The abrogation of celibacy in England was a process of far more perplexity and intricacy than in any other country which adopted the Reformation. Perhaps this may be partially explained by the temperament of the race, whose fierce spirit of independence made them quick to feel and impatient to suffer the manifold evils of the sacerdotal system, while their reverential conservatism rendered them less disposed to adopt a radical cure than their Continental neighbors.
In no country of Europe had the pretensions of the papal power been so resolutely set aside. In no country had ecclesiastical abuses been more earnestly attacked or more persistently held up for popular odium, and the applause which greeted all who boldly denounced the shortcomings of priest and prelate shows how keenly the people felt the evils to which they were exposed. William Langlande, the monk of Malvern, was no heretic, yet he was unsparing in his reprobation of the corruptions of the church:—
And he boldly prophesied the violent downfall of the whole fabric—
But while the people greeted these assaults with the keenest pleasure, they were attached to the old observances, and were in no haste to see the predictions of the poet fulfilled. A little sharp persecution was sufficient to suppress all outward show of Lollardry, and there was no chance in England for the fierce revolutionary enthusiasm of the Taborites.
As the sixteenth century opened, John Colet did good work in disturbing the stagnation of the schools by his contempt for the petrified theological science of the schoolmen. His endeavor to revert to the Scriptures as the sole source of religious belief was a step in advance, while he was unsparing in his denunciations of the corruptions which were as rife in the English church as we have seen them elsewhere. Yet Colet, though at one time taxed with heretical leanings, kept carefully within the pale of orthodoxy, and seems never to have entertained the idea that the evils which he deplored were to be attacked save by a renewal of the fruitless iteration of obsolete canons.1121 Perhaps, however, his friend and disciple, Sir Thomas More, is the best example of this frame of mind in England’s worthiest men, the besetting weakness of which made the Anglican reformation a struggle whose vicissitudes can scarce be said to have even yet reached their final development.
Before Luther had raised the standard of revolt, More keenly appreciated the derelictions of the church, and allowed his wit to satirize its vices with a freedom which showed the scantiest respect for the sanctity claimed by its hierarchy.1122 Yet when Luther came with his heresies to sweep away all abuses, More’s gentle and tender spirit was roused to a vulgarity of vituperation which earned for him a distinguished place among the foul-mouthed polemics of the time, and which is absolutely unfit for translation.1123 As regards ascetic observances, before the Lutheran movement, More seems to have inclined towards condemning all practices that were not in accordance with human nature, though he appears willing to admit that there may be some special sanctity, though not wisdom, in conquering nature.1124 After the commencement of the Reformation, however, his views underwent a reaction, and he not only defended monastic vows, but he even went so far as to argue that by the recent marriages of the Saxon reformers God had manifested his signal displeasure, for in the old law true priests could be joined only to the chastest virgins, while God permitted these false pastors to take to wife none but public strumpets.1125 If he accused Luther of sweeping away the venerable traditions of man and of God,1126 he showed how conscientious was this rigid conservatism when he laid his head upon the block in testimony for the principal creation and bulwark of tradition—the papal supremacy.
A community thus halting between an acute perception of existing evils and a resolute determination not to remove them was exactly in the temper to render the great movement of the sixteenth century as disastrous to themselves as possible. How to meet the inevitable under such conditions was a problem which well might tax the acutest intellect, and Wolsey, whose fate it was to undertake the task, seems to have been inspired with more than his customary audacious ingenuity in seeking the solution.
Wolsey himself was no ascetic, as the popular inscription over the door of his palace—“Domus meretricium Domini Cardinalis”—sufficiently attests. A visitation of the religious houses undertaken in 1511 by Archbishop Warham had revealed all the old iniquities without calling forth any remedy beyond an admonition.1127 In 1518, Wolsey himself had attempted a systematic reformation in his diocese of York, and had revived the ancient canons punishing concubinage among his priesthood;1128 and in 1519 we find him applying to Leo X. for a Bull conferring special power to correct the enormities of the clergy.1129 When, in 1523, he proposed a general visitation for the reformation of the ecclesiastical body, Fox, Bishop of Winchester, urged it as in the highest degree necessary, stating that he himself had for three years been devoting all his energies to restore discipline in his diocese, and that his efforts had been so utterly fruitless that he had abandoned all hope of any change for the better.1130 Cranmer, indeed, in his “Confutation of Unwritten Verities,” had no hesitation to say that “within my memory, which is above thirty years, and also by the information of others that be twenty years elder than I, I could never perceive or learn that any one priest, under the pope’s kingdom, was ever punished for advoutry by his ordinary.”1131 It may readily be believed, therefore, that Wolsey fully recognized the utter inefficiency of the worn-out weapons of discipline. Yet he was too shrewd a statesman not to foresee that reformation from within or from without must come, and, in taking the initiative, he commenced by quietly and indirectly attacking the monastic orders. As a munificent patron of letters, it was natural that he should emulate Merton and Wykeham in founding a college at Oxford; and “Cardinal’s College,” now Christ Church, became the lever with which to topple over the vast monastic system of England.
