204, that one member, Sir Ralph Bagnal, refused to concur in the act abolishing the supremacy. The queen, however, in her letter to Cardinal Pole, says of this repeal: "Quod non sine contentione, disputatione acri, et summo labore fidelium factum est." Lingard, Carte, Philips's _Life of Pole_. Noailles speaks repeatedly of the strength of the protestant party, and of the enmity which the English nation, as he expresses it, bore to the pope. But the aversion to the marriage with Philip, and dread of falling under the yoke of Spain, was common to both religions, with the exception of a few mere bigots to the church of Rome.
[66] Noailles, vol. 5, _passim_.
[67] Strype, ii. 394.
[68] Strype, iii. 155; Burnet, ii. 228.
[69] Burnet, ii. 262, 277.
[70] Noailles, v. 190. Of the truth of this plot there can be no rational ground to doubt; even Dr. Lingard has nothing to advance against it but the assertion of Mary's counsellors, the Pagets and Arundels, the most worthless of mankind. We are, in fact, greatly indebted to Noailles for his spirited activity, which contributed, in a high degree, to secure both the protestant religion and the national independence of our ancestors.
[71] Henry VII. first established a band of fifty archers to wait on him. Henry VIII. had fifty horse-guards, each with an archer, demilance and couteiller, like the gendarmerie of France; but on account, probably, of the expense it occasioned, their equipment being too magnificent, this soon was given up.
[72] _View of Middle Ages_, ch. 8. I must here acknowledge, that I did not make the requisite distinction between the concilium secretum, or privy council of state, and the concilium ordinarium, as Lord Hale calls it, which alone exercised jurisdiction.
[73] _Commonwealth of England_, book 3, c. 1. The statute 26 H. 8, c. 4 enacts, that if a jury in Wales acquit a felon, contrary to good and pregnant evidence, or otherwise misbehave themselves, the judge may bind them to appear before the president and council of the Welsh marches.
The partiality of Welsh jurors was notorious in that age; and the reproach has not quite ceased.
[74] _State Trials_, i. 901; Strype, ii. 120. In a letter to the Duke of Norfolk (_Hardwicke Papers_, i. 46) at the time of the Yorkshire rebellion in 1536, he is directed to question the jury who had acquitted a particular person, in order to discover their motive. Norfolk seems to have objected to this for a good reason, "least the fear thereof might trouble others in the like case." But it may not be uncandid to ascribe this rather to a leaning towards the insurgents than a constitutional principle.
[75] _Hale's Jurisdiction of the Lords' House_, p. 5. Coke, 4th Inst.
65, where we have the following passage: "So this court [the court of star-chamber, as the concilium was then called] being holden coram rege et concilio, it is, or may be, compounded of three several councils; that is to say, of the lords and others of his majesty's privy council, always judges without appointment, as before it appeareth. 2. The judges of either bench and barons of the exchequer are of the king's council, for matters of law, etc., and the two chief justices, or in their absence other two justices, are standing judges of this court. 3. The lords of parliament are properly de magno concilio regis; but neither those, not being of the king's privy council, nor any of the rest of the judges or barons of the exchequer are standing judges of the court." But Hudson, in his _Treatise of the Court of Star-chamber_, written about the end of James's reign, inclines to think that all peers had a right of sitting in the court of star-chamber; there being several instances where some who were not of the council of state were present and gave judgment, as in the case of Mr. Davison, "and how they were complete judges unsworn, if not by their native right, I cannot comprehend; for surely the calling of them in that case was not made legitimate by any act of parliament; neither without their right were they more apt to be judges than any other inferior persons in the kingdom; and yet I doubt not but it resteth in the king's pleasure to restrain any man from that table, as well as he may any of his council from the board."
_Collectanea Juridica_, ii. p. 24. He says also, that it was demurrable for a bill to pray process against the defendant, to appear before the king and his privy council. _Ibid._
[76] The privy council sometimes met in the star-chamber, and made orders. See one in 18 H. 6, Harl. MSS. Catalogue, N. 1878, fol. 20. So the statute, 21 H. 8, c. 16, recites a decree _by the king's council in his star-chamber_, that no alien artificer shall keep more than two alien servants, and other matters of the same kind. This could no way belong to the court of star-chamber, which was a judicial tribunal.
