, for Prior Horde had certainly shown " untowardness in certain things," and was not quite the man to do the work.^ On the 29th May Whalley had received orders from Cromwell to take from the monks such books as the statutes of Bruno '' and such like doctors." ^ They were to be deprived of all means of reference even to the statutes on which their rule was founded. Whalley was assisted in the work by Jasper Filoll, a servant of Cromwell's, who also took up his abode in the house, and continued there after he was gone. In September Filoll reported on the expenses of the establishment. He found that the demands of the lay brethren were more than the revenue of the house could stand. Wheat had risen 4s. 3d. a quarter, and malt 20d. ; and yet 311, 494, 803). The only exceptions were Llandaff (a foreigner), no doubt deprived by this time, like Ghinucci of Worcester and Campeggio of Salisbury, and the newly appointed successors to these two last, Latimer and Shaxton. 1 L. P., VIII. 600, 602. 2 L. P., VIII. 1011. Comp. Nos. 402, 778. For particulars about Prior Horde see The Somerset Carthusians, by Miss E. M. Thompson. 3 L. P., VIII. 778. 14 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m they expected, lie said, to have the same fare as in times past, with the old bounteous distribution of bread, ale, and fish to strangers in the buttery, " and to their servants and vagabonds at the gate." This was out of the question.^ There had been a very rainy summer — a calamity, as people thought, due to the King s misdeeds — followed by a very bad harvest, and on the 2nd October FiloU followed up his suggestions by the following " instructions," which he forwarded to Cromwell : — If it be the King's pleasure and yours that this Charter- house shall stand without a prior as it now doth, it seemeth then, saving your mastership's correction, to be very necessary to minish the number of the cloister monks, and also of the lay brothers, at the least by so many as hath not, ne will not, confess the King to be their Supreme Head under God here in earth, and that will not renounce all jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, and of all his laws that be contrary to the good laws of the realm. That done, it seemeth to be necessary that they shall sit daily in their fraytowr, and four of them at a mess of meat, and that so done that meat that now serveth twelve persons will serve then twenty persons honestly. It seemeth also to be convenient that their lay steward, and other their lay servants and strangers, should eat flesh in their hall and parlour, contrary to their old ill custom. Also, if any of the cloister monks list to eat flesh it were pity to constrain him to eat fish ; for such constrained abstin- ence shall never be meritorious. It is no great marvel though many of these monks have heretofore offended God and the King by their foul errors ; for I have found in the prior and proctor's cells, three or four sundry printed books from beyond the sea, of as foul errors and heresies as may be; and one or two books be never printed alone, but hundreds of them. Wherefore, by your mastership's favor, it seemeth to be much necessary that their cells be better searched ; for I can perceive few of them but they have great pleasure in reading of such erroneous doctors, and little or none in reading of the New Testament or in other good books. 1 i. P., IX. 283. CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 15 Also Master Bedyll and Mr. Doctor Crome in this vacation time called Rochester and Fox before them, and gave them marvellous good exhortations by the space of an hour and more, but it prevailed nothing, but they left those two fro ward monks as erroneous as they found them ; wherein was much lack of grace. Also, William Marshall gave lately to be distributed among all our monks twenty-four English books named The Defence of Peace. Many of them received those books and said if their president would command them or license them to read it, then they would so do, or else not. The third day following all they save one sent home their books again to me, saying that their President had commanded them so to do. Yet at more leisure Dampne ^ John Rochester was so fair entreated to read one of them that he took the book and kept it four or five days, and then burned him ; which is good matter to lay to them at the time when your pleasure shall be to visit them. Where in every office of the house there is set one or two lay brothers, it is thought that they be not profitable to the house but much prodigal, every one of them to the other and to their friends elsewhere. Also the lay servants of that house be but like Abbey men, and will do but as they list ; and they be the common messengers for bearing and bringing of letters, tidings, and credence to and fro the convent in the cloister ; and every of the said lay servants hath a key to the cloister door, to come and to go, and let in and let out their friends at their pleasure. One man there hath the convent seal of twenty houses in London, and his writing is much suspicious, for it is razed in twenty words ; and the tenths decayeth and he is bound to reparations, and is not able to repair them, for he hath long owed £18 to this house and yet oweth it ; and also he hath forfeited £40 to this house for not keeping his covenants. There be also other tenants, and one of them hath two or three houses without any lease of them, and they maketh their under-tenants at their will, and driveth those tenements to ruin ; and they will take no warning to avoid. And some of those tenements will be let with reparations borne by the tenant, and good surety therefor. Your Mastership's pleasure and commandment known, aU these matters may be reformed well enough and in short space. 1 II Dampne " or " Dan," equivalent to the Latin dominus. i6 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m Memorandum, for Fogwell pound, it is like to be destroyed by the means of an ill tenant that hath no lease therein, for he is a very poor and wilful young man, that doth steal and destroy carps there, to the treble value of his rent ; and yet that pound is no part of his covenant, but he hath free entry thereto and shutteth out all other the owners. Master Maydwell, otherwise called the Scottish Friar, hath at mine instance lain three nights in the Charterhouse to examine certain books which I think to be much erroneous. I beseech your Mastership that I may know your pleasure whether he shall tarry here any longer or nay. The man is very honest, but he hath no money to pay.^ This Scottish Friar, Master John Maydwell, had been employed to preach to the brethren, and they were at first content to give him a hearing, but next day sent him word that they would not hear him again as he preached against the worship of images and was a blasphemer of Saints.^ Presently an A new ** Order for the Charterhouse " ^ was drawn up, fOTthT putting the house under five or six temporal Charter- govemors, two or three of whom were to be present ^^^^^' at every meal and lodge there at night. They were to call before them all the members and servants of the house, and tell them that the King had pardoned all their heresies and treasons committed before that day, but that they should die without mercy if they ofi'ended again. They were to take the keys from the procurator and other officers, and govern the house, receiving all the rents and making all the payments. They were to call the monks individually before them at different times, use all persuasions and ofi'er dis- pensations to those willing to leave the Order, with stipends for a year or two till they had found livings, and so forth. It seems to have been after this that, as we learn from Chauncy, two seculars appointed by Cromwell to have charge of the place, living very comfortably themselves, reduced the by no means 1 MS. Cott., Cleopatra E iv. ff. 36, 37. 2 i. P., IX. 283. 3 X. P., IX. 524. CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 17 luxurious diet of the monks, leaving them to starve on slender allowances of cheese or some such food, and called in bullies who jeered at and buffeted them.^ Everything, in short, was done to depress, intimi- date, and demoralise the community. Dan Thomas Salter, who had of old been given to complaining of his brethren,^ had been imprisoned by Prior Houghton for some breach of discipline, and was willing enough to invoke Cromwell's aid for his release.^ Whalley recommended Cromwell to set him at liberty,* which no doubt he did ; and afterwards he and Dan John Darley informed Jasper FiloU that they would fain be out of the cloister with Cromwell's favour. At the same time Dan Nicholas Rawlyns, with some help from Archbishop Cranmer, procured from the new authority a capacity to leave his Order, but had to borrow secular garments from other priests to go abroad in the world with.^ Applying to Cromwell for this dispensation, he poured forth sentiments which he durst not utter inside the convent. He had heard, he wrote, that the King, Lords, and Commons, who had a conscience and a soul to keep as well as himself, had enacted that the King should be Supreme Head of the Church of England, for not consenting to which their Father Prior and others had suffered death. But he desired to express his loyalty, though his brethren who suspected him for it would wonder at him like a company of crows or daws at a tame hawk. He complained, moreover, that, contrary to the statutes, he had not even had a half-year's probation before entering the Order, and that his health could not stand the fasting and watch- ing. There were not six monks in the cloister, he said, but had some infirmity or other. ^ 1 Hist, aliquot Martyrum, 109. This could not have been till after the 13th October, at which date they seem to have fared tolerably well. See L. P., IX. 597. 2 Chauncy's jyis^, pp. 81, 82. 3 L. R, VII. 246. 4 X. P., VIII. 601. 5 L, P., IX. 283, 284. « L, P., ix. 1160. VOL. II C Darley's vision. 1 8 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m A curious story is told of Dan John Darley in earlier days, which seems slightly overdrawn. He one day murmured at his scanty fare, especially at the fish diet, declaring that he would rather eat toads. He straightway had an opportunity, not at all to his satisfaction, for his cell was invaded with such a number of toads that they jumped after him when- ever he turned in it, leaped upon his plate when he dined, and were his companions in bed. If he threw one into the fire it jumped out unhurt, and when he took one up with the tongs for that purpose it emitted such a smell that he was forced to desist. Even other monks in the cloister smelt that horrid odour ; and the toads continued in his garden for the space of three months, as he himself used to relate with great grief of heart. ^ John Dan John Darley, no doubt, had a fevered imagi- nation ; but what he imagined during that troubled year, 1535, was a thing that got noised outside the monastery and gave sensible discomfort to Cromwell, who, as the King's minister, did his utmost to pre- vent the spread of the story. Nevertheless it got abroad, even as far as Rome, that the Charterhouse of London had been the scene of revelations from a deceased person, showing the glorious crown of martyrdom that had been won by the Cardinal of Rochester and the saints who had preceded him.^ Dan John Darley had, in the spring before Prior Houghton's execution, attended the deathbed of another of the house named Father Raby, and had said to him, " Good Father Raby, if the dead may come to the quick, I beseech you to come to me " ; and Raby, just before he died, said "Yea." The rest must be told in the words of Dan John Darley himself : — ** And since that I never did think upon him to St. John's Day, Baptist, last past. Item, the same 1 Chauncy, pp. 83, 84. ^ x. P., ix. 681. cH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 19 day at 5 of the clock at afternoon, I being in contem- plation in our entry in our cell, suddenly he appeared to me in a monk's habit, and said to me, ' Why do ye not follow our Father ? ' And I said, ' Wherefore ? ' He said, 'For he is a martyr in heaven next unto angels.' And I said, 'Where be all our other Fathers which died as well as he?' He answered and said, * They be well, but not so well as he.' And then I said to him, ' Father, how do ye ? ' And he answered and said, ' Well enough, but prayer both for you and other doth good.' And so suddenly vanished away. '' Item, upon Saturday next after, at 5 of the clock in the morning, in the same place in our entry, he appeared to me again with a long white beard and a white staff in his hand, lifting it up, whereupon I was afraid ; and then, leaning upon his staff, said to me, ' I am sorry that I lived not to I had been a martyr.' And I said, * I think ye be as well as ye were a martyr.' And he said, ' Nay ; for my lord of Rochester and our Father was next unto the angels in heaven.' And then I said, 'Father, what else?' And then he answered and said : ' The angels of peace did lament and mourn without measure ' ; and so vanished away." ^ It was not pleasant, certainly, for the King and his chief minister when even a weak brother of the Charterhouse could utter stories like this. But his dream does not seem to bave stirred him to emulate the martyrs, and no doubt the attentions he received from Whalley and FiloU increased his desire to be relieved from the obligation of his monastic vows. He was secure, moreover, of filling another post at Salisbury;^ and it may be presumed that with Cromwell's good leave he quitted London and went thither. ^ Wright's Suppression of the Monasteries, pp. 34, 35. 2 Z. P., IX. 284. 