The development of the plan was characteristically insidious. By a Bull of April 3d, 1524 (confirmed by Henry, May 10th), Clement VII. authorized him to suppress the priory of St. Frediswood at Oxford, and to remove the monks for the purpose of converting it into a “Collegium Clericorum Seculorum.”1132 This was followed by a Bull, dated August 21st of the same year, empowering him as legate to make inquisition and reformation in all religious houses throughout the kingdom, to incarcerate and punish the inmates, and to deprive them of their property and privileges, all grants or charters to the contrary notwithstanding.1133 The real purport of this extraordinary commission is shown by the speedy issue of yet another Bull, dated September 11th, conceding to him the confiscation of monasteries to the amount of 3000 ducats annual rental, for the endowment of his college, and alleging as a reason for the measure that many establishments had not more than five or six inmates.1134
The affair was now fully in train, and proceeded with accelerating momentum. On the 3d of July, 1525, Henry confirmed the incorporation of the college; his letters-patent of May 1st, 1526, enumerate eighteen monasteries suppressed for its benefit, while other letters of May 10th grant seventy-one churches or rectories for its support, and yet other grants are alluded to as made in letters which have not been preserved.1135 In 1528 these were followed by various other donations of religious houses and manors; and during the same year Wolsey founded another Cardinal’s College at Ipswich, which became a fresh source of absorption.1136
Had Henry VIII. entertained any preconceived design of suppressing the religious houses, his impatient temper would scarcely have allowed him to remain so long a witness of this spoliation without taking his share and carrying the matter out with his accustomed boldness and disregard of consequences. At length, however, he claimed his portion, and procured from Clement a Bull dated November 2d, 1528, conceding to him, for the benefit of the old foundations of the King’s Colleges at Cambridge and Windsor, the suppression of monasteries to the annual value of 8000 ducats.1137 This was followed by another, a few days later, empowering Wolsey and Campeggi, co-legates in the affair of Queen Katharine’s divorce, to unite to other monasteries all those containing less than twelve inmates—thus suppressing the latter, of which the number was very large.1138 Another Bull of the same date (November 12th) attacked the larger abbeys, which had thus far escaped. It ordered the two cardinals, under request from the king, to inquire into the propriety of suppressing the rich monasteries enjoying over 10,000 ducats per annum, for the purpose of converting them into bishoprics, on the plea that the seventeen sees of the kingdom were insufficient for the spiritual wants of the people.1139 The report of the cardinals apparently seconded the views of Henry, for Clement granted to them, May 29th, 1529, the power of creating and arranging bishoprics at their discretion, and of sacrificing additional monasteries when necessary to provide adequate revenues.1140 It is probable that the monks who had been unceremoniously deprived of their possessions did not in all cases submit without resistance, for the Bull of November 12th, 1528, suppressing the smaller houses, was repeated August 31st, 1529, with the suggestive addition of authority to call in the assistance of the secular arm.1141
Wolsey was now tottering to his fall. Process against him was commenced on October 9th, 1529, and on the 18th the Great Seal was delivered to More. His power, however, had lasted long enough to break down all the safeguards which had for so many centuries grown around the sacred precincts of ecclesiastical property; and the rich foundations which covered so large a portion of English territory lay defenceless before the cupidity of a despot, who rarely allowed any consideration, human or divine, to interfere with his wishes, whose extravagance rendered him eager to find new sources of supply for an exhausted treasury, and whose temper had been aroused by the active support lent by the preaching friars to the party of Queen Katharine in the affair of the divorce. Yet it is creditable to Henry’s self-command that the blow did not fall sooner, although it came at last.
It is not my province to enter into the details of Henry’s miserable quarrel with Rome, which, except in its results, is, from every point of view, one of the most humiliating pages of history. The year 1532 saw the proclamation of the king commanding the support of his subjects in the impending rupture, and the subscription of the clergy to a paper which, with unparalleled servility, placed the whole ecclesiastical constitution of the kingdom in his absolute power.1142 The following year his long-protracted divorce from Katharine of Arragon was consummated; the annates were withdrawn from the pope, and Henry assumed the title of Supreme Head of the Church of England.1143 In 1535 an obedient Parliament confirmed the acts of the sovereign, and forbade the promulgation of any canons by synods or convocations without his approval. The power of the pope was abolished by proclamation; and Universities and prelates rivalled each other in obsequiously transferring to Henry the reverence due to Rome.1144
The greater portion of the monasteries, which had already experienced a foretaste of the wrath to come, hastened to proclaim their adhesion to the new theological autocracy, and means not the most gentle were found to persuade the remainder. The Carthusians of the Charter House of London gave especial trouble, and the contest between them and the king affords a vivid picture of the times. There is something very affecting in the account given by Strype of the humble but resolute resignation with which the prior and his monks prepared themselves for martyrdom in vindication of the papal supremacy.1145 Their courage was soon put to the test. Between the 27th of April and the 4th of August, 1535, the prior and eleven of his monks were put to death with all the horrors of the punishment for high treason;1146 but neither this nor the efforts of a new and more loyal prior were able to produce submission. In 1536 ten of the most unyielding were sent to other houses, where several of them were subsequently executed, and in 1537 ten more were thrown into Newgate, where nine of them died almost immediately—it is to be presumed from the rigor of their confinement and the foulness of the jail. In 1539 the few that remained were expelled; the house was seized and used as an arsenal, until it was given to Sir Edward North, who changed it into a residence, pulling down the cloisters and converting the church into his parlor.1147
The most conspicuous of the recalcitrants, however, was the powerful order of the Franciscans. These refused the oath exacted of them, causing no little trouble, and affording a cover for the intrigues of that large body of the clergy who were dissatisfied with the innovations, but afraid of open opposition.1148 This precipitated the ruin of the monastic orders, which could not, under any circumstances, have been long delayed, and a general visitation was considered the most effective means of encompassing their destruction. It was accordingly ordered in 1535, and as their immorality and neglect of their sacred duties had passed almost into a proverb, there was not much difficulty in accumulating evidence to justify the measure. The visitation was commanded to examine into the foundation, title, history, condition of discipline, and number and character of the inmates of all religious houses;1149 and, as might have been expected, the report disclosed a state of affairs which called for the immediate removal of so foul a source of corruption and scandal. The visitors had their work assigned them in advance, and they performed it thoroughly; but we cannot assume that the evils which they described were the creation of their own invention to gratify the wishes and advance the purposes of their master.