It should be remarked, though not to our immediate purpose, that this decree was supposed to require an act of parliament for its confirmation; so far was the government of Henry VIII. from arrogating a legislative power in matters of private right.
[77] Lord Hale thinks that the jurisdiction of the council was gradually "brought into great disuse, though there remain some straggling footsteps of their proceedings till near 3 H. 7."--P. 38. "The continual complaints of the commons against the proceedings before the council in causes civil or criminal, although they did not always attain their concession, yet brought a disreputation upon the proceedings of the council, as contrary to Magna Charta and the known laws."--P. 39. He seems to admit afterwards, however, that many instances of proceedings before them in criminal causes might be added to those mentioned by Lord Coke. P. 43.
The paucity of records about the time of Edward IV. renders the negative argument rather weak; but, from the expression of Sir Thomas Smith in the text, it may perhaps be inferred that the council had intermitted in a considerable degree, though not absolutely disused, their exercise of jurisdiction for some time before the accession of the house of Tudor.
Mr. Brodie, in his _History of the British Empire under Charles I._, i.
158, has treated at considerable length, and with much acuteness, this subject of the antiquity of the star-chamber. I do not coincide in all his positions; but the only one very important, is that wherein we fully agree, that its jurisdiction was chiefly usurped, as well as tyrannical.
I will here observe that this part of our ancient constitutional history is likely to be elucidated by a friend of my own, who has already given evidence to the world of his singular competence for such an undertaking, and who unites, with all the learning and diligence of Spelman, Prynne, and Madox, an acuteness and vivacity of intellect which none of those writers possessed.
[78] _Commonwealth of England_, book 3, c. 4. We find Sir Robert Sheffield in 1517 "put into the Tower again for the complaint he made to the king of my lord cardinal." Lodge's _Illustrations_, i. p. 27. See also Hall, p. 585, for Wolsey's strictness in punishing the "lords, knights, and men of all sorts, for riots, bearing, and maintenance."
[79] Plowden's _Commentaries,_ 393. In the year-book itself, 8 H. 7, pl.
ult. the word star-chamber is not used. It is held in this case, that the chancellor, treasurer, and privy-seal were the only judges, and the rest but assistants. Coke, 4 Inst. 62, denies this to be law; but on no better grounds than that the practice of the star-chamber, that is, of a different tribunal, was not such.
[80] _Hist. of Henry VII._ in Bacon's works, ii. p. 290.
[81] The result of what has been said in the last pages may be summed up in a few propositions. 1. The court erected by the statute of 3 Henry VII. was not the court of star-chamber. 2. This court by the statute subsisted in full force till beyond the middle of Henry VIII.'s reign, but not long afterwards went into disuse. 3. The court of star-chamber was the old concilium ordinarium, against whose jurisdiction many statutes had been enacted from the time of Edward III. 4. No part of the jurisdiction exercised by the star-chamber could be maintained on the authority of the statute of Henry VII.
[82] Burnet, ii. 324.
CHAPTER II
ON THE ENGLISH CHURCH UNDER HENRY VIII., EDWARD VI., AND MARY
REFORMATION. _State of public opinion as to religion._--No revolution has ever been more gradually prepared than that which separated almost one-half of Europe from the communion of the Roman see; nor were Luther and Zuingle any more than occasional instruments of that change which, had they never existed, would at no great distance of time have been effected under the names of some other reformers. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the learned doubtfully and with caution, the ignorant with zeal and eagerness, were tending to depart from the faith and rites which authority prescribed. But probably not even Germany was so far advanced on this course as England. Almost a hundred and fifty years before Luther, nearly the same doctrines as he taught had been maintained by Wicliffe, whose disciples, usually called Lollards, lasted as a numerous, though obscure and proscribed sect, till, aided by the confluence of foreign streams, they swelled into the protestant church of England. We hear indeed little of them during some part of the fifteenth century; for they generally shunned persecution; and it is chiefly through records of persecution that we learn the existence of heretics. But immediately before the name of Luther was known, they seem to have become more numerous, or to have attracted more attention; since several persons were burned for heresy, and others abjured their errors, in the first years of Henry VIII.'s reign. Some of these (as usual among ignorant men engaging in religious speculations) are charged with very absurd notions; but it is not so material to observe their particular tenets as the general fact, that an inquisitive and sectarian spirit had begun to prevail.
