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King was that of Christ Church Priory, Aldgate; the
Priory Church was pulled down and the materials sold
by Lord Audley, Speaker in the Parliament, to whom
the convent was granted by the King for his assistance
in ruining Wolsey," an excellent receipt," says old
Fuller in his quaint manner, "to clear his voice, and
make him speak shrill and loud for his Master." The
King's ulterior design in making this grant was, no
doubt, to ascertain how the people were affected
towards monasteries. "He dispatched this convent
first," continues Fuller, "as the forlorn hope is sent
out before the body of the army,"
"* which very speedily
entered upon the breach thus made. For in the 27th
of the King's reign, A.D. 1539, a motion was made in
Parliament, "That to support the King's states and
supply his wants, all religious houses might be con-
ferred on the Crown, which were not able clearly to
expend above £200 a year.”+ It was moreover stated
confidently in Parliament that the revenues of these
monasteries would so enrich the Crown as that the
people should never be called upon to pay subsidies
again, and that an army of 40,000 men for the defence
of the kingdom should be maintained with the over-
plus. All which, of course, turned out to be but
dust thrown into the eyes of the people, or as

"Dead-sea fruits, which tempt the eye,
But turn to ashes on the lips."

The ostensible ground of this suppression of the lesser
monasteries was the alleged "vicious living" of their
inmates, who were to be dispersed among
the great
and honourable monasteries" of religion in the realm,
wherein," as the preamble hypocritically sets forth,
religion is right well kept and observed."
"hypocritically," for in less than two years the fiat-
sic volo, sic jubeo-went forth for the destruction of
these also; these, which are again called in the same

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* Fuller's Church History, Book vi. Sec. 3. + Ibid.
Nalson, vol. ii. p. 300.

preamble, "the great and solemn monasteries of this realm, wherein, thanks be to GOD, religion is right well kept and observed!" But the truth was, King Henry, with all his brutal tyranny and unscrupulous rapacity, could not and did not dare to attempt to suppress the lesser abbeys but by consent of the greater abbots, whereof twenty-six as barons voted in the Parliament, and who were mollified and cajoled by this plausible and hypocritical commendation of the houses over which they presided into a concurrence with his desires. The baits thus held out were the means of keeping the people quiet under such barefaced robbery, and will partially, at least, account for what has often been a matter of just surprise that the body of the English people submitted almost without a murmur to the suppression of the religious houses the sources from which all the comfort, and most of the prosperity, of the common people flowed. It was only in the north that any disturbance ensued upon the measure, where a rising of the people took place under the Lord Darcy and others, to which allusion is made in these annals, but which was quickly suppressed.

As we have already said, in less than two years a formal Commission was appointed to visit and report upon the greater monasteries; and of the characters of the persons who were on the Commission a fair criterion may be formed from that of one of the principal persons, Dr. London, Dean of Wallingford, who, as Fuller in his history says: "Though employed to correct others was 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." Such were the worthy instruments of sacrilegious robbery! The inquisitorial power granted to this Commission enabled them to employ all sorts of agents, and of course every crime of which human nature is capable was charged upon the head of the poor monks the base-minded among them were

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induced to impeach their brethren, and the better sort were the victims of treachery and falsehood,—and many wicked and shocking devices were adopted to entrap the innocent and unwary.

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Of the abbots and priors, many were appointed to higher dignities some being made bishops, and others suffragans; others were collated to valuable livings, and allowed a pension, in some cases equivalent to their present income if they agreed to give up their convents into the hands of the Commissioners; so that those who were unworthy among them readily fell in with the wishes of the King, who willingly accepted such a bargain, for the pension died with the individual, but the broad abbey-lands remained, and moreover were rated far beneath their true valuation, so that no sooner did they pass out of the possession of the monks, than the effects of the transfer were immediately felt; tenants were compelled to surrender their writings by which they held estates for two or three lives at an easy rent, payable chiefly in produce, and the rents were trebled, and quadrupled; and fines were raised in even more enormous proportion even twenty fold.*

