Constitutional History of England, Henry VII to George II. Volume 1 of 3

by Henry Hallam

The fall of the mitred abbots changed the proportions of the two estates which constitute the upper house of parliament. Though the number of abbots and priors to whom writs of summons were directed varied considerably in different parliaments, they always, joined to the twenty-one bishops, preponderated over the temporal peers.[106] It was no longer possible for the prelacy to offer an efficacious opposition to the reformation they abhorred. Their own baronial tenure, their high dignity as legislative counsellors of the land, remained; but, one branch as ancient and venerable as their own thus lopped off, the spiritual aristocracy was reduced to play a very secondary part in the councils of the nation. Nor could the protestant religion have easily been established by legal methods under Edward and Elizabeth without this previous destruction of the monasteries. Those who, professing an attachment to that religion, have swollen the clamour of its adversaries against the dissolution of foundations that existed only for the sake of a different faith and worship, seem to me not very consistent or enlightened reasoners. In some, the love of antiquity produces a sort of fanciful illusion; and the very sight of those buildings, so magnificent in their prosperous hour, so beautiful even in their present ruin, begets a sympathy for those who founded and inhabited them. In many, the violent courses of confiscation and attainder which accompanied this great revolution excite so just an indignation, that they either forget to ask whether the end might not have been reached by more laudable means, or condemn that end itself either as sacrilege, or at least as an atrocious violation of the rights of property. Others again, who acknowledge that the monastic discipline cannot be reconciled with the modern system of religion, or with public utility, lament only that these ample endowments were not bestowed upon ecclesiastical corporations, freed from the monkish cowl, but still belonging to that spiritual profession to whose use they were originally consecrated. And it was a very natural theme of complaint at the time, that such abundant revenues as might have sustained the dignity of the crown and supplied the means of public defence without burthening the subject, had served little other purpose than that of swelling the fortunes of rapacious courtiers, and had left the king as necessitous and craving as before.

Notwithstanding these various censures, I must own myself of opinion, both that the abolition of monastic institutions might have been conducted in a manner consonant to justice as well as policy, and that Henry's profuse alienation of the abbey lands, however illaudable in its motive, has proved upon the whole more beneficial to England than any other disposition would have turned out. I cannot, until some broad principle is made more obvious than it ever has yet been, do such violence to all common notions on the subject, as to attach an equal inviolability to private and corporate property. The law of hereditary succession, as ancient and universal as that of property itself, the law of testamentary disposition, the complement of the former, so long established in most countries as to seem a natural right, have invested the individual possessor of the soil with such a fictitious immortality, such anticipated enjoyment, as it were, of futurity, that his perpetual ownership could not be limited to the term of his own existence, without what he would justly feel as a real deprivation of property. Nor are the expectancies of children, or other probable heirs, less real possessions, which it is a hardship, if not an absolute injury, to defeat. Yet even this hereditary claim is set aside by the laws of forfeiture, which have almost everywhere prevailed. But in estates held, as we call it, in mortmain, there is no intercommunity, no natural privity of interest, between the present possessor and those who may succeed him; and as the former cannot have any pretext for complaint, if, his own rights being preserved, the legislature should alter the course of transmission after his decease, so neither is any hardship sustained by others, unless their succession has been already designated or rendered probable. Corporate property therefore appears to stand on a very different footing from that of private individuals; and while all infringements of the established privileges of the latter are to be sedulously avoided, and held justifiable only by the strongest motives of public expediency, we cannot but admit the full right of the legislature to new mould and regulate the former in all that does not involve existing interests upon far slighter reasons of convenience. If Henry had been content with prohibiting the profession of religious persons for the future, and had gradually diverted their revenues instead of violently confiscating them, no protestant could have found it easy to censure his policy.

It is indeed impossible to feel too much indignation at the spirit in which these proceedings were conducted. Besides the hardship sustained by so many persons turned loose upon society for whose occupations they were unfit, the indiscriminate destruction of convents produced several public mischiefs. The visitors themselves strongly interceded for the nunnery of Godstow, as irreproachable managed, and an excellent place of education; and no doubt some other foundations should have been preserved for the same reason. Latimer, who could not have a prejudice on that side, begged earnestly that the priory of Malvern might be spared, for the maintenance of preaching and hospitality. It was urged for Hexham abbey that, there not being a house for many miles in that part of England, the country would be in danger of going to waste.[107] And the total want of inns in many parts of the kingdom must have rendered the loss of these hospitable places of reception a serious grievance. These and probably other reasons ought to have checked the destroying spirit of reform in its career, and suggested to Henry's counsellors that a few years would not be ill consumed in contriving new methods of attaining the beneficial effects which monastic institutions had not failed to produce, and in preparing the people's minds for so important an innovation.

The suppression of monasteries poured in an instant such a torrent of wealth upon the crown, as has seldom been equalled in any country by the confiscations following a subdued rebellion. The clear yearly value was rated at £131,607; but was in reality, if we believe Burnet, ten times as great; the courtiers undervaluing those estates, in order to obtain grants or sales of them more easily. It is certain, however, that Burnet's supposition errs extravagantly on the other side.[108] The movables of the smaller monasteries alone were reckoned at £100,000; and, as the rents of these were less than a fourth of the whole, we may calculate the aggregate value of movable wealth in the same proportion. All this was enough to dazzle a more prudent mind than that of Henry, and to inspire those sanguine dreams of inexhaustible affluence with which private men are so often filled by sudden prosperity.

