CHAPTER VIII
THE SUPPRESSION OF THE CONVENTS
At the apex of the new society stood Henry VIII., who, like Philip the Fair, had many of the qualities which make a great religious reformer in an economic age. In reaching an estimate of his nature, however, the opinions of Englishmen are of no great value, since they are usually distorted by prejudice. The best observers were the foreign ministers at his court, whose business was to collect information for their governments. At a time when there were no newspapers, these agents had to be accurate, and their despatches are trustworthy.
Charles de Marillac was born in 1510. He belonged to an old family, and had an unblemished reputation. He had no leaning against Protestants, for he was disgraced by the Guise party. He was thirty when in London as ambassador of Francis I. After having been a year in England, he wrote:—
“This prince seems to me subject among other vices to three, which certainly in a king may be called pests, of which the first is, that he is so avaricious and covetous, that all the riches of the world would not be sufficient to satisfy and content his ambition.... From this proceeds the second evil and pest, which is distrust and fear ... wherefore he ceaselessly embrews his hands in blood, feeling in his mind doubt of those about him, wishing to live without suspicion, which every day augments.... And in part from these two evils proceeds the last pest, which is levity and inconstancy; and partly also from the temper of the nation, by which they have perverted the rights of religion, of marriage, of honesty and honour, as if they were wax, the which alloy can change itself into whatever forms they wish.”[225]
Cruelty was one of Henry’s most salient traits, and was, perhaps, the faculty by which he succeeded in imposing himself most strongly upon his contemporaries. He not only murdered his wives, his ministers, and his friends, but he pursued those who opposed him with a vindictiveness which appalled them. He was ingenious in devising torments.
Friar Forest, whose crime was the denial of the royal supremacy, he caused to be slowly roasted over a rood which he had fetched from Wales on purpose. They “hanged [him] in Smithfield in chains, upon a gallows quick, by the middle and arm-holes, and fire was made under him, and so was he consumed and burned to death.”[226] Henry relished the idea of the show so much, that Chapuys thought him disappointed at not being able to attend with his whole court.
His way of dealing with the Carthusians was equally characteristic. The Carthusians were in the Church what Darcy was in the State: men of the old imaginative type, of austere life and ascetic habits, in whom still glowed the fiery enthusiasm of Hildebrand. They could not accept Henry as God’s viceregent upon earth. The three priors—Houghton, Webster, and Lawrence—were “ripped up in each other’s presence, their arms torn off, their hearts cut out and rubbed upon their mouths and faces.”[227]
Three more were chained upright to posts, where they stood for fourteen days, “without the possibility of stirring for any purpose whatever, held fast by iron collars on their necks, arms, and thighs.”[228] Then they were hanged and disembowelled.
In 1537, ten were still resolute. They were chained in Newgate like the others, where, according to Stowe, nine “died ... with stink and miserably smothered.” The tenth, who survived, was hanged.