This instance paved the way for others. The suppression of the smaller monasteries for the purpose of founding and endowing seats of learning on a large scale was advocated by Cardinal Wolsey soon after his accession to power. He was advanced to the chancellorship in 1513 and was nominated cardinal by the Pope in 1515, and among the first houses which he dissolved were the two nunneries of Bromhall in Berkshire and Lillechurch in Kent.
In a letter about Bromhall addressed to the bishop of Salisbury[1050] Wolsey directs him to ‘proceed against enormities, misgovernance and slanderous living, long time heretofore had, used, and continued by the prioress and nuns.’ The nuns were to be removed ‘to other places of that religion, where you best and most conveniently bestow them, especially where they may be brought and induced unto better and more religious living.’ Henry VIII asked in a letter to the bishop that the deeds and evidences of the convent ‘by reason of the vacation of the said place’ might be delivered to his messenger[1051]. It is not clear whether the inmates returned to the world or were transferred to other nunneries. In 1522 it was found that the prioress Joan Rawlins had resigned, her only two nuns had abandoned the house, and it was granted to St John’s College, Cambridge, by the interest and procurement of Fisher, bishop of Rochester[1052].
Full information is preserved about the charges brought against the nuns at Lillechurch. From records at Cambridge we learn on what pleas proceedings were taken. The house formerly contained sixteen nuns, but for some years past there had been only three or four. It stood in a public place, that is on the road to Rochester, and was frequented by clerics, and the nuns were notorious for neglect of their duties and incontinence. Moreover the foundations at Cambridge made by Margaret Beaufort needed subsidizing, and public feeling was against the house. Depositions were taken in writing from which we see that the prioress was dead, and that one of the three inmates had yielded to temptation some eight or nine years before. In answer to the question: ‘Alas, madam, how happened this with you?’—she replied: ‘And I had been happy I might have caused this thing to have been unknown and hidden.’—Together with her two companions she agreed to sign the form of surrender (dated 1521), which was worded as follows. ‘Not compelled by fear or dread, nor circumvented by guile or deceit, out of my own free will, for certain just and lawful reasons (I) do resign and renounce all my right, title, interest and possession that I have had and now have in the aforesaid monastery.’ We do not know what became of these women. Their house was given over to Bishop Fisher, and by letters patent it also passed to St John’s College, Cambridge[1053].
Regarding the charges of immorality brought against the inmates of convents in this and in other instances, it has been repeatedly pointed out by students that such accusations should be received with a reservation, for the occurrence may have taken place before the nun’s admission to the house. The conventionalities of the time were curiously loose in some respects; the court of Henry VIII could boast of scant respect even for the conjugal tie, and a woman of the upper classes who disgraced herself naturally took refuge in a convent, where she could hope in some measure to redeem her character. The fact that Anne Boleyn, who was averse to the whole monastic system, at one time thought of retiring into a nunnery, is quoted as a case in point[1054].
The readiness of Wolsey to dissolve decayed convents and to appropriate their property grew apace with his increase of power. In no case is it recorded that he was deterred by opposition. In 1524 he appropriated St Frideswith’s, a house of Austin canons at Oxford, and made it the nucleus of his great college[1055]. His legatine powers being further extended by a bull of the same year and the royal consent being obtained[1056], twenty small convents were dissolved by him during the next few years[1057]. Among them we note two nunneries, Wykes in Essex, and Littlemore in Oxfordshire[1058]. But little is known of the number and character of their inmates at the time. Two further bulls[1059] were obtained by Wolsey from Pope Clement (1523-34) for diminishing the number of monasteries and suppressing houses of less than twelve inmates. Gasquet, to whom we are indebted for a detailed account of the dissolution, shows that Clement, who was hard pressed by the Lutheran agitation at the time, only reluctantly yielded to Wolsey’s request[1060].