Those who took little interest in theological questions, or who retained an attachment to the faith in which they had been educated, were in general not less offended than the Lollards themselves with the inordinate opulence and encroaching temper of the clergy. It had been for two or three centuries the policy of our lawyers to restrain these within some bounds. No ecclesiastical privilege had occasioned such dispute, or proved so mischievous, as the immunity of all tonsured persons from civil punishment for crimes. It was a material improvement in the law under Henry VI. that, instead of being instantly claimed by the bishop on their arrest for any criminal charge, they were compelled to plead their privilege at their arraignment, or after conviction.
Henry VII. carried this much farther, by enacting that clerks convicted of felony should be burned in the hand. And in 1513 (4 H. 8), the benefit of clergy was entirely taken away from murderers and highway robbers. An exemption was still made for priests, deacons, and subdeacons. But this was not sufficient to satisfy the church, who had been accustomed to shield under the mantle of her immunity a vast number of persons in the lower degrees of orders, or without any orders at all; and had owed no small part of her influence to those who derived so important a benefit from her protection. Hence, besides violent language in preaching against this statute, the convocation attacked one Doctor Standish, who had denied the divine right of clerks to their exemption from temporal jurisdiction. The temporal courts naturally defended Standish; and the parliament addressed the king to support him against the malice of his persecutors. Henry, after a full debate between the opposite parties in his presence, thought his prerogative concerned in taking the same side; and the clergy sustained a mortifying defeat.
About the same time, a citizen of London named Hun, having been confined on a charge of heresy in the bishop's prison, was found hanged in his chamber; and though this was asserted to be his own act, yet the bishop's chancellor was indicted for the murder on such vehement presumptions, that he would infallibly have been convicted, had the attorney-general thought fit to proceed in the trial. This occurring at the same time with the affair of Standish, furnished each party with an argument; for the clergy maintained that they should have no chance of justice in a temporal court; one of the bishops declaring, that the London juries were so prejudiced against the church, that they would find Abel guilty of the murder of Cain. Such an admission is of more consequence than whether Hun died by his own hands, or those of a clergyman; and the story is chiefly worth remembering, as it illustrates the popular disposition towards those who had once been the objects of reverence.[83]
_Henry VIII.'s controversy with Luther._--Such was the temper of England when Martin Luther threw down his gauntlet of defiance against the ancient hierarchy of the catholic church. But, ripe as a great portion of the people might be to applaud the efforts of this reformer, they were viewed with no approbation by their sovereign. Henry had acquired a fair portion of theological learning, and on reading one of Luther's treatises, was not only shocked at its tenets, but undertook to confute them in a formal answer.[84] Kings who divest themselves of their robes to mingle among polemical writers, have not perhaps a claim to much deference from strangers; and Luther, intoxicated with arrogance, and deeming himself a more prominent individual among the human species than any monarch, treated Henry, in replying to his book, with the rudeness that characterised his temper. A few years afterwards, indeed, he thought proper to write a letter of apology for the language he had held towards the king; but this letter, a strange medley of abjectness and impertinence, excited only contempt in Henry, and was published by him with a severe commentary.[85] Whatever apprehension therefore for the future might be grounded on the humour of the nation, no king in Europe appeared so steadfast in his allegiance to Rome as Henry VIII. at the moment when a storm sprang up that broke the chain for ever.
_His divorce from Catherine._--It is certain that Henry's marriage with his brother's widow was unsupported by any precedent and that, although the pope's dispensation might pass for a cure of all defects, it had been originally considered by many persons in a very different light from those unions which are merely prohibited by the canons. He himself, on coming to the age of fourteen, entered a protest against the marriage which had been celebrated more than two years before, and declared his intention not to confirm it; an act which must naturally be ascribed to his father.[86] It is true that in this very instrument we find no mention of the impediment on the score of affinity; yet it is hard to suggest any other objection, and possibly a common form had been adopted in drawing up the protest. He did not cohabit with Catherine during his father's lifetime. Upon his own accession, he was remarried to her; and it does not appear manifest at what time his scruples began, nor whether they preceded his passion for Anne Boleyn.[87] This, however, seems the more probable supposition; yet there can be little doubt, that weariness of Catherine's person, a woman considerably older than himself and unlikely to bear more children, had a far greater effect on his conscience than the study of Thomas Aquinas or any other theologian. It by no means follows from hence that, according to the casuistry of the catholic church and the principles of the canon law, the merits of that famous process were so much against Henry, as out of dislike to him and pity for his queen we are apt to imagine, and as the writers of that persuasion have subsequently assumed.
