chapter 12._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1535-1539. The suppression of the Monasteries.

"The enormous, and in a great measure ill-gotten, opulence of the regular clergy had long since excited jealousy in every part of Europe. ... A writer much inclined to partiality towards the monasteries says that they held [in England] one-fifth part of the kingdom; no insignificant patrimony. ... As they were in general exempted from episcopal visitation, and intrusted with the care of their own discipline, such abuses had gradually prevailed and gained strength by connivance as we may naturally expect in corporate bodies of men leading almost of necessity useless and indolent lives, and in whom very indistinct views of moral obligations were combined with a great facility of violating them. The vices that for many ages had been supposed to haunt the monasteries, had certainly not left their precincts in that of Henry VIII. Wolsey, as papal legate, at the instigation of Fox, bishop of Hereford, a favourer of the Reformation, commenced a visitation of the professed as well as secular clergy in 1523, in consequence of the general complaint against their manners. ... Full of anxious zeal for promoting education, the noblest part of his character, he obtained bulls from Rome suppressing many convents (among which was that of St. Frideswide at Oxford), in order to erect and endow a new college in that university, his favourite work, which after his fall was more completely established by the name of Christ Church. A few more were afterwards extinguished through his instigation; and thus the prejudice against interference with this species of property was somewhat worn off, and men's minds gradually prepared for the sweeping confiscations of Cromwell [Thomas Cromwell, who succeeded Wolsey as chief minister of Henry VIII.]. The king indeed was abundantly willing to replenish his exchequer by violent means, and to avenge himself on those who gainsayed his supremacy; but it was this able statesman who, prompted both by the natural appetite of ministers for the subjects' money and by a secret partiality towards the Reformation, devised and carried on with complete success, if not with the utmost prudence, a measure of no inconsiderable hazard and difficulty. ... {831} It was necessary, by exposing the gross corruptions of monasteries, both to intimidate the regular clergy, and to excite popular indignation against them. It is not to be doubted that in the visitation of these foundations, under the direction of Cromwell, as lord vice-gerent of the king's ecclesiastical supremacy, many things were done in an arbitrary manner, and much was unfairly represented. Yet the reports of these visitors are so minute and specific that it is rather a preposterous degree of incredulity to reject their testimony whenever it bears hard on the regulars. ... The dread of these visitors soon induced a number of abbots to make surrenders to the king; a step of very questionable legality. But in the next session the smaller convents, whose revenues were less than £200 a year, were suppressed by act of parliament, to the number of 376, and their estates vested in the crown. This summary spoliation led to the great northern rebellion soon afterwards," headed by Robert Ask, a gentleman of Yorkshire, and assuming the title of a Pilgrimage of Grace.

_H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England,