Short Studies on Great Subjects

J >> James Anthony Froude >> Short Studies on Great Subjects

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40

But we need not transcribe further this overwhelming document. It
pursues its way through mire and filth to its most lame and impotent
conclusion. After all this, the abbot was not deposed; he was invited
merely to reconsider his doings, and, if possible, amend them. Such was
Church discipline, even under an extraordinary commission from Rome.
But the most incorrigible Anglican will scarcely question the truth of a
picture drawn by such a hand; and it must be added that this one
unexceptionable indictment lends at once assured credibility to the
reports which were presented fifty years later, on the general
visitation. There is no longer room for the presumptive objection that
charges so revolting could not be true. We see that in their worst form
they could be true, and the evidence of Legh and Leghton, of Rice and
Bedyll, as it remains in their letters to Cromwell, must be shaken in
detail, or else it must be accepted as correct. We cannot dream that
Archbishop Morton was mistaken, or was misled by false information. St.
Albans was no obscure priory in a remote and thinly-peopled county. The
Abbot of St. Albans was a peer of the realm, taking precedence of
bishops, living in the full glare of notoriety, within a few miles of
London. The archbishop had ample means of ascertaining the truth; and,
we may be sure, had taken care to examine his ground before he left on
record so tremendous an accusation. This story is true--as true as it is
piteous. We will pause a moment over it before we pass from this, once
more to ask our passionate Church friends whether still they will
persist that the abbeys were no worse under the Tudors than they had
been in their origin, under the Saxons, or under the first Norman and
Plantagenet kings. We refuse to believe it. The abbeys which towered in
the midst of the English towns, the houses clustered at their feet like
subjects round some majestic queen, were images indeed of the civil
supremacy which the Church of the Middle Ages had asserted for itself;
but they were images also of an inner spiritual sublimity, which had won
the homage of grateful and admiring nations. The heavenly graces had
once descended upon the monastic orders, making them ministers of mercy,
patterns of celestial life, breathing witnesses of the power of the
Spirit in renewing and sanctifying the heart. And then it was that art
and wealth and genius poured out their treasures to raise fitting
tabernacles for the dwelling of so divine a soul. Alike in the village
and the city, amongst the unadorned walls and lowly roofs which closed
in the humble dwellings of the laity, the majestic houses of the Father
of mankind and of his especial servants rose up in sovereign beauty.
And ever at the sacred gates sat Mercy, pouring out relief from a
never-failing store to the poor and the suffering; ever within the
sacred aisles the voices of holy men were pealing heavenwards in
intercession for the sins of mankind; and such blessed influences were
thought to exhale around those mysterious precincts, that even the poor
outcasts of society--the debtor, the felon, and the outlaw--gathered
round the walls as the sick men sought the shadow of the apostle, and
lay there sheltered from the avenging hand, till their sins were washed
from off their souls. The abbeys of the middle ages floated through the
storms of war and conquest, like the ark upon the waves of the flood, in
the midst of violence remaining inviolate, through the awful reverence
which surrounded them. The abbeys, as Henry's visitors found them, were
as little like what they once had been, as the living man in the pride
of his growth is like the corpse which the earth makes haste to hide for
ever.

The official letters which reveal the condition into which the monastic
establishments had degenerated, are chiefly in the Cotton Library, and a
large number of them have been published by the Camden Society. Besides
these, however, there are in the Rolls House many other documents which
confirm and complete the statements of the writers of those letters.
There is a part of what seems to have been a digest of the 'Black
Book'--an epitome of iniquities, under the title of the 'Compendium
Compertorum.' There are also reports from private persons, private
entreaties for enquiry, depositions of monks in official examinations,
and other similar papers, which, in many instances, are too offensive to
be produced, and may rest in obscurity, unless contentious persons
compel us to bring them forward. Some of these, however, throw curious
light on the habits of the time, and on the collateral disorders which
accompanied the more gross enormities. They show us, too, that although
the dark tints predominate, the picture was not wholly black; that as
just Lot was in the midst of Sodom, yet was unable by his single
presence to save the guilty city from destruction, so in the latest era
of monasticism there were types yet lingering of an older and fairer
age, who, nevertheless, were not delivered, like the patriarch, but
perished most of them with the institution to which they belonged. The
hideous exposure is not untinted with fairer lines; and we see traits
here and there of true devotion, mistaken but heroic.