20 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. hi Another weak brother was won over to the King's service in a more effectual fashion ; and as he was really a man of great ability I must give some little account of him. In 1534, when the oaths of the Charterhouse monks were taken by Bishop Eoland Lee, one of those nineteen brethren who were priests Andrew was Andrcw Borde. His physical constitution was Borde. ^^^ B>\ich. as to cndure easily the severities of the Carthusian rule. He wrote himself to the Prior of Hinton, " I am not able to bide the rugorosyte of your religion." The close air and confinement especially disagreed with him, and perhaps it was partly for this reason that about the year 1520 he procured from Rome a dispensation to leave the Order, though the reason assigned for it was that he might be made suffragan to the aged Bishop Sher- burn of Chichester. This oflSce he never exercised, and he remained a Carthusian, but seems to have had licence to go abroad, and he studied medicine in various schools on the Continent. After his return to England he served for some time as physician in attendance on Sir Robert Drury, when, in 1530 — the year in which Wolsey was sent northward to his See of York — the Duke of Norfolk sent to have his advice, it would seem rather urgently, in the absence of Dr. Buttes, the Court physician. Borde, feeling himself *' but a young doctor " then, though he could not have been very young in years, undertook the case with some anxiety ; but his patient recovered, and Borde was called to the King's presence. It was probably owing to royal intercession that Prior Batmanson then procured for him from the Grande Chartreuse a dispensation from his " religion " ; and this, no doubt, enabled him to go a second time beyond sea and visit the most approved universities and schools ** to have a true cognition of the practice of physic." He took counsel with the most eminent physicians of the day with the view of writing ^' a CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 21 dietary of health" for the Duke his patron's use. But he was home again, and in his cloister, as we have seen, on the 6th June 1534, when Bishop Roland Lee visited the house in company with Sheriff Kytson, and he took the oath of supremacy along with his fellow monks. He was certainly not one of the most unwilling. In fact, it is clear that by this time his loyalty to the Order was suspected among the brethren. He was kept in prison strictly and was compelled, as he afterwards explained to Cromwell, to write at their request to Prior Houghton in the Tower ; for which he hoped Cromwell would pardon him. " For I could never know nothing of no manner of matter but only by them " — such was his excuse, and he was thus led ''stultitiously " to do as many of the others did, knowing '' neither the King's noble acts " nor Crom- well's authority as the King's Vicegerent. But Cromwell not only set him free but gave him, as he said, '' clearness of conscience," and he fully re- cognised " the ignorance and blindness " which he had shared with his fellow monks. In short, royal supremacy suited him very well as a means of emancipation from monastic discipline, though he still remained a Carthusian monk with licence to travel abroad. For he presently crossed the sea again; and by June 1535, seven weeks after his prior had suffered at Tyburn, and while Bishop Fisher was in the Tower after sentence awaiting execution on Tower Hill, he wrote from Bordeaux to Cromwell, saying that he had '' perlustrated " Normandy, France, Gascony and Bayonne,^ Castile, Biscay, Spain, and part of Portugal, and had returned through Aragon and Navarre to Bordeaux. And as one result of his travels he was compelled to inform Cromwell that he had heard by '' divers credible persons " of all those 1 "Byon" in MS., which has been misread "Lyon" and given as 'Lyons'" in X. P., viii. 901. 22 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m countries, and also of Rome, Italy, and Germany, that the Pope, the Emperor, and other Christian princes, all but the French King, were dead set against the King his master ; that fleets and armies were every- where preparing, and that England had few friends in those parts of Europe. From Bordeaux Andrew Borde traversed the south of France into Dauphiny, where he visited the chief He visits house of his Order, the Grande Chartreuse, having a oilrtreust ^^^*^^ business to do there both for himself and for ' the King of England. The solitude of the great monastery was no doubt favourable to his designs. The monks could have known nothing of Henry's cruelties to their brethren, or of Paul IIL^s deter- mination, already formed, to deprive him of his kingdom if he could but obtain the aid of temporal princes to carry out the sentence. They had just elected a new Grand Prior, by name John Gailhard, whom Andrew approached as an English Carthusian, declaring that though he had a licence to leave his house procured for him by Father Batmanson, his conscience was not satisfied without visiting the General of the Order, and being assured that he was fully ''dispensed with the religion." He then told him something about the affairs of the Order in England, but evidently without saying a word about the fate of Prior Houghton, which, indeed, it is just possible that he might not have heard of himself,^ indicating that there were disputes between the King ^ This seems difficult to believe considering the indignation which it aroused on the Continent, even at Venice, as we have seen above. But Borde had doubtless left England the year before, and the news might not have reached the south of France, where perhaps efforts were made to stop its diffusion. It is curious that writing (no doubt) from the Grande Chartreuse, on the 2nd August 1535, when there was no prior at the head of the London Charterhouse, he addresses his letter ' ' to Master Prior and the Convent of the Charterhouse of London, and to all priors and convents of the said Order in England." And even after he had reached London, in August or September, he wrote to Cromwell referring to a licence he had "to depart from the religion " granted to him by " the Prior of the Charterhouse of London last being." Did he really mean Houghton, or was he thinking of his predecessor Batmanson ? cH.i FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 23 and the monks, which a letter from the head of the Order would tend to pacify. The Grand Prior gave and obtains him all he wanted, and enabled him to write to his If^^l^.^ brother Carthusians at home that the Father of the ^^^rand Head Charterhouse exhorted them " in any wise " to obey their King, being sorry to hear that there had been '' wilful and sturdy opinions among them to the contrary." The Grand Prior was also induced to make Thomas Cromwell and the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield brothers of the religion, apparently on the supposition that they would be mediators with the King in behalf of the Order ; and a mutilated letter to the Bishop still exists which he entrusted to Borde to take honfe with him. It is dated at the Chartreuse, 1st August 1535. Having achieved this grand object Borde lost no time in coming home, and was with Cromwell at Bishop's Waltham in September. In the following spring we find him in Sq'otland, studying and practis- ing physic *'in a little university or study named Glasgow." ^ But the rest of his career and corre- spondence do not greatly concern our subject, except that it is interesting to note that he was unable to collect debts due to him in London, where they called him an apostate and a good-for-nothing fellow for leaving his Order. ^ How the monks still left in the London Charter- house were dealt with appears pretty clearly in a letter addressed to Cromwell by the obsequious Bedyll written from Otford — no doubt, from Cranmers house there — on the 28th August 1535,^ beginning as follows : — As I am greatly bounden to you, so I commend me heartily to you. I am right sorry to see the foolishness and obstinacy 1 L. P., X. 605. 2 L. P., XI. 297, which may possibly be a year or two later than 1536, where it is placed. The whole of Borde's letters are printed by Dr. Furnivall in the Early English Text Society's Extra Series, No. 10. '^ L. P., VII. 1090. See correction of date in viii. 200. The text is printed in State Papers^ i. 422. 24 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m Bedyll wishes the steadfast Carthus- ians were dead. of divers religious men, so addict to the Bishop of Rome and his usurped power that they contemn all counsel, and like- wise jeopardie their bodies and souls and the suppression of their houses, as careless men and willing to die. If it were not for the opinion which men had, and some yet have, in their apparent holiness, which is and was, for the most part, covert hypocrisy, it made no great matter what became of them, so that their souls were saved. And as for my part, I would that all such obstinate persons of them which be wilHng to die for the advancement of the Bishop of Rome's authority were dead indeed by God's hand, that no man should run wrongfully into obloquy for their just punish- ment. For the avoiding whereof, and for the charity that I owe to their bodies and souls, I have taken some pains to reduce them from their errors, and will take more if I be commanded specially, to the intent that my sovereign lord the King's Grace should not be troubled or disquieted with their extreme madness and folly. I mean this by divers of the Charterhouses, and chiefly at London, but also by others, as by divers of the friars at Sion wriich be minded to offer themselves in sacrifice to the great idol of Rome. And in their so minding they be cursed of God, as all others be which put their trust and. confidence in any man concerning everlasting life. And in case they had not such confidence in the Bishop of Rome they would never be so ready to lose their temporal life for him and for his sake, which is the great impostor and deceiver of the world. The writer of these shameful words was not a mere secular tool of the King and Cromwell. He was Archdeacon of Cornwall, advanced, of course, by royal favour, and he had been strenuously doing the King s work as a churchman. He had been getting the clergy to preach the King's title as Supreme Head of the Church, and he had received reports of the partial success with which this new duty had been enforced in the great monastery of Sion to which Dr. Reynolds had belonged. This house was a very special foundation, of the Order of St. Austin as reformed by St. Bridget of Sweden, and the full number of its regular inmates was eighty -five, of whom no less than sixty were nuns living in a CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 25 separate wing of the building. The whole staff was ordained to consist of thirteen priests (corresponding to the number of the Apostles, including St. Paul) and seventy- two disciples, among whom the males were four deacons and eight lay brethren. Of the thirteen priests one was the Confessor, the head of the whole house, and of the sixty nuns one was Abbess. Bedyll reports to Cromwell, as follows, what Mr. Mores, surveyor of the lands of Sion, had informed him about the success of the eflPorts to compel the monks to preach the King's title. The Confessor (Father Fewterer) had done as required and had preached twice since a visit which Bedyll had paid to the place in company with the Bishop of London (Stokesley). Master David Curson had done the same, though he once brought in the words mea culpa out of frame — perhaps by inadvertence. On Sunday last, however, one Whitford had preached — one of the most wilful, Bedyll calls him — and said nothing about the King's title. On St. Bartholomew's Day one Ricot complied with the order, but said that he who commanded him so to preach should discharge his conscience — thus laying the responsibility either on the Bishop of London or on the Confessor. But when he began The monks to declare the King's title, nine of the brethren, nof'^^e^r"^^ whose names Bedyll gives, immediately left. Bedyll the King's seriously thought that as Cromwell was then at a ^^edared • distance it would be better to forbid them preaching at all till his return, or else to see that those who did preach did their duty in declaring the King's title, and that others did not go away from the sermon. He suggested also that some of the King's servants thereabouts should be present at their sermons and report them. I have shown already how Father Fewterer on his deathbed repented of having counselled resistance to the King's supremacy. Here we find him already 26 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m but a few submissive in August 1535 ; and it is to be noted that brought ^^^ ^f ^^^ ^^^^ rebellious brethren who left the church to con- during Ricot's sermon were afterwards brought to formity. conformity by Bishop Stokesley. Their names were Copynger and Lache. The course of events brought home to them a lesson which, however they disliked it at first, seemed to have real arguments in its favour; and like Father Fewterer himself, they were anxious to persuade the Carthusians to give up resistance to the royal will. By that time, probably, the London Charterhouse had got a new prior, not, certainly, of its own election. In April 1535 the Royal Commis- sioners for the valuation of spiritual benefices in Nottinghamshire sat in the Carthusian priory of Beauvale, and declared to the monks that the King was of right Supreme Head of the Church. The prior was then absent in London; but William Trafford, proctor of the house, answered boldly, *' I believe firmly that the Pope of Rome is Supreme Head of the Church Catholic," and on being asked if he would stand to his words, he replied, " Even to death." He wrote down the words himself, and was committed to the custody of the Sheriff, who was one of the Com- missioners.^ But William Trafford, too, experienced a change, however it may have come about ; and just Anew a twelvemonth later, in April 1536, he was appointed pnor IS set |^y CromwcU Prior of the London Charterhouse, on over tne ./ , . ' brethren, which he wcut up to pay his respects to his patron with a letter of recommendation from Henry Man, Prior of Sheen, another convert to royal supremacy.^ It was about this time, certainly in 1536, that Copynger and Lache, writing partly in behalf of Father Fewterer, endeavoured to dissuade the brethren of the London Charterhouse from continuing their resistance to royal supremacy. The writers urged them to believe that their own conformity and that ^ L.P., VIII. 560, 692. "^ L. P.y VIII. 585, which is misplaced in 1535. CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 27 of others was conscientious, and not dictated by fear of bodily pain, penury, death, or shame, or worldly loss. They found arguments to absolve all doubts and scruples. If any of the Carthusians would not obey the power ^ that God had set to be obeyed, '' his prince, I mean," says the writer, *' nor his prelate," if he had learning to defend his position, he could be answered. Obedience was due to a prince or prelate if it was not expressly against the law of God. They had considered the matter much, and given papers containing the result of their labours to the Prior of Sheen. They had found arguments both in the Old and the New Testament in favour of the King's authority, and none whatever for '^ the Bishop of Kome's." As to the supremacy, if there was any Church in England the King was supreme. St. Paul counselled obedience to the higher power. It was true that the King did in the spiritualty what other princes had not done before ; but this was not against God's law, for it was admitted that the Pope might license a layman to be judge in a spiritual cause, and if so it was lawful for a prince to be judge in spiritual causes, and so forth. ^ Were such reasonings sound ? To men who upheld that the Pope had a divine authority as head of a universal Church, of course they could never be so. To us it may appear that there was a good deal of truth in them. But it is clear enough that to religious men of that generation — even to the very men who were using these arguments — they would have appeared of little weight but for the formidable coercive power by which royal supremacy was enforced. Yet there was a far greater trial than that 1 The word in the MS. looks very like '* priour," written with a contraction over the p to represent "ri," and it may very well be that the writers were thinking of the new prior Trafford, whom most of the Carthusians would not acknowledge. But if we ignore the ambiguous contraction, the word is simply "pour," i.e. power, which harmonises better with the sense. '^ L.P., VIII. 78, misplaced in 1535. The letter is printed in full, but not very accurately, in Smythe's Historical Account of Charterhouse, pp. 64-70. 