It would be unnecessary to repeat, what is told by so many historians, the vacillating and evasive behaviour of Clement VII., the assurances he gave the king, and the arts with which he receded from them, the unfinished trial in England before his delegates, Campegio and Wolsey, the opinions obtained from foreign universities in the king's favour, not always without a little bribery,[88] and those of the same import at home, not given without a little intimidation, or the tedious continuance of the process after its adjournment to Rome. More than five years had elapsed from the first application to the pope, before Henry, though by nature the most uncontrollable of mankind, though irritated by perpetual chicanery and breach of promise, though stimulated by impatient love, presumed to set at nought the jurisdiction to which he had submitted, by a marriage with Anne. Even this was a furtive step; and it was not till compelled by the consequences that he avowed her as his wife, and was finally divorced from Catherine by a sentence of nullity, which would more decently, no doubt, have preceded his second marriage.[89] But, determined as his mind had become, it was plainly impossible for Clement to have conciliated him by anything short of a decision, which he could not utter without the loss of the emperor's favour and the ruin of his own family's interests in Italy. And even for less selfish reasons, it was an extremely embarrassing measure for the pope, in the critical circumstances of that age, to set aside a dispensation granted by his predecessor; knowing that, however erroneous allegations of fact contained therein might serve for an outward pretext, yet the principle on which the divorce was commonly supported in Europe, went generally to restrain the dispensing power of the holy see. Hence it may seem very doubtful whether the treaty which was afterwards partially renewed through the mediation of Francis I., during his interview with the pope at Nice about the end of 1533, would have led to a restoration of amity through the only possible means; when we consider the weight of the imperial party in the conclave, the discredit that so notorious a submission would have thrown on the church, and, above all, the precarious condition of the Medici at Florence in case of a rupture with Charles V. It was more probably the aim of Clement to delude Henry once more by his promises; but this was prevented by the more violent measure into which the cardinals forced him, of a definitive sentence in favour of Catherine, whom the king was required under pain of excommunication to take back as his wife. This sentence of the 23rd of March 1534, proved a declaration of interminable war; and the king, who, in consequence of the hopes held out to him by Francis, had already despatched an envoy to Rome with his submission to what the pope should decide, now resolved to break off all intercourse for ever, and trust to his own prerogative and power over his subjects for securing the succession to the crown in the line which he designed. It was doubtless a regard to this consideration that put him upon his last overtures for an amicable settlement with the court of Rome.[90]
But long before this final cessation of intercourse with that court, Henry had entered upon a course of measures which would have opposed fresh obstacles to a renewal of the connection. He had found a great part of his subjects in a disposition to go beyond all he could wish in sustaining his quarrel, not, in this instance, from mere terror, but because a jealousy of ecclesiastical power, and of the Roman court, had long been a sort of national sentiment in England. The pope's avocation of the process to Rome, by which his duplicity and alienation from the king's side was made evident, and the disgrace of Wolsey, took place in the summer of 1529. The parliament which met soon afterwards was continued through several sessions (an unusual circumstance), till it completed the separation of this kingdom from the supremacy of Rome. In the progress of ecclesiastical usurpation, the papal and episcopal powers had lent mutual support to each other; both consequently were involved in the same odium, and had become the object of restrictions in a similar spirit. Warm attacks were made on the clergy by speeches in the Commons, which Bishop Fisher severely reprehended in the upper house. This provoked the Commons to send a complaint to the king by their speaker, demanding reparation; and Fisher explained away the words that had given offence. An act passed to limit the fees on probates of wills, a mode of ecclesiastical extortion much complained of, and upon mortuaries.[91] The next proceeding was of a far more serious nature.
It was pretended, that Wolsey's exercise of authority as papal legate contravened a statute of Richard II., and that both himself and the whole body of the clergy, by their submission to him, had incurred the penalties of a praemunire, that is, the forfeiture of their movable estate, besides imprisonment at discretion. These old statutes in restraint of the papal jurisdiction had been so little regarded, and so many legates had acted in England without objection, that Henry's prosecution of the church on this occasion was extremely harsh and unfair. The clergy, however, now felt themselves to be the weaker party.
