Sketch of the Reformation in England

by John J. Blunt

The grounds of such a decision were many and various; in the first place, St. Peter himself, on whose transmitted authority the popes pretended to found their own, was not at all superior to the other apostles:—“Thou art Peter,” said indeed our Lord to him, “and on this rock will I build my church;” but he only built it upon him as he built it upon James or John. Of the church of Ephesus, it was expressly declared that it was built “upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone.”[238] In whatever sense, therefore, Peter might be called the rock, (if indeed to Peter the expression referred, and not to Christ,) James or John might be called so too. When an apostle was to be appointed in the room of Judas, it did not fall to Peter’s province especially to choose him; when deacons were instituted, it was not exclusively by Peter that it was done; the bishop of the first and principal church after our Lord’s ascension was not Peter but James; and by James the decree touching circumcision was issued. St. Paul had no scruple in rebuking Peter to his face when he dissembled, or in asserting of himself that “he was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles.”[239] But further, even had St. Peter been all that the church of Rome pretended, his superiority would still have been of person, not of place, and could not attach to Rome more than to Antioch; nor so much, if Rome, as some even of the earliest interpreters of Scripture affirmed, was Babylon. Moreover, whilst the commission given by our Lord to Peter, “Feed my sheep,” (which was a text put in the fore-front of the controversy by the Romanists) could be interpreted to mean the whole world was to be the Pope’s diocese, there was nothing which Scripture might not be made to mean; besides, if the Pope was St. Peter’s successor, wherein, it was asked, did the succession consist? What one thing had St. Peter like the Pope, or the Pope like St. Peter? Did St. Peter take away the keys of the kingdom of heaven; hide the treasures of God’s word; consign souls to purgatory, or release them from it at his pleasure for silver or gold; pray in an unknown tongue; carry about the sacrament with lights and bells; sell jubilees, graces, palls, bulls, pardons, indulgences? Did he call himself the head of the church, the bishop of bishops, and usurp dominion over all God’s creatures? Did he exempt himself from the power of civil government; maintain wars; set princes at variance; or sit in a chair with a purple gown and regal sceptre and diadem of gold and precious stones, and set his feet on kings’ necks? Did St. Peter, it was asked in conclusion, leave these affairs and others like them in charge to his successors from hand to hand?

Nor, in transferring the supremacy from the Pope to the King, did the church of England act unadvisedly, however it was objected to her that civil princes should confine themselves to civil matters. Certainly, nothing could be more inexpedient, whether for the good government of the country, or its spiritual improvement, than that there should be in it two sovereign heads, each desirous to have the pre-eminence, and a struggle be thus perpetuated between politics and religion; such a mingling of hot blood with sacrifice could never be acceptable to a God of order and peace; and how was the inconvenience to be avoided except by making one and the same person in all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, supreme? Neither was this a new thing under the sun: God had of old time commissioned kings to execute many holy offices.—Isaiah had spoken of them as nursing fathers of the church;[240]—Moses, the civil magistrate, had rebuked Aaron the priest for a breach of duty—Joshua had set many things in order which pertained to God; enjoining circumcision, commanding sacrifices to be made, and the blessings and curses of the law to be sounded in the ears of the people—David had directed and superintended the removal of the ark to Jerusalem—Solomon had reared the Temple, addressed his subjects afterwards in a godly oration, deposed Abiathar the priest, and set up Zadok in his place—Josiah had restored and reformed the worship of his time; cleansed the Temple, broken the brazen serpent, now become an object of idolatry, and despatched his priest to inquire of the prophetess respecting the copy of the law which he had recently discovered;[241] and whatever may be said of a change of times and systems since these dynasties passed away, still the principle itself is not affected by such change; and nothing can be more certain than that these persons were temporal and not spiritual governors of their nation, and yet that in matters ecclesiastical they were authorised to a certain extent to interfere—we say, to a certain extent; for neither could these sovereigns, nor can any sovereigns, as such, excommunicate, or bind, or loose, or perform, one of the priestly functions; still they may lawfully see that others duly commissioned do perform them; it is one thing to exercise the office of a bishop, and another to provide that a bishop there be, and a fit one, to execute it for himself.[242]