The poor and the destitute also suffered very grievously by the suppression of monasteries, for to them they were as "GOD's ravens in the wilderness supplying them with bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the evening; they had been inns for the wayfaring man, who heard from afar the sound of the vesper-bell, at once inviting him to repose and devotion, and who might sing his matins with the morning star, and go on his way rejoicing." + The effect, therefore, with respect to the poor and destitute, was much the same, only in a greater degree, as would now follow from the sudden abolition of the poor laws. So great was the distress that Hooper, the bishop of Glocester, writes to Cecil the Secretary of State, Southey's Book of the Church, vol. ii. + Blunt's History of the Reformation.

*

beseeching him, "for the love and tender mercy of GOD, to persuade and cause some order to be taken upon the price of things, or else the ire of GOD will shortly punish. All things be here so dear that the most part of people lacketh, and yet more will lack necessary food.*

Nor can we wonder that such universal distress should prevail, when we remember the shameful and scandalous manner in which the abbey-lands were disposed of. Not only were the nobility and gentry sharers in the plunder, and thereby bribed to defend the iniquitous proceeding, but "the meanest turnbroach in the King's kitchen did lick his fingers!" On one occasion the King gave a religious house of some value to a woman cook for making a dish of puddings which pleased his palate: on another he gambled at dice with Sir Miles Partridge for the bells of a church against which he staked a hundred pounds, and lost them at a cast.†

Strype records the complaint of Archbishop Cranmer, that Church robbers took possession of and spoiled the chief parish churches; and that commonly one man had four or six of them or more: and that many parties bestowed two or three upon their stewards and huntsmen, upon condition that a good portion of the profits should be reserved to themselves."+

Nor was this indiscriminate robbery confined to the reign of Henry the Eighth-then was only the "beginning of sorrows." Edward the Sixth himself (thanks to the poor child's counsellors) was as deep in the mire as any; there are still extant documents in his own hand-writing recording the sale of property belonging to certain religious houses, (gold and silver chalices and patens probably, and other utensils used in the Holy Eucharist,) the proceeds of which were, as the document expresses it, "for myne owne use," and "for the payment of my debts!" The Princess Elizabeth, Strype. Memor.

* State Papers.

Fuller's Ch. Hist. vol. ii. part ii. p. 143.

too, (afterwards Queen,) entreated Cecil, the newly appointed Secretary of State, to bestow a Parsonage on her Yeoman of the robes! by name John Kenyon;* and when she became Queen many is the goodly bishopric which she robbed of its lawful revenues.

These are only a few instances of the manner in which the lands and riches "given to GOD" by the piety of past ages, were sacrilegiously squandered among the Court sycophants of the time and their unscrupulous retainers, but few as they are, they will serve to show the prevailing impiety, and the direction in which the tide set. It would be beyond our limits to go fully into the subject, or volumes might be written, as volumes have been written, upon the wholesale "appropriation" of religious houses and lands, by the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland and others, and the woeful work they made among the venerable edifices erected to the honour and glory of GOD, but which they turned into barns, or pulled down and used the materials to build stables and dog-kennels!

We need not therefore dwell any longer in adducing instances to prove that the dissolution of monasteries in England at the period of the Reformation was accompanied by acts of the most heartless robbery and the most wicked sacrilege- such as no doubt brought down the heavy curse of the ALMIGHTY upon the nation under which it is suffering even at this day in the schisms and divisions which exist amongst us. We do not pretend to say that there needed no reformation of religious houses - but we do say that the benefits, which it was so loudly alleged would accrue to the nation by their suppression, have never been realized, but on the contrary, have brought down upon us a long train of evils, from which we must not expect to be relieved until restitution be made.

Whatever were the faults in the system of monasteries, and whatever abuses had crept in, we are bold * State Papers.

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