The monastic rule of life being thus abrogated, as neither conformable to pure religion nor to policy, it is to be considered, to what uses these immense endowments ought to have been applied. There are some, perhaps, who may be of opinion that the original founders of monasteries, or those who had afterwards bestowed lands on them, having annexed to their grants an implied condition of the continuance of certain devotional services, and especially of prayers for the repose of their souls, it were but equitable that, if the legislature rendered the performance of this condition impossible, their heirs should re-enter upon the lands that would not have been alienated from them on any other account. But, without adverting to the difficulty in many cases of ascertaining the lawful heir, it might be answered that the donors had absolutely divested themselves of all interest in their grants, and that it was more consonant to the analogy of law to treat these estates as escheats or vacant possessions, devolving to the sovereign, than to imagine a right of reversion that no party had ever contemplated. There was indeed a class of persons, very different from the founders of monasteries, to whom restitution was due. A large proportion of conventual revenues arose out of parochial tithes, diverted from the legitimate object of maintaining the incumbent to swell the pomp of some remote abbot. These impropriations were in no one instance, I believe, restored to the parochial clergy, and have passed either into the hands of laymen, or of bishops and other ecclesiastical persons, who were frequently compelled by the Tudor princes to take them in exchange for lands.[109] It was not in the spirit of Henry's policy, or in that of the times, to preserve much of these revenues to the church, though he had designed to allot £18,000 a year for eighteen new sees, of which he only erected six with far inferior endowments. Nor was he much better inclined to husband them for public exigencies, although more than sufficient to make the Crown independent of parliamentary aid. It may perhaps be reckoned a providential circumstance that his thoughtless humour should have rejected the obvious means of establishing an uncontrollable despotism, by rendering unnecessary the only exertion of power which his subjects were likely to withstand. Henry VII. would probably have followed a very different course. Large sums, however, are said to have been expended in the repair of highways, and in fortifying ports in the Channel.[110] But the greater part was dissipated in profuse grants to the courtiers, who frequently contrived to veil their acquisitions under cover of a purchase from the crown. It has been surmised that Cromwell, in his desire to promote the Reformation, advised the king to make this partition of abbey lands among the nobles and gentry, either by grant, or by sale on easy terms, that, being thus bound by the sure ties of private interest, they might always oppose any return towards the dominion of Rome.[111] In Mary's reign accordingly her parliament, so obsequious in all matters of religion, adhered with a firm grasp to the possession of church lands; nor could the papal supremacy be re-established until a sanction was given to their enjoyment. And we may ascribe part of the zeal of the same class in bringing back and preserving the reformed church under Elizabeth to a similar motive; not that these gentlemen were hypocritical pretenders to a belief they did not entertain, but that, according to the general laws of human nature, they gave a readier reception to truths which made their estates more secure.

But, if the participation of so many persons in the spoils of ecclesiastical property gave stability to the new religion, by pledging them to its support, it was also of no slight advantage to our civil constitution, strengthening, and as it were infusing new blood into the territorial aristocracy, who were to withstand the enormous prerogative of the Crown. For if it be true, as surely it is, that wealth is power, the distribution of so large a portion of the kingdom among the nobles and gentry, the elevation of so many new families, and the increased opulence of the more ancient, must have sensibly affected their weight in the balance. Those families indeed, within or without the bounds of the peerage, which are now deemed the most considerable, will be found, with no great number of exceptions, to have first become conspicuous under the Tudor line of kings; and, if we could trace the titles of their estates, to have acquired no small portion of them, mediately or immediately, from monastic or other ecclesiastical foundations. And better it has been that these revenues should thus from age to age have been expended in liberal hospitality, in discerning charity, in the promotion of industry and cultivation, in the active duties or even generous amusements of life, than in maintaining a host of ignorant and inactive monks, in deceiving the populace by superstitious pageantry, or in the encouragement of idleness and mendicity.[112]

A very ungrounded prejudice had long obtained currency, and, notwithstanding the contradiction it has experienced in our more accurate age, seems still not eradicated, that the alms of monasteries maintained the indigent throughout the kingdom, and that the system of parochial relief, now so much the topic of complaint, was rendered necessary by the dissolution of those beneficent foundations. There can be no doubt that many of the impotent poor derived support from their charity. But the blind eleemosynary spirit inculcated by the Romish church is notoriously the cause, not the cure, of beggary and wretchedness. The monastic foundations, scattered in different counties, but by no means at regular distances, could never answer the end of local and limited succour, meted out in just proportion to the demands of poverty. Their gates might indeed be open to those who knocked at them for alms, and came in search of streams that must always be too scanty for a thirsty multitude. Nothing could have a stronger tendency to promote that vagabond mendicity, which unceasing and very severe statutes were enacted to repress. It was and must always continue a hard problem, to discover the means of rescuing those whom labour cannot maintain from the last extremities of helpless suffering. The regular clergy were in all respects ill fitted for this great office of humanity. Even while the monasteries were yet standing, the scheme of a provision for the poor had been adopted by the legislature, by means of regular collections, which in the course of a long series of statutes, ending in the 43rd of Elizabeth, were almost insensibly converted into compulsory assessments.[113] It is by no means probable that, however some in particular districts may have had to lament the cessation of hospitality in the convents, the poor in general were placed in a worse condition by their dissolution; nor are we to forget that the class to whom the abbey lands have fallen have been distinguished at all times, and never more than in the first century after that transference of property, for their charity and munificence.