In convocation they implored the king's clemency, and obtained it by paying a large sum of money. In their petition he was styled the protector and supreme head of the church and clergy of England. Many of that body were staggered at the unexpected introduction of a title that seemed to strike at the supremacy they had always acknowledged in the Roman see. And in the end it passed only with a very suspicious qualification, "so far as is permitted by the law of Christ." Henry had previously given the pope several intimations that he could proceed in his divorce without him. For, besides a strong remonstrance by letter from the temporal peers as well as bishops against the procrastination of sentence in so just a suit, the opinions of English and foreign universities had been laid before both houses of parliament and of convocation, and the divorce approved without difficulty in the former, and by a great majority in the latter. These proceedings took place in the first months of 1531, while the king's ambassadors at Rome were still pressing for a favourable sentence, though with diminished hopes.
Next year the annates, or first fruits of benefices, a constant source of discord between the nations of Europe, and their spiritual chief, were taken away by act of parliament, but with a remarkable condition, that if the pope would either abolish the payment of annates, or reduce them to a moderate burthen, the king might declare before next session, by letters patent, whether this act, or any part of it, should be observed. It was accordingly confirmed by letters patent more than a year after it received the royal assent.
It is difficult for us to determine whether the pope, by conceding to Henry the great object of his solicitude, could in this stage have not only arrested the progress of the schism, but recovered his former ascendency over the English church and kingdom. But probably he could not have done so in its full extent. Sir Thomas More, who had rather complied than concurred with the proceedings for a divorce, though his acceptance of the great seal on Wolsey's disgrace would have been inconsistent with his character, had he been altogether opposed in conscience to the king's measures, now thought it necessary to resign, when the papal authority was steadily, though gradually, assailed.[92]
In the next session an act was passed to take away all appeals to Rome from ecclesiastical courts; which annihilated at one stroke the jurisdiction built on long usage and on the authority of the false decretals. This law rendered the king's second marriage, which had preceded it, secure from being annulled by the papal court. Henry, however, still advanced, very cautiously, and on the death of Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, not long before this time, applied to Rome for the usual bulls in behalf of Cranmer, whom he nominated to the vacant see. These were the last bulls obtained, and probably the last instance of any exercise of the papal supremacy in this reign. An act followed in the next session, that bishops elected by their chapter on a royal recommendation, should be consecrated, and archbishops receive the pall, without suing for the pope's bulls. All dispensations and licences hitherto granted by that court were set aside by another statute, and the power of issuing them in lawful cases transferred to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The king is in this act recited to be the supreme head of the church of England, as the clergy had two years before acknowledged in convocation. But this title was not formally declared by parliament to appertain to the Crown till the ensuing session of parliament.[93]
_Separation from the Church of Rome._--By these means was the church of England altogether emancipated from the superiority of that of Rome. For as to the pope's merely spiritual primacy and authority in matters of faith, which are, or at least were, defended by catholics of the Gallican or Cisalpine school on quite different grounds from his jurisdiction or his legislatorial power in points of discipline, they seem to have attracted little peculiar attention at the time, and to have dropped off as a dead branch, when the axe had lopped the fibres that gave it nourishment. Like other momentous revolutions, this divided the judgment and feelings of the nation. In the previous affair of Catherine's divorce, generous minds were more influenced by the rigour and indignity of her treatment than by the king's inclinations, or the venal opinions of foreign doctors in law. Bellay, Bishop of Bayonne, the French ambassador at London, wrote home in 1528, that a revolt was apprehended from the general unpopularity of the divorce.[94] Much difficulty was found in procuring the judgments of Oxford and Cambridge against the marriage; which was effected in the former case, as is said, by excluding the masters of arts, the younger and less worldly part of the university, from their right of suffrage. Even so late as 1532, in the pliant House of Commons, a member had the boldness to move an address to the king, that he would take back his wife. And this temper of the people seems to have been the great inducement with Henry to postpone any sentence by a domestic jurisdiction, so long as a chance of the pope's sanction remained.
