“And when they had opened the chest, they found him lying whole, uncorrupt, with his face bare, and his beard as it had been a fortnight’s growth, and all his vestments upon him, as he was accustomed to say mass withall, and his meet wand of gold lying beside him.
“Then, when the goldsmith did perceive that he had broken one of his legs, when he did break open the chest, he was very sorry for it and did cry, ‘Alas, I have broken one of his legs.’
“Then Dr. Henley [one of the commissioners] hearing him say so, did call upon him, and did bid him cast down his bones.”[260]
By the statute of 1536, only those convents were suppressed which were worth less than £200 a year, or which, within twelve months after the passage of the act, should be granted to the king by the abbot. This legislation spared the mitred abbeys, and as long as any conventual property remained undivided, the land-owners kept Cromwell in office, not feeling, perhaps, quite sure of their capacity to succeed alone.
In 1539 it had proved impossible to force the three great abbots of Glastonbury, Reading, and Colchester into a surrender to the Crown, and accordingly Cromwell devised an act to vest in Henry such conventual lands as should be forfeited through attainder. Then he indicted the abbots for treason, and thus sought to bring the estates they represented constructively within the statute. The fate of Abbot Whiting, whom Layton incautiously praised, will do for all. He was eighty when he died, and his martyrdom is unusually interesting, as it laid the fortune of the great house of Bedford, one of the most splendid of modern dukedoms.
The commissioners came unexpectedly, and found the old monk at a grange at Sharpham, about a mile from Glastonbury. On September 19 they apprehended him, searched his apartment, and finding nothing likely to be of service, sent him up to London for Cromwell to deal with, though he was “very weak and sickly.” Cromwell lodged him in the Tower, and examined him, apparently in a purely perfunctory fashion, for the government had decided on its policy. The secretary of state simply jotted down a memorandum to see “that the evidence be well sorted and the indictments well drawn,” and left the details of the murder to John Russell, a man thoroughly to be trusted. Cromwell’s only anxiety was about the indictments, and he had “the king’s learned counsel” with him “all day” discussing the matter. Finally they decided, between them, that it would be better to proceed at Glaston, and Whiting was sent to Somersetshire to be dealt with by the progenitor of a long line of opulent Whig landlords.
In superintending the trial, Russell showed an energy and judgment which won its reward. On the 14th of November, when the invalid reached Wells, he wrote that he had provided for him “as worshipful a jury as was ever charged here these many years. And there was never seen in these parts so great appearance as were here at this present time, and never better willing to serve the king.”[261] Russell wasted no time. He arranged for the trial one day and the execution the next. “The Abbot of Glastonbury was arraigned, and the next day put to execution with two other of his monks, for the robbing of Glastonbury church.”[262]
He had the old man bound on a hurdle and dragged to the top of Tor Hill, “but ... he would confess no more gold nor silver, nor any other thing more than he did before your Lordship in the Tower.... And thereupon took his death very patiently, and his head and body bestowed in like manner as I certified your lordship in my last letter.”[263] “One quarter standeth at Wells, another at Bath, and at Ilchester and Bridgewater the rest. And his head upon the abbey gate at Glaston.”[264]
On the 17th of the following April, Henry created Cromwell Earl of Essex, preparatory to slaughtering him. Within two months the new earl was arrested by his bitterest enemy, the Duke of Norfolk, the chief of the landed interest; on the 28th of July he lost his head on Tower Hill, and his colossal fortune fed the men who had divided the body of Whiting.