[15] Advantage was taken of the Abbot’s compulsory absence to take the necessary steps for the dissolution of the monastery. (Froude.)
[16] In some private memoranda of Thomas Cromwell, which still exist in his own hand-writing, occur the words,—“Item. The Abbot of Glaston to be tried at Glaston, and also to be executed there with his accomplices.” The trial, however, took place at Wells, the execution (a foregone conclusion) at Glastonbury, as related in the story.
CHAPTER VI.
THE TRIAL.
The period of English history of which we are now writing has been aptly called “The Reign of Terror.” England under Thomas Cromwell, and France under Robespierre, were alike examples of the utter prostration which may befall a mighty nation beneath the sway of one ruthless intellect.
To make the King absolute, and himself to rule through the King, was the one aim of the man whom Fox, the Martyrologist, grotesquely calls “The valiant soldier of Christ:”—for this end he smote down the Church and the nobility: Bishop Fisher and the Carthusians represented the ecclesiastical world, the Courtenays and the Poles the aristocracy, Sir Thomas More the new-born culture of the time; and Cromwell chose his victims from the noblest and the best. The piety of Fisher, once the King’s tutor, to whom his mother had committed her royal boy on her death-bed, could not save him; nor his learning, Sir Thomas More; nor her grey hairs, the Countess of Salisbury. Spies were scattered through the land; it was dangerous to speak one’s mind in one’s own house; nay, the new inquisition claimed empire over men’s thoughts; we have seen that the concealment of one’s sentiments was treason.
Will my more youthful readers wonder then that men could be found to convict upon such charges as those preferred against the aged Abbot of Glastonbury? They need wonder at nothing that occurred while Bloody Harry was King, and Thomas Cromwell Prime Minister.