Neither does it seem to be unmeet that they who are themselves the “ministers of God,” (as St. Paul expressly calls the supreme magistrates) the “powers ordained of God,” the men to whom “every soul,” without any reservation of ecclesiastics, is to be subject “because they are of God,” should have some voice in the approval of the servants of God’s church, and some control over them; more especially when it is remembered that it is the duty of a king to rule well, and that it would be difficult for him to rule at all, with a body of men within his realm and out of his own reach, who must always possess, so long as the concerns of a world beyond the grave can touch mankind, a very powerful lever in their hands, which, however honestly it may be, and is in general applied, is nevertheless capable of misapplication, as the history of every nation can testify, and none more than our own.[243] And without any reference to extreme cases, to the danger, for instance, of religious meetings becoming, in critical seasons, schools of sedition, and of the divine resolving himself into the demagogue; a danger, however, by no means chimerical when there is nothing to connect the system of religious instruction with the office of the civil magistrate; even in ordinary times it would be found, and it has been found, that the spirit of the independent congregation and that of the government under which it exists, but to which it owes nothing, coincide but little—and that the state is apt to feel its energies crippled by the positive opposition, or at least the non-co-operation of these, its members, in their religious capacity.

It may be added, in defence of the consolidation of the supremacy, both civil and ecclesiastical, in the king, that the Romanists themselves could not deny that the early councils (the decrees of which are recognised by the church of Rome to this day) were summoned by the magistrate, and not by the Bishop of Rome; the council of Nice; for example, by Constantine, “who called together a synod (they are the words of Sozomen), and wrote letters to those who were set over the churches, in every place to attend on a certain day—and there were present (he adds) at this assembly, from the apostolic see, Macarius of Jerusalem, Eustathius, the President of the church of Antioch, (who is reported by Theodoret, it may be observed, as the leader of the council, and the orator who opened it by an address to the emperor,) Alexander of Alexandria, Biton and Bicentius, presbyters of the church of Rome, Julius the bishop being absent, and in all, of bishops about three hundred and twenty, and of presbyters and deacons who attended them no small number.”[244]

Thus do we find Scripture lending its sanction to such an alliance between church and state, as the identification of the king with the supreme head of the church implies—early ecclesiastical history declaratory of the authority by which councils were at first summoned, giving it the approbation of primitive usage—and the necessity of one mind actuating every member of the body politic, both civil and sacred, dictating its expediency.

CHAPTER VIII.

DISSOLUTION OF THE ABBEYS.—CHURCH PROPERTY.—IMMEDIATE CONSEQUENCES OF THE DISSOLUTION.

Henry had by this time fairly passed the Rubicon. After a long pause and much anxiety for the event, he had ventured upon an act which was a declaration of war against the Pope, and he must now carry on. The strength of the Pontiff lay, as we have seen, in the monastic orders, and in the Mendicants above all. The secular clergy were better subjects, and acknowledged a less divided allegiance. But the monks were so powerful a body in England that the monarch, even in times when he wore far from the semblance of a kingly crown, could scarcely balance them. Grievances are alleged against them without end in the “Supplication of Beggars;” “But what remedy?” says the author of this singular address to the King. “Make laws against them? I am in doubt whether ye be able. Are they not stronger in your own parliament-house than yourself? What a number of bishops, abbots, and priors are lords of your parliament![245] Are not all the learned men of your realm in fee with them, to speak in your parliament-house for them against your crown, dignity, and commonwealth of your realm, a few of your own learned council only expected? What law can be made against them that will be available?”[246] When, therefore, the time came for all men to choose their side, and it was clearly seen that this formidable body of regulars would cleave to the Pope to a man, the question was, whether the King should put down the monks, or the monks the King. Henry had no alternative but to try a fall with them, and accordingly, having been slow (considering his temperament) to get into the quarrel, he still acted as Lord Bacon would have advised, and being in it bore himself bravely. Some encouragement in his hazardous undertaking he might possibly derive from the new channel in which public benefactions began now to run, and the feeling it indicated towards the religious houses; for whilst no abbey or priory had been founded for thirty years and upwards, the endowment of schools and colleges was becoming more and more frequent.[247] Accordingly, he began with the lesser monasteries, of which the income did not exceed 200l., or the inmates twelve in number. There were many reasons for making them his first victims. They were the houses of the the friars, the most faithful of all the Pope’s servants, and the earliest to lift up their voice against the King’s supremacy whilst the question of the divorce was in progress. The friars did not stay at home like the easy and well-conditioned monks, but had to forage for a living. “Go not from house to house,” though a text uttered, as it might seem, with almost a prophetic reference to them, they found it convenient to overlook. Whatever opinions, therefore, they entertained, they had the power of putting in extensive circulation; now that they were disaffected, this facility became doubly dangerous. Then they were the most vulnerable of the orders; their corruptions were the grossest. Their vagrant habits threw them amongst temptations, whilst they at the same time withdrew them from wholesome restraints. Abroad they were notorious for intrigues in the hospitable families of the peasants and artisans who received them; and at home they had a treasury of lies, very profitable to themselves whilst their credit was good, but more profitable to their enemies when the fictitious nature of the capital with which they traded was exposed. The Rood of Grace, which would hang its lip when silver was offered to it, and shake its beard merrily when the offering was of gold, was for a time an exchequer; but when the profane hand of a Thomas Cromwell had once opened the figure at Paul’s Cross, and displayed to the good citizens of London the wires by which it had been worked, indignation took the place of credulity, and the craftsmen, to whom it had brought no small gain, were justly scandalised. Moreover, the destruction of these lesser houses did not touch in a very tender place the powerful and privileged classes of society. Younger brothers were provided for in the wealthy abbey, but not in the friar’s hostel. It was a war upon the weak (so far as property was concerned,) and at a time when commerce and manufactures had not taught the weak but the many their value and their strength; and therefore it was a step attended with less danger. Lastly, it was a measure that served very well as a feeler for one still greater which was behind, but which was as yet studiously disavowed, the suppression of all the monasteries and convents great and small; it was the bristle which made a way for the thread.