28 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m Conflicts of of coercion itself — the tears and groans and expostula- feeiing. ^^^^^g ^£ kinsmen and friends urging the most steadfast to abandon the fundamental principles of their Order. The way, indeed, was free for any of them to leave the Order itself. '' But, thank God," says Chauncy, *'such was their holiness of life, their constancy of mind, their modesty in speech, their cheerfulness of countenance, their alacrity in doing, their moderation in all things, that all who saw them were confounded. Though bereft of an outward prior, and made orphans without a father, yet to each of them his conscience was a prior, inwardly directing and instructing them in all things." ^ Troubled, no doubt, at meeting with such resistance, Mr. Secretary Cromwell was '' much busied " about the Charterhouse monks, and it was difficult to *' get him in a good mood" for other subjects.^ The process by which some monks in diflferent Orders were subdued to the King's will was a gradual one. In December 1535, Copynger and Lache of Sion had not yet been brought into conformity. But hopes were entertained of important conquests, even in the great monastery to which they belonged. Among the monks the King's clerical tools, Richard Layton and Bedyll, even with the aid of Dr. Buttes and Shaxton, the Queen's almoner, were as yet making little progress in persuasion ; but with the nuns things looked somewhat better. Lord Windsor had a sister and some relations among them, whom he was naturally very anxious to win over to compliance. The con- version of the Confessor, of course, was a great assistance. On the 16 th the Confessor and Bishop Stokesley came into the women's chapter-house, and both declared to them that upon their consciences and the peril of their souls they considered that the ladies ought to consent to the King's title. This promised to smooth matters, and Layton and Bedyll fancied they saw an easy way to victory. They ^ Historia aliquot Martyrum, pp. 110-11. ^ L. P., ix. 950. CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 29 desired such of the ladies as agreed to acknowledge the King's title to sit still, and those who refused it to leave the chapter-house. Not one of the nuns left her seat. But this did not exactly mean complete agree- ment; more probably the feeling was that Layton and Bedyll had no proper authority to address them. One Agnes Smith was urgent with several of the The nuns other sisters not to allow their convent seal to be ^^^^^^ attached to any act of submission ; and apparently she prevailed, for among the numerous monastic acknowledgments of supremacy in the Record Office we do not find one of the monastery of Sion, not even of the nuns.^ As to the Carthusians, it was suggested by Bishop Hilsey, whom the King had appointed as Fisher's successor in the See of Rochester, that the monks should be taken to Paul's Cross every week to hear the sermon there, ''that their hearts might be lightened by knowledge, their bodies escape such pains as they were worthy to suffer, and their souls escape the judgment of God for such demerits as their ignorant hearts had conceived."^ This highly spiritual advice seems to have been acted upon, for by Cromwell's orders one Sunday morning four of the FourCar- Charterhouse monks were seized during the celebra- gg^g^^^^^^ tion of mass, carried out of the convent, and taken mass, to St. Paul's to hear a bishop preach, who was probably no other than Hilsey himself. They were brought to the usual place in custody of the Sheriffs of London, and after the sermon they were sent home again. But they were not edified by what they heard. ^ It appears, indeed, that one of the four who was to have been taken to hear the sermon was that day the celebrant at the mass, and the officers had the grace to let him go on with the function. They put another in his place to make up the number. But 1 X. p., IX. 986. ^ Z. P., IX. 989. ' Chauncy, p. 111. 30 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m now it was resolved to use stronger measures, and the four whose names had been put down to be taken to Paul's Cross were seized on the 4th May 1536, the and sent to anniversary of the prior's martyrdom, and sent to two the North. Q^iier monasteries belonging to the Order in the North. '* For four entire years," says Chauncy (that is to say, from 1534 to 1537), ''we had to endure very special troubles during the months of May and June, though by no means left in peace at other seasons." ^ The four monks who were thus dealt with were, first John Rochester and James Walworth — these two were sent to the Charterhouse of Hull ; and next, John Fox and Chauncy himself, who were committed to that of Beauvale in Nottinghamshire. ** The King's councillors then thought," says Chauncy, '* to lay hands on those who were left, as if they had been without wall, or bars, or doors. And they came with gaping mouth to seize and disperse the flock ; but, blessed be God, who did not give them a prey to their teeth, they remained immovable and steady upon a rock." The councillors then sent eight of them to the Bridgettine house of Sion to hear the exhortation of the dying Father Fewterer, of which we have already heard. But though some of them were half persuaded at the moment that he was right, when they got back to their own house they were again firm in resisting the royal counsels. The opposition of the brethren was undoubtedly strengthened by corporate feeling, and the consciousness that weakness in one or two of them would have encouraged the King to put the rest to death. ^ Archbishop Lee of York, however, had already won over the priors of the Carthusian houses of Hull and Mountgrace. They and other heads of houses had come to him for counsel what to do in times of so great peril, and he had always counselled them to do as he himself had done, and many others '' both great 1 Chauncy, p. 112. 2 jhid., pp. 113, 114. CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 31 learned men and taken for good men." *' The priors of Hull and Mountgrace/* he wrote to the King, " were sore bent rather to die than to yield to this your royal style, but I have persuaded both to change their opinions." ^ Just after this, by the middle of March 1536, the The sup- Act had been passed for the suppression of all the pression of ,, ^ . -t^-c^ the smaller smaller monasteries with revenues under £200 a monas- year. With what pressure the servile Parliament *^^^^' was induced to pass this measure we need not in- quire. There was a tradition in a later generation, that a comprehensive measure on these lines had been in contemplation some years before, and that Convocation had been urged to consent under threat of the King's displeasure, but that Bishop Fisher had warned them in a fable that the axe which cut down small trees would in time leave a whole forest bare.^ We cannot well feel much certainty of the truth of this story, but we are in no great danger of error if we regard the royal visitation of the monas- teries set on foot in the autumn of 1535, as having been designed to smooth the way for a large confisca- tion of monastic property. Of this I shall speak more at large in the next chapter. Here suffice it to say that two principal agents. Dr. Thomas Legh and Dr. Eichard Layton, commissioned by the King's Vicegerent, Cromwell, traversed the West, South, and North of England in the course of a few months, visiting the monasteries, giving injunctions which it was hard to keep, and which were well calculated to promote applications to Cromwell for dispensations, and sending reports of gross scandals and disgusting impurities which they professed to have discovered in two -thirds of the houses they visited. That these reports were ever seen by the persons accused, or that they were ever submitted to Parliament, as historians for a long time believed, there is no evidence 1 i. p., X. 93, 99. 2 Ortroy, pp. 222-4. 32 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m whatever to show ; and apart from the questionable characters of the visitors and the extreme rapidity with which they did their work, a good deal can be shown to discredit several of their statements in detail. Reports, moreover, of a totally different character were made not very long afterwards by a number of the local gentry in different counties, acting under a royal commission. But the general effect of the reports of the Visitors was declared by the King himself to the House of Commons, which he seems to have visited on purpose, and the bill for the confiscation of the smaller houses was passed with a preamble declaring (quite against the tenor of the secret reports) that while vice and abominable living abounded in houses where there were fewer than twelve inmates, good discipline prevailed in larger monasteries, to which it would be advisable to transfer the demoralised brethren of those smaller houses.^ At the same time there was a judicious provision in the Act, that the King might grant, by patent under the Great Seal, licences to certain of those minor monasteries to continue — a faculty of which he made use in a considerable number of instances, when a sufficient sum of money was offered by those interested. This was frequently done by neighbours, for of course houses whose revenues were so small could not easily afford the sum that was re- quisite ; but the monasteries, on the whole, were popular, and many of them in particular situations discharged specially useful functions, or were endeared by old associations to families of wealth and rank. Hull Charterhouse was one of those for which inter- cession was made. The townsmen of Hull thought it deserved to stand on account of the virtuous living and hospitality of the monks ; and though its revenues were under £200 a year it was spared for a payment 1 Stat. 27 Hen. VIII. c. 28. CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 33 into the Exchequer of £233, 6s. 8d.^ It would hardly have been so if the prior and his brethren had not been persuaded to accept the royal supremacy ; against which, evidently, Rochester and Walworth stood alone in their protest. It would seem that John Rochester, after the death of Prior Houghton, must at least have held an informal position among the brethren in London The car- as a monk of special zeal. Early in August, ^^^^^^^s- Cranmer as Archbishop had sent for him and Nicholas Rawlins to converse with them and bring them over. With Rawlins he succeeded, but he was oblio-ed to send Rochester back to the Charterhouse unaltered in his devotion to Rome.^ Later, as we have seen, Bedyll and Crome bestowed long exhorta- tions upon him and Fox to no purpose, and when copies of The Defence of Peace were given to the monks, he apparently was the ''president" to whom they referred the question whether they should read the book, and at whose command they returned the volumes unread to Filoll. On further exhortation he consented to read over one copy himself, but after keeping it four or five days he burned it.^ He and Walworth, of whose previous history less is known, remained in the Hull Charterhouse during the great commotions in the North in the winter of 1536-37. With these risings they do not seem in any way to have been mixed up. The risings themselves, The indeed, were mainly due to the general dislike of ^l^^^^^ heresy and of the first steps taken in the suppression of the monasteries. But these Carthusian monks, living within their cloisters, were not insurgents and did not favour insurrection. It was the laity who were alarmed at the new tendencies of things, more than any monks or clergy. The legislation of the 1 X. p., X. 980. Comp. Gasquet's Henry VIIl. and the English Monas- teries, ii. 530 (ed. 1888-89). 2 L. P., VIII. 283. ^ See above, p. 15. VOL. II ^ 34 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m last Parliament had been revolutionary and destructive of ancient authority; and the insurgents, perfectly loyal to the King, wished the removal and punish- ment of wicked councillors like Cromwell and Riche, and of heretical bishops like Cranmer and Latimer. They wanted a free Parliament to revise the recent revolutionary legislation, and to relieve them of the fear of new inordinate confiscations. And so formid- able was the revolt that Norfolk, sent to quell it, was obliged to temporise. He quieted the people by a promise, which he was understood to have given by authority, that there should be a free Parliament in the North of England for the consideration and redress of grievances. But there soon appeared reasons for doubting the good faith of the Government, and there was serious danger of a new commotion in the North, of which Hallom's attempt to get possession of Hull was one of the first indications. Indeed, new com- motions did occur, even after the failure of this and of Bigod's rebellion in Yorkshire, in the region farther west, south of Carlisle. The Duke of Norfolk came down again into the North, not, as had been expected, to complete the pacification of which he had given hopes, but to administer severe punishment to all new ofi'enders. He was called to Carlisle by the disturbances in the West, and after doing " dreadful execution " there, returned to Newcastle and so into Yorkshire, where he visited Hull in the middle of March and was at York a little later. At Hull he seems to have called Rochester, and probably Wal- worth also, before him, when Rochester said he was ready to prove that the King had been deluded by false counsel to assume the title of Supreme Head. This he told the Duke he had already declared to Bedyll and others in London, and he even sent a letter to Norfolk^ after the Duke had left Hull, asking 1 L. p., XII. i. 778. CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 35 that he might have an opportunity to put the matter before the King himself. He trusted that Norfolk's influence might be of use in this, as it had already been on a very important point not long before. For it was through Norfolk that the King had ''staid Purgatory " — a point which deserves a word or two of retrospective notice. In June 1534, when the encouragement of heretical preachers was important to support the Anne Boleyn marriage against the Pope, Archbishop Cranmer issued an order to the clergy of his Province, inhibiting all persons from preaching either for or against Purgatory and some other disputed doctrines for one year.