Of these documents two specimens shall be given in this place, one of
either kind; and both, so far as we know, new to modern history. The
first is so singular, that we print it as it is found--a genuine
antique, fished up, in perfect preservation, out of the wreck of the old
world.

About eight miles from Ludlow, in the county of Herefordshire, once
stood the abbey of Wigmore. There was Wigmore Castle, a stronghold of
the Welsh Marches, now, we believe, a modern, well-conditioned mansion;
and Wigmore Abbey, of which we do not hear that there are any remaining
traces. Though now vanished, however, like so many of its kind, the
house was three hundred years ago in vigorous existence; and when the
stir commenced for an enquiry, the proceedings of the abbot of this
place gave occasion to a memorial which stands in the Rolls collection
as follows:--[R]

Articles to be objected against John Smart, Abbot of the Monastery
of Wigmore, in the county of Hereford, to be exhibited to the Right
Honourable Lord Thomas Cromwell, the Lord Privy Seal and Vice-gerent
to the King's Majesty.

1. The said abbot is to be accused of simony, as well for taking
money for advocation and putations of benefices, as for giving of
orders, or more truly, selling them, and that to such persons which
have been rejected elsewhere, and of little learning and light
consideration.

2. The said abbot hath promoted to orders many scholars when all
other bishops did refrain to give such orders on account of certain
ordinances devised by the King's Majesty and his Council for the
common weal of this realm. Then resorted to the said abbot scholars
out of all parts, whom he would promote to orders by sixty at a
time, and sometimes more, and otherwhiles less. And sometimes the
said abbot would give orders by night within his chamber, and
otherwise in the church early in the morning, and now and then at a
chapel out of the abbey. So that there be many unlearned and light
priests made by the said abbot, and in the diocese of Llandaff, and
in the places afore named--a thousand, as it is esteemed, by the
space of this seven years he hath made priests, and received not so
little money of them as a thousand pounds for their orders.

3. Item, that the said abbot now of late, when he could not be
suffered to give general orders, for the most part doth give orders
by pretence of dispensation; and by that colour he promoteth them to
orders by two and three, and takes much money of them, both for
their orders and for to purchase their dispensations after the time
he hath promoted them to their orders.

4. Item, the said abbot hath hurt and dismayed his tenants by
putting them from their leases, and by enclosing their commons from
them, and selling and utter wasting of the woods that were wont to
relieve and succour them.

5. Item, the said abbot hath sold corradyes, to the damage of the
said monastery.

6. Item, the said abbot hath alienate and sold the jewels and plate
of the monastery, to the value of five hundred marks, _to purchase
of the Bishop of Rome his bulls to be a bishop, and to annex the
said abbey to his bishopric, to that intent that he should not for
his misdeeds be punished, or deprived from his said abbey_.

7. Item, that the said abbot, long after that other bishops had
renounced the Bishop of Rome, and professed them to the King's
Majesty, did use, but more verily usurped, the office of a bishop by
virtue of his first bulls purchased from Rome, till now of late, as
it will appear by the date of his confirmation, if he have any.

8. Item, that he the said abbot hath lived viciously, and kept to
concubines divers and many women that is openly known.

9. Item, that the said abbot doth yet continue his vicious living,
as it is known, openly.

10. Item, that the said abbot hath spent and wasted much of the
goods of the said monastery upon the foresaid women.

11. Item, that the said abbot is malicious and very wrathful, not
regarding what he saith or doeth in his fury or anger.

12. Item, that one Richard Gyles bought of the abbot and convent of
Wigmore a corradye, and a chamber for him and his wife for term of
their lives; and when the said Richard Gyles was aged and was very
weak, he disposed his goods, and made executors to execute his will.
And when the said abbot now being ---- perceived that the said
Richard Gyles was rich, and had not bequested so much of his goods
to him as he would have had, the said abbot then came to the chamber
of the said Richard Gyles, and put out thence all his friends and
kinsfolk that kept him in his sickness; and then the said abbot set
his brother and other of his servants to keep the sick man; and the
night next coming after the said Richard Gyles's coffer was broken,
and thence taken all that was in the same, to the value of forty
marks; and long after the said abbot confessed, before the executors
of the said Richard Gyles, that it was his deed.