One of the earliest abbeys visited was that of Langdon, where the visitor, Dr. Leighton, suddenly breaking open the abbot’s door, found him with his concubine, whose disguise as a man was discovered secreted in a coffer. Leighton’s account of this little adventure “scribullede this Satterday,” to his patron, Cromwell, is full of humor, showing how thoroughly he enjoyed his success, and how fully he was assured that the Secretary would likewise be gratified by it.1150 Bishop Burnet’s general summary of the result of the visitation asserts that “for the lewdness of the confessors of nunneries, and the great corruption of that state, whole houses being found almost all with child; for the dissoluteness of abbots and the other monks and friars, not only with whores, but married women; and for their unnatural lusts and other brutal practices; these are not fit to be spoken of, much less enlarged on, in a work of this nature. The full report of the visitation is lost, yet I have seen an extract of a part of it, concerning 144 houses, that contains abominations in it equal to any that were in Sodom.”1151
The good bishop was not likely to extenuate what he had read, but we yet may readily believe the truth of his account of it, for we cannot assume that the charges were manufactured, like the accusations against the Templars, for the purpose of serving as an excuse for confiscation. The monasteries were not likely to have improved in morals since Archbishop Morton described a similar condition of affairs half a century earlier; nor is there any ground for imagining them better than their Continental contemporaries, whose lapses were the subject of animadversion by censors favorable to the monastic system. Scarce anything, indeed, can be conceived worse than the condition of the German convents as described in a document drawn up by command of the Emperor Ferdinand to stimulate the sluggishness of the council of Trent.1152 A short account of “The Manner of Dissolving the Abbeys,” by a contemporary,1153 states the result of the visitation in terms even stronger than those of Burnet, and Strype gives some most suggestive extracts from the report of the visitation of the diocese of Litchfield.1154 Descriptions of the disorders of special houses are very frequent in the private letters of the visitors and commissioners to Cromwell,1155 which may be the more readily believed, since they also report favorably of many abbeys as being well governed, and of the utmost benefit to their neighborhoods through their generous hospitality and charity. It should be added that, in some districts at least, the morals of the laity were no better than those of the clergy.1156 Nicander Nucius, who visited England about the year 1545, in relating the suppression of the monastic orders, gives as bad an account of their discipline as Burnet. He is not, of course, an original authority, but, as an impartial observer, his statements are worthy of consideration as reflecting the current views of society at the period.1157 It was evidently for the purpose of influencing public opinion abroad that a book on the subject was written in Italian by William Thomas, who summed up by stating that the visitors found “not seven, but more than 700,000 deadly sins,” and who received the reward of his vivacity by being put to death under Queen Mary.1158
A portion of the people were ready and eager to welcome the secularization of the religious houses. Their views and arguments are set forth with more force than elegance in the well-known “Beggars’ Petition,” which calculates that, besides the tithes, one-third of the kingdom was ecclesiastical property, and that these vast possessions were devoted to the support of a body of men who found their sole serious occupation in destroying the peace of families and corrupting the virtue of women. The economical injury to the commonwealth, and the interference with the royal prerogative of the ecclesiastical system, were argued with much cogency, and the king was entreated to destroy it by the most summary methods. That any one should venture to publish so violent an attack upon the existing church, at a time when punishment so prompt followed all indiscretions of this nature, renders this production peculiarly significant both as to the temper of the educated portion of the people, and the presumed intentions of the king.1159
The visitation produced the desired effect. In 1536, after reading the report, Parliament passed without opposition a bill suppressing, for the benefit of the crown, all monasteries with less than twelve inmates or possessing a revenue under £200 per annum. Three hundred and seventy-six houses were swept away by this act, and the “Court of Augmentations of the King’s Revenue” was established to take charge of the lands and goods thus summarily escheated. The rents which thus fell to the king were valued at £32,000 a year, and the movable property at £100,000, while the commissioners were popularly supposed to have been “as careful to enrich themselves as to increase the king’s revenue.” Stokesley, Bishop of London, remarked, concerning the transaction, that “these lesser houses were as thorns soon plucked up, but the great abbots were like putrefied old oaks, yet they must needs follow, and so would others do in Christendom before many years were passed.” But Stokesley, however true a prophet in the general scope of his observation, was mistaken as to the extreme facility of eradicating the humble thorns. The country was not as easily reconciled to the change as the versatile, more intelligent, and less reverent inhabitants of the cities. Henry, unluckily, not only had not abrogated Purgatory by proclamation, but had specially recommended the continuance of prayers and masses for the dead,1160 and thousands were struck with dread as to the future prospects of themselves and their dearest kindred, when there should be few to offer the sacrifice of the mass for the benefit of departed souls. The traveller and the mendicant, too, missed the ever open door and the coarse but abundant fare, which smoothed the path of the humble wayfarer. Discontent spread widely, and was soon manifested openly. To meet this, most of the lands were sold at a very moderate price to the neighboring gentry, under condition of exercising free hospitality, to supply the wants of those who had hitherto been dependent on conventual charity.1161
The plan was only partially successful, and soon another element of trouble made itself apparent. Of the monks whose houses were suppressed, those who desired to continue a monastic life were transferred to the larger foundations, while the rest took “capacities,”1162 under promise of a reasonable allowance for their journey home. They received only forty shillings and a gown, and with this slender provision it was estimated that about ten thousand were turned adrift upon the world, in which their previous life had incapacitated them from earning a support. The result is visible in the act for the punishment of “sturdy vagabonds and beggars,” passed by Parliament in this same year, inflicting a graduated scale of penalties, of which hanging was the one threatened for a third offence.1163