^ Like order, of course, was taken for the province of York, where Archbishop Lee mentions that the year was to expire at Whitsunday 1535.^ A definite decision was expected to be promulgated by that time as to the sort of doctrine that was to be sanc- tioned by royal authority. But the time was allowed to lapse, and Archbishop Lee received instructions in January 1536 still to avoid contrariety in preaching against novel opinions, but to repress the temerity of adherents of ''the Bishop of Rome."^ When Parlia- ment met next month the members were abundantly supplied with a number of new printed books designed to provoke legislation against images, adoration of Saints, and the doctrine of Purgatory.^ In the spring the bishops held conferences on the subject with Cranmer at Lambeth ; but before the end of April the King came to a determination about it, and preachers were ordered to avoid new opinions and return to the old fashion of preaching.^ That this decision was due largely to the influence of Norfolk, Father Rochester's letter shows, and it is what we might otherwise pretty 1 L. p., VII. 464, 871. From the date of Chapuys's letter (871) it is clear this order was given some time after the inhibition, No. 463, which was in Easter week, 2 L. P., IX. 704. -^ L. P., X. 172. •* L. P., X. 282. Comp. 528, 619. ' L. P., x. 601, 752, 831. 36 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m well expect. Norfolk was always in favour of old orthodoxy, as far as he might be allowed to support it. But to be asked to send to the King an obstinate Carthusian, who, when refreshed with proper diet — for it seems that he was much debilitated at the very time he wrote — hoped to maintain in the face of royalty that the title of Supreme Head was unlawful, was altogether out of the question. In writing to Cromwell, Norfolk wondered how the man was ever sent into those parts at all, when he had shown his opinion to Mr. Bedyll and others in London. Why was he not put to execution there ? ^ His letter, of course, which the Duke forwarded to Cromwell, showed him in the opinion of the Council to be a rank traitor, and the Duke was instructed, if he persisted in his opinions, to deal with him as such. A month later the Duke, who had been at Sheriff- button, returned for a day to York and had before him Rochester and Walworth, indicted for denial of Two more tlic Kiug's Supremacy.^ They were hanged in chains Ss'" ^^ York on the 11th May.^ Just one week later came a great crisis in the London Charterhouse. Under a new prior, placed over them by Cromwell to bring about compliance with the King's will, persuasions, of course, were not wanting, and Archdeacon Bedyll, backed up by Richard Gwent, the Archdeacon of London, pressed them harder than before, and succeeded in bringing' In London about a divisiou in the community. Nineteen of the some sub- -, i "^ -n. , . . , , mit, some mouks wcrc wou ovcr, and unwillmgly jomed the die in prior in takinsr the oath of supremacy. They took prison. -. rw. 1*1 • .. ^i • • it, as Uhauncy plamly says, against their consciences,, with qualifications which they were allowed to make, and hoping that their compliance would avert the complete destruction of their house. But ten others 1 L. P., XII. i. 777. ^ L. F., XII. i. 846, 1156, 1172. 2 Cliauncy, p. 118. CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 37 remained refractory. Two documents were drawn up by a notary of the submission on the 18th May 1537.' The ten who remained faithful to their principles were allowed but eleven days' rest. On the 29th May they were committed to the filthy prison of Newgate, where with stench and squalor they all of them but one gradually succumbed to fate. The single survivor three years later, on the 4th November 1540, was brought out to suffer a martyrdom like that of his prior — the brutal punishment awarded to high treason.^ The conformity of the majority did not save the house from ultimate extinction. On the 10th June it was surrendered by Prior TrafFord in the name of the convent, with a formal confession that the majority had provoked the King by their offences, and deserved the severest death as well as the confiscation of the property of their priory, and that they thought it best to throw themselves upon the King's mercy. ^ Four days later Archdeacon Bedyll informed Cromwell, in the following cold-blooded letter, of the process which was gradually going on in Newgate : — My very good Lord, after my most hearty commendations, it shall please your Lordship to understand that the monks of the Charterhouse here at London, which were committed to ]N"ewgate for their traitorous behaviour longtime continued against the King's Grace, be almost despatched by the hand of God, as it may appear to you by this bill enclosed; whereof, considering their behaviour and the whole matter, 1 am not sorry, but would that all such as love not the King's Highness and his worldly honor were in like case. My Lords, as ye may, I desire you in the way of charity, and none otherwise, to be good lord to the prior of the said Charterhouse, which is as honest a man as ever was in that habit (or else I am much deceived), and is one which never ^ L. P., XII. i. 1232, 1233 ; Chaimcy, p. 115. 2 Chauncy, pp. 116, 117. See correction of date in Annotations, p. 145. ^ L. P., XII. ii. 64. 38 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m offended the King's Grace by disobedience of his laws, but hath labored very sore continually for the reformation of his brethren, and now at the last, at mine exhortation and instigation, constantly moved and finally persuaded his brethren to surrender their house, lands, and goods into the King's hands and to trust only to his mercy and grace. I beseech you, my Lord, that the said Prior may be so entreated by your help that he be not sorry and repent that he hath feared and followed your sore words and my gentle exhorta- tion made unto him to surrender his said house, and think that he might have kept the same if your Lordship and I had not led him to the said surrender. But surely I believe that I know the man so well that how so ever he be order[ed] he will be contented without grudge ; he is a man of such charity as I have not seen the like. As touching the house of the Charterhouse, I pray God, if it shall please the King to alter it, that it may be turned into a better use, seeing it is in the face of our world, and much communication will run thereof throughout this realm ; for London is the common country of all England, from which is derived to all parts of this realm all good and ill occurrent here. Erom London the 14th day of June. By your Lordship's at commandment, THOiiAS Bedyll. The enclosure is as follows : — There be departed : — Brother William Greenewode, Dan John Davye, Brother Robert Salt, Brother Walter Peereson, Dan Thomas Greene. There be even at the point of death : — Brother Thomas Scryven, Brother Thomas Reedyng. There be sick : — ^Dan Thomas Johnson, Brother William Horn. One is whole : — Dan Bere.^ So it appears that it was only by " sore words " on the part of Cromwell, as well as ''gentle exhortation ''' on that of Bedyll, that Prior Trafford, who a year before he was made head of the house had expressed ^^ MS. Cott, Cleop. E iv. 217. Printed in Ellia' Letters (l S. iL 76) and Wright's Suppi'ession of the Jfry,iast€,-ies, p. 162. Bnt Wright omits the enclosure, and Ellis misreads two names in the list. surrender of the CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 39 himself as ready to die for the Pope's supremacy, was induced both to make the surrender and get his brethren's consent almost to the very thing that they had taken an unwilling oath in order to avoid. It was important that he should be rewarded for his submissiveness in such a way that he should not repent it. In his behalf, at least, Bedyll could write *' in the way of charity." Did Prior Trafford not repent it? We have no record of his feelings.^ The one thing which is beyond all question is that the surrender was forced. Forced The King had set his mind on the complete suppres- sion of the Charterhouse, had got Prior Trafford's aid house to win over as many of the brethren as possible to consent to the act, and was determined to get rid of the rest by a process of slow murder in Newgate. It appears that an old MS., preserved long ago among the English Carthusian exiles, gave an obituary of those poor sufferers, showing the date on which each of them departed to God ; and the record is in complete conformity with the above list. William Greenwood died on the 6th June, John Davy on the 8th, Robert Salt on the 9th, Walter Pierson and Thomas Green on the 10th, Thomas Scriven on the loth, and Thomas Reding on the 16th ; while Richard Beer — the only one above described as ''whole" on the 14th June — did not die till the 9th August; and Thomas Johnson, though sick on the 14th June, held out till the 20th September.^ That some of them lived so long after a time excited the King's astonishment, who suspecting, what was indeed the case, that private sympathy had come to the aid of the afflicted, caused a stricter watch to be kept over them. For in truth a kind-hearted young woman named Margaret Clement, whose mother had been ^ He got only a pension of £20 a year for his pains. Dugdale's Monasiicon, vi. 10. 2 Hendriks, 228. 40 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION ek. m brought up in Sir Thomas More's household, had bribed the jailor to get access to them, and, dis- guising herself as a milkmaid, came to them ** with a great pail upon her head full of meat, wherewith she fed that blessed company, putting meat into their mouths, they being tied and not able to stir, nor to help themselves ; which having done, she afterwards took from them their natural filth." But when the stricter watch was instituted the jailor durst not allow her the same free access as before. Nevertheless, by importunity and by the force of bribes, she prevailed with him for a time to let her go up upon the roof, just above their cells, and, removing some of the tiles, she was able to let down by a string some meat in a basket and approach it to their mouths as they stood chained against the posts. It was a troublesome operation, and the poor prisoners after all could not feed themselves very effectually. The danger of dis- covery, moreover, was such that the jailor at length refused to let her come any longer.^ There were still two monks of the London house, John Fox and Maurice Chauncy, who, having been removed, as we have seen, to the priory of Beauvale in Nottinghamshire, had not even yet acknowledged the supremacy. In August 1537 that priory was visited by Henry Man, prior of Sheen, a Carthusian whom the King, having won him over to his supremacy, had appointed visitor of his own Order, along with John Mitchel, prior of Witham. They found Fox and Chauncy "very scrupulous in the matter con- cerning the Bishop of Rome/' though they were not obstinate and willingly agreed to confer upon the subject with Copinger, who, since Father Pewterer's death, had been appointed, of course by royal authority. Confessor of Sion in his room. They were ^ Morris's Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers (1 Ser.), i. '27, '28. This kind-hearted lady died at an advanced age at Loiivaiu, where slie luid been for more than fifty years Superior of the convent of St. Ursula. CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 41 accordingly sent up to Sion, where they appear to have had lengthened discussions with the new Con- fessor ; to whom also William Broke and Bartholomew Burgoyn, two of those monks still in the London Charterhouse who had once been sent to Sion to hear Father Pewterer's dying exhortations, wrote to thank him for the great pains he took with them, hoping that he would succeed in their conversion. " We have not forgotten/' they said, " the pains and patience and longanimity that ye had with us when we were with you, and how hard it was, and in a manner impossible, to us to follow your counsel. But in process of time we did follow your counsel, thanks be to Jesu. This we write, for we suppose it to be thus with our brethren ; and if it be thus, we instantly desire you to continue your good patience to them. . . . Glad would we be to hear that they would surrender their wits and consciences to you, that they might come home, and as bright lanterns show the light of religious conversation amongst us, as they can right well, to God be glory." ^ The reader can judge from words like these what lengthened arguments it required to overcome con- scientious scruples and subvert an ancient order. But we cannot blink the fact that the ancient order was in the end effectually subverted, and even conscience cannot bind a man to a dead master or a woman to a dead husband. The moral influence and political power of Rome were tottering to their fall. The moral influence might in part revive, and did so ; but the political power was going, if not actually gone. In this very year, 1537, Cardinal Pole cardinal had been sent by the Pope as Le2:ate to 2:0 to the ^?^^'^. T n ♦ T 1 •T-iiTi abortive Low Countries and watch matters m England, where mission. rebellion had broken out in opposition to the King's revolutionary measures. A papal legate had hitherto been honoured in all countries as the ambassador of 1 Hendriks, pp. 232-6. 42 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m the most sacred Power on earth. But such was Henry's extraordinary influence over secular princes that neither Francis I. nor Mary of Hungary, the Regent of the Netherlands, durst give a public recep- tion to one whom the KiDg of England denounced as a traitor to himself, and whose delivery to him as such he had the audacity to demand. Neither Francis nor Mary of Hungary desired to oflFend the Pope ; but to offend Henry VIII. would have been more dangerous still, and they begged Pole's indul- gence for not receiving him. Pole accordingly, after making a public entry into Paris in the French king's absence, went on to Cambray, and from thence, after waiting some time, was escorted hastily to the security of Liege without having accomplished anything. The Kinor of Enorland was thus an absolute sovereign in his own realm. There was no power on earth to control him within or without the kingdom ; and it is no wonder that the scrupulous Fox and Chauncy at length yielded to Copinger's arguments and took the oath of supremacy — a weakness with which Chauncy ever afterwards reproached himself as a grievous sin. They were partly reconciled to it, as their brethren had been, by the belief that their submission on this point would preserve the monastery from being utterly suppressed. In so thinking they were deceived. The work begun in 1536 under the Act of Parliament for suppressing the smaller monasteries was continued two years later by other processes, till in the year 1540 not a single monastery was left in England. On the 15th November 1538, within a year after Fox and Chauncy had taken the oath and been restored to their old priory, the monks were turned End of the out of the housc and pensioned.