The aversion entertained by a large part of the community, and especially of the clerical order, towards the divorce, was not perhaps so generally founded upon motives of justice and compassion, as on the obvious tendency which its prosecution latterly manifested to bring about a separation from Rome. Though the principal Lutherans of Germany were far less favourably disposed to the king in their opinions on this subject than the catholic theologians, holding that the prohibition of marrying a brother's widow in the Levitical law was not binding on Christians, or at least that the marriage ought not to be annulled after so many years' continuance;[95] yet in England the interests of Anne Boleyn and of the Reformation were considered as the same. She was herself strongly suspected of an inclination to the new tenets; and her friend Cranmer had been the most active person both in promoting the divorce, and the recognition of the king's supremacy. The latter was, as I imagine, by no means unacceptable to the nobility and gentry, who saw in it the only effectual method of cutting off the papal exactions that had so long impoverished the realm; nor yet to the citizens of London, and other large towns, who, with the same dislike of the Roman court, had begun to acquire some taste for the protestant doctrine. But the common people, especially in remote counties, had been used to an implicit reverence for the holy see, and had suffered comparatively little by its impositions. They looked up also to their own teachers as guides in faith; and the main body of the clergy was certainly very reluctant to tear themselves, at the pleasure of a disappointed monarch, in the most dangerous crisis of religion, from the bosom of catholic unity.[96] They complied indeed with all the measures of government far more than men of rigid conscience could have endured to do; but many who wanted the courage of More and Fisher, were not far removed from their way of thinking.[97] This repugnance to so great an alteration showed itself, above all, in the monastic orders, some of whom by wealth, hospitality, and long-established dignity, others by activity in preaching and confessing, enjoyed a very considerable influence over the poorer class. But they had to deal with a sovereign, whose policy as well as temper dictated that he had no safety but in advancing; and their disaffection to his government, while it overwhelmed them in ruin, produced a second grand innovation in the ecclesiastical polity of England.
_Dissolution of 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. Though the statutes of mortmain under Edward I. and Edward III. had put some obstacle to its increase, yet as these were eluded by licences of alienation, a larger proportion of landed wealth was constantly accumulating, in hands which lost nothing that they had grasped.[98] A writer much inclined to partiality towards the monasteries says that they held not one-fifth part of the kingdom; no insignificant patrimony! He adds, what may probably be true, that through granting easy leases, they did not enjoy more than one-tenth in value.[99] These vast possessions were very unequally distributed among four or five hundred monasteries. Some abbots, as those of Reading, Glastonbury, and Battle, lived in princely splendour, and were in every sense the spiritual peers and magnates of the realm. In other foundations, the revenues did little more than afford a subsistence for the monks, and defray the needful expenses. 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.[100] This great minister, though not perhaps very rigid as to the morality of the church, was the first who set an example of reforming monastic foundations in the most efficacious manner, by converting their revenues to different purposes. 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.[101] 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. 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 subject's 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. For such it surely was, under a system of government which rested so much on antiquity, and in spite of the peculiar sacredness which the English attach to all freehold property, to annihilate so many prescriptive baronial tenures, the possessors whereof composed more than a third part of the House of Lords, and to subject so many estates which the law had rendered inalienable, to maxims of escheat and forfeiture that had never been held applicable to their tenure. But for this purpose 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 vicegerent of the king's ecclesiastical supremacy, many things were done in an arbitrary manner, and much was unfairly represented.[102] 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. It is always to be remembered that the vices to which they bear witness, are not only probable from the nature of such foundations, but are imputed to them by the most respectable writers of preceding ages. Nor do I find that the reports of this visitation were impeached for general falsehood in that age, whatever exaggeration there might be in particular cases.
And surely the commendation bestowed on some religious houses as pure and unexceptionable, may afford a presumption that the censure of others was not an indiscriminate prejudging of their merits.[103]
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 three hundred and seventy-six, and their estates vested in the crown. This summary spoliation led to the great northern rebellion soon afterwards.
It was, in fact, not merely to wound the people's strongest impressions of religion, and especially those connected with their departed friends, for whose souls prayers were offered in the monasteries, but to deprive the indigent, in many places, of succour, and the better rank of hospitable reception. This of course was experienced in a far greater degree at the dissolution of the larger monasteries, which took place in 1540. But, Henry having entirely subdued the rebellion, and being now exceedingly dreaded by both the religious parties, this measure produced no open resistance; though there seems to have been less pretext for it on the score of immorality and neglect of discipline than was found for abolishing the smaller convents.[104] These great foundations were all surrendered; a few excepted, which, against every principle of received law, were held to fall by the attainder of their abbots for high treason. Parliament had only to confirm the king's title arising out of these surrenders and forfeitures. Some historians assert the monks to have been turned adrift with a small sum of money. But it rather appears that they generally received pensions not inadequate, and which are said to have been pretty faithfully paid.[105] These however were voluntary gifts on the part of the Crown. For the parliament which dissolved the monastic foundations, while it took abundant care to preserve any rights of property which private persons might enjoy over the estates thus escheated to the Crown, vouchsafed not a word towards securing the slightest compensation to the dispossessed owners.