This was a dangerous addition to society when discontent was smouldering and ready to burst into flame. The result was soon apparent. After harvest-time great disturbances convulsed the kingdom. A rising, reported as consisting of twenty thousand men, in Lincolnshire, was put down by the Duke of Suffolk with a heavy force and free promises of pardon. In the North matters were even more serious. The clergy there were less tractable than their southern brethren, and some Injunctions savoring strongly of Protestantism aroused their susceptibilities afresh. Unwilling to submit without a struggle, they held a convocation, in which they denied the royal supremacy and proclaimed their obedience to the pope. This was rank rebellion, especially as Paul III., on the 30th of August, 1535, had issued his Bull of excommunication against Henry, and self-preservation therefore demanded the immediate suppression of the recalcitrants. They would hardly, indeed, have ventured on assuming a position of such dangerous opposition without the assurance of popular support, nor were their expectations or labors disappointed. The “Pilgrimage of Grace,” according to report, soon numbered forty thousand men. Although Skipton and Scarboro’ bravely resisted a desperate siege, the success of the insurgents at York, Hull, and Pomfret Castle was encouraging, and risings in Lancashire, Durham, and Westmoreland gave to the insurrection an aspect of the most menacing character. Good fortune and skilful strategy, however, saved the Duke of Norfolk and his little army from defeat; the winter was rapidly approaching, and at length a proclamation of general amnesty, issued by the king on the 9th of December, induced a dispersion of the rebels. The year 1537 saw another rising in the North, but this time it only numbered eight thousand men. Repulsed at Carlisle, and cut to pieces by Norfolk, the insurgents were quickly put down, and other disturbances of minor importance were even more readily suppressed.1164
Strengthened by these triumphs over the disaffected, Henry proceeded, in 1537, to make the acknowledgment of papal authority a crime liable to the penalties of a præmunire;1165 and, as resistance was no longer to be dreaded, he commenced to take possession of some of the larger houses. These did not come within the scope of the act of Parliament, and therefore were made the subject of special transactions. The abbots resigned, either from having been implicated in the late insurrections, or feeling that their evil lives would not bear investigation, or doubtless, in many cases, from a clear perception of the doom impending in the near future, which rendered it prudent to make the best terms possible while yet there was time. Thus, in these cases, the monks were generally pensioned with eight marks a year, while some of the abbots secured a revenue of 400 or 500 marks.1166 In an agreement which has been preserved, the monks were to receive pensions varying from 53s. 4d. to £4 a year, according to their age.1167 In some cases, indeed, according to Bishop Latimer, in a sermon preached before Edward VI., the royal exchequer was relieved by finding preferment for most unworthy objects—“however bad the reports of them were, some were made bishops and others put into good dignities in the church; that so the king might save their pensions that otherwise were to be paid them.”1168 An effectual means, moreover, of inducing voluntary surrenders was by stopping their source of support, and thus starving them out. Richard, Bishop of Dover, one of the commissioners in Wales, writes to Cromwell, May 23d, 1538: “I thinke before the yere be owt ther schall be very fewe howsis abill to lyve, but schall be glade to giffe up their howseis and provide for them selvys otherwise, for their thei schall have no living.” In anticipation of the impending doom, many of the abbots and priors had sold everything that was salable, from lands and leases down to spits and kitchen utensils, leaving their houses completely denuded. The letters of the commissioners are full of complaints respecting this sharp practice, and of their efforts to trace the property. Another mode of compelling surrenders was by threatening the strict enforcement of the rules of the order. Thus, in the official report of the surrender of the Austin friars of Gloucester, we find the alternative given them, when “the seyd freeres seyed ... as the worlde ys nowe they war not abull to kepe them and leffe in ther howseys, wherfore voluntaryly they gaffe ther howseys into the vesytores handes to the kynges use. The vesytor seyd to them, ‘thynke nott, nor hereafter reportt nott, that ye be suppresseyd, for I have noo such auctoryte to suppresse yow, but only to reforme yow, wherfor yf ye woll be reformeyd, accordeyng to good order, ye may contynew for all me.’ They seyd they war nott abull to contynew,” whereupon they were ejected.1169
In the year 1538 the work proceeded with increased rapidity, no less than 158 surrenders of the larger houses being enrolled. Many of the abbots were attainted of treason and executed, and the abbey lands forfeited. Means not of the nicest kind were taken to increase the disrepute of the monastic orders, and they retaliated in the same way. Thus, the Abbot of Crossed-Friars, in London, was surprised in the day time with a woman under the worst possible circumstances, giving rise to a lawsuit more curious than decent;1170 while, on the other hand, the Abbess of Chepstow accused Dr. London, one of the visitors, of corrupting her nuns.1171 Public opinion, however, did not move fast enough for the rapacity of those in power, and strenuous exertions were made to stimulate it. All the foul stories that could be found or invented respecting the abbeys were raked together; but these proving insufficient, the impostures concerning relics and images were investigated with great success, and many singular exposures were made which gave the king fresh warrant for his arbitrary measures, and placed the religious houses in a more defenceless position than ever.1172
Despite all this, in the session of 1539 all the twenty-eight parliamentary abbots had their writs, and no less than twenty sat in the House of Lords.1173 Yet the influence of the court and the progress of public opinion were shown in an act which confirmed the suppressions of the larger houses not embraced in the former act, as well as all that might thereafter be suppressed, forfeited, or resigned,1174 and May 9th, 1540, by special enactment, the ancient order of the Knights of St. John was broken up, pensions being granted to the grand prior and some of the principal dignitaries.1175 These measures consummated the ruin of the monastic system in England. Henceforth it was altogether at the king’s mercy, and his character was not one to temper power with moderation. In 1539 there are upon record fifty-seven surrenders of the great abbeys,1176 and a large number in 1540, the good house of Godstow being the last of the great monasteries to fall. Of the old monastic system this left only the chantries, free chapels, collegiate churches, hospitals, &c., which were gradually absorbed during the succeeding years;1177 until the necessities of the king prompted a sweeping measure for their destruction. Accordingly in 1545 a bill was brought in placing them all at his disposition. There were some indications of opposition, but the king pleaded the expenditures of the French and Scottish wars, and solemnly promised his Parliament “that all should be done for the glory of God and common profit of the realm,” whereupon it was passed.1178 It is computed that the number of monasteries suppressed by these various measures was 645; of colleges, 90; of chantries and free chapels, 2374; and of hospitals, 110.1179