^ Their old home of chartS- pi^'ty w^s turned into a brothel and a place of house. wrestling matches ; the church was made a repository ^ Chauncy's original date of 1539 is corrected by his last editor, Doreau. See Pref, p. xxi. CH. I FURTHER TRIALS OF THE FAITHFUL 43 for the King's tents, and the altars were profaned as gaming tables. At last, six years after the expulsion of the monks, the place was at least purified, the buildings being given to a courtier, Sir Edward North, who turned them into a private residence, converting the church into a dining-room and pulling down all the cloister.^ 1 Chaiincy, pp. 119, 120. CHAPTER II VISITATION A^D SUPPRESSION OF MONASTERIES Magnitude The overtlirow of papal authority in England, whicli change ^^s the great achievement of Henry's reign, has caused by brought about such enormous results, not merely in throw of this, but, since then, in every country in Europe, that ^Th^ t ^^ ^^^ hardly realise what a stupendous task he undertook, and with what difficulty he carried it through. Eoyal supremacy over the Church within any realm, whether recognised by that name or not, is really a universal principle now. The sovereign authority is supreme over all persons and over all causes, whether ecclesiastical or civil A jurisdiction termed ecclesiastical may still remain, but it is not the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Middle Ages, when bishops had their own courts and cited heretics before them virtute officii, without interference from any other power. As Selden put the matter in his Table Talk, " There is no such thing as spiritual jurisdiction — aU is civil; the Church's is the same with the Lord Mayor's." The same, he meant, as to the supreme determining power, though there might be a distinction in the tribunal according to the nature of the cause. But as to aU jurisdiction being civil, it is scarcely so in one sense ; for civil authority could not stand alone without a religious sanction. We are weU satisfied, indeed, that there are no Church tribunals now independent of the State ; but we hardly realise that a result which we consider so 44 CH. II SUPPRESSION OF MONASTERIES 45 wholesome was due in the first instance to unex- ampled tyranny and oppression. Nor was it the work of a mere commonplace tyrant ; for no such character would have found the existing system any very great impediment to his lust, his selfishness, or his caprice. Henry was at once a casuistical and a self-willed tyrant, professedly observant of law, but determined to carry his point at any cost. He had with great difl&culty forced Convocation to acknow- ledge his supremacy, and they had only done so with a qualification which they considered essential. He got Parliament to ratify it without the qualifica- tion. He procured the most merciless enactments against any who should deny it ; yet even Parlia- ment, like Convocation, would not do what was required without putting in a qualification of its own. The parliamentary qualification in the statute was designed to protect those who did not deny the supremacy '* maliciously.'^ But the lawyers treated the word as superfluous, just as Parliament had ignored the qualification inserted by Convocation. And so the heads of martyrs fell on the block, or their bodies were suspended on the gibbet. And all this was done, in the first place, to justify the King's marriage with Anne Boleyn, and, after Anne Boleyn's fall, to justify the King's own enactments. Yet even with all this the result was but imper- Difficulty fectly achieved. We have followed the process so far -t^^aT^^^^ to the extinction of one religious house — the house achieved, which undoubtedly offered most resistance to the royal claims. But the monasteries, without out- spoken opposition, were a far greater obstacle than the bishops and Convocations. In the Convocations the Church of each province seemed to have but one neck, as Caligula wished the Roman people had, and the bishops were helpless after their Convocations had yielded. All of them, except the Spaniard who was Bishop of Llandaff, took the oath of supremacy within 46 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m the space of little more than three months. But the monasteries still remained — scores of houses often in a single county, besides those which clustered about the suburbs of great towns, and the friaries within the precincts of such towns. Of the friars, indeed, one Order had already been suppressed, namely, the more strict Order of Franciscans, who were called Observants. Bound to the rule of St. Francis in all its rigour, unable to possess property, and incapable of being seduced by the ordinary allurements which wealth and power can place in the way of other men, the Observants were popular mainly on account of their known fearlessness and independence. But it was just these qualities which made them specially objectionable to the King. On Easter Sunday, 1532, the year before he married Anne Boleyn, Friar Peto, preaching before him at Greenwich, warned him against sycophants who, like the lying prophets of Ahab, encouraged him in evil counsels, and also against the danger he incurred of excommunication if he put away his true wife, Katharine. The King vainly remonstrated with him at a private interview, and no less vainly endeavoured, in Peto's absence next Sunday, to correct the impression made, by getting a chaplain of his own to preach a contrary doctrine in the same place. The royal chaplain was answered by another of the friars, the Warden of the Greenwich brethren, who, for his boldness, was told by a nobleman that he deserved to be put in a sack and thrown into the Thames. ''Make these threats to courtiers," replied the Warden ; " the way lieth as open to heaven by water as by land." ^ If the King were to have his way, such a dangerous Order, it was clear, must be suppressed. One of the earliest measures taken two years later for enforcing ^ The accounts of this episode, given by Sandei-s, and before hini by Harpsfield {Pretended Divorce, pp. 202-205), are quite in accordance with the strictly contemporary and independent reports of the Imperial and Venetian ambassadors (Z. P., v. 941 ; Venetian Calendar, iv. No. 760). CH. II SUPPRESSIOxX OF MONASTERIES 47 the royal supremacy, as may be seen in a State paper of the period, had special reference to the control of the friars and the regulation of preaching. The fol- lowing is the abstract of this document given in the Calendar of State Papers : — All the Friars of every monastery in England must be assembled in their chapter house and examined separately concerning their faith and obedience to Henry YIII., and bound by an oath of allegiance to him, Queen Anne, and her present and future issue. They must be bound by oath to preach and persuade the people of the above at every oppor- tunity. They must acknowledge the King as Supreme Head of the Church, as Convocation and Parliament have decreed. They must confess that the Bishop of Rome has no more authority than other bishops. They shall not call the Bishop of Rome Pope, either privately or pubhcly, or pray for him as such. They shall not presume to wi^est the Scrip- tures, but preach the words and deeds of Christ sincerely and simply, according to the meaning of Holy Scriptures and Catholic doctors. The sermons of each preacher must be carefully examined, and burned if not Catholic, orthodox, and worthy of a Christian preacher. Preachers must be warned to commend to God and the prayers of the people, first the Ring as Head of the Church of England, then Queen Anne with her child, and lastly the Archbishop of Canterbury, with the other Orders oi: the Clergy. Each house must be obliged to show theu' gold, silver, and other moveable goods, and dehver an inventory of them. Each house must take an oath, under their convent seal, to observe the above orders.^ To confess the King to be Supreme Head of the How the Church of England was a thing that friaro of any ^^^^^^ Order had never done yet ; but means were taken to ^^^^^ compel them. The King, wielding powers which had *^°^ hitherto belonged to the Pope, first appointed the Prior of the Austin Friars in London (Dr. George Browne) as Provincial of the whole Order of Friars Hermits in England, and Dr. John Hilsey as Pro- vincial of the whole Order of the Dominicans, or 1 X. p., VI. 590, from MS. Cott, Cleopatra E iv. 11. 48 LOLLARDY and THE REFORMATION bk. m Friars Preachers ; then gave these two jointly a com- mission to visit the houses of all Orders of friars whatever — not only their own two Orders, but the Franciscans, Carmelites, and Crossed Friars — to in- quire into their lives and morals and fealty to the King, and to lay down injunctions for their future conduct, calling in the secular arm, if necessary, to enforce obedience/ Of course Browne and Hilsey were men well suited to serve the King's purpose, or they would not have been selected ; and each of them had his reward in a bishopric not very long after. The lessons of compliance which it was their function to teach were, more- over, strongly recommended to attention by the fact that two Observant Friars, Rich and Risby, Wardens of the houses at Richmond and Canterbury respectively, had been hanged at Tyburn in April as abettors of the Nun of Kent. Yet the efforts of Browne and Hilsey were but subsidiary to those of other agents by whom it was hoped to bring the friars, especially the Observants, into complete sub- jection. Those worthy associates. Bishop Roland Lee and Thomas Bedyll, little more than a fortnight after the execution of the Nun's adherents, had got the prior, convent, and novices of Sheen to take the oath required by the statute, and had done their best to persuade the Observants of Richmond to do the like. With these they confessed that after repeated conferences they had been unsuccessful, and had despaired of influencing them till the 7th May, when they passed on to Sion. It was just three weeks and a day before their visit to the London Charterhouse, and their success in swearing the whole inmates of one Carthusian house at Sheen encouraged them to look for further conquests. They began to think that the Observants of Eichmond would be 1 X. p., Yi. 530, 587 (18). CH. II SUPPRESSION OF MONASTERIES 49 more pliable, and meanwhile they would see what Resistance they could do with the brethren and sisters of Sion oble^ants before they went on to London. They were not sue- of Rich- cessful, and, as we have seen already, their first visit ^^^^' to the London Charterhouse on the 29th May had to be supplemented by a second visit from Bishop Lee in company with Sheriff Kitson on the 6th June, in order to produce a very marked effect. When by these means the qualified oath had been procured from the London Carthusians, Bishop Lee and Bedyll were directed once more to turn their attention to the Observants ; but, as the following letter shows, their zeal met with very little success. Bishop Lee and Bedyll to Cromwell Please it you to understand that on Saturday last, about 6 of the clock, we received your letters by the Provincial of the Augustine Friars,^ according to the which letters we took our journey forthwith towards Eichmond, and came thither betwixt 10 and 11 at night. And iu the morning following we had first communication with the warden and one of the seniors named Sebastian, and after with the whole convent, and moved them by all the means and poHcies that we could devise to consent to the articles dehvered unto us by the said Provincial, and required the confirmation of them by their convent seal. Which warden and convent showed themselves very untoward in that behalf ; and thereupon we were forced to move the convent to put the matter wholly in the arbitrament of their seniors, otherwise named dis- creets, which were but four in number, and that they four having full authority to consent or dissent for them all and in the name of them all, should meet us at Greenwich this day ia the morning and bring their convent seal with them ; and so they did. And when we came to Greenwich we exhorted the convent likewise to put the whole matter in the hands of their seniors or discreets, to the latent to avoid superfluous words and idle reasoning, and specially to the intent that if the discreets should refuse to consent, it were better, after our minds, to strain a few than a multitude. ^ Dr. George Browne. VOL. II E 50 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. iii But at Greenwich we could in no wise obtain to have the matter put in the discreets' hands and arbitrament, but the convent stiffly affirmed that where the matter concerned particularly every one of their souls, they would answer particularly every man for himself. And when, after much reasoning and debating, we required to have their final and determinate answer, which we demanded of every one of them particularly, we found them in one mind of contradic- tion and dissent from the said articles, but specially against this article, Quod episcopus Romanus nihilo majoris neque auctoritatis aut jurisdictionis hahendus sit quam cceteri quivis episcopi in Anglia vel alibi gentium in sua quisque diocesi. And the cause of their dissent, as they said, was by reason that that article was clearly against their profession and the rules of St. Francis, in which rules it is thus written, as they showed unto us : Ad hcec per ohedientiam injungo ministris ut petant a domino Papa unum de Sanctce Romance Ecclesioe cardinalihus, qui sit guhernator, protector, et corrector istius fraternitatis, ut semper suhditi et suhjecti pedihus Sanctce Ecclesioe ejusdem stabiles in fide Catholica paupertatem et humilitatem, et secundum Evangelium Domini nostri Jesu Christi, quod firmiter promisimus observemus. Whereunto three answers: First, that St. Francis and his brethren at the beginning were dwelling in Italy under the obedience of the Bishop of Rome, as all monks not exempt be under the obedience of the Bishop of Canterbury, and therefore it were no marvel that St. Francis would his brethren to be obedient to the Bishop of Rome, being their prelate ; at which time of St. Francis, and long after, there were noae of his Order in England, and therefore these words were not meant by friars of England. The second answer that we made was this, that the chapter of St. Francis' rule which they allege maketh mention of ministers, and that they should desire of the Pope to have one of the cardinals which should be governor, protector, and corrector of their brotherhood ; and we showed them that in our opinion that chapter [was] no part of St. Francis' rule, but was forged sithence and planted into the same by some ambitious friar of that Order, for, as we sup- posed, the name of ministers was not found out or spoken of when their rule was confirmed ; and it is [not ?] to be thought that St. Francis, being a holy man, was desirous to have a cardinal to govern and correct his bretliren. Thirdly, we affirmed unto them that they were the King's subjects and that by the law of God they owed him their entire obedi- CH. II SUPPRESSION OF MONASTERIES 51 ence; and that the Pope and St. Francis and they them- selves, with their vows, oaths, and professions, could take away not one jot of the obedience which they owe to the King by God's law. And we showed them that none of the King's subjects could submit himself or bear obedience to any other prince or prelate, without the King's consent. And if he did he did the King's Grace great injury and offended God, breaking his laws commanding obedience towards princes. And in this behalf we showed that the King, being a Christian prince, was a spiritual man, and that obedience which they owed to the King by God's law was a spiritual obedience and in spiritual causes ; for they would be obedient but only in temporal causes. But all this reason could not sink into their obstinate heads and worn in custom of obedience of the Pope, — albeit we further declared unto them that both Archbishops of this realm, the Bishops of London, Winchester, Durham, Bath, and all other prelates and heads, and all the famous clerks of this realm, have subscribed to this conclusion Quod Romanus jpontifex non habet majorem jurisdictionem ex sacris Uteris in hoc regno Anglice quam quivis alius externus episcopus. All this notwithstanding, their conclusion was, they had professed St. Francis' religion, and in the observance thereof they would live and die. Sorry we be we cannot bring them to no better frame and order in this behalf, as our faithful minds was to do, for the accompHshment of the King's pleasure. From the Mile's end, the 15 th day of June. By yours assuredly, Roland Co. et Lich. Your own, Thomas Bedyll. Addressed : To Master Secretary.