and Cambridge scarcely less serious than would result, in the present day, from a sudden diversion of those educated at the public schools'. Justice, again, requires us to admit that the condition of any of these societies was very far from being of the kind presented in the unscrupulous exaggerations of the Black Bk. The commissioners, strongly prejudiced though they were and eager to listen to all that might discredit and &fame the monastic character, were yet obliged to allow that there were houses with the administration of which they could find no just fault. Those at Newark, Folkestone, Dover, Ramsey, and not a few others, presented to the most inquisitorial scrutiny a state of discipline, order, and conomy, which it was impossible to gainsay. Leland has kit on record the admiration with which he first beheld the lid structure at Edmundsbury-like a great city, with its brazen gates and towers,-and the no less reverent awe with which he gazed at Glastonbury on the vast assemblage of ancient authors in the library. Although moreover the most zealous and prejudiced members of the Reform party could see in the monastery ely the home of ignorance, the stronghold of obsolete perstitions, and a shelter for vicious and abandoned men, to the great majority of the nation, who had nothing to gain. by the overthrow of these ancient societies, the associations they suggested were of a very different kind. Many a noble had received his education within monastic walls and not a fw had there found shelter with their families in times of deilty and distress. There was scarcely a merchant who A letter sål Iressed by the univer. Bir of Oxford to Sir Thomas More F'am'y in licates both the commencement and the causes of this decline: I was of abbats recalling their nobles, their sons; and ps their young kinsmen. WoodGut:b, n 69. See also Huber's ob W in his English Universi ta 126-9. * Wr♫ t, Sunpression of the MoBoater on, jups M), 93, 94, etc. 1. crte limen intraveram, cum antiquissimorum librorum vel solus conspectus religionem, nescio an stuporem, animo incuteret meo; eaque de causa pedem paullulum sistebam.' De Scriptt. Britt, 1 41. The common people well liked them and generally were very fond of them; because of the hospitality And good housekeeping there used. The inhabitants of these cloisters relieved the poor, raised no rents, took no excessive fines upon renewing of leases; and their noble and had not met there with a welcome and a resting-place when CHAP on his journeys; not a scholar who envied not the treasures of learning there enshrined, the legacy of a less degenerate race. Men could remember how often at the decline of day, as the sunset reddened on the ancient towers, the weary cavalcade had halted at some abbey gate, to find there a hospitality which was seldom otherwise than heartily accorded and was often sumptuous and profuse in character. They could remember how as they had sat at the social board they had listened to and discussed each new item of intelligence, the designs of Wolsey, the machinations of the emperor, the vacillations of the French monarch, and the perplexities and trials, amid all these contending interests and passions, of the Holy Father at Rome; grave themes, varied perhaps by some story none too chaste from the wanton page of Poggio or Boccaccio, until the evening service with its impassioned chant and plaintive Miserere suminoned them to loftier thoughts. To all these familiar experiences there was now an end, and notwithstanding the shouts of exultation with which the work of destruction was urged on, not a few, from the zealous reformer of the sixteenth century to the candid historian of the nineteenth, while admitting that monasticism as a system was obsolete, have yet seen cause to regret that its institutions should have altogether perished'. Thoughtful minds have held, even in these later The total times, that it might be well if some such retreats for the monastie heart-stricken and the desolate still existed among us, where in Eingan those unfitted by temperament or defect for the rude warfare well-built structures adorned the places and countries where they stood. The rich also had here education for their children.' Strype, Memor. Vol. 1, pt. i, c. 46. Henry Stafford, son of the duke of Buckingham, is represented in a letter to king Henry as having been 'fayne to lyve full powerly at boorde in an abbey this four yere's day, wyth his wyff and seven children.' Ellis's Letters (2nd series) 11 21. See also facts cited from the evidence of Robert Aske when in the Tower, Fronde, Hist. of England, 11 501 2; M. II. and the interesting fourteenth chap- 1 See on this point Blunt (J. H.), 3 abolition institut a matter in after time of life, or smitten, it might be, by some irretrievable calamity, which had embittered the cup of worldly intercourse for ever, might yet cast their solitary remaining talent into a common fund, and treading an unbroken and tranquil round of kly duties and devout observances, pass the remainder of their days nearer in thought to heaven and in action more Lpful to man. In the year 1540, a vacancy having occurred in the office of high-steward to the university, the duke of Norfolk was electel to the post. His eldest son, the earl of Surrey, was at the same time united with him in the office. No Dame now stood higher than the father's in the general esteem, and seven years before, the university when soliciting Lis intervention on their behalf against the townsmen, had dated on his still growing fame,-had recalled the prowess which had inflicted at Flodden so deadly a defeat on Scotland, azi declared him, next to the king himself, the chief bulwark and pillar of the state'. His recent victory over the northern rebels' had yet further added to his renown, while his political learings were of a kind that served to conciliate not a few of the party over whom that victory had been gained. His eletion may accordingly be interpreted as of twofold significance: as indicating a sense on the