A vast amount of property thus passed into the hands of the court. The clear yearly rental of the suppressed houses alone was rated at £131,607 6s. 4d.—an immense sum in those days; but Burnet states that in reality it was almost tenfold the amount.1180 Small as may have been the good effected by these enormous possessions in the hands of the monks, it was even more worthless under the management of its new masters. Henry admitted the heavy responsibility which he assumed in thus seizing the wealth which had been dedicated to pious uses, and he entertained magnificent schemes for devoting it to the public benefit, but his own necessities and the grasping avarice of needy courtiers wrought out a result ridiculously mean. Thus he designed to set aside a rental of £18,000 for the support of eighteen “Byshopprychys to be new made.”1181 For this purpose he obtained full power from Parliament in 1539,1182 and in 1540 he established one on the remains of the Abbey of Westminster. Those of Chester, Gloucester, and Peterboro’ were established in 1541, and in 1543 those of Oxford and Bristol,1183 and one of them, that of Westminster, was suppressed in 1550, leaving only five as the result. The people were quieted by assurances that taxes would be abrogated forever and the kingdom kept in a most efficient state of defence; but subsidies and benevolences were immediately exacted with more frequency and energy than ever.1184 Splendid foundations were promised for institutions of learning, but little was given; a moderate sum was expended in improving the sea-ports, while broad manors and rich farms were granted to favorites at almost nominal prices; and the ill-gotten wealth abstracted from the church disappeared without leaving traces except in the sudden and overgrown fortunes of those gentlemen who were fortunate or prompt enough to make use of the golden opportunity, and who to obtain them had no scruple in openly tendering bribes and shares in the spoil to Cromwell, the omnipotent favorite of the king.1185 The complaints of the people, who found their new masters harder than the old, may be estimated from some specimens printed by Strype.1186
If it be asked what became of the “holy idle thieves” and “sturdy loobies” whom the Beggars’ Petition so earnestly desired to be thrown upon the world, the answer may be found in the legislation of Edward VI. A poor-law, the commencement of a series which to this day has pressed upon England with ever-increasing weight, was enacted in 1552.1187 This tells its own story, but even more suggestive was another bill for the suppression of vagabondage, the provisions of which mark not only the inhumanity of the age, but the magnitude of the evil caused by the violent acts of Henry. Every able-bodied man loitering in any place for three days without working or offering to work was held to be a vagabond. He was thereupon to be branded on the breast with a letter V, and adjudged as a slave for two years to any one who might bring him for that purpose before a justice of the peace.1188 Such was the ignominious end of the powerful and wealthy monastic orders of England.
The monastic establishments of Ireland shared the same fate. Rymer1189 gives the text of a commission for the suppression of a nunnery of the diocese of Dublin, in 1535. The insubordination of the island, however, rendered it difficult to carry out the measure everywhere, and finally, in 1541, it was accomplished by virtually granting their lands to the native chieftains. These were good Catholics, but they could not resist the temptation. They joined eagerly in grasping the spoil, and the desirable political object was effected of detaching them, for the time, from the foreign alliances with the Catholic powers which threatened serious evils.1190
It is a striking proof of Henry’s strength of will and intense individuality of character, that, in thus tearing up by the roots the whole system of monachism, he did not yield one jot to the powerful section of his supporters who had pledged themselves to the logical sequence of his acts, the abrogation of sacerdotal celibacy in general. While every reason of policy and statesmanship urged him to grant the privilege of marriage to the secular clergy, whom he forced to transfer to him the allegiance formerly rendered to Rome; while his chief religious advisers at home and his Protestant allies abroad used every endeavor to wring from him this concession, he steadily and persistently refused it to the end, and we can only guess whether his firmness arose from conscientious conviction or from the pride of a controversialist.
Notwithstanding his immovable resolution on this point, his power seemed ineffectual to stay the progress of the new ideas. An assembly held by his order in May, 1530, to condemn the heretical doctrines disseminated in certain books, shows how openly the advocates of clerical marriage had promulgated their views while yet Wolsey was prime minister and Henry gloried in the title of Defender of the Faith. Numerous books were denounced in which celibacy was ridiculed, its sanctity disproved, and its evil influences commented upon in the most irreverent manner.1191 These doctrines were sometimes carried into practice, and the orthodox clergy had little ceremony in visiting them with the sharpest penalties of the canons. It was about this time that Stokesley, Bishop of London, condemned to imprisonment for life Thomas Patmore, the incumbent of Hadham in Hertfordshire, for encouraging his curate to marry and permitting him subsequently to officiate; and the unfortunate man actually lay for three years in gaol, until released by the intercession of Cranmer.1192 This severity offers a significant contrast to the lenity which punished priestly incontinence with trifling fines and penalties, or sold licenses to sin almost openly.1193
If the reforming polemics were thus bold while Henry was yet orthodox, it may readily be imagined how keenly they watched the progress of his quarrel with the pope, and how loud became their utterances as he gradually threw off his allegiance to Rome and persecuted all who hesitated to follow in his footsteps. He soon showed, however, that he allowed none to precede him, and that all consciences were to be measured by the royal ell-wand. Thus his proceedings against the Carthusians and Franciscans in 1534 were varied by a proclamation directed against seditious books and priestly marriages. As we have seen, some unions had taken place, and all who had committed the indiscretion were deprived of their functions and reduced to the laity, though the marriages seem to have been recognized as valid. Future transgressions, moreover, were threatened with the royal indignation and further punishment—words of serious import at such a time and under such a monarch.1194
In spite of all this, the chief advisers of Henry did not scruple to connive at infractions of the proclamation. Both Cranmer and Cromwell favored the Reformation; the former was himself secretly married, and even ventured to urge the king to reconsider his views on priestly celibacy;1195 while the latter, though, as a layman, without any such personal motive, was disposed to relax the strictness of the rule of celibacy. During the visitation of the monasteries, for instance, the Abbot of Walden had little hesitation in confessing to Ap Rice, the visitor, that he was secretly married, and asked to be secured from molestation. The confidence thus manifested in the friendly disposition of the vicar-general was satisfactorily responded to. Cromwell replied, merely warning him to “use his remedy” without, if possible, causing scandal.1196 A singular petition, addressed to him in 1536 by the secular clergy of the diocese of Bangor, illustrates forcibly both the confidence felt in his intentions, and the necessity of the Abbot of Walden’s “remedy” in the fearful state of immorality which prevailed. There had been a visitation in which the petitioners admit that many of them had been found in fault, and as their women had been consequently taken away, they pray the vicar-general to devise some means by which their consorts may be restored. They do not venture to ask directly for marriage, but decency forbids the supposition that they could openly request Cromwell to authorize a system of concubinage. Nothing can be more humiliating than their confession of the relations existing between themselves, as ministers of Christ, and the flocks entrusted to their spiritual care. After pleading that without women they cannot keep house and exercise hospitality, they add: “We ourselves shall be driven to seek our living at ale-houses and taverns, for mansions upon the benefices and vicarages we have none. And as for gentlemen and substantial honest men, for fear of inconvenience, knowing our frailty and accustomed liberty, they will in nowise board us in their houses.”1197
