Cranmer. Paul III. many disgraceful impostures about relics and wonderful HENRY VIII. images were laid bare. The Rood* of Grace, for instance, at Bexley, Kent, which hung its lip when a pilgrim offered silver, but shook its beard merrily at an offering of gold, motions which the multitude attributed to divine power, was shown to be worked by wires. And at Hales, in Gloucestershire, the blood of Christ, which none in mortal sin could see, was a coloured substance in a cunningly contrived vial, visible in one position and invisible in another. The smaller foundations were found to harbour the greatest amount of vice and fraud. Besides which, they were the houses of the friars, the most devoted of the pope's adherents and the busiest opponents of the king's supremacy; and the destruction of them would not greatly affect the powerful classes of society, for younger brothers were provided for in the wealthy abbey, and not in the friar's hostel. Accordingly, in the A.D. 1536. year 1536, an act was passed, under which 376 monasteries, with incomes not exceeding £200. a-year, were suppressed, and their revenues, amounting to about £32,000 a-year, together with their plate and jewels, granted to the king, who secured the support of the nobility by bribing them with grants and sales at easy prices of the sequestered lands.† *The crucifix, and sometimes The lay impropriator origithe image of a saint, was so nated from this practice. called in old English Churches. was more anxious to suppress the smaller foundations than the larger. When were the lesser monasteries suppressed? How did the king secure the acquiescence of the nobility in their suppression? +[Note.] What was the origin of lay impropriation? HENRY VIII. Cranmer. The Paul III. Pilgrimage 42. By the dissolution of the lesser monasteries, it is said that about 10,000 persons became (rather from choice than necessity, for of Grace. they had the option of being transferred to the larger houses,) appellants to public bounty. These persons, traversing the kingdom, excited, by their detail of suffering, extensive dissatisfaction, and public feeling took part with them. The people also sympathised with the inmates of nunneries, some of them ladies of gentle lives and kind deeds, whose charities were necessarily suspended when they were turned adrift in an unfriendly world. A vain attempt to appease the growing discontent was made by an offer to restore thirty of the suppressed houses, the greater part being nunneries. But the storm broke out first in Lincolnshire, and subsequently in Yorkshire, where forty thousand men marched with a crucifix before them, calling their expedition "The Pilgrimage of Grace," and avowing their object to be “the removal of low-born counsellors, the suppression of heresy, and the restitution of the Church." The rebel forces, however, overcome by the temporizing policy of the king's commanders, melted away without a collision; and their leader, Aske, upon a repetition of the outbreak, was beheaded for treason. Some of the abbots and friars were supposed to have been implicated in the Pilgrimage of Grace, which enabled the king so to work upon their fears that many monastic houses were * * Cromwell was the son of a blacksmith at Putney. 42. What was the immediate result of the dissolution of the lesser monasteries? What insurrection was caused thereby? Give an account of the origin, progress, and result of "The Pilgrimage of Grace." Name some emincnt persons who were executed for having taken part in it. surrendered — among them the abbeys of Woburn and HENRY VIII, Burlington, whose abbots were executed for having joined the rebellion. Demolition of Becket's Shrine. A.D. 1537. 43. The shrine* of Thomas Becket, who was slain by some of the officious servants of Henry II., in the cathedral at Canterbury, was the richest and most famous in England. In 1537 Henry seized upon its treasures; and the remains of the prelate were disinterred, arraigned of treason, and dispersed or burnt. This vengeance upon the remains of one so mixed up with papal triumph may possibly be accounted for by the fact, that at this period the pope was openly encouraging the rebellion of Henry's subjects, having published his bulls of excommunication and deposition, which had been suspended since the death of Fisher and More.† He also endeavoured to inflame the kings of Scotland and France against Henry; and Cardinal Pole was despatched to the Netherlands with invitations to the continental sovereigns to aid the rebellion in England. Pole's conduct so enraged Henry, that the Countess of Salisbury, the Cardinal's venerable mother, was ordered to the scaffold, the victim for her son's offence. Dissolution of the larger Monasteries. 44. Not long after the fall of the lesser monasteries, a visitation of the larger houses was set on foot, to inquire into the purity, sincerity, and what was more questionable + See par. 38. *The place where a sacred relic | is deposited. Cranmer. Paul III. 43. When was Becket's shrine demolished? Account for Henry's vengeance upon Becket's remains. What was the conduct of Henry to the mother of Cardinal Pole? 44. What was the object and result of the visitation of the larger Paul III. HENRY VIII. Still, the loyalty of the inmates. The royal designs being Cranmer. very evident, not a few conventual superiors bowed to the coming storm, and made a voluntary cession as the best way of escaping difficulties and securing comfortable annuities. The abbots of Tewkesbury and Bury St. Edmund's were of this class; but the abbots of Reading, Colchester, and Glastonbury, having refused to surrender, paid the forfeit with their lives. Other resignations were obtained by promises of pensions or threats of exposure.* * The number of monasteries suppressed was 555; and in the A.D. 1539. year 1539, an act was passed which gave the king the control of their revenues, amounting to nearly £160,000 a-year. In the following year, a statute, dissolving that half-military, half-monastic fraternity, the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, extinguished the last remnant of English monachism. The Parliament was compliant in the matter of giving the king control over the monastic revenues, in consequence of his expressed intention to consult the public interests in their future application. But six new bishoprics, namely, Westminster, Oxford, Bristol, Gloucester, Chester, and Peterborough, with some aid in the foundation of Trinity College and the building of King's College Chapel, Cambridge, and the establishment of a few grammar schools, completed the list of compensa It is said that the visitors | of Polesworth and Godstow, and could bring no charges of vice or the abbeys of St. Edmondsbury, immorality against the nunneries Tewkesbury, and St. Alban's. monasteries? Name some of the abbots who bowed to the coming storm, and some who resisted it. *[Note.] What were the principal houses against which it is recorded that the visitors could bring no charges? How many monasteries were suppressed? What were the ostensible objects for which the religious houses were granted to the Crown, and how far were those objects tory benefaction. Had Cranmer's* advice been followed, HENRY VIII. fourteen bishoprics, in addition to the six already recorded, would have been erected. Papal precedent for the Dissolution of Monasteries. } 45. Rome itself had furnished a precedent for Henry's attack upon mo nastic institutions. About the year 1517, Wolsey designed some reformation of the clergy, and was desirous of building and endowing two splendid colleges, one at Ipswich, the place of his birth, and the other at Oxford, the place of his academical education. For this purpose Pope Clement VII. granted him a bull, which empowered him to dispense for a certain time with the laws of the Church, and to visit and suppress various monasteries. A number of these, variously stated from 19 to 40, were consequently dissolved, and their revenues applied by Wolsey to the purpose contemplated. Thus Rome herself had been led into the indiscretion of treating monastic property as liable to alienation, when public interest required: and such a requirement was the plea set up when Parliament laid its hands on conventual property. * Cranmer agreed in the dissolution of the monasteries, but did not share in the unwsrthy motives of the ageuts by which it was effected. His object was to annihilate abuses of which these institutions were the incorrigible patrons; but he considered their revenues a sacred treasure, to be Cranmer. realised? *[Note.] What were Cranmer's plans for the appropriation of the property derived from the monasteries? What was the conduct of Latimer? 45. Had Henry VIII. any precedent for his attack upon the monasteries? |