CHAPTER II
PRECEDENTS FOR SUPPRESSION
The Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII is popularly represented as an isolated act, standing alone in the nation’s history. Except that it was on an exceptionally large scale, such is very far from being the fact. It was, indeed, only the last stage in a process which had long been in progress. The Suppression, in 1312, of the Knights Templars, who had a Preceptory in Staffordshire at Keele, was the first great destruction of a Religious Order, and it must not be forgotten that it was the work of the Papacy. A century later Henry V, for financial and political reasons, suppressed the Alien Priories, Lapley, in Staffordshire, among them. During the following hundred years, which intervene before we arrive at the time with which we are more immediately concerned, such great ecclesiastics as Wykeham, Chichele, Waynflete, Fisher, and Alcock, had all laid hands on monastic wealth for educational purposes. Even the great Dissolution of the sixteenth century was no idea suddenly conceived at the moment. It was itself, again, the last phase of a movement which naturally developed. It was one of the Acts of a great drama.
The suppressions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had fatally weakened the idea that property devoted to religious purposes was for ever inviolable. The intentions of Founders could no longer be sacrosanct. The tendency was, not even to ask whether the monasteries were fulfilling the objects for which they had been founded, but rather, whether they were needed. The New Learning had little respect for old foundations, and Staffordshire had an early example of the way it would deal with endowments.
William Smythe was Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry from 1493 to 1496. As Lord President of the Welsh Marches he was mainly employed in unepiscopal work, Thomas Fort, Prior of Stone, acting as his suffragan. He founded Brasenose College, at Oxford, and boldly diverted monastic endowments into new channels. In 1495 he suppressed the Austin Priory of St. John at Lichfield, and used the site and property for a Grammar School and Almshouses. Such action obviously indicates that at Lichfield, at any rate, there was neglect of charity and education by the “religious,” otherwise Bishop Smythe would have had no need to suppress St. John’s Priory.
Bishop Smythe was an early Wolsey, on a small scale. The Cardinal, like the Bishop, was a politician rather than an ecclesiastic, and he, too, laid bold hands on monastic endowments for educational purposes.
Of course Wolsey’s work was much more important than Bishop Smythe’s, and the history of Staffordshire shows in some measure how it was accomplished. He became Chancellor in 1515 and sought from the Pope visitatorial powers over the English monasteries. Such authority for a royal official was little of a novelty. The King had always claimed to have considerable power in the religious houses, and had often exercised it. The royal license was necessary before a new Superior could be elected, and during the vacancy the temporalities were taken over and administered by royal officials. The election, when made, required the royal assent. In all sorts of ways the royal power made itself felt in the religious houses. It was continually interfering in their internal affairs, as we shall see fully when we approach the time of the General Dissolution. It was able to bring such considerable influence to bear in elections that requests were made for headships just as for other appointments which were properly in the gift of the Government.[15] The right of nominating to corrodies, always claimed and constantly exercised, would of itself ensure the presence of representatives of the King and his opinions in the religious houses. How widely the right was interpreted in the sixteenth century may be gathered from the claim made by the Duke of Richmond, Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, in 1532. In that year he wrote from Calais to the Prior of Tutbury, informing him that he had been sent on a mission to France and that the King’s pleasure was that such of his servants as remained behind in England should be established in religious houses, “of whom,” the letter says, “Robert Amyas, clerk of my jewel house, is appointed to abide at your monastery.”[16] Even so recently as 1490 the King had exercised the powers which Wolsey desired, and by papal authorisation.
Wolsey, therefore, knew he was on safe ground in making his request to the Pope. After some delay, Leo X granted the desired authority (1518), and Wolsey issued statutes for the Austin Canons next year.
He soon began his splendid educational schemes. With some difficulty he obtained the Pope’s consent (April, 1524) to use the revenues of St. Frideswide’s at Oxford (where Reginald Pole, a Staffordshire man, while a student at Oxford, had had a pension, though he was of Royal lineage) towards the endowment of the college he was founding.[17] This, of course, was quite insufficient for the splendid scheme he had in mind, and many further negotiations with the Pope resulted in a series of grudgingly granted Bulls during several years. Meanwhile, Wolsey proceeded with his work. The single house he had obtained was by no means all he intended to appropriate, and he had already drawn up the draft of a license for incorporating for the use of his college at Oxford twenty-one other houses, including those at Canwell and Sandwell,[18] in Staffordshire. It is a Latin document of eleven pages, and is in Wriothesley’s handwriting.
In 1514 there had been but a single inmate at Canwell available for appointment to the office of Prior. As a Cluniac house it had never received adequate supervision, and had often been unsatisfactory: long ago one of its canons had become a murderer.[19] Sandwell had been on the verge of bankruptcy, with discreditable canons, wasteful and unbusiness-like management, violent altercations with neighbours and armed “religious” rivals. Its buildings were in bad repair. Both houses were ripe for dissolution.
The deed for the dissolution of St. Mary’s, Sandwell, by William Burbank, LL.D., is dated February, 1524.[20] It is a Latin document of twenty-three pages, written on vellum, signed by Prior John and sealed by Burbank. The witnesses are Thomas Cromwell, John Clifton (chaplain), Roland Rokyn, and John Lupton. The house was not absolutely closed; provision was made for the religious services to be maintained, and the servants and inmates who were dismissed were recompensed. The yearly value was £12 in spiritualities and £26 8s. 7d. in temporalities.[21]