The fall of the mitred abbots changed the proportions of the two estates which constitute the upper house of parliament. Though the number of abbots and priors to whom writs of summons were directed varied considerably in different parliaments, they always, joined to the twenty-one bishops, preponderated over the temporal peers.[106] It was no longer possible for the prelacy to offer an efficacious opposition to the reformation they abhorred. Their own baronial tenure, their high dignity as legislative counsellors of the land, remained; but, one branch as ancient and venerable as their own thus lopped off, the spiritual aristocracy was reduced to play a very secondary part in the councils of the nation. Nor could the protestant religion have easily been established by legal methods under Edward and Elizabeth without this previous destruction of the monasteries. Those who, professing an attachment to that religion, have swollen the clamour of its adversaries against the dissolution of foundations that existed only for the sake of a different faith and worship, seem to me not very consistent or enlightened reasoners. In some, the love of antiquity produces a sort of fanciful illusion; and the very sight of those buildings, so magnificent in their prosperous hour, so beautiful even in their present ruin, begets a sympathy for those who founded and inhabited them. In many, the violent courses of confiscation and attainder which accompanied this great revolution excite so just an indignation, that they either forget to ask whether the end might not have been reached by more laudable means, or condemn that end itself either as sacrilege, or at least as an atrocious violation of the rights of property. Others again, who acknowledge that the monastic discipline cannot be reconciled with the modern system of religion, or with public utility, lament only that these ample endowments were not bestowed upon ecclesiastical corporations, freed from the monkish cowl, but still belonging to that spiritual profession to whose use they were originally consecrated. And it was a very natural theme of complaint at the time, that such abundant revenues as might have sustained the dignity of the crown and supplied the means of public defence without burthening the subject, had served little other purpose than that of swelling the fortunes of rapacious courtiers, and had left the king as necessitous and craving as before.
Notwithstanding these various censures, I must own myself of opinion, both that the abolition of monastic institutions might have been conducted in a manner consonant to justice as well as policy, and that Henry's profuse alienation of the abbey lands, however illaudable in its motive, has proved upon the whole more beneficial to England than any other disposition would have turned out. I cannot, until some broad principle is made more obvious than it ever has yet been, do such violence to all common notions on the subject, as to attach an equal inviolability to private and corporate property. The law of hereditary succession, as ancient and universal as that of property itself, the law of testamentary disposition, the complement of the former, so long established in most countries as to seem a natural right, have invested the individual possessor of the soil with such a fictitious immortality, such anticipated enjoyment, as it were, of futurity, that his perpetual ownership could not be limited to the term of his own existence, without what he would justly feel as a real deprivation of property. Nor are the expectancies of children, or other probable heirs, less real possessions, which it is a hardship, if not an absolute injury, to defeat. Yet even this hereditary claim is set aside by the laws of forfeiture, which have almost everywhere prevailed. But in estates held, as we call it, in mortmain, there is no intercommunity, no natural privity of interest, between the present possessor and those who may succeed him; and as the former cannot have any pretext for complaint, if, his own rights being preserved, the legislature should alter the course of transmission after his decease, so neither is any hardship sustained by others, unless their succession has been already designated or rendered probable. Corporate property therefore appears to stand on a very different footing from that of private individuals; and while all infringements of the established privileges of the latter are to be sedulously avoided, and held justifiable only by the strongest motives of public expediency, we cannot but admit the full right of the legislature to new mould and regulate the former in all that does not involve existing interests upon far slighter reasons of convenience. If Henry had been content with prohibiting the profession of religious persons for the future, and had gradually diverted their revenues instead of violently confiscating them, no protestant could have found it easy to censure his policy.