^ Since reasoning like the above was of so little suppres- sion of t' Observants. avail, a new process was applied, and, two days later, sio^ofthe two carts full of friars passed through the city on their way to the Tower/^ In August matters were carried a step or two further. *' Of seven houses of Observants,'' writes Chapuys on the 11th, *'five have been already emptied of friars because they have re- fused to swear to the statutes made against the Pope. Those in the two others expect also to be expelled." 1 MS. Cott., Cleopatra E iv. 40. Printed by Wright, Suppression of the Monasteries, pp. 41-44. 2 X. P., VII. 856. 3 2;. P., VII. 1057. 3 52 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m The persecuted brethren found means to send a memorial to the King;^ but of course it was alto- gether useless. In a very short time the two remain- ing houses were cleared, and their inmates distributed in other Franciscan monasteries of the Conventual, or less strict Order, where they were kept locked in chains and worse treated than they would have been in ordinary prisons.^ Thus the whole Order of the Observants in England was suppressed. All this, be it observed, was before the tyrannical view of Supremacy had even been endorsed by Parliament ; for the session in which the Act of Supreme Head was passed only began in November following, and, as we have seen. Parliament showed itself anxious to protect those who did not offend " maliciously." But together with this came Acts of Attainder against More and Fisher for refusing the oath to the succession (which they did only on account of its preamble), and the severe Act of treasons already mentioned, enacted to prevent speaking against the marriage with Anne Boleyn. It was in the following year, 1535, that all this fearful legislation began to bear fruit, and the world was horror-struck at the executions of England's best and noblest sons. But after More's head had fallen on Tower Hill in July legal butcheries ceased for a while. The government even of the Church in England was now a despotism against which it was hopeless to contend ; and the foundations had to be laid for a new order of things without much risk of interference from abroad. It was in truth a new order of things even from the passing of that Act of Supremacy ; for never had such pretensions been advanced before by any English sovereign, or in any English sovereign's name. But the development of that new order was ^ L. T., VII. 1063. 2 X. P., VII. 1095. Cp. Wriothesley's Chronicle, i. 25. CH. 11 SUPPRESSION OF MONASTERIES 53 not a matter that could be left to time and circum- stance. The beginning of the year 1535 had seen Cromwell appointed Vicegerent of the King in spiritual matters, to carry out a policy withia the Church as well as within the State, of which he seems himself to have been the great deviser. Bent merely on satisfying a despotic master with a view to his own advancement in wealth and power, he never allowed considerations of humanity or justice to stand for a moment in his way. In January he received a commission for a general visitation of churches, monasteries, and clergy throughout the kingdom ; but nothing was done in the matter during the first half of the vear whUe those awftd executions were going OJL In July, however, while he was with Cromweii the King in the West of England, the two monastic vigj^f^r Visitors whom he had appointed. Dr. Legh and Dr. the monas- Layton, started on their work. They had both, as ^^"^ Layton confessed, been preferred to the King's ser- vice by CromweU and looked upon him as their only patron ; and in the North Country they had both of them ** familiar acquaintance," within ten or twelve miles of every monastery, by whom they could find out every scandal, '' so that no knavery could be hid from them." ^ They had both, moreover, shown their fitness for the work required by taking part in the examinations of More and Fisher in the Tower ; and so had John Ap Eice, a notary, who was set to accompany Dr. Legh upon his travels. The three worthies did not agree very weU together at first. Dr. Legh visited over again the monastery of Bruton which had already been visited by Layton, and complained that Layton had not been strict enough elsewhere, in restraining the heads and brethren &om leaving the precincts. Complaints on the other hand reached CromweU of Legh's ostentatious insolence, which he blamed Ap 1 X. p., vm. S22. 54 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. ni Rice for not reporting. Ap Rice agreed that Legh was too insolent and pompous, but he thought Crom- well had seen evidence of the fact himself in London. " Wherever he comes," wrote Ap Rice, ** he handles the fathers very roughly, many times for small causes, as for not meeting him at the door, where they had warning of his coming." He was young and intolerably conceited, and, moreover, took ex- orbitant fees of the houses he visited ; while at every election he demanded the altogether unheard-of sum of £20. He made all the monks afraid of him ; and he departed in some matters from the instructions given him in his dealings with them. Still it would not do for Cromwell to punish him and so discredit the wisdom of his own appointment ; it would be better, Ap Rice thought, first to admonish him gently.' Ap Rice, indeed, as he confessed, had some per- sonal reasons of his own for this suggestion. Legh had acquaintance with so many rufflers and serving- men that he could make him very uncomfortable if he suspected that he was giving information against him. But as to the taking of fees, Legh, no doubt, had learned much of the arts used by Cromwell him- self when he suppressed the small monasteries for Wolsey's colleges. Moreover, if his strictness was complained of, Legh had a good deal to say for him- self. Ap Rice, it seems, thought it was excessive that not even the heads of monastic houses were allowed to go out of doors. Many of those houses, he remarked, were supported by husbandry, and would be quite unable to live if their heads were never to leave their precincts. The head of a house was chosen expressly for his ability in business matters, and was to do duty in providing for all the rest that they might be released from secular cares and devote their attention the more freely to their religious ' L. p., IX. 138, 139, 167, 621, 622, 630. CH. II SUPPRESSION OF MONASTERIES 55 duties. Even the monks of the Charterhouse re- quired to have a proctor, and their prior had to go abroad on the business of the house. ^ But Legh considered that he was not bound to take such matters into consideration. He merely followed his instructions, treating heads and members alike, which would have a most beneficial effect in making them feel the King s ecclesiastical power, and apply either to the King himself or to Cromwell for relief. Even when his instructions were modified by Crom- well, who wrote to allow him at discretion to let the heads go abroad quietly on the business of their houses, he declined to relax his orders till he had spoken with Cromwell himself, thinking not only that it might give occasion to the juniors to com- plain of unequal treatment, but that it would be for Cromwell's own advantage to compel the seniors thus to seek his favour and the King's.^ By and by Legh and Ap Kice ventured to submit their joint counsel to Cromwell on a higher subject. The visitation of monasteries was but one depart- ment of the Vicegerent's functions, and it could not be effectually carried on without encroachment on the regular functions of the bishops. On the 18th September royal letters were despatched to the two archbishops to inhibit their suffragans from visiting Episcopal their dioceses, as the King intended a general visita- Shibited! tion of the whole kingdom. Even Cranmer did not at once act upon this mandate. Probably he made some remonstrances, the bishops themselves very naturally being much disturbed at the idea that their functions were to be suspended ; and it was only on the 2nd October that he sent the required inhibi- tion to the Bishop of London.^ It was Legh and Ap Rice who had drawn up the inhibitions, and, anticipating the remonstrances of the bishops, they wrote to Cromwell on the 24th September giving six 1 Z. p., IX. 139. 2 X. p., IX. 265. ^ L. P., ix. 517. 56 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. hi reasons in justification of the step. 1st, As the King was now acknowledged as Supreme Head of the Church of England (though he had always been so), the only way to give efiect to his title was by taking all jurisdiction into his own hands for a season. 2nd, If this were not done the bishops would imagine they had not received their jurisdiction from the King. 3rd, They must either have it by the law of God, or from '* the Bishop of Rome,'' or from the King. If the first, let them show it by Scripture, which they would hardly be so unwise as to attempt. If the second, let them exercise it still if they thought meet. If the third, why object to its resumption by the King ? 4th, They might say they had ** prescribed against the King " — that is to say, they might urge the plea of prescription ; which, no doubt, they would, though the law was against them, and for that very reason it was well to interrupt their visitation. 5th, If they exercised their jurisdiction, it would undoubtedly be according to the canon law, which was now abrogated in England ; so Lee and Ap Rice considered that the jurisdiction should be given them from the King with the laws for executing it. 6th, When they challenged jurisdiction as theirs by right, it was clear that they would refer it to some one else than the King if they only dared.^ The very tenor of these arguments shows the greatness of the revolution which two upstarts — mere creatures of Cromwell — had taken upon them to urge on a not unwilling master. Not a vestige of authority was to be left to the bishops which was not avowedly derived from the King as the only source. The whole form of ecclesiastical jurisdiction was to be changed, and the bishops must submit to an innovation which sensibly lowered their dignity and repute among the people. Suggestions were made about the same time by other councillors for bringing ecclesiastical 1 L. p., IX. 424. CH. II SUPPRESSION OF MONASTERIES 57 causes under the cognisance of temporal judges.^ The way, at all events, was clear for Legh, Ap Eice, and Layton to visit the monasteries at their pleasure. Their commission, at first, does not seem to have extended to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, though the colleges might have been considered in that day somewhat in the light of monastic bodies. Legh wrote to Cromwell from Wilton on the 3rd September urging him to consider well whom he sent to those universities, *' where either would be found all virtue and goodness or else the fountain of all vice and mischief" ^ The person Cromwell actually sent to visit Oxford, however, was Layton, who must Layton have arrived there about a week after Legh wrote ^fg^^^^f this letter from Wilton ; and Legh himself writes unWer- from Cambridge on the 21st October.^ So the two '^^'^^'^' universities were successively subjected to the dis- cipline of the two chief monastic Visitors ; and in this new field, as in the former, Layton was at work before his colleague, armed with full authority to bring about a new state of things. In this business, indeed, he seems to have had colleagues, though we do not know their names, for in the report of their joint doings to Cromwell he uses continually the plural pronoun ** we." But we can hardly doubt that he himself was the chief moving spirit, and his account of what was done is lively reading. In Magdalen College where they found one lecture of divinity, two of philosophy (moral and natural), and one of Latin, they added a lecture in Greek. In New College they established one Greek and one Latin lecture, and the like at All Souls, but they found Corpus Christi was so provided already. They established a Latin lecture at Merton and another at Queen's. The revenues of the other Colleges were insufficient to support such lectures, and ^ L. P.y IX. 119. ^ Wright's SuppressioUf p. 66. 3 X. P., IX. 350, 651. 58 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. hi their students were enjoined under a penalty to resort daily to the lectures thus established. So far the Visitors had provided for the future study of Latin and Greek, and of moral and natural philosophy. But the real revolution was in the abolition of the study of the canon law and scholastic theology. "We have set Duns in Bocardo," Lay ton continues, "and have utterly banished him Oxford forever with all his blind glosses," adding that he was now nailed up upon posts for public use " in all common houses of easement." " And the second time we came to New College, after we had declared your injunctions, we found all the great quadrant court full of the leaves of Duns, the wind blowing them into every corner. And there we found one Mr. Greenfield, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, gathering up part of the said book leaves, as he said, therewith to make him sewelles or * blawnsherres ' ^ to keep the deer within the wood, thereby to have the ' better cry with his hounds.' " In place of a canon law lecture the Visitors instituted one on civil law to be read in every college, hall, and inn. To complete their great reform they imposed new regulations on students sent up from the monasteries, prohibiting their resort to taverns or alehouses, and laundresses from visiting their chambers — to the great distress, as Layton understood, " of all the double honest women of the town." ' Legh's injunctions for Cambridge ^ are less interest- ing than Layton's account of his own at Oxford. The University, he himself said, approved them highly " except three or four Pharisaical Pharisees." ^ The injunctions were in Cromwell's name, who had just ^ The meaning of these terms is pretty well conveyed by the words which follow. A "sewell" was a figure with papers fluttering in the wind like a scarecrow to frighten deer. A *' blancher " was either a man or any inanimate device to serve the same purpose. ^ Wright's Suppression of the Monasteries, pp. 70-72. 