CHAPTER VIII.
THE DISSOLUTION.
Attitude of the Grey Friars towards the Reformation in its intellectual, religious, and political aspects.—The Divorce.—Visitation of Oxford in 1535.—Suppression of the friaries in 1538.—Condition of the Grey Friary.—Expulsion of the friars; their subsequent history; Simon Ludford.—Houses and site of the Grey Friars.—Dr. London tries to secure the land for the town.—The place leased to Frewers and Pye; bought by Richard Andrews and Howe; resold to Richard Gunter.—Subsequent history of the property.—Total destruction of the buildings.
The intellectual torpor which oppressed Oxford for more than a century after the disappearance of Wiclif and his followers was due less to the repressive measures adopted by Archbishop Arundel, than to the want of vitality, of adaptability to new modes of thought, in the scholastic philosophy and method, with which the intellectual life of Oxford had for so long been identified. The University as a whole did not extend a warm welcome to the New Learning, and it was to be expected that the Mendicant Orders especially should be attached to the old state of things, with which their past greatness was connected, and to which their present position and any prestige they still possessed were due[749]. The Grey Friars consequently were inclined to oppose the revival of learning; and Tyndale no doubt classed them among ‘the old barking curs, Duns’ disciples and like draff called Scotists, the children of darkness,’ who ‘raged in every pulpit against Greek, Latin, and Hebrew[750].’ Dr. Henry Standish, sometime Warden of the Grey Friars of London and Provincial Minister of England, attacked Erasmus’ version of the New Testament in a sermon at Paul’s Cross and in conversation at Court, and seems to have been the recognised leader of the ‘Trojan’ party in England[751]. But even among the Minorites there are traces of the influence of the Renaissance. Another Provincial Minister, Richard Brynkley, was a student of Greek, and was supplied with a copy of the Gospels in Greek from the Franciscan Library at Oxford. Friar Nicholas de Burgo seems to have been one of that band of Humanists whom Wolsey attracted to Oxford, that they might propagate in his own University the learning and culture of Italy[752].
The close historical relation, notwithstanding the fundamental differences, between the intellectual movement and the religious movement, was neatly expressed in a saying current among the friars: ‘Erasmus laid the egg; Luther hatched it[753].’ The beginnings of the English Reformation in its religious aspect are to be sought among the educated classes, especially at Cambridge. The Minorites, while generally hostile to the new religion[754], did not take a leading part in suppressing it. And when it is remembered how very little progress the Lutheran doctrines made in England before the Dissolution, the few instances of sympathy with those doctrines recorded in the lives of Oxford Franciscans acquire a certain importance[755]. These, however, were exceptional cases. If we trace the fortunes of individual Franciscans after the Dissolution, it will be found that no generalization as to their attitude towards the Reformation can be made. A few remained loyal to the old religion[756], others embraced the new[757], and on both sides persecution was suffered for conscience’ sake[758]; others again contrived to reconcile themselves with both old and new according to circumstances[759].
With the Reformation as a political movement, the Franciscans had more sympathy. A large section of them had, long before this, taught the supremacy of the State over the Church in all things political[760]; they approved in principle the confiscation of Church-property for the common good[761]; and Friar Henry Standish, in defending the claim of the temporal courts to try and punish criminous clerks, together with the broad principles on which that claim rested, was only applying to present circumstances the time-honoured traditions of his Order[762]. It is true that the Friars of the Observance resisted the royal supremacy in 1534. But the supremacy claimed by Henry VIII went beyond anything asserted by his predecessors, involving, as it did in effect, the establishment of a lay jurisdiction superior to all ecclesiastical courts in spiritualibus as well as in temporalibus, constituting Henry ‘a king with a pope in his belly’[763]. The Franciscans at Oxford seem, like most of the religious, to have accepted the supremacy in this extended form and to have taken the oath without demur: at least there is no evidence to the contrary[764].
The oath administered to the monks and friars involved an acknowledgment, not only of the royal supremacy, but of the lawfulness of Henry’s divorce from Katharine and marriage with Anne Boleyn, and a promise to preach the same on every occasion[765]. The attitude of the Oxford Franciscans to the divorce, so far as it can be ascertained, may be briefly stated here.
Henry attached great importance to securing a decision in favour of his divorce from the chief universities of Europe. The divorce became the all-absorbing topic at Oxford; and individual Minorites took a prominent part in the discussions. But the convent as a whole did not present a united front. Dr. Thomas Kirkham, a Franciscan, is mentioned as one of the Doctors of Divinity who opposed the divorce and were ready to write against it[766]. Dr. Kynton seems to have been on the same side at first[767]; Archbishop Warham complained of his having spread calumnious reports about himself in connexion with the ‘King’s matter,’ and demanded his punishment. But it is doubtful whether in the end Kynton had the courage of his opinions; he was one of the committee of three appointed by the theological faculty to decide the question with the assistance of thirty other members to be nominated by the smaller committee[768]. This body subsequently issued, in the name of the University, the qualified declaration in favour of the King, the tenour of which is well-known.