The History of England, Volume III Henry VIII Suppression of the greater monasteries
by David Hume
There was only one particular, in which Henry was quite decisive; because he was there impelled by his avarice, or more properly speaking, his rapacity, the consequence of his profusion: This measure was the entire destruction of the monasteries. The present opportunity seemed favourable for that great enterprize, while the suppression of the late rebellion fortified and encreased the royal authority; and as some of the abbots were suspected of having encouraged the insurrection, and of corresponding with the rebels, the king’s resentment was farther incited by that motive. A new visitation was appointed of all the monasteries in England; and a pretence only being wanted for their suppression, it was easy for a prince, possessed of such unlimited power, and seconding the present humour of a great part of the nation, to find or feign one. The abbots and monks knew the danger, to which they were exposed; and having learned, by the example of the lesser monasteries, that nothing could withstand the king’s will, they were most of them induced, in expectation of better treatment, to make a voluntary resignation of their houses. Where promises failed of effect, menaces and even extreme violence were employed; and as several of the abbots, since the breach with Rome, had been named by the court, with a view to this event, the king’s intentions were the more easily effected. Some also, having secretly embraced the doctrine of the reformation, were glad to be freed from their vows; and on the whole the design was conducted with such success, that, in less than two years, the king had got possession of all the monastic revenues.
In several places, particularly in the county of Oxford, great interest was made to preserve some convents of women, who, as they lived in the most irreproachable manner, justly merited, it was thought, that their houses should be saved from the general destruction.n There appeared also great difference between the case of nuns and that of friars; and the one institution might be laudable, while the other was exposed to much blame. The males of all ranks, if endowed with industry, might be of service to the public; and none of them could want employment, suited to his station and capacity. But a woman of a family, who failed of a settlement in the married state, an accident to which such persons were more liable than women of lower station, had really no rank which she properly filled: and a convent was a retreat both honourable and agreeable, from the inutility and often want, which attended her situation. But the king was determined to abolish monasteries of every denomination; and probably thought, that these ancient establishments would be the sooner forgotten, if no remains of them, of any kind, were allowed to subsist in the kingdom.
The better to reconcile the people to this great innovation, stories were propagated of the detestable lives of the friars in many of the convents; and great care was taken to defame those whom the court had determined to ruin. The reliques also and other superstitions, which had so long been the object of the people’s veneration, were exposed to their ridicule; and the religious spirit, now less bent on exterior observances and sensible objects, was encouraged in this new direction. It is needless to be prolix in an enumeration of particulars: Protestant historians mention on this occasion with great triumph the sacred repositories of convents; the parings of St. Edmond’s toes; some of the coals that roasted St. Laurence; the girdle of the Virgin shown in eleven several places; two or three heads of St. Ursula; the felt of St. Thomas of Lancaster, an infallible cure for the head-ach; part of St. Thomas of Canterbury’s shirt, much reverenced by big-bellied women; some reliques, an excellent preventive against rain; others, a remedy to weeds in corn. But such fooleries, as they are to be found in all ages and nations, and even took place during the most refined periods of antiquity, form no particular or violent reproach to the catholic religion.
There were also discovered, or said to be discovered, in the monasteries some impostures of a more artificial nature. At Hales, in the county of Gloucester, there had been shown, during several ages, the blood of Christ brought from Jerusalem; and it is easy to imagine the veneration with which such a relique was regarded. A miraculous circumstance also attended this miraculous relique; the sacred blood was not visible to any one in mortal sin, even when set before him; and till he had performed good works sufficient for his absolution, it would not deign to discover itself to him. At the dissolution of the monastery, the whole contrivance was detected. Two of the monks, who were let into the secret, had taken the blood of a duck, which they renewed every week: They put it in a phial, one side of which consisted of thin and transparent chrystal, the other of thick and opaque. When any rich pilgrim arrived, they were sure to show him the dark side of the phial, till masses and offerings had expiated his offences; and then finding his money, or patience, or faith, nearly exhausted, they made him happy by turning the phial.o
A miraculous crucifix had been kept at Boxley in Kent, and bore the appellation of the Rood of Grace. The lips, and eyes, and head of the image moved on the approach of its votaries. Hilsey, bishop of Rochester, broke the crucifix at St. Paul’s cross, and showed to the whole people the springs and wheels by which it had been secretly moved. A great wooden idol revered in Wales, called Darvel Gatherin, was also brought to London, and cut in pieces: And by a cruel refinement in vengeance, it was employed as fuel to burn friar Forest,p who was punished for denying the supremacy, and for some pretended heresies. A finger of St. Andrew’s, covered with a thin plate silver, had been pawned by a convent for a debt of forty pounds; but as the king’s commissioners refused to pay the debt, people made themselves merry with the poor creditor, on account of his pledge.
