But they did not all use the same language. It was the last hour for the convents. There was a ceaseless movement in the cloisters; bursts of sorrow and fear, of anger and despair. What! No more monasteries! no more religious pomps! no more gossip! no more refectory! Those halls, wherein their predecessors had paced for centuries; those chapels, in which they had worshipped kneeling on the pavement, were to be converted to vulgar uses. A few convents endeavored to bribe Cromwell: 'If you save our house,' said the abbot of Peterborough, 'I will give the king two million five hundred marks, and yourself three hundred pounds sterling.'[216] But Cromwell had conceived a great national measure, and wished to carry it out. Neither the eloquence of the monks, their prayers, their promises, nor their money could move him.
Some of the abbots set themselves in open revolt against the king, but were forced to submit at last. The old halls, the long galleries, the narrow cells of the convents, became emptier from day to day. The monks received a pension in proportion to their age. Those who desired to continue in the religious life were sent to the large monasteries. Many were dismissed with a few shillings for their journey and a new gown.[217] 'As for you,' said the commissioners to the young monks under twenty-five, 'you must earn a living by the work of your hands.' The same rule was applied to the nuns.
There was great suffering at this period. The inhabitants of the cloisters were strangers in the world: England was to them an unknown land. Monks and nuns might be seen wandering from door to door, seeking an asylum for the night. Many, who were young then, grew old in beggary. Their sin had been great, and so was their chastisement. Some of the monks fell into a gloomy melancholy, even into frightful despair: the remembrance of their faults pursued them; God's judgment terrified them; the sight of their miseries infuriated them. 'I am like Esau,' said one of them, 'I shall be eternally damned.' And he strangled himself with his collar. Another stabbed himself with a penknife. Some compassionate people having deprived him of the power of injuring himself, he exclaimed with rage, 'If I cannot die in this manner, I shall easily find another;' and taking a piece of paper, he wrote on it: Rex tanquam tyrannus opprimit populum suum.[218] This he placed in one of the church books, where it was found by a parishioner, who in great alarm called out to the persons around him. The monk, full of hope that he would be brought to trial, drew near and said, 'It was I who did it: here I am; let them put me to death.'
Erelong those gloomy clouds, which seemed to announce a day of storms, appeared to break. There were tempests afterwards, but, speaking generally, England found in this energetic act one of the sources of her greatness, instead of the misfortunes with which she was threatened. At the moment when greedy eyes began to covet the revenues of Cambridge and Oxford, a recollection of the pleasant days of his youth was awakened in Henry's mind. 'I will not permit the wolves around me,' he said, 'to fall upon the universities.' Indeed, the incomes of a few convents were employed in the foundation of new schools, and particularly of Trinity College, Cambridge; and these institutions helped to spread throughout England the lights of the Renaissance and of the Reformation. An eloquent voice was heard from those antique halls, saying: 'O most invincible prince, great is the work that you have begun. Christ had laid the foundation; the apostles raised the building. But alas! barren weeds had overrun it; the papal tyranny had bowed all heads beneath its yoke. Now, you have rejected the pope; you have banished the race of monks. What more can we ask for? We pray that those houses of cenobites, where an ignorant swarm of drones was wont to buzz,[219] should behold in their academic halls a generous youth, eager to be taught, and learned men to teach them. Let the light which has been restored to us spread its rays through all the universe and kindle other torches, so that the darkness should flee all over the world[220] before the dawn of a new day.'
It was not learning alone that gained by the suppression of the monasteries. The revenues of the crown, which were about seven hundred thousand ducats, increased by those of the convents which were about nine hundred thousand, were more than doubled. This wealth, hitherto useless, served to fortify England and Ireland, build fortresses along the coasts, repair the harbors, and create an imposing fleet. The kingdom took a step in the career of power. By the reformation of the convents the moral force of the nation gained still more than the material force. The abolition of the papacy restored to the people that national unity which Rome had taken away; and England, freed from subjection to a foreign power, could oppose her enemies with a sword of might and a front of iron.
=NATIONAL PROSPERITY.=
Political economy, rural economy, all that concerns the collection and distribution of wealth, then took a start that nothing has been able to check. The estates, taken from the easy-going monks, produced riches. The king and the nobility, desirous of deriving the greatest gain possible from the domains that had fallen to them, endeavored to improve agriculture. Many men, until that time useless, electrified by the movement of minds, sought the means of existence. The Reformation, from which the nation expected only purity of doctrine, helped to increase the general prosperity, industry, commerce, and navigation. The poor remembered that God had commanded man to eat his bread, not in the shade of the monasteries, but in the sweat of his brow. To this epoch we must ascribe the origin of those mercantile enterprises, of those long and distant voyages which were to be one day the strength of Great Britain. Henry VIII. was truly the father of Elizabeth.
Moral, social, and political development was no less a gainer by the order that was established. At the first moment, no doubt, England presented the appearance of a vast chaos: but from that chaos there sprang a new world. Forces which had hitherto been lost in obscure cells, were employed for the good of society. The men who had been dwelling carelessly within or without the cloister walls, and had expended all their activity in listlessly giving or listlessly receiving alms, were violently shaken by the blows from the Malleus monachorum, the hammer of the monks: they aroused themselves, and made exertions which turned to the public good. Their children, and especially their grandchildren, became useful citizens. The third estate appeared. The population of the cloisters was transformed into an active and intelligent middle class. The very wealth, acquired, it is true, greedily by the nobility, secured them an independence, which enabled them to oppose a salutary counterpoise to the pretensions of the crown. The Upper House, where the ecclesiastical element had predominated, became essentially a lay house by the absence of the abbots and priors. A public grew up. A new life animated antique institutions that had remained almost useless. It was not, in truth, until later that mighty England, having become decidedly evangelical and constitutional, sat down victoriously on the two great ruins of feudalism and popery; but an important step was taken under Henry VIII. That great transformation extended its influence even beyond the shores of Great Britain. The blow aimed at the system of the Middle Ages re-echoed throughout Europe, and everywhere shook the artificial scaffolding. Spain and Italy alone remained almost motionless in the midst of their ancient darkness.
The suppression of the monasteries, begun in 1535, was continued in 1538, and brought to a conclusion in 1539 by an Act of Parliament.
=A PROPHECY.=