3 X. P., IX. 664. * L. P„ IX. 694. CH. II SUPPRESSION OF MONASTERIES 59 been made Chancellor of the University in place of the martyred Fisher, and we may place what value we please on Legh's assurance in writing to him : '* They say you have done more for the advancement of learning than ever Chancellor did." ^ As to the general character of the monastic visita- tion, it is scarcely necessary to say much ; for though the amount of monastic impurity may be a subject of debate, it is now generally agreed that it was not an honest investigation. But a few specific illustrations may not be out of place. The nature of the commis- instmc- sion given to the Visitors is briefly described by Abbot foAh?"^^" Gasquet as follows : — monastic visitation. They were furnished with a set of eighty-six articles of inquiry and with twenty-five injunctions, to which they had power to add much at their discretion. The articles of inquiry were searching, the injunctions minute and exacting. Framed in the spirit of three centuries earlier, unworkable in practice, and enforced by such agents, it is easy to understand, even were there no written evidence of the fact, that they were galHng and unbearable to the helpless inmates of the monasteries. We may give a passing notice to one or two of these regulations, as they show the spirit which actuated those who framed them. All religious under twenty-four years of age, or who had been professed under twenty, were to be dismissed from the religious Hfe. Those who were left became practically prisoners in their monasteries. No one was allowed to leave the precincts (which even in the larger monasteries were very confined as to limit) or to visit there. In many instances porters, who were in reality gaolers, were appointed to see that this impossible regulation was kept. What was simply destructive of all discipline and order in the monasteries was an injunction that every religious who wished to complain of anything done by his superior or any of his brethren was to have a right at any time to appeal to Cromwell. To facilitate this the superior was ordered to find any subject the money and means for prosecuting such an appeal in person, if he so desired.^ 1 i. P., IX. 708. ^ Gasquet's Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries , 1. 255-6. 6o LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. hi The results of all this interference appear naturally in Cromweirs correspondence, and, considering how completely that correspondence seems to have been preserved, we are almost surprised that the evidences of demoralisation procured were not greater. Many, doubtless, were the houses in which the monks were still loyal to their superiors, and good discipline was still kept up in spite of the insidious efforts of Cromwell and the Visitors to destroy it. But as to the demoralisation we must not leave the reader to general inferences without positive examples. Examples At Worccstcr, William Fordham had occupied seven desVoyed J^^^s bcforc the ofl&ce of cellarer to the Cathedral discipline Priory. Hc incurred debts in the name of the ~ter;^^ monastery to the extent of £280, and borrowed money, likewise in the name of the monastery, which he converted to his own use, while the prior, attending the Convocation in London, was arrested for payment of his bills. He also incurred a disease which speaks ill for the kind of life he led, and the house was charged with payments for his cure. Under these circumstances it is not wonderful that he was removed from his post and a new cellarer appointed. But the priory was visited by Legh and Ap Eice in the end of July, and on the 1st August Fordham wrote to Cromwell commending the pains taken by his Visitors, trusting that they would report that he had lived religiously, and declaring that '' the saddest men " of the monastery wished him restored to his office. In his time, he said, no lawsuits had gone against the house, but during the seven years since his removal they had lost £200. His final plea to Cromwell, however, was undoubtedly the most effective. "If your Lordship will restore me" (Cromwell, however, was not a lord at that time) " I will give you 100 marks." Four weeks later he was given to understand that Cromwell had *' spoken good words of him," and that his suit was successful. He CH. II SUPPRESSION OF MONASTERIES 6i accordingly writes to Cromwell to express his thanks, and as he hears that ** some of the brethren " were applying to men of honour to speak for them, he himself will rely entirely upon Cromwell, whose administration, he says, was so much to the comfort of the King, the Queen, and all their subjects. In this reign, he ventured to say, no man had suflfered but he had confessed himself he had deserved to suffer, and many who had suffered might have lived if they would under such a benignant King. ^' His most merciful pardon was ready ; it was but their own folly. All this realm may it well know." ^ The reader will hardly require any criterion besides his own words by which to judge the sycophant. He was answered by a letter from the convent to Crom- well, signed by the sub-prior (the prior, William More, had got into trouble, as we shall see) and six- and-twenty of the monks, giving the reasons why he was dismissed from the cellarership, which, one would think, were sufficiently weighty. But it is true, as Fordham himself wrote, that he had supporters within the monastery, whether '' the saddest men '' of the community may perhaps be open to question. Legh in his visitation of course had his ears open to complaints, and ordered the prior, with three of his brethren, to appear before Cromwell in the beginning of August. Cromwell was at that time in the West Country, with the King, and even when he got home in October the prior remained in custody at Gloucester.^ It would seem that in spring the prior had im- prisoned a refractory monk named John Musard for appealing to Cranmer's visitation. Musard could not have been detained very long ; for in July, when the King was at Gloucester, and his Vicegerent, Cromwell, at Winchcombe, he took the opportunity of visiting them both and reporting the treasonable 1 L. p., IX. 6, 204, 653. ^ i, p.^ ix. 656. 62 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m conversation of some of the monks who had railed at the King and Queen Anne and upheld the authority of the Pope. For this, however, he complains that his '' unkind master," and some of the brethren, ** conspired against him," and made such a report of him to Cromwell that he was again imprisoned at Worcester, this time by Cromwell's orders. Even Legh and Ap Rice joined in accusing him ; and as, apparently, Cromwell had acted on their informa- tion, he wrote to Cromwell himself for a further hearing. He wrote also to the King, showing that his father and brothers had devoted themselves to the service of Henry VH., who made two of them Yeomen of the Crown, and one had been slain at the siege of Boulogne ; and he further intimated that sixteen of his near relations were ready any day to set upon four-and-twenty of his Grace's evil willers.^ At the election of Latimer as bishop he could take no part, having been expelled by the Chancellor as an excommunicate, and he wrote to Cromwell that another of the monks deserved such treatment better, — Thomas Blockley, who stole out of his cell a letter conveying an accusation of treason. Dr. Legh, he said, had stated openly that Blockley was *' com- perted " by many of the convent for incontinency and as a sower of discord among them, yet nothing had been laid to his charge, and it was suspected that he had bribed Dr. Legh and Master Ap Rice.^ Such was the imputation he did not scruple to make against Cromwell's Visitors, and it certainly was not incon- ceivable. With all this he was unable to win favour, and remained still in prison in January following, writing new representations to Cromwell of the maladminis- tration of the monastery under the prior and his last predecessor.^ But he had succeeded in getting his 1 L, P., IX. 51, 52, 108. 2 L^ p j^^ 497_ ^ L, P., X. 216. CH. II SUPPRESSION OF MONASTERIES 63 prior into trouble for treason, and the Lord Chancellor sent down a Commission of oyer and terminer to in- vestigate the case.^ The prior remained for some time in custody.^ The King himself, however, manifested some disposition to restore him to his office, and on this subject Cromwell asked the opinion of Latimer as his bishop, who, however, gave it as his opinion that if " that great crime " was proved against him, it was a pity even to spare his life.^ Nothing, apparently, could atone in Latimer's eyes for the fact of a man having countenanced the Pope's authority against the King's. The King himself, however, was more merciful in this case than Latimer, and was content to accept the man's resignation, and to give him a pension, and, it would seem, a comfortable living besides.^ The prior's chief accuser was Dr. Eoger Neckham, whom he had deposed from the office of sub-prior.^ In pleading to Cromwell that the prior's case might be carefully examined. Lady Margery Sandys declared that he was a true monk to God and the King, and also that his accuser, Neckham, was sufficiently well known. ^ The prior had been elected by the unani- mous vote of the convent, and had received his appointment from Fox, Bishop of Winchester, with- out giving a penny for his promotion. Nevertheless he knew well enough the altered ways of the world, and, as Lady Margery wrote, was prepared to give Cromwell in ready money as much as any other man. It would have been useless interceding for him without such an intimation. Of course Musard and Neckham were strong supporters of the dismissed cellarer Fordham. Now let us look at the effects of the visitation on at winch- another large West Country monastery. At Winch- "^^^^^ ' 1 L. p., IX. 90 (p. 26), 151, 165. ^ X. P., ix. 304. 3 L. P., X. 56. ^ L. P., X. 311, 597 (8), 1272 ; xvii. 14. ^ L. P., IX. 52 (2). 6 X. P., IX. 656. 64 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. hi combe was a monk named John Horwood, who generally used the signature of ** Placet/' or " Pla- cidus." On the 20th August he begins a corre- spondence with Cromwell by informing him that the monastery had lately been visited by the King's Commissioners, to whom he felt bound in conscience to report some things, — especially about a certain book which he was ready to send to Cromwell, and which one Master Cannonis, dwelling near Salisbury, had borrowed of him long ago. But he also desired counsel what to do about certain ceremonies for exalt- ing '* the Bishop of Rome." Encouraged by the Visitors, he asked Cromwell for orders to bring in books touching *'the Bishop of Rome's" authority, St. Patrick's Purgatory, miracles, and so forth, by which simple souls were confounded.^ In another letter he asks for authority to seize any books about Purgatory, and mentions particularly one, '' freshly limned and fair written," of which the matter is but '* dry dreams " ; also a book of Alverius, in which the power of the Pope is so magnified that he was made equal to the Holy Trinity. He advises that his brother, Overbury, should be commanded to preach the Royal Supremacy every Sunday before the con- vent, and have his chamber, books, and fire ; and that he himself should have authority to compel every monk to preach it and to teach it to others.^ This was pretty well for a subordinate. One asks in amazement, if his request was granted, what amount of authority was left to his abbot. Clearly, none at all. No wonder that in his next letter, dated 9th September, he declares that his proceedings are dis- liked by the convent. He was counted a wretch, he said, because he had made a little treatise against the usurped power of "the Bishop of Rome." His brethren, it seems, attached far too great importance 1 X. p., IX. 134. 2 j^^ p jx^ 135^ CH. II SUPPRESSION OF MONASTERIES 65 to their three vows, '' the efficacy " of which Cromwell had *' discreetly declared " to them when he was with them.