Thus the year 1536, saw the downfall of 376 smaller abbeys, and the transfer of the buildings themselves, and of the estates attached thereto, to the King. Here, Henry appears for a little while to have paused, partly, perhaps, waiting to see the effect of his first blow, and partly engaged by domestic matters and the judicial destruction of Ann; but he was now too deeply embarked in the work of spoliation to stop long. The greater monasteries had taken the alarm, many of them had already divested themselves of whatever they could detach and turn into money; fines were passed to the detriment of the rent-roll, and furniture and plate sold to the dismantling of the house; so that upon the whole, the personal property of these greater houses was not found to be near so rich a booty as that of the less, on which the storm had burst unawares. Besides, what had been as yet done was enough to irritate, but not enough to disarm the regulars; Henry had made them implacable without making them impotent; and a rebellion which they were understood secretly to have fomented in various parts of England, and especially in the north (the quarter whence some of the most serious of the English rebellions have issued,) was sufficient to attest at once their spirit and their strength. Once more, therefore, the visiters were put in motion. Their commission was made out to examine and report the state of the religious societies yet subsisting; and as the inquiry embraced the purity, the sincerity, and what was more questionable still, the loyalty of the parties, a verdict of guilty, as might be anticipated, was soon returned. In many cases, indeed, the inquisitors were spared their investigation, and some parties feeling their approaching condemnation to be just, and more feeling it to be inevitable, determined to take their sea of troubles at half-tide and make at once a confession and a surrender. To induce this, however, much machinery was set to work by the commissioners themselves; for it was with a heavy heart, and a strong sense of the injustice of the demand, that the honest head of a religious house resigned that, which “was not his to geve,” (as the prior of Henton wrote to his brother, reflecting herein a very general feeling,) “being dedicate to Allmyghtye Gode for service to be done to hys honoure continuallye, with other many goode deeds off daylye charite to christen neybors.”[248] Still some resignations were obtained by promises of pensions; some, again, by threats of exposure, real, or pretended. If a superior was after all refractory, he was put out of the way by force; and some disorderly substitute having been previously provided by the visiter, the latter was formally ejected, and thus appearances were saved.[249] Nor, probably, were there wanting amongst the young and adventurous, those who were glad to be released from retreats which, like the Happy Valley, were too free from pain to be pleasurable; and who had found that there was but small satisfaction in the enjoyment “of that fugitive and cloistered virtue, that shrunk from the race when the prize was to be won not without dust and heat.”[250]

Amidst the strife of tongues, which those tempestuous times called forth, it is almost hopeless to come at the exact truth. On the one hand, the visiters are charged with inordinate rapacity, with private embezzlement of the vast property lying at their mercy, and even with abusing the opportunities which their commission gave them, and corrupting the nuns. They, on the other hand, retaliated by presenting to the eyes of the people a most revolting picture of the interior of these whited sepulchres (for such they were described to be) fair on the outside, but within full of dead men’s bones, and all uncleanness, of spurious relics and sensual sins, and the foulness of the picture helped to relieve the King from the odium of destroying it.