13. Item, that the said abbot, after he had taken away the goods of
the said Richard Gyles, used daily to reprove and check the said
Richard Gyles, and inquire of him where was more of his coin and
money; and at the last the said abbot thought he lived too long, and
made the sick man, after much sorry keeping, to be taken from his
feather-bed, and laid upon a cold mattress, and kept his friends
from him to his death.

15. Item, that the said abbot consented to the death and murdering
of one John Tichkill, that was slain at his procuring, at the said
monastery, by Sir Richard Cubley, canon and chaplain to the said
abbot; which canon is and ever hath been since that time chief of
the said abbot's council; and is supported to carry crossbowes, and
to go whither he lusteth at any time, to fishing and hunting in the
king's forests, parks, and chases; but little or nothing serving the
quire, as other brethren do, neither corrected of the abbot for any
trespass he doth commit.

16. Item, that the said abbot hath been perjured oft, as is to be
proved and is proved; and as it is supposed, did not make a true
inventory of the goods, chattels, and jewels of his monastery to the
King's Majesty and his Council.

17. Item, that the said abbot hath infringed all the king's
injunctions which were given him by Doctor Cave to observe and keep;
and when he was denounced _in pleno capitulo_ to have broken the
same, he would have put in prison the brother as did denounce him to
have broken the same injunctions, save that he was let by the
convent there.

18. Item, that the said abbot hath openly preached against the
doctrine of Christ, saying he ought not to love his enemy, but as he
loves the devil; and that he should love his enemy's soul, but not
his body.

19. Item, that the said abbot hath taken but small regard to the
good-living of his household.

20. Item, that the said abbot hath had and hath yet a special favour
to misdoers and manquellers, thieves, deceivers of their neighbours,
and by them [is] most ruled and counselled.

21. Item, that the said abbot hath granted leases of farms and
advocations first to one man, and took his fine, and also hath
granted the same lease to another man for more money; and then would
make to the last taker a lease or writing, with an antedate of the
first lease, which hath bred great dissension among gentlemen--as
Master Blunt and Master Moysey, and other takers of such leases--and
that often.

22. Item, the said abbot having the contrepaynes of leases in his
keeping, hath, for money, rased out the number of years mentioned in
the said leases, and writ a fresh number in the former taker's
lease, and in the contrepayne thereof, to the intent to defraud the
taker or buyer of the residue of such leases, of whom he hath
received the money.

23. Item, the said abbot hath not, according to the foundation of
his monastery, admitted freely tenants into certain alms-houses
belonging to the said monastery; but of them he hath taken large
fines, and some of them he hath put away that would not give him
fines: whither poor, aged, and impotent people were wont to be
freely admitted, and [to] receive the founder's alms that of the old
customs [were] limited to the same--which alms is also diminished by
the said abbot.

24. Item, that the said abbot did not deliver the bulls of his
bishopric, that he purchased from Rome, to our sovereign lord the
king's council till long after the time he had delivered and
exhibited the bulls of his monastery to them.

25. Item, that the said abbot hath detained and yet doth detain
servants' wages; and often when the said servants hath asked their
wages, the said abbot hath put them into the stocks, and beat them.

26. Item, the said abbot, in times past, hath had a great devotion
to ride to Llangarvan, in Wales, upon Lammas-day, to receive pardon
there; and on the even he would visit one Mary Hawle, an old
acquaintance of his, at the Welsh Poole, and on the morrow ride to
the foresaid Llangarvan, to be confessed and absolved, and the same
night return to company with the said Mary Hawle, at the Welsh Poole
aforesaid, and Kateryn, the said Mary Hawle her first daughter, whom
the said abbot long hath kept to concubine, and had children by her,
that he lately married at Ludlow. And [there be] others that have
been taken out of his chamber and put in the stocks within the said
abbey, and others that have complained upon him to the king's
council of the Marches of Wales; and the woman that dashed out his
teeth, that he would have had by violence, I will not name now, nor
other men's wives, lest it would offend your good lordship to read
or hear the same.

