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that these small morsels to so many mouths should satisfy their hunger, but only intending to give them a taste of the sweetness of abbey-lands. And here papists plentifully rail upon him in scattering these lands all abroad, that if any should be so scrupulous as to find fault with the fact, a general guiltiness should amount unto innocence. 66 Thus," say they, "there is no fear that a man shall be condemned for felony, who hath so many receivers in the county; that scarcely a judge can sit, and surely no jury can be empanneled upon him, saving such who had been parties with

him."

No fewer than three hundred seventy-five convents (as Sanders doth account them) were dissolved at this time. Sure I am, none was left standing in the whole diocess of Bangor, where no foundation was valued at full seventy pounds per annum.*

9-12. Why the King cajoleth the great Monasteries. Specious Uses pretended on heavy Penalties. Such Penalties gra

ciously repealed by King James. Some grudge at so great a Grant.

We must not forget how, in the foresaid preamble, the king fairly claweth the great monasteries; wherein, saith he, “religion, thanks be to God, is right well kept and observed;" though he clawed them soon after in another acceptation. The truth is, king Henry could not suppress the lesser abbeys but by the consent of the greater abbots, whereof twenty-six (as barons) voted in the parliament, who mollified them by this commendation into a concurrence with his desire.

However, most specious uses were pretended, (though few perchance had faith firm enough to believe their full performance,) "that all should be done to the pleasure of Almighty God, and for the honour of the realm." And particular care is taken in the statute, as it is printed, "for the reservation of many rents and services, corrodies, and pensions to founders, donors, and benefactors." Order also was taken, "that those to whom abbey-lands were passed, should keep, or cause to be kept, a continual house and household in the same site or precinct." They were also "to occupy yearly as much of the domains in tillage as the abbots did, or their farmers under them, within the time of twenty years next before this Act, otherwise forfeiting to the king's Highness for every month so offending £6. 13s. 4d. to be recovered to his use in any of his courts of record." The arrears whereof, if rigorously exacted, would amount to a vast sum from such offenders, whose hospitality was contracted to a shepherd and his dog; neither * See SPEED'S " Catalogue of Valuations."

relieving those that would work, by industry; nor such who could not work, by their charity.

These penalties stood in full force above eighty years; namely, until the twenty-first of king James, when by Act of Parliament they were repealed. Indeed, such who are obnoxious to penal statutes are only innocent by courtesy, and may be made guilty at their prince's pleasure. And though such statutes may be dormant as disused, they are never dead till revoked, seeing commonly princes call on such statutes when themselves are called on by their necessities. Many of the English gentry knew themselves subject to such penalties, when, instead of maintaining tillage, [they] had converted the granges of abbeys into inclosures; and, therefore, provided for their own safety, when they wrought the king to a revocation of those statutes.*

But the courtiers grudged at this grant and great indulgence given by the king without any valuable compensation, some sticking not to say, that hereby the king at once gave his subjects more than ever they gave him in subsidies, benevolences, contributions, or any other way whatsoever, all the time of his reign; which if so, let no man's eye be evil, because the king's was so good to his subjects.

V. THE NORTHERN REBELLION OCCASIONED BY THIS DISSOLUTION.

1-4. Northern Rebellion, begun, suppressed, punished; excused by Sanders unjustly.

WHEN all in the school are equally guilty, and the master beginneth at the bottom to correct the least boys first, no wonder if those in the highest form begin to shake; as here no doubt the bigger abbeys did, except some few, who, to follow the metaphor, like sturdy striplings, counting themselves above correction, began to prepare themselves to make resistance; hence presently arose the northern rebellion, wherein all the open undertakers were in the North of England; though, no doubt, many secret compliers south of Thames were engaged.

This commotion began first in Lincolnshire, where the rebels presented Six Articles to the king; in the last whereof they complained, that divers bishops of England, of his Grace's late promotion, had subverted the faith of Christ, as they thought; which is, the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Rochester, Salisbury, St. David's, and Dublin.

* See the Statutes the twenty-first of king James, cap. 28.

This Lincolnshire commotion being quickly suppressed, and a right understanding begotten betwixt the king and his subjects, the rebellious humour removed into Yorkshire; where no fewer than fifty thousand, saith Sanders, were assembled in a body under Robert Aske (a mean gentleman) their captain, and one Diamond, though a knave of another suit, who termed himself the Earl of Poverty. Yet this distemper also was seasonably cured by the King's pardon and their submission; till soon after a great part of them fell into a relapse of rebellion, carrying in their ensigns the five wounds of our Saviour, the chalice, with the host, and the name of Jesus betwixt them; who, being vanquished by the king's forces, under the command of the earl of Shrewsbury, were condignly executed for the same.

Indeed, Sanders (to whom it is as natural to defame, as for a stone to descend) complaineth that the king executed those whom formerly he had pardoned for the same offence, contrary to God's proceedings, with whom peccata remissa non recurrunt; yea, contrary to equity, and all common justice. But our Chronicles make it plain, that they ran on the score of a new rebellion, (their faults specifically not numerically the same,) and justly suffered for their

offences therein.

5, 6. Persons executed.