The tendencies thus exhibited by the king’s advisers called forth the remonstrances of the conservatives. In June, 1536, the lower house of convocation presented a memorial inveighing strongly against the progress of heresy, and among the obnoxious opinions condemned was “That it is preached and taught that all things awght to be in comen and that Priests shuld have wiffes,” and they added that books containing heretical opinions were printed “cum privilegio,” were openly sold among the people, and were not condemned by those in authority.1198 Possibly it was in consequence of this that in the following November Henry issued a circular letter to his bishops in which he commanded them—“Whereas we be advertised that divers Priests have presumed to marry themselves contrary to the custom of our Church of England, Our Pleasure is, Ye shall make secret enquiry within your Diocess, whether there be any such resiant within the same or not”—and any such offenders who had presumed to continue the performance of their sacred functions were ordered to be reported to him or to be arrested and sent to London.1199 Curiously enough, there is no reference to the subject in the “Articles devised by the Kinges Highnes Majestie to stablyshe Christen Quietnes and Unitie amonge us,” issued by Henry in this year.1200
Notwithstanding the ominous threat in the letter to the Bishops there appears, about this period, to have been great uncertainty in the public mind respecting the state of the law and the king’s intentions. Two letters happen to have been preserved, written within a few days of each other, in June, 1537, to Cromwell, which reveal the condition of opinion at the time. One of these complains that the vicar of Mendelsham, in Suffolk, has brought home a wife and children, whom he claims to be lawfully his own, and that it is permitted by the king. Although “thys acte by hym done is in thys countre a monstre, and many do growdge at it,” yet, not knowing the king’s pleasure, no proceedings can be had, and appeal is therefore made for authority to prosecute, lest “hys ensample wnponnyched shall be occasion for other carnall evyll dysposed prestes to do in lyke manner.” The other letter is from an unfortunate priest who had recently married, supposing it to be lawful. The “noyse of the peopull,” however, had just informed him that a royal order had commanded the separation of such unions, and he had at once sent his wife to her friends, threescore miles away. He therefore hastens to make his peace, protesting that he had sinned through ignorance, though he makes bold to argue that “yf the kyngys grace could have founde yt laufull that prestys mught have byn maryd, they wold have byn to the crowne dubbyll and dubbyll faythefull; furste in love, secondly for fere that the byschoppe of Rome schuld sette yn hys powre unto ther desolacyon.”1201
It is evident from these letters that there was still a genuine popular antipathy to clerical marriage, and yet that the royal supremacy was so firmly established by Henry’s ruthless persecutions that this antipathy was held subject to the pleasure of the court, and could at any moment have been dissipated by proclamation. In fact, the only wonder is that any convictions remained in the minds of those who had seen the objects of their profoundest veneration made the sport of avarice and derision. Stately churches torn to pieces, the stone sold to sacrilegious builders, the lead put up at auction to the highest bidder, the consecrated bells cast into cannon, the sacred vessels melted down, the holy relics snatched from the shrines and treated as old bones and offal, the venerated images burned at Smithfield—all this could have left little sentiment of respect for worn-out religious observances in those who watched and saw the sacrilege remain unpunished.
Notwithstanding the reforming influences with which he was surrounded, Henry sternly adhered to the position which he had assumed.1202 When, in 1538, the princes of the Schmalkaldic League offered to place him at its head, and even to alter, if possible, the Augsburg Confession so as to make it a common basis of union for all the elements of opposition to Rome, Henry was well inclined to obtain the political advantages of the position tendered him, but hesitated to accept it until all doctrinal questions should be settled. The three points on which the Germans insisted were the communion in both elements, the worship in the vulgar tongue, and the marriage of the clergy. In the Convocation of that year a series of questions was submitted for decision embracing the contested points, and the clergy decided in favor of celibacy, private masses, and communion in one element.1203 Thus sustained, Henry was firm, and the ambassadors of the League spent two months in conferences with the English bishops and doctors without result. On their departure (August 5th, 1538), they addressed him a letter arguing the subjects in debate—the refusal of the cup, private masses, and sacerdotal celibacy—to which Henry replied at some length, defending his position on these topics with no little skill and dexterity, and refusing his assent finally.1204 The reformers, however, did not yet despair, and the royal preachers even ventured occasionally to debate the propriety of clerical marriage freely before him in their sermons, but in vain.1205 An epistle which Melanchthon addressed him in April, 1539, arguing the same questions again, had no better effect.1206
In the spring of 1539 Henry renewed negotiations with the German princes, and his envoys in soliciting another visit from deputies of the League held out some vague promises of his yielding on the point of celibacy. The Germans in turn, to show their earnest desire for union with England, submitted a series of propositions, in which they suggested that the marriage of priests might be left to the discretion of the pope, and that if it were to be prohibited only persons advanced in life should be ordained.1207 Both parties, however, were too firmly set in their opinions for accord to be possible. Notwithstanding any seeming hesitation caused by the policy of the moment, Henry’s mind was fully made up, and the consequences of endeavoring to persuade him against his prejudices soon became apparent. Even while the negotiations were in progress he had issued a series of injunctions degrading from the priesthood all married clergy, and threatening with imprisonment and his displeasure all who should thereafter marry.1208 Argumentation confirmed his opinions, and he proceeded to enforce them on his subjects in his own savage manner, “for though on all other points he had set up the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession,” yet on these he had committed himself as a controversialist, and the worst passions of polemical authorship—the true “odium theologicum”—acting through his irresponsible despotism, rendered him the cruellest of persecutors. But a few weeks after receiving the letter of Melanchthon, he answered it in cruel fashion.