It is indeed impossible to feel too much indignation at the spirit in which these proceedings were conducted. Besides the hardship sustained by so many persons turned loose upon society for whose occupations they were unfit, the indiscriminate destruction of convents produced several public mischiefs. The visitors themselves strongly interceded for the nunnery of Godstow, as irreproachable managed, and an excellent place of education; and no doubt some other foundations should have been preserved for the same reason. Latimer, who could not have a prejudice on that side, begged earnestly that the priory of Malvern might be spared, for the maintenance of preaching and hospitality. It was urged for Hexham abbey that, there not being a house for many miles in that part of England, the country would be in danger of going to waste.[107]
And the total want of inns in many parts of the kingdom must have rendered the loss of these hospitable places of reception a serious grievance. These and probably other reasons ought to have checked the destroying spirit of reform in its career, and suggested to Henry's counsellors that a few years would not be ill consumed in contriving new methods of attaining the beneficial effects which monastic institutions had not failed to produce, and in preparing the people's minds for so important an innovation.
The suppression of monasteries poured in an instant such a torrent of wealth upon the crown, as has seldom been equalled in any country by the confiscations following a subdued rebellion. The clear yearly value was rated at 131,607; but was in reality, if we believe Burnet, ten times as great; the courtiers undervaluing those estates, in order to obtain grants or sales of them more easily. It is certain, however, that Burnet's supposition errs extravagantly on the other side.[108] The movables of the smaller monasteries alone were reckoned at 100,000; and, as the rents of these were less than a fourth of the whole, we may calculate the aggregate value of movable wealth in the same proportion.
All this was enough to dazzle a more prudent mind than that of Henry, and to inspire those sanguine dreams of inexhaustible affluence with which private men are so often filled by sudden prosperity.
The monastic rule of life being thus abrogated, as neither conformable to pure religion nor to policy, it is to be considered, to what uses these immense endowments ought to have been applied. There are some, perhaps, who may be of opinion that the original founders of monasteries, or those who had afterwards bestowed lands on them, having annexed to their grants an implied condition of the continuance of certain devotional services, and especially of prayers for the repose of their souls, it were but equitable that, if the legislature rendered the performance of this condition impossible, their heirs should re-enter upon the lands that would not have been alienated from them on any other account. But, without adverting to the difficulty in many cases of ascertaining the lawful heir, it might be answered that the donors had absolutely divested themselves of all interest in their grants, and that it was more consonant to the analogy of law to treat these estates as escheats or vacant possessions, devolving to the sovereign, than to imagine a right of reversion that no party had ever contemplated. There was indeed a class of persons, very different from the founders of monasteries, to whom restitution was due. A large proportion of conventual revenues arose out of parochial tithes, diverted from the legitimate object of maintaining the incumbent to swell the pomp of some remote abbot. These impropriations were in no one instance, I believe, restored to the parochial clergy, and have passed either into the hands of laymen, or of bishops and other ecclesiastical persons, who were frequently compelled by the Tudor princes to take them in exchange for lands.[109] It was not in the spirit of Henry's policy, or in that of the times, to preserve much of these revenues to the church, though he had designed to allot 18,000 a year for eighteen new sees, of which he only erected six with far inferior endowments. Nor was he much better inclined to husband them for public exigencies, although more than sufficient to make the Crown independent of parliamentary aid. It may perhaps be reckoned a providential circumstance that his thoughtless humour should have rejected the obvious means of establishing an uncontrollable despotism, by rendering unnecessary the only exertion of power which his subjects were likely to withstand. Henry VII. would probably have followed a very different course. Large sums, however, are said to have been expended in the repair of highways, and in fortifying ports in the Channel.[110] But the greater part was dissipated in profuse grants to the courtiers, who frequently contrived to veil their acquisitions under cover of a purchase from the crown. It has been surmised that Cromwell, in his desire to promote the Reformation, advised the king to make this partition of abbey lands among the nobles and gentry, either by grant, or by sale on easy terms, that, being thus bound by the sure ties of private interest, they might always oppose any return towards the dominion of Rome.[111] In Mary's reign accordingly her parliament, so obsequious in all matters of religion, adhered with a firm grasp to the possession of church lands; nor could the papal supremacy be re-established until a sanction was given to their enjoyment. And we may ascribe part of the zeal of the same class in bringing back and preserving the reformed church under Elizabeth to a similar motive; not that these gentlemen were hypocritical pretenders to a belief they did not entertain, but that, according to the general laws of human nature, they gave a readier reception to truths which made their estates more secure.