27. Item, the said abbot doth daily embezzle, sell, and convey the
goods and chattels, and jewels of the said monastery, having no need
so to do: for it is thought that he hath a thousand marks or two
thousand lying by him that he hath gotten by selling of orders, and
the jewels and plate of the monastery and corradyes; and it is to be
feared that he will alienate all the rest, unless your good lordship
speedily make redress and provision to let the same.

28. Item, the said abbot was accustomed yearly to preach at
Leynt-warden on the Festival of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary,
where and when the people were wont to offer to an image there, and
to the same the said abbot in his sermons would exhort them and
encourage them. But now the oblations be decayed, the abbot, espying
the image then to have a cote of silver plate and gilt, hath taken
away of his own authority the said image, and the plate turned to
his own use; and left his preaching there, saying it is no manner of
profit to any man, and the plate that was about the said image was
named to be worth forty pounds.

29. Item, the said abbot hath ever nourished enmity and discord
among his brethren; and hath not encouraged them to learn the laws
and the mystery of Christ. But he that least knew was most cherished
by him; and he hath been highly displeased and [hath] disdained when
his brothers would say that 'it is God's precept and doctrine that
ye ought to prefer before your ceremonies and vain constitutions.'
This saying was high disobedient, and should be grievously punished;
when that lying, obloquy, flattery, ignorance, derision, contumely,
discord, great swearing, drinking, hypocrisy, fraud, superstition,
deceit, conspiracy to wrong their neighbour, and other of that kind,
was had in special favour and regard. Laud and praise be to God that
hath sent us the true knowledge. Honour and long prosperity to our
sovereign lord and his noble council, that teaches to advance the
same. Amen.

By John Lee, your faithful bedeman, and canon of the said monastery
of Wigmore.

Postscript.--My good lord, there is in the said abbey a cross of
fine gold and precious stones, whereof one diamond was esteemed by
Doctor Booth, Bishop of Hereford, worth a hundred marks. In that
cross is enclosed a piece of wood, named to be of the cross that
Christ died upon, and to the same hath been offering. And when it
should be brought down to the church from the treasury, it was
brought down with lights, and like reverence as should have been
done to Christ himself. I fear lest the abbot upon Sunday next, when
he may enter the treasury, will take away the said cross and break
it, or turn it to his own use, with many other precious jewels that
be there.

All these articles afore written be true as to the substance and
true meaning of them, though peradventure for haste and lack of
counsel, some words be set amiss or out of their place. That I will
be ready to prove forasmuch as lies in me, when it shall like your
honourable lordship to direct your commission to men (or any man)
that will be indifferent and not corrupt to sit upon the same, at
the said abbey, where the witnesses and proofs be most ready and the
truth is best known, or at any other place where it shall be thought
most convenient by your high discretion and authority.

The statutes of Provisors, commonly called Praemunire statutes, which,
forbade all purchases of bulls from Rome under penalty of outlawry, have
been usually considered in the highest degree oppressive; and more
particularly the public censure has fallen upon the last application of
those statutes, when, on Wolsey's fall, the whole body of the clergy
were laid under a praemunire, and only obtained pardon on payment of a
serious fine. Let no one regret that he has learnt to be tolerant to
Roman Catholics as the nineteenth century knows them. But it is a
spurious charity which, to remedy a modern injustice, hastens to its
opposite; and when philosophic historians indulge in loose invective
against the statesmen of the Reformation, they show themselves unfit to
be trusted with the custody of our national annals. The Acts of
Parliament speak plainly of the enormous abuses which had grown up under
these bulls. Yet even the emphatic language of the statutes scarcely
prepares us to find an abbot able to purchase with jewels stolen from
his own convent a faculty to confer holy orders, though he had never
been consecrated bishop, and to make a thousand pounds by selling the
exercise of his privileges. This is the most flagrant case which has
fallen under the eyes of the present writer. Yet it is but a choice
specimen out of many. He was taught to believe, like other modern
students of history, that the papal dispensations for immorality, of
which we read in Fox and other Protestant writers, were calumnies, but
he has been forced against his will to perceive that the supposed
calumnies were but the plain truth; he has found among the records--for
one thing, a list of more than twenty clergy in one diocese who had
obtained licences to keep concubines.[S] After some experience, he
advises all persons who are anxious to understand the English
Reformation to place implicit confidence in the Statute Book. Every
fresh record which is brought to light is a fresh evidence in its
favour. In the fluctuations of the conflict there were parliaments, as
there were princes, of opposing sentiments; and measures were passed,
amended, repealed, or censured, as Protestants and Catholics came
alternately into power. But whatever were the differences of opinion,
the facts on either side which are stated in an Act of Parliament may be
uniformly trusted. Even in the attainders for treason and heresy we
admire the truthfulness of the details of the indictments, although we
deplore the prejudice which at times could make a crime of virtue.