In May a new parliament met, chosen under great excitement, for the people were inflamed on the subject of religion, and animosities ran high. The principal object of the session was known to be a settlement of the national church, and as the reformers were in a minority against the court, the temper of the Houses was not likely to be encouraging for them.1209 On the 5th of May, a week after its assembling, a committee was appointed, at the king’s request, to take into consideration the differences of religious opinion. On the 16th, the Duke of Norfolk, who was not a member of the committee, reported that no agreement could be arrived at, and he therefore laid before the House of Lords, for full discussion, articles embracing—1st. Transsubstantiation; 2d. Communion in both kinds; 3d. Vows of Chastity; 4th. Private Masses; 5th. Sacerdotal Marriages; and 6th. Auricular Confession. Cranmer opposed them stoutly, arguing against them for three days, and especially endeavoring to controvert the third and fifth, which enjoined celibacy, but his efforts and those of his friends were vain, when pitted against the known wishes of the king, who himself took an active part in the debate, and argued in favor of the articles with much vigor. Under such circumstances, the adoption of the Six Articles was a foregone conclusion. On the 30th of May the chancellor reported that the House had agreed upon them, and that it was the king’s pleasure “that some penal statute should be enacted to compel all his subjects who were in any way dissenters or contradicters of these articles to obey them.” The framing of such a bill was intrusted to two committees, one under the lead of Cranmer, the other under that of the Archbishop of York, and they were instructed to lay their respective plans before the king within forty-eight hours. Of course the report of the Archbishop of York was adopted. Introduced on the 7th of June, Cranmer again resisted it gallantly, but it passed both Houses by the 14th, and received the royal assent on the 28th. It was entitled “An Act for abolishing Diversity of Opinions in certain Articles concerning Christian Religion,” and it stands as a monument of the cruel legislation of a barbarous age. The Third Article was “that Priests after the order of Priesthood might not marry by the Law of God;” the Fourth, “that Vows of Chastity ought to be observed by the Law of God,” and those who obstinately preached or disputed against them were adjudged felons, to suffer death without benefit of clergy. Any opposition, either in word or writing, subjected the offender to imprisonment during the king’s pleasure, and a repetition of the offence constituted a felony, to be expiated with the life of the culprit. Priestly marriages were declared void, and a priest persisting in living with his wife was to be executed as a felon. Concubinage was punishable with deprivation of benefice and property, and imprisonment, for a first offence; a second lapse was visited with a felon’s death, while in all cases the wife or concubine shared the fate of her partner in guilt. Quarterly sessions were provided, to be held by the bishops and other commissioners appointed by the king, for the purpose of enforcing these laws, and the accused were entitled to trial by jury.1210 Vows of chastity were only binding on those who had taken them of their own free will when over twenty-one years of age.1211 According to the Act, the wives of priests were to be put away by June 24th, but on that day, as the act was not yet signed, an order was mercifully made extending the time to July 12th.1212
Cranmer argued, reasonably enough, that it was a great hardship, in the case of the ejected monks, to insist on the observance of the vow of chastity, when those of poverty and obedience were dispensed with, and when the unfortunates had been forcibly deprived of all the advantages, safeguards, and protection of monastic life.1213 The matter, however, was not decided by reason, but by the whimsical perversity of a self-opinionated man, who, unfortunately, had the power to condense his polemical notions in the blood of his subjects.
To comprehend the full iniquity of this savage measure we must remember the rapid progress which the new opinions had been making in England for twenty years; the tacit encouragement given them by the suppression of the religious houses, and by the influence of the king’s confidential advisers; and the hopes naturally excited by Henry’s quarrel with Rome and negotiations with the League of Schmalkalden. In spite, therefore, of the comparatively mild punishments hitherto imposed on priestly marriage, which were no doubt practically almost obsolete, such unions may safely be assumed as numerous. Even Cranmer himself, the primate of Henry’s church, was twice married, his second wife, then living, the niece of Osiander, being kept under a decent veil of secrecy in his palace.1214 When, after his fruitless resistance to the Six Articles, the bill was passed, he sent his wife to her friends in Germany, until the death of his master enabled him to bring her back and acknowledge her openly;1215 but vast numbers of unfortunate pastors could not have had the opportunity, and perhaps lacked the self-control, thus to arrange their domestic affairs. Even the gentle Melanchthon was moved from his ordinary equanimity, and ventured to address to his royal correspondent a remonstrance expressing his horror of the cruelty which could condemn to the scaffold a man whose sole guilt consisted in not abandoning the wife to whom he had promised fidelity through good and evil, before God and man—a cruelty which could find no precedent in any code that man had previously dared to frame.1216
As might be expected, numerous divorces of married priests followed this Draconian legislation, and these divorces were held good by the act of 1549, which, under Edward VI., granted full liberty in the premises to ecclesiastics.1217 Even Henry, however, began to feel that he had gone too far, and the influence of Cromwell was sufficient to prevent the harshest features of the law from being enforced in all their odious severity, especially as the projected marriage with Ann of Cleves and the alliance with the German Lutherans rendered active persecution in the highest degree impolitic. When the comedy of Henry’s fourth marriage culminated in the tragedy of Cromwell’s ruin (June, 1540), the reactionary elements again gathered strength. There can be no little doubt that the atrocity of the law had greatly interfered with its efficient execution and had aroused popular feeling, for now, although the Vicar-General was removed, the Catholics passed with speedy alacrity a bill moderating the act of the Six Articles, in so far as it related to marriage and concubinage. For capital punishment was substituted the milder penalty of confiscation to the king of all the property and revenue of the offenders.1218