But of all the instruments of ancient superstition, no one was so zealously destroyed as the shrine of Thomas a Becket, commonly called St. Thomas of Canterbury. This saint owed his canonization to the zealous defence, which he had made for clerical privileges; and on that account also, the monks had extremely encouraged the devotion of pilgrimages towards his tomb, and numberless were the miracles, which, they pretended, his reliques wrought in favour of his devout votaries. They raised his body once a year; and the day on which this ceremony was performed, which was called the day of his translation, was a general holiday: Every fiftieth year there was celebrated a jubilee to his honour, which lasted fifteen days: Plenary indulgences were then granted to all that visited his tomb; and a hundred thousand pilgrims have been registered at a time in Canterbury. The devotion towards him had quite effaced in that place the adoration of the Deity: nay, even that of the Virgin. At God’s altar, for instance, there were offered in one year three pounds two shillings and six pence; at the Virgin’s, sixty-three pounds five shillings and six pence; at St. Thomas’s, eight hundred and thirty-two pounds twelve shillings and three pence. But next year, the disproportion was still greater: There was not a penny offered at God’s altar; the Virgin’s gained only four pounds one shilling and eight pence; but St. Thomas had got for his share nine hundred and fifty-four pounds six shillings and three pence.q Lewis VII, of France had made a pilgrimage to this miraculous tomb, and had bestowed on the shrine a jewel, esteemed the richest in Christendom. It is evident, how obnoxious to Henry a saint of this character must appear, and how contrary to all his projects for degrading the authority of the court of Rome. He not only pillaged the rich shrine, dedicated to St. Thomas: he made the saint himself be cited to appear in court, and be tried and condemned as a traitor: He ordered his name to be struck out of the calendar; the office for his festival to be expunged from all breviaries; his bones to be burned, and the ashes to be thrown in the air.
On the whole, the king, at different times, suppressed six hundred and forty-five monasteries: Of which twenty-eight had abbots, that enjoyed a seat in parliament. Ninety colleges were demolished in several counties; two thousand three hundred and seventy-four chantries and free chapels: A hundred and ten hospitals. The whole revenue of these establishments amounted to one hundred and sixty-one thousand one hundred pounds.r It is worthy of observation, that all the lands and possessions and revenue of England had, a little before this period, been rated at four millions a year; so that the revenues of the monks, even comprehending the lesser monasteries, did not exceed the twentieth part of the national income: A sum vastly inferior to what is commonly apprehended. The lands belonging to the convents, were usually let at very low rent; and the farmers, who regarded themselves as a species of proprietors, took always care to renew their leases before they expired.NOTE [L]
Great murmurs were every where excited on account of these violences; and men much questioned, whether priors and monks, who were only trustees or tenants for life, could, by any deed, however voluntary, transfer to the king the entire property of their estates. In order to reconcile the people to such mighty innovations, they were told, that the king would never thenceforth have occasion to levy taxes, but would be able from the abbey lands alone, to bear, during war as well as peace, the whole charges of government.t While such topics were employed to appease the populace, Henry took an effectual method of interesting the nobility and gentry in the success of his measures:u He either made a gift of the revenues of convents to his favourites and courtiers, or sold them at low prices, or exchanged them for other lands on very disadvantageous terms. He was so profuse in these liberalities, that he is said to have given a woman the whole revenue of a convent, as a reward for making a pudding, which happened to gratify his palate.w He also settled pensions on the abbots and priors, proportioned to their former revenues or to their merits; and gave each monk a yearly pension of eight marks: He erected six new bishoprics, Westminster, Oxford, Peterborow, Bristol, Chester, and Gloucester; of which five subsist at this day: And by all these means of expence and dissipation, the profit, which the king reaped by the seizure of church lands, fell much short of vulgar opinion. As the ruin of convents had been foreseen some years before it happened, the monks had taken care to secrete most of their stock, furniture, and plate; so that the spoils of the great monasteries bore not, in these respects, any proportion to those of the lesser.