Wolsey’s proceedings in the matter, however, roused considerable local dissatisfaction and brought censure on him from the king. ‘They say not that all that is ill gotten is bestowed on the colleges,’ Henry wrote to him on the eve of his fall, ‘but that the college is the cloak for covering mischiefs.’ The king’s ire was further roused by the cardinal’s accepting the appointment of Isabel Jordan as abbess of Wilton, a house which was under royal patronage, and where the acceptance of the abbess belonged to the king. Anne Boleyn was in the ascendant in Henry’s favour at the time, and wanted the post for someone else. But on enquiry at Wilton the unsuitability of this person became apparent. ‘As touching the matter of Wilton,’ Henry wrote to Anne, ‘my lord cardinal has had the nuns before him and examined them, Master Bell being present, who has certified to me that for a truth she has confessed herself (which we would have abbess) to have had two children by sundry priests, and further since has been kept by a servant of Lord Broke that was, and not long ago; wherefore I would not for all the world clog your conscience nor mine to make her ruler of a house who is of such ungodly demeanour, nor I trust, you would not that neither for brother nor sister I should so stain mine honour and conscience[1061].’ It is evident from this letter that whatever the character of the women received into the house might be, the antecedents of the lady superior were no matter of indifference. In this case the king’s objection to one person and the unsuitability of the other led to the appointment of a third[1062].
From the year 1527 all other questions were swallowed up by the momentous question of the king’s divorce. Wolsey, who refused to comply with his wishes, went into retirement in 1529 and died in the following year. The management of affairs then passed into the hands of those who in this country represented the ruthless and reckless spirit of rebellion which had broken loose abroad. However several years passed before the attempt to appropriate the revenues of monasteries was resumed.
In the intervening period of increasing social and political unrest we note the publication, some time before 1529, of the ‘Supplication for beggars,’ with which London was flooded[1063]. It was an attack on the existing religious and monastic orders by the pamphleteer Simon Fish († c. 1530). Based on the grossest misrepresentations this supplication, in a humorous style admirably suited to catch popular attention, set forth the poverty of the people, the immorality of those who were vowed to religion, and the lewdness of unattached women, and declared that if church and monastic property were put to a better use these evils would be remedied. The king, who was on the eve of a rupture with Rome, lent a willing ear to this ‘supplication,’ and it so fell in with the general belief in coming changes that the refutation of its falsehoods and the severe criticism of Luther written in reply by Thomas More passed for the most part unheeded[1064].
Another incident which reflects the spirit of the time in its contrarieties and instability, is the way in which Elizabeth Barton, of the parish of Aldington, the so-called Maid or Nun of Kent, rose to celebrity or notoriety. Her foresight of coming events had been received as genuine by many men of distinction, but her visions concerning the king’s projected divorce were fiercely resented by the king’s partisans. Bishop Fisher wept tears of joy over her, Wolsey received her as a champion of Queen Katherine’s cause, and even Thomas More showed some interest in her, while Cromwell accused her of rank superstition and induced Henry to take proceedings against her[1065]. She had been a servant girl, but at the instigation of the clergy at Canterbury had been received into St Sepulchre’s nunnery, where she lived for seven years and was looked upon with special favour by the Carthusian monks of Charterhouse and Sheen, and the inmates of the monastery of Sion. At the beginning of 1533 the king was married to Anne, and in the autumn of the same year Elizabeth Barton was accused of treasonable incitement and made to do public penance. Later a bill of attainder was brought in against her, and as Gasquet has shown[1066], she was condemned without a hearing and executed at Tyburn with several Carthusian monks who were inculpated with her on the charge of treason. Henry also made an attempt to get rid of Bishop Fisher and of Sir Thomas More by causing them to be accused of favouring her ‘conspiracy,’ but the evidence against them was too slight to admit of criminal proceedings. It was on the charge of declaring that Henry was not the supreme head of the Church that Fisher suffered death (June, 1535), and on the yet slighter charge of declining to give an opinion on the matter, that More was executed a fortnight later[1067].
The parliament of 1533 had passed the act abolishing appeals to the Court of Rome, and among other rights had transferred that of monastic visitation from the Pope to the king. In the following year a further division was made,—the king claimed to be recognised as the head of the Church. It was part of Henry’s policy to avoid openly attacking any part of the old system; gradual changes were brought about which undermined prerogatives without making a decided break. Cromwell was appointed vicegerent in ecclesiastical matters, and it was on the plea of securing the recognition of the king’s supremacy that he deputed a number of visitors or agents to conduct monastic visitations on a large scale, and to secure all possible information about religious houses. His plan and the way in which it was carried out struck a mortal blow at the whole monastic system.