These two great political measures, the separation from the Roman see, and the suppression of monasteries, so broke the vast power of the English clergy, and humbled their spirit, that they became the most abject of Henry's vassals, and dared not offer any steady opposition to his caprice, even when it led him to make innovations in the essential parts of their religion. It is certain that a large majority of that order would gladly have retained their allegiance to Rome, and that they viewed with horror the downfall of the monasteries. In rending away so much that had been incorporated with the public faith, Henry seemed to prepare the road for the still more radical changes of the reformers. These, a numerous and increasing sect, exulted by turns in the innovations he promulgated, lamented their dilatoriness and imperfection, or trembled at the reaction of his bigotry against themselves. Trained in the school of theological controversy, and drawing from those bitter waters fresh aliment for his sanguinary and imperious temper, he displayed the impartiality of his intolerance by alternately persecuting the two conflicting parties. We all have read how three persons convicted of disputing his supremacy, and three deniers of transubstantiation, were drawn on the same hurdle to execution. But the doctrinal system adopted by Henry in the latter years of his reign, varying indeed in some measure from time to time, was about equally removed from popish and protestant orthodoxy. The corporal presence of Christ in the consecrated elements was a tenet which no one might dispute without incurring the penalty of death by fire; and the king had a capricious partiality to the Romish practice in those very points where a great many real catholics on the Continent were earnest for its alteration, the communion of the laity by bread alone, and the celibacy of the clergy. But in several other respects he was wrought upon by Cranmer to draw pretty near to the Lutheran creed, and to permit such explications to be given in the books set forth by his authority, the Institution, and the Erudition of a Christian Man, as, if they did not absolutely proscribe most of the ancient opinions, threw at best much doubt upon them, and gave intimations which the people, now become attentive to these questions, were acute enough to interpret.[114]

Progress of the reformed doctrine in England.—It was natural to suspect, from the previous temper of the nation, that the revolutionary spirit which blazed out in Germany should spread rapidly over England. The enemies of ancient superstition at home, by frequent communication with the Lutheran and Swiss reformers, acquired not only more enlivening confidence, but a surer and more definite system of belief. Books printed in Germany or in the Flemish provinces, where at first the administration connived at the new religion, were imported and read with that eagerness and delight which always compensate the risk of forbidden studies.[115] Wolsey, who had no turn towards persecution, contented himself with ordering heretical writings to be burned, and strictly prohibiting their importation. But to withstand the course of popular opinion is always like a combat against the elements in commotion; nor is it likely that a government far more steady and unanimous than that of Henry VIII. could have effectually prevented the diffusion of protestantism. And the severe punishment of many zealous reformers, in the subsequent part of his reign, tended, beyond a doubt, to excite a favourable prejudice for men whose manifest sincerity, piety, and constancy in suffering, were as good pledges for the truth of their doctrine, as the people had been always taught to esteem the same qualities in the legends of the early martyrs. Nor were Henry's persecutions conducted upon the only rational principle, that of the inquisition, which judges from the analogy of medicine, that a deadly poison cannot be extirpated but by the speedy and radical excision of the diseased part; but falling only upon a few of a more eager and officious zeal, left a well-grounded opinion among the rest, that by some degree of temporising prudence they might escape molestation till a season of liberty should arrive.

One of the books originally included in the list of proscription among the writings of Luther and the foreign Protestants, was a translation of the New Testament into English by Tindal, printed at Antwerp in 1526. A complete version of the Bible, partly by Tindal, and partly by Coverdale, appeared, perhaps at Hamburgh, in 1535; a second edition, under the name of Matthews, following in 1537; and as Cranmer's influence over the king became greater, and his aversion to the Roman church more inveterate, so material a change was made in the ecclesiastical policy of this reign, as to direct the Scriptures in this translation (but with corrections in many places) to be set up in parish churches, and permit them to be publicly sold.[116] This measure had a strong tendency to promote the Reformation, especially among those who were capable of reading; not surely that the controverted doctrines of the Romish church are so indisputably erroneous as to bear no sort of examination, but because such a promulgation of the Scriptures at that particular time seemed both tacitly to admit the chief point of contest, that they were the exclusive standard of Christian faith, and to lead the people to interpret them with that sort of prejudice which a jury would feel in considering evidence that one party in a cause had attempted to suppress; a danger which those who wish to restrain the course of free discussion without very sure means of success will in all ages do well to reflect upon.