I have not, therefore, hesitated to make the sufferings of the last Abbot of Glastonbury the theme of a story, but while I have adhered to the main facts of the tragedy, I have availed myself somewhat of the usual license accorded to all writers of historical fiction, justified by the example of the great and revered founder of the school, Sir Walter Scott.
In particular, the words put into the mouth of the Abbot, both in his last sermon at Glastonbury and in the trial at Wells, were actually used by his fellow-sufferer, the Prior of the Charterhouse, John Houghton, under precisely similar circumstances: the reader will find the whole of the touching story in the second volume of Froude’s “History of England;” it is well worth perusal.
It may be objected that one so young as the hero of the latter portion of the story, “Cuthbert the foundling,” could scarcely have been exposed to the operation of the Treason Acts, or required to take the oath of supremacy, in his twenty-first year; but there are examples of sufferers under this régime at a more tender age: a month or two, more or less, made small difference in the Tudor period, especially when the interests of the Crown were concerned, or the will of the despot expressed. The concealment of the Abbey treasure, and the sympathy of the Abbot with the Pilgrimage of Grace (how could he be otherwise disposed) are matters of history.
An attempt has been made, within our memory, by a modern historian, to whitewash the memory of the royal “Blue Beard,” under whom such fearful atrocities were committed; we are asked to believe that the Carthusians, dying dismembered and mutilated in so horrible a manner, or in the filth of the fetid dungeons in which they were thrown, that the aged Countess of Salisbury flying about the scaffold with her gray hairs dabbled in blood, that the Protestants who were burnt, and Catholics who were drawn and quartered, sometimes on the same day and at the same place, that such victims as Fisher, More, and Surrey, were all unwilling sacrifices to a high sense of duty on the part of the king who slew them, who also was a right honourable husband, plagued by unworthy wives, and hence deserving of the pity of married men.
But to the writer, the following paragraph from a deservedly popular history, appears more nearly to represent the truth:—
“The temper of such a legislator as Henry the Eighth, and the thorough subservience, the otherwise incredible cowardice and baseness of his parliaments, can only be fully exhibited by an enumeration of their penal laws, which for number, variety, severity, and inconsistency are perhaps unequalled in the annals of jurisprudence.
“Instead of the calmness, the foresight, and the wisdom which are looked for in a legislator, we find the wild fantasies and ever-changing, though ever selfish caprices of a spoiled child, joined to the blind fierce malignant passions of a brutal and cruel savage. It would seem as if the disembodied demon of a Caligula or a Nero, the evil spirit that once bore their human form, had again become incarnate upon earth, let loose for some wise (though to dull mortal eyes, dimly discerned) end, to repeat in a distant age, and another clime that same strange, wild, extravagant medley of buffoonery and horror, which is fitted to move at once the laughter and execration of mankind.” (Knight’s Pictorial History).
This is strong language, but when one rises from a perusal of the deeds committed during this reign of terror, it seems justified.
The destruction also of the monastic libraries, and the decay of solid learning (Latimer being witness), must ever be regretted by the scholar. Fuller tells us that “the English monks were bookish of themselves, and much inclined to hoard up monuments of learning.” But all these treasures were ruthlessly destroyed or scattered, including books and valuable MS., which would now be worth their weight in gold. John Ball, by no means a laudator temporis acti, wrote to Edward VI.:—
“A number of them which purchased these superstitious mansions (the monasteries) reserved of their library books, some to serve their jakes, some to scour their candlesticks, and some to rub their boots, some they sold to the grocers and soap sellers; and some they sent over sea to the bookbinders—not in small number, but at times whole ships full. ... I know a merchant man, which shall at this time be nameless, that bought the contents of two noble libraries for forty shillings a piece. A shame it is to be spoken. This stuff hath he occupied instead of grey paper by the space of more than these ten years, and yet he hath store enough for as many years to come.”