CHAPTER VII.
VISITATION OF THE MONASTERIES: THEIR SCANDALS AND SUPPRESSION.
(September 1535 to 1536.)
The death of the late tutor and friend of the prince was to be followed by a measure less cruel but far more general. The pope who treated kings so rudely should not be surprised if kings treated the monks severely. Henry knew—had indeed been a close witness of their lazy and often irregular lives. One day, when he was hunting in the forest of Windsor, he lost his way, perhaps intentionally, and about the dinner hour knocked at the gate of Reading Abbey. As he represented himself to be one of his Majesty's guards, the abbot said: 'You will dine with me;' and the king sat down to a table covered with abundant and delicate dishes. After examining everything carefully: 'I will stick to this sirloin,' said he, pointing to a piece of beef of which he eat heartily.[161] The abbot looked on with admiration. 'I would give a hundred pounds,' he exclaimed, 'to eat with as much appetite as you; but alas! my weak and qualmish stomach can hardly digest the wing of a chicken.'—'I know how to bring back your appetite,' thought the king. A few days later some soldiers appeared at the convent, took away the abbot, and shut him up in the Tower, where he was put upon bread and water. 'What have I done,' he kept asking, 'to incur his Majesty's displeasure to such a degree?' After a few weeks, Henry went to the state prison, and concealing himself in an ante-room whence he could see the abbot, ordered a sirloin of beef to be set before him. The famished monk in his turn fell upon the joint, and (according to tradition) eat it all. The king now showed himself: 'Sir abbot,' he said, 'I have cured you of your qualms; now pay me my wages. It is a hundred pounds, you know.' The abbot paid and returned to Reading; but Henry never after forgot the monks' kitchen.
=STATE OF THE MONASTERIES.=
The state of the monasteries was an occasion of scandal: for many centuries all religious life had died out in most of those establishments. The monks lived, generally, in idleness, gluttony, and licentiousness, and the convents which should have been houses of saints had become in many cases mere sties of lazy gormandizers and impure sensualists. 'The only law they recognize,' said Luther, speaking of these cloisters, 'is that of the seven deadly sins.' History encounters here a twofold danger: one is that of keeping back what is essential, the scandalous facts that justify the suppression of monasteries; the other is that of saying things that cannot be named. We must strive to steer between these two quicksands.
All classes of society had become disgusted with the monasteries: the common people would say to the monks: 'We labor painfully, while you lead easy and comfortable lives.' The nobility regarded them with looks of envy and irony which threatened their wealth. The lawyers considered them as parasitical plants, which drew away from others the nutriment they required. These things made the religious orders cry out with alarm: 'If we no longer have the pope to protect us, it is all over with us and our monasteries.' And they set to work to prevent Henry from separating from the pope: they circulated anonymous stories, seditious songs, trivial lampoons, frightful prophecies and biting satires against the king, Anne Boleyn, and the friends of the Reformation. They held mysterious interviews with the discontented, and took advantage of the confessional to alarm the weak-minded. 'The supremacy of the pope,' they said, 'is a fundamental article of the faith: none who reject it can be saved.' People began to fear a general revolt.
When Luther was informed that Henry VIII. had abolished the authority of the pope in his kingdom, but had suffered the religious orders to remain, he smiled at the blunder: 'The king of England,' he said, 'weakens the body of the papacy but at the same time strengthens the soul.'[162] That could not endure for long.
=CROMWELL'S ADVICE.=
Cromwell had now attained high honors and was to mount higher still. He thought with Luther that the pope and the monks could not exist or fall one without the other. After having abolished the Roman pontiff, it became necessary to abolish the monasteries. It was he who had prevailed on the king to take the place of head of the Church; and now he wished him to be so really. 'Sire,' he said to Henry, 'cleanse the Lord's field from all the weeds that stifle the good corn, and scatter everywhere the seeds of virtue.[163] In 1525, 1528, 1531 and 1534 the popes themselves lent you their help in the suppression of monasteries; now you no longer require their aid. Do not hesitate, Sire: the most fanatical enemies of your supreme authority are to be found in the convents. There is buried the wealth necessary to the prosperity of the nation. The revenues of the religious orders are far greater than those of all the nobility of England. The cloister schools have fallen into decay, and the wants of the age require better ones. To suppress the pope and to keep the monks is like deposing the general and delivering the fortresses of the country up to his army. Sire, imitate the example of the protestants and suppress the monasteries.'
Such language alarmed the friends of the papacy, who stoutly opposed a scheme which they believed to be sacrilegious. 'These foundations were consecrated to Almighty God,' they told the king; 'respect therefore those retreats where pious souls live in contemplation.'[164] 'Contemplation!' said Sir Henry Colt smiling; 'tomorrow, Sire, I undertake to produce proofs of the kind of contemplation in which these monks indulge.' Whereupon, says an historian, Colt, knowing that a certain number of the monks of Waltham Abbey had a fondness for the conversation of ladies, and used to pass the night with the nuns of Chesham Convent, went to a narrow path through which the monks would have to pass on their return, and stretched across it one of the stout nets used in stag-hunting. Towards daybreak, as the monks, lantern in hand, were making their way through the wood, they suddenly heard a loud noise behind them—it was caused by men whom Colt had stationed for the purpose—and instantly blowing out their lights they were hurrying away, when they fell into the toils prepared for them.[165] The next morning, he presented them to the king, who laughed heartily at their piteous looks. 'I have often seen better game,' he said, 'but never fatter. Certainly,' he added, 'I can make a better use of the money which the monks waste in their debaucheries. The coast of England requires to be fortified, my fleet and army to be increased, and harbors to be built for the commerce which is extending every day.[166] All that is well worth the trouble of suppressing houses of impurity.'