^ But, however unpopular they made him in the convent, his efforts to please Cromwell had gained some personal comforts for himself, for Cromwell had ordered that he should be excused from rising at mid- night. This had created all the more grudge against him ; yet his much-enduring abbot, who was obliged to tell him so, was, he said, very good to him. The abbot knew very well that he could not endure the rigour of the religion, the fasts, the *' frayter," and other observances. He begs Cromwell, therefore, to get him a capacity to take a benefice without changing his habit. Bishop Roland Lee could have got him one at one time, but he trusted to the favour of Cromwell and his abbot, who had already allowed him the cure of a little village of forty souls, though not worth quite £4 a year. " Such a thing," he wrote, '' were most quiet for me, which I may serve and keep my bed and board, and go to my book in the monastery.'' ^ He got leave to visit Cromwell in September when he was in attendance on the King at Waltham, and apparently obtained a commission about books such as he desired, or nearly so. He was evidently greatly indebted in these matters to Dr. Lay ton. '*You cannot love your servant Dr. Layton too well," he writes to Cromwell, and he goes on to tell how he was proceeding with his commission. '' I have sought many old books and ragged pamphlets de Purga- torio, pr^o et contraJ' He had also found a letter to Pope John against pride and covetousness. He had scribbled in haste a small quire against prayers for the dead, and some other points. He had got hold of a book of Alverius, de Planctu Ecclesice, " which some thought smelt of the Popish pannier," and so forth. ^ 1 i. p., IX. 321. ^ L. p., IX. 322. ^ L, P., ix. 723. VOL. It F 66 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. hi There are also two letters to Cromwell from his " brother Overbury/' above mentioned, for whom he desired powers to assist him in forcing the Koyal Supremacy upon the convent. These are written in a hand so exactly like his own that it is really very difficult to distinguish between them/ It may be desirable to give the text of these letters in full : — William Overbury to Cromwell — I Jesus Christus. Honorable Master Secretary, I meekly commend me unto your goodness, as the true subject ought to the power which is ordained of Almighty God. For to you is given ministra- tion of God next under the King's Highness ; to the which power of ministration every Christian man in this realm of England ought truly without any feigning meekly to obey, and not for fear but for safeguard of conscience. And for my poor part, because I would knowledge myself in heart, word and deed to be a true obediencer and faithful subject to this high power which is given to the King's Grace immediately next to God, as excelling and forepassing all other, and to you as the faithful minister under him : Where- fore by God's own words you and all such true ministers that truly doen minister under this power (which was not given by any man's trade or invention, but only by God) be called well-doers. There is no power but only of God, who ever preserve you. Scribbled in great haste, the 16 th day of September. By your obiencer, William Overbury. Addressed: — "To the very honorable Master Secretary unto the King's Highness, with reverence this be delivered." ^ 1 Perhaps he really wrote with his own hand in Overbury's name, although both signed the Supremacy, or appear to have done so. He was certainly obliging enough to write a letter to Cromwell in the name of one John Persons, who appears to have been a servant or dependant on the abbey, complaining of the abbot for not allowing him to be in the town of Winchcombe to work for his living. The only cause of complaint the abbot had against him, Persons writes — that is to say, Placidus writes for him — was that he waited on one of the monks (of course Placidus himself) to London, when he was commanded by Cromwell to bring up certain books to him {L. P., IX. 1137). The handwriting of this letter is undoubtedly that of Placidus himself. ^ L. P., ix. 381. CH. II SUPPRESSION OF MONASTERIES 6y This letter is written in a beautiful regular hand, which is quite exceptional in its neatness, and no one certainly would believe that it was '' scribbled in great haste." William Overbury to Croimwell — II Emanuel. Faithful, trusty and dearly beloved minister unto the high power of Almighty God, of that which you have ministration under our Sovereign Lord the King, here in earth, the only high and supreme Head of this His Church of England, grace, peace and mercy be evermore with you. Laud and thanks be to G-od the Father Almighty for the true and unfeigned faith that you have in our sweet Saviour Jesu. Paul, the true preacher of Christ, saith Fundamentum aliud nemo potest ponere prceter id quod positum est, quod est Jesus Christus. Whosoever believe th Jesus Christ to be only Saviour of the whole world, pacifier of G-od's wrath, mediator between God and man, the bearer of sins and the true Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world, hath now set this foundation. Therefore it is to be trusted upon that where Christ is the foundation, there must needs follow the edifying and building of good works as testimony of the true foundation. Also Christ saith Ego sum ostium. He entereth in by this door, the which feeleth the truth and, preaching the same to others, followeth and keepeth it himself. Paul 9 Corin. ^ : — Vce enim mihi est si non evan- gelizavero. Necessitas enim mihi incumhit. Si enim volens hoc ago, mercedem habeo. Si autem invitus, dispensatio mihi credita est. Qu^ est ergo merces mea ? etc. This doth some take upon them, diligently executing the office of the minis- tration of the word of God, plainly, sincerely, following the gracious will and mind of our gracious Sovereign Lord the King, being only high and Supreme Head of this Church of England, to whose high power, given unto him from God above, it pertaineth by the ordinance of Almighty God, to send workmen into the harvest or vineyard of this His Church, of the which his Grace is the only high Head and governor next God. Quomodo audient sine prcedicante ? Quomodo vero prcedicahunt, nisi mittantur ? Sed non omnes ohediunt Evangelio. For there be many perverse men which do dilaniate the flock of Christ — yea, and of them which ^ Tlie passage is in 1 Cor. ix. 16-18. 68 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. ni seem to men to be the pillars or bearers up of the Church, which doth rather diminish the faith than anything augment it. I have many things which I would fain declare to your goodness ; but I consider your great and manifold cure and business, and mine own impediments by the custom and trades of men ordained that let me, not only this time in this my rude scribbling to you, but also almost at all times, from both study and exercise of the Holy Gospel, the true faith and doctrine of the which I pray God augment to His honor ; who ever preserve and keep you. Amen. Your obediencer, William Overbery.^ The address of this letter, which was doubtless on a fly-leaf, has not been preserved, but there is no question whatever that it was addressed to Cromwell as the King's Vicegerent in spiritual things. It is not exactly pleasant to dwell on an exhibition of arrant hypocrisy ; but that some few monks, finding that, willingly or not, they and their brethren had to live under a new allegiance, were only too ready to give that new allegiance a religious sanction is no more than the necessities of the case would naturally lead us to expect. Yet historic, if not religious, sympathy must deplore the sad ruin of monasticism — a system whose great aim was to remove men from worldly and demoralising influences — when we see it in its last days helpless before tyranny, obliged even to harbour within the cloister some traitors who made a religion of worldliness and subservience to earthly power.^ 1 The original of this letter is in MS. Cott., Cleop. E vi. 261. It i& printed by Strype in Ecclesiastical Memorials, i. i. 316. 2 As for John Placidus, I presume that he got his benefice ; for though he signed with his brother monks the acknowledgment of the King's supremacy in August 1534 {L. P., VII. 1211 (42)), his name does not appear in the pension list of the monastery in December 1539 (Z. P. xiv. ii. 728). Or rather, he is one of seven monks who signed the supremacy in 1534, and who were' not pen- sioned at the dissolution ; for it is curious that every monk of this monastery was pensioned under a different surname from that which he used in his cH.ii SUPPRESSION OF MONASTERIES 69 Yet one more documentary illustration may be permitted, to show how the new state of matters affected abbots, who, having hitherto had undisturbed control of their houses, could even have called in the aid of the civil power at any time to prevent the escape of disaffected brethren seeking to run away. Now it was a different story when a monk desiring to lodge a complaint against his superior had facilities given him by the authorities to go up to London. It is thus the Abbot of Brewerne in Oxfordshire writes to Cromwell : ^ — The Abbot of Brewerne to Cromwell Right worshipful and my very singular good master, I at have me heartily commended unto your good mastership, Brewerne most instantly desiring you of your help and counsel, which I ®^' shall deserve by God's grace. So it is, as I am informed, that I was indicted three times at Oxford the 6 th day of this present April First was for a riot, the second of ravine (?), the third of murder. I know no cause why they should so do, I take God to record. As for the riot, they lay it unto me because I perceived by one that told me privily Easter day at afternoon that one of my monks, which is now in London, he intended that night of Easter day at midnight to take his journey, as I heard, towards London, and I sent one of my servants to my friend Master Whyteney, which dwelleth within two miles of me, desiring him to send two or three servants of his with my servant, to watch till after midnight for the same monk a quarter of a mile fro the Abbey ; and so he came about midnight with a horse which one of the sheriff's servants lent him to take his journey upon ; which servant was commanded by his master to wait on me because I have but few servants and am amongst them every day in jeopardy of my life. But that servant of the sheriffs hath done there much hurt in giving my monks signature. One or two of the seven may have died in the meanwhile, but I suspect that Placidus got the benefice he so much wanted ; for there were only two Johns who received pensions, the prior and the sub-prior, and he can hardly be identified with either of them. ^ This letter has unhappily been omitted by oversight in the Letters and Papers, It is in MS. Cott., Cleop. E iv. 100. 70 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION bk. m evil counsel, and of a very likelihood by his master's setting on. So that night my servant with Master Whyteney^s servants took the monk and carried him to Master Why teney's unto they knew my pleasure ; and for so taking of my monk (as I perceive) they have indicted me of a riot. And so the Monday in the morning my convent had knowledge that their messenger was so taken, they raised a great many of lewd fellows abroad in the country, which came to my abbey and threatened to pluck me out of my house unless I would fet the monk again. And so they kept me in to my chamber all day till even song time, and I dare in no wise come out. So the said Master Whytteney had knowledge how I was dealt withal ; he being of the fee of the house, as injoined in patent with his father-in-law, Master Robert Wye, as stewards of our courts, he could do no less but come to me with his servants, intending hurt to no man. So, soon after his coming, which was about three of the clock, many of his neighbours, which heard that he had gone to Brewern, came after him ; and after that came the sheriff, whom I had sent for in the morning, and he was greatly discontented because Master Whyteney was there; and for that cause they have indicted the said Mr. Whytteney and all that came with him for a unlawful assembly. Therefore, in the honour of God, be good unto me and to my friends, for the sheriff is heavy master to me and to as many as taketh part with me. For such as came to pluck me out by the head, as they said they would, were nothing spoke to ; but such as would have holp me if need had required, were indicted ; and the sheriff', as I heard, gave evidence himself and panelled a quest for the same at his pleasure ; whereby I think he did wrong. Therefore, for the love of God, be good unto me in this my heinous business, and I shall deserve your pains with my heart and prayer, as knoweth Almighty God my whole mind, who ever preserve you. Fro Brewern, the 9th day of April, All yours unfeigned, The poor Abbot of Brewern. If monks ought to have been protected by their rule and the respect in which it had always been held from the evil influences of a secular tyranny, even more so should nuns have been ; but it is only too evident that they were not. Nuns under twenty-five years of age were turned out of their convents, and CH. II SUPPRESSION OF MONASTERIES 71 one of the commissaries sent on this business (no doubt Dr. Legh) addressed the ladies in an immodest way. They rebuked his insolence, and said he was violating their apostolic privileges ; but he replied that he himself had more power from the King than the whole Apostolic See. The nuns, having no other appeal, made their remonstrance to Cromwell ; but he in reply said these things were but a prologue of that which was to come.^ So the occurrence was reported at the time by Chapuys in England to Dr. Ortiz, the Imperial agent at Kome ; and Sanders, who though then only eight years old, was much better informed and more accu- rate about many things when he wrote than past historians have believed, says distinctly that Legh, as Dr. Legii's a means of discharging the duties imposed upon him, towards solicited the nuns to breach of chastity, and that he nuns. spoke of nothing more readily than of sexual impurity; for the visitation was appointed expressly for the pur- pose that the King might catch at every pretext for overthrowing the monasteries.^ The tradition of this abominable procedure, as is shown even by the Protestant historian Fuller, was kept alive for some generations by the just indignation of Roman Catholics ; and Fuller himself reports as a fact circum- stantially warranted by the tradition of papists, the story of one of those base attempts in a nunnery some miles from Cambridge. It is, moreover, quite evident that Fuller himself, with every desire to dis- credit the story, was far from being convinced that it was altogether untrue. If false, indeed, the tradi- tion must have been very elaborately supported by further falsehood ; for it is stated that one of the agents afterwards confessed to Sir William Stanley, who served in the Low Countries in the time of Queen Elizabeth, '' that nothing in all his life lay 1 L. R, IX. 873. 2 Historia Schismatis Anglicani, p. 105 (ed. Cologne, 1628). 72 LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION mk. n; more heavy on bis conscience than tJjJH i'nhit acciiHa- tion of those innocentH.'' ' It was on the 4tli June 15'>5 that l)j\ Jilcljard Layton, Clerk of the Council, wvoic to Cromwell desiring a commission for IjirriH^Jf arjd I jr. I'hornas Lcgh to visit the North of England as Crorrjwcirs commissaries in the general vmitatlorj which was then resolved upon. As many were likely to H>i>^y '^^J^' such ofKccH, he assured Cromwell he would find no more trusty agerjts anywhere. (Jromwr^ll, he said, required instruments such as would he to him anr/lher self, and as they both owed tJjeir preferrnerjf/ in the King's service to him, he njigljt };e jjerfV'/^tly sun*, of their **true hearts and mirjds/' 'i'here was not a monastery or cell in the North **but either \>r. Eegh or I,'' he wrote, ^* have familiar aerjuaintarje^', within ten or twelve milen of it, so that no knavery can f^e hid from us in that country/' They would also firjd friends and kinsfolk ready to assist thfjn ''if any stubborn or sturdy carle might perr^ljarj^te \t(' founrj rebellious/' Layton, moreover, harj drawn uf^articJ^^ of inquiry for such a visitation twelve moTjthn before, which would nerve to detect all ahunen hith^-jto cloaked and coloured by so-called ff.UjnftfSH; \'()r each particular rellgiou.H rule had *' by friendship found crafty means to be their own visitors, " who \i\U'j\<]('A no real reform, '*but only to k^^;p necret all matterri of mi.schief," and who hantened the ruin of the monasteries by nelling their jev/eln and f;iij.tc at half their value for ready money, Kuch was the j)ur[>ort of his letter.^ Again he wrote to him that tlie diocene of York h^l not been visite/1 since Wotney's time, and v/ithln ' Fali'jr'H fJkv/rdi, JM/rry («/L I^.^O/, iii, /J^S, ( ^uiuyAJk, ^huX i> ly^i/J V/«:fof'; ;rj f*r». ^