Thomas lord Darcy, and the lord Hussey, (first and last baron of his family,) were beheaded on this account: the first of these being much bemoaned both for what he had been, (a martial man of merit by sea and land,) and for what he was: (decayed, being almost eighty, with old age :) Insomuch that there goeth a tradition, that he had the king's pardon in his pocket, and slept while the sentence of condemnation was passed on him, and then produced it too late: such (it seems) were the rigorous proceedings against him.

Aske and Diamond were executed in this rebellion, and so also were six abbots, namely, of Sawley, Barling, Gerveaux, Whaley, Rivers, with the prior of Burlington,* besides many gentlemen of prime account, whereof these the chief: Robert Constable, Thomas Piercy, Francis Bigot, Nicholas Musgrave, Nicholas Temple, Stephen Hamilton, Thomas Gilby, William Lumley, John Bulmer and his wife. However, some pity may seem proper to these persons, as ignorantly zealous, and grieved to behold the destruction of the old religion before they had received any competent instruction for a new. And thus was there a rout of the most ancient of the northern gentlemen of the Romish persuasion, who in the next generation had scarcely rallied

In BURNET's "History of the Reformation," the names of the rebellious abbots are thus given: "The abbots of Walley, Jerveux, Bridlington, Lenton, Woburn, and Kingstead, and Mackrall the monk, that first raised the Lincolnshire rebellion."-EDIT.

themselves again but they were routed the second time in the rebellion of the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland.

VI. THE RETURN OF THE VISITORS OF ABBEYS.

1, 2. The Return of the Lord Cromwell's Agents. The principal Commissioners.

By this time, the instruments employed, by the lord Cromwell, to make discovery of the vicious lives of monks and friars, were all returned in their persons, or in their intelligence sent unto him. They were men who well understood the message they went on, and would not come back without a satisfactory answer to him that sent them, knowing themselves were likely to be no losers thereby. And now they had found out water enough to drive the mill, (besides what ran by,) a sufficient detection to effect the business. Of these, some were put in commission to visit abbeys; others moving in a lower (but no less needful) sphere of activity.

Of these commissioners the principal were, Richard Layton, Thomas Legh, William Peters, doctors of the law; Doctor John London, dean of Wallingford.* Of the three former I can say nothing ; but find the latter, though employed to correct others, no great saint himself; for afterwards he was publicly convicted of perjury, and adjudged to ride with his face to the horse-tail at Windsor and Oakingham with papers about his head; which was done accordingly.

3, 4. Their two-edged Sword. Monics weary of their Lives. Their power was partly inquisitive, to search into the former lives of religious persons; partly impositive, to enjoin them stricter rules for their future observation. It is hard to say whether their eyes were more prying for what was past, or hands more heavy for the time to come; and most true it is, that, betwixt both, many monks formerly lazy in, were now weary of, their present profession.

Some counted their convents their prisons, being thus confined; for, once out of the House, (without lawful cause and leave obtained,) and never in again. It was a fine thing when they might, but sad case when they must, live in their monasteries; the eighty-six articles of the visitors (looking with Janus partly backward, partly forward) did so vex them, that many who had hopes of others' subsistence cast off the cowls and vails, and quitted their convents.

* LORD HERBERT in "the Life of Henry VIII." page 398. Monuments," page 1221, where is a picture thereof.

† Fox's "Acts and

VII. THE SECOND SORT OF INSINUATING EMISSARIES.

1, 2. Others undone by their own Dissensions. A charitable Censure.

THESE visitors were succeeded with a second sort of public agents, but working in a more private way, encouraging the members in monasteries to impeach one another: for, seeing there was seldom such general agreement in any great convent, but that factions were found, and parties did appear therein, these emissaries made an advantageous use thereof. No abbey could have been so soon destroyed, but by cunning setting it against itself, and secret fomenting of their own divisions. Whereupon, many, being accused, did recriminate their accusers; and, hopeless to recover their own innocency, pleased themselves by plunging others in the like guiltiness. Others, being conscious to themselves, prevented accusing, by confessing their faults, and those very foul ones. Insomuch that some have so much charity as to conceive, that they made themselves worse than they were, though it was a needless work for a Black-Moor to besoot his own face.

Yea, some hold that as witches, long-tortured with watching and fasting, and pinched when but ready to nod, are contented causelessly to accuse themselves to be eased of the present pain; so some of these poor souls, frighted with menaces, and fearing what might be the success, acknowledged all, and more than all, against themselves; the truth whereof none on earth can decide,

VIII. SOLICITING AND TEMPTING EMISSARIES COMPLAINED
SOLICITI
OF BY THE PAPISTS.

1-4. A Devilish Design, if true. A memorable Story: Sin plot, Sin pay for. Application as far as concerns the Matter in Hand,

THE papists do heavily complain, (how justly, God alone knoweth,) that a third sort of agents were employed, to practise on the chastity of the nuns, so to surprise them into wantonness. Some young gallants were on design sent to some convents, with fair faces, flattering tongues, store of gold, and good clothes, youth, wit, wantonness, and what else might work on the weaker sex. These having with much craft screwed themselves into the affections of nuns, and brought them to their lure, accused them afterwards to the king's commissioners for their incontinence: a damnable act, if true, and

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