The Six Articles, as thus modified, remained the law of England during the concluding years of Henry’s reign, nor is it likely that any one ventured to urge upon him seriously a relaxation of the principles to which he had committed himself thus definitely. The fall of Cromwell and the danger to which Cranmer was exposed for several years were sufficient to insure him against troublesome remonstrants, even if his increasing irritability and capriciousness had not made those around him daily more alive to the danger of thwarting or resisting his idlest humor. How little progress, indeed, the Reformation had thus far made in England is shown in a letter written in 1546 by John Hooper, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, during the exile into which he was forced by the act of the Six Articles—“Our king has destroyed the pope, but not popery; he has expelled all the monks and nuns, and pulled down their monasteries; he has caused all their possessions to be transferred into his exchequer, and yet they are bound, even the frail female sex, by the king’s command, to perpetual chastity. England has at this time at least ten thousand nuns, not one of whom is allowed to marry. The impious mass, the most shameful celibacy of the clergy, the invocation of saints, auricular confession, superstitious abstinence from meats, and purgatory, were never before held by the people in greater esteem than at the present moment.”1219
On the 28th of January, 1547, Henry VIII. died, and Edward VI. succeeded to the perilous throne. Not yet ten years of age, his government of course received its direction from those around him, and the rivalry between the protector Somerset and the chancellor Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, threw the former into the hands of the progressives, as the latter was the acknowledged head of the reactionary party. The ruin of Southampton and the triumph of Somerset, strengthened by his successful campaign in Scotland, soon began to develop their natural consequences on the religion of the country. Under the auspices of Cranmer, a Convocation was assembled, which was empowered to decide all questions in controversy. When the primate was anxious to again enjoy the solace of his wife’s company and to relieve both her and himself from the stigma of unlawful marriage, it is easy to understand that the subject of celibacy would receive early and appropriate attention; and so confident were the reformers of success that they did not hesitate to enter into matrimony without waiting for any formal sanction.1220 Accordingly, on December 17, 1547, a proposition was submitted to the effect that all canons, statutes, laws, decrees, usages, and customs, interfering with or prohibiting marriage, should be abrogated, and it was carried by a vote of 53 to 22. No time was lost. Two days afterwards a bill was introduced in the Commons permitting married men to be priests and to hold benefices. It was received with so much favor that it was read twice the same day, and on the 21st it was sent up to the Lords; but in the Upper House it raised debates so prolonged that, as the members were determined to adjourn before Christmas, it was laid aside. This might be the more readily agreed to, since on the 23d an act was approved which abolished numerous severe laws of the former reign, including the statute of the Six Articles, and was immediately followed by another granting the use of the cup to the laity and prohibiting private masses.1221
The repeal of the Six Articles left the marriage of the clergy subject to the previous laws of Henry, imposing on it various pains and penalties, but with the votes recorded in Convocation and Parliament, it is not likely that much vigor was displayed in their enforcement. Those interested could thus afford to await the reassembling of the Houses, which did not take place until November 24, 1548, but they claimed the reward of their patience by an early hearing in the session. On the 3d of December a bill was introduced, similar to that of the previous year, rendering married men eligible to the priesthood; it passed second reading on the 5th, and third reading on the 6th. Apparently encouraged by the favorable reception accorded to it, the friends of the measure resolved on demanding further privileges. The bill was therefore laid aside, and on the next day a new one was presented which granted the additional liberty of marriage to those already in orders. It conceded to the established opinions the fact that it were better that the clergy should live chaste and single, yet, “as great filthiness of living had followed on the laws that compelled chastity and prohibited marriage,” therefore all laws and canons inhibiting sacerdotal matrimony should be abolished. This bill, after full discussion, was read a second and third time on the 10th and 12th, and was sent up to the Lords on the 13th. Again the Upper House was in no haste to pass it. It lay on the table until February 9, 1549, when it was stoutly contested, and, after being recommitted, it finally passed on the 19th, with the votes of nine bishops recorded against it.1222
Cranmer and his friends were now at full liberty to establish the innovation by committing the clergy individually to marriage, and by enlisting the popular feeling in its support. During the discussion they had not been idle. Much controversial writing had occurred on both sides, in which Poynette, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, took an active part, while Bale, Bishop of Ossory, distinguished himself on the same side by raking together all the foul stories that could be collected concerning the celibate clergy—a scandalous material not likely to be lacking in either quantity or quality. Burnet declares that no law passed during the reign of Edward excited more contradiction and censure, and the matrimonialists soon found that, even with the act of parliament in their favor, their course was not wholly a smooth one. Cranmer ordered a visitation in his province, and directed as one of the points for inquiry and animadversion, “Whether any do contemn married priests, and, for that they be married, will not receive the communion or other sacraments at their hands,”1223 which distinctly reveals the difficulties encountered in eradicating the convictions of centuries from the popular mind. Sanders says, and with every appearance of probability, that the Archbishop of York united with Cranmer in ordering a visitation of the whole kingdom, during which the visitors investigated particularly the morals of the clergy, and used every argument to impel them to marriage, not only declaring celibacy to be most dangerous to salvation, but intimating that all who adhered to it would be regarded as papists and enemies of the king.1224 The active interest which Cranmer took in the question is manifested by the fact that when Dr. Richard Smith, who had fled to Scotland in consequence of having endeavored to stir up a tumult at Oxford against Peter Martyr, desired to make his peace and return, the inducement which he offered to the Archbishop of Canterbury to obtain for him the king’s pardon was that he would write a book in favor of priestly marriage, as he had previously done against it.1225