part of the university of the absolute necessity, at this critical juncture, of winning the powerful to the support of its interests, and also a certain action against the influence of the Reform party. The old Jake was no friend to the changes in progress either in letters 1 Neque enim nescimus quantopere Kouni huius salus et incolumitas e tus salute pendeant et sustenton qu sceanium regem ipsum omBaatsens es maximum huius Po ir pozracnlum et columen. Got praeserin iam et in republica vira's tragam cunctis huius regni - sormritatem praestas praesen La tua, a iversus Belicos omnes rumnes et metus hostium; ita dum & in Gallin legatus ageres in♫ tu desyderi im nobis fuit, dum si un nom de Sottorum in nostros from preuractibus rumorem, Norstat.m ducis virtutem prae sentiamque desyderamus; dum recordaremur tuae et fortitudinis et Rei militaris peritiae; maxime vero dum cogitaremus clarissimam tuam de illa gente victoriam, quam ante multos annos ipsorum occiso rege et exercitu omni victo et profligato nobis reportasti.' Letter (written by George Day) from the University to the duke of Norfolk, Oct. 4, 1533. Epistolae Academine, 1 131-2. The duke had halted at Cam bridge with his army when on his way to the north. State Papers, Hen. vi, 1 491, 518, or religion. He had been heard to declare that 'it was merry in England before the new learning came up'; as for the Bible, he never had read it and he never would.' CHAP. 1 versities renounce their alle glance to the l'ope The rupture between the universitics and Rome might The niwell, it is true, have appeared irreparable. In 1536 an Act of du Parliament had required of every person proceeding to any degree in any university of the realm, to make oath before the commissary of such university, 'that he from henceforth shall utterly renounce, refuse, relinquissh or forsake the Bishopp of Rome and his auctorite, power, and jurisdiccion"; while the papal bull, issued two years later, excommunicating Henry in terms, to quote the language of Father Paul, such as 'had never been used by the pontiff's predecessors, nor were ever imitated by his successors',' seemed finally to close the door against all reconciliation between the Holy See and the English Crown. Yet notwithstanding the party Reactiona of reaction were still active and far from despondent, and the Act of the Six Articles had proved their power. Latimer had resigned his see, and was for some time the prisoner of bishop Sampson; while bishop Sampson's confessions when, in 1540, he was himself committed to the Tower, revealed a concerted effort, of which Gardiner, Tunstal, and Stokesley were the chief leaders, for preserving in the English Church the most important doctrines and rites of Catholicism. An outbreak of more than ordinary turbulence at the re-election of Dr Buckmaster to the vice-chancellorship for the year 1539-40 probably indicates the excited state of parties within the university'. symptoms. Cromwell Cromwell had sanctioned the election to the high-steward- Fall of ship and had even designated the duke as the more eligible of two candidates for the honour, but within a few months the hand of Norfolk himself plucked the insignia of the garter from his neck in the council chamber, and another of the chancellors of the university died on the scaffold. 1 Stat. 28 Hen. vi, c. 10, ss. 6 and 7; Cooper, Annals, 1 382. Strype, Memor. Vol. 1, pt. i, c. 13 ad fin. Ibid. Vol. 1, pt. i, c. 42. See A Broyle upon the attempt of D. Glyn the Lawer for the Election of a Vice-Chancellor contrary to the myndes and libertyes of the Regentes, printed in Cooper, Annals, 1 305 6. Cromwell was succeeded by Gardiner, whose tact and compliant character had marked him out as a fit instrument for the accomplishment of the royal designs. He was now high in Henry's favour,-favour however not unmingled with contempt for his too manifest lack of principle'. His rise since the time when he first comes prominently into notice as master of Trinity Hall and a supporter of the royal divorce had been singularly rapid. He had been promoted to the see of Winchester. He had been employed on more than one important state negotiation, and was this very year despatched as ambassador to France. He had taken an active share in the promulgation of the Six Articles, and Melanchthon, pained beyond measure at their character and the harshness of the penalties with which they were enforced, cast on him the chaf blame. That his election as chancellor was, on the Lle, a politic measure, there seems little reason to doubt. He was now in his forty-sixth year, a ripe scholar and a skilful orator, and he subsequently proved himself a jealous guardian of the academic interests and privileges; while alrely the rising talent of the university was beginning to 1-k to him as a judicious patron of struggling merit. Of the Cambridge of 1540 it may probably be said with truth, that never had the need or the desert of her scholars been greater, and St John's, to its lasting honour, may fairly claim the distinction of including among its members at this time a majority of the most able teachers and the most promising students in the university. Roger Ascham, writing about seven years later, declares that from their society went forth the talent which formed the ornament of nearly every other college in the university'; while more than a quarter of a century afterwards, as he recounted the names of those who This trait in Gardiner's charac ter seems to have been soon noted by Hivory a shrewiness; in a letter to an to known individual written in 1536, be says: "we may well perecyne hym to have ostentyd and bostyd hym to brie doone more then in deede he bath, and a coleryd, dowblenes ether to be in hym or in Morres, or in bothe.' Ellis, Orig. Letters (2nd ser.), 11 86. Compare Burnet's statement, that the king used Gardiner not as a counsellor but as a slave.' Burnet-Pocock, 1 401. 2. ex nostro cor tu proficiscuntur, qui reliqua fere singula collegia explent et ornant. Letter to Somerset, Epit. p. 292. |