We pass on to the next picture. Equal justice, or some attempt at it,
was promised, and we shall perhaps part from the friends of the
monasteries on better terms than they believe. At least, we shall add to
our own history and to the Catholic martyrology a story of genuine
interest.

We have many accounts of the abbeys at the time of their actual
dissolution. The resistance or acquiescence of superiors, the
dismissals of the brethren, the sale of the property, the destruction of
relics, &c., are all described. We know how the windows were taken out,
how the glass appropriated, how the 'melter' accompanied the visitors to
run the lead upon the roofs, and the metal of the bells into portable
forms. We see the pensioned regulars filing out reluctantly, or exulting
in their deliverance, discharged from their vows, furnished each with
his 'secular apparel,' and his purse of money, to begin the world as he
might. These scenes have long been partially known, and they were rarely
attended with anything remarkable. At the time of the suppression, the
discipline of several years had broken down opposition, and prepared the
way for the catastrophe. The end came at last, but as an issue which had
been long foreseen.

We have sought in vain, however, for a glimpse into the interior of the
houses at the first intimation of what was coming--more especially when
the great blow was struck which severed England from obedience to Rome,
and asserted the independence of the Anglican Church. Then, virtually,
the fate of the monasteries was decided. As soon as the supremacy was
vested in the Crown, enquiry into their condition could no longer be
escaped or delayed; and then, through the length and breadth of the
country, there must have been rare dismay. The account of the London
Carthusians is indeed known to us, because they chose to die rather than
yield submission where their consciences forbade them; and their
isolated heroism has served to distinguish their memories. The pope, as
head of the Universal Church, claimed the power of absolving subjects
from their allegiance to their king. He deposed Henry. He called on
foreign princes to enforce his sentence; and, on pain of
excommunication, commanded the native English to rise in rebellion. The
king, in self-defence, was compelled to require his subjects to disclaim
all sympathy with these pretensions, and to recognise no higher
authority, spiritual or secular, than himself within his own dominions.
The regular clergy throughout the country were on the pope's side,
secretly or openly. The Charterhouse monks, however, alone of all the
order, had the courage to declare their convictions, and to suffer for
them. Of the rest, we only perceive that they at last submitted; and
since there was no uncertainty as to their real feelings, we have been
disposed to judge them hardly as cowards. Yet we who have never been
tried, should perhaps be cautious in our censures. It is possible to
hold an opinion quite honestly, and yet to hesitate about dying for it.
We consider ourselves, at the present day, persuaded honestly of many
things; yet which of them should we refuse to relinquish if the scaffold
were the alternative--or at least seem to relinquish, under silent
protest?

And yet, in the details of the struggle at the Charterhouse, we see the
forms of mental trial which must have repeated themselves among all
bodies of the clergy wherever there was seriousness of conviction. If
the majority of the monks were vicious and sensual, there was still a
large minority labouring to be true to their vows; and when one entire
convent was capable of sustained resistance, there must have been many
where there was only just too little virtue for the emergency--where the
conflict between interest and conscience was equally genuine, though it
ended the other way. Scenes of bitter misery there must have been--of
passionate emotion wrestling ineffectually with the iron resolution of
the Government: and the faults of the Catholic party weigh so heavily
against them in the course and progress of the Reformation, that we
cannot willingly lose the few countervailing tints which soften the
darkness of their conditions.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40