Beside the lands, possessed by the monasteries, the regular clergy enjoyed a considerable part of the benefices of England, and of the tythes, annexed to them; and these were also at this time transferred to the crown, and by that means passed into the hands of laymen: An abuse which many zealous churchmen regard as the most criminal sacrilege. The monks were formerly much at their ease in England, and enjoyed revenues, which exceeded the regular and stated expence of the house. We read of the abbey of Chertsey in Surrey, which possessed 744 pounds a year, though it contained only fourteen monks: That of Furnese, in the county of Lincoln, was valued at 960 pounds a year, and contained but thirty.x In order to dissipate their revenues, and support popularity, the monks lived in a hospitable manner; and besides the poor, maintained from their offals, there were many decayed gentlemen, who passed their lives in travelling from convent to convent, and were entirely subsisted at the tables of the friars. By this hospitality, as much as by their own inactivity, did the convents prove nurseries of idleness; but the king, not to give offence by too sudden an innovation, bound the new proprietors of abbey lands, to support the ancient hospitality. But this engagement was fulfilled in very few places, and for a very short time.
It is easy to imagine the indignation, with which the intelligence of all these acts of violence was received at Rome; and how much the ecclesiastics of that court, who had so long kept the world in subjection by high sounding epithets, and by holy execrations, would now vent their rhetoric against the character and conduct of Henry. The pope was at last incited to publish the bull, which had been passed against that monarch; and in a public manner he delivered over his soul to the devil, and his dominions to the first invader. Libels were dispersed, in which he was anew compared to the most furious persecutors in antiquity; and the preference was now given to their side: He had declared war with the dead, whom the pagans themselves respected; was at open hostility with heaven; and had engaged in professed enmity with the whole host of saints and angels. Above all, he was often reproached with his resemblance to the emperor Julian, whom, it was said, he imitated in his apostacy and learning, though he fell short of him in morals. Henry could distinguish in some of these libels the stile and animosity of his kinsman, Pole; and he was thence incited to vent his rage, by every possible expedient, on that famous cardinal.
[n] Burnet, vol. i. p. 328.
[o] Herbert, p. 431, 432. Stowe, p. 575.
[p] Goodwin’s Annals. Stowe, p. 575. Herbert. Baker, p. 286.
[q] Burnet, vol. i. p. 244.
[r] Lord Herbert, Camden, Speed.
[NOTE [L]] There is a curious passage, with regard to the suppression of monasteries, to be found in Coke’s institutes, 4th Inst. chap. 1. p. 44. It is worth transcribing, as it shews the ideas of the English government, entertained during the reign of Henry VIII. and even in the time of Sir Edward Coke, when he wrote his Institutes. It clearly appears, that the people had then little notion of being jealous of their liberties, were desirous of making the crown quite independent, and wished only to remove from themselves, as much as possible, the burthens of government. A large standing army, and a fixed revenue, would, on these conditions, have been regarded as great blessings; and it was owing entirely to the prodigality of Henry, and to his little suspicion that the power of the crown could ever fail, that the English owe all their present liberty. The title of the chapter in Coke is, Advice concerning new and plausible Projects and Offers in Parliament. “When any plausible project,” says he, “is made in parliament, to draw the lords and commons to assent to any act, (especially in matters of weight and importance) if both houses do give upon the matter projected and promised their consent, it shall be most necessary, they being trusted for the commonwealth, to have the matter projected and promised (which moved the houses to consent) to be established in the same act, lest the benefit of the act be taken, and the matter projected and promised never performed, and so the houses of parliament perform not the trust reposed in them, as it fell out (taking one example for many) in the reign of Henry the eighth: On the king’s behalf, the members of both houses were informed in parliament, that no king or kingdom was safe, but where the king had three abilities; 1. To live of his own, and able to defend his kingdom upon any sudden invasion or insurrection. 2. To aid his confederates, otherwise they would never assist him. 3. To reward his well deserving servants. Now the project was, that if the parliament would give unto him all the abbies, priories, friories, nunneries, and other monasteries, that, for ever in time then to come, he would take order that the same should not be converted to private uses: but first, that his exchequer for the purposes aforesaid should be enriched; secondly, the kingdom strengthened by a continual maintenance of forty thousand well- trained soldiers, with skilful captains and commanders; thirdly, for the benefit and ease of the subject, who never afterwards, (as was projected) in any time to come, should be charged with subsidies, fifteenths, loans, or other common aids; fourthly, lest the honour of the realm should receive any diminution of honour by the dissolution of the said monasteries, there being twenty-nine lords of parliament of the abbots and priors, (that held of the king per baronium, whereof more in the next leaf) that the king would create a number of nobles, which we omit. The said monasteries were given to the king by authority of divers acts of parliament, but no provision was therein made for the said project, or any part thereof.”
