In point of fact the visitations were conducted in a manner which left those immediately concerned in no doubt as to the ultimate object in view. In court circles likewise men were aware that the monastic system was threatened by dangerous and far-reaching changes. While Cromwell’s agents were on their tours of inspection Chapuys, the French ambassador (Sept. 1535) wrote as follows[1081]: ‘There is a report that the king intends the religious of all orders to be free to leave their habits and marry. And if they will stay in their houses they must live in poverty. He intends to take the rest of the revenue and will do stranger things still.’ And two months later he wrote that the king meant to exclude the abbots from the House of Lords for fear of their opposition to his intentions regarding the spoliation of monasteries[1082].
The one merit Cromwell’s visitors can claim is despatch, for in six months, between July 1535 and February 1536, the information on the monasteries was collected throughout the country and laid before Parliament. Gasquet has shown that the House of Lords was the same which had been packed for passing the act of divorce, and that the king, bent on carrying his purpose, bullied the Commons into its acceptance[1083].
The preamble to the bill is couched in strong terms and begins as follows[1084]: ‘Forasmuch as manifest sins, vicious, carnal, and abominable living is daily used and committed amongst the little and small abbeys, priories, and other religious houses of monks, canons and nuns, where the congregation of such religious persons is under the number of twelve persons, whereby the governors of such religious houses and their convent spoil, destroy, consume and utterly waste, as well their churches, monasteries, priories, principal houses, farms, granges, lands, tenements and hereditaments, as the ornaments of their churches and their goods and chattels, to the high displeasure of Almighty God, slander of good religion, and to the great infamy of the king’s highness and the realm, if redress should not be had thereof,’ ... and it goes on to say that since visitations have produced no results, and bad living continues, the Lords and Commons, after deliberation, have resolved to put the possessions of these religious houses to a better use, and that the king and his heirs shall for ever enjoy all houses that are not above the clear annual value of £200 in like manner as the heads of houses at present enjoy it, but that the king by ‘his most excellent charity’ is pleased to grant pensions to those whom he deprives.
Touching the evidence on which action was taken writers of the Elizabethan era speak of the so-called Black Book, the existence of which has since been disproved[1085]. Latimer in a sermon preached in 1549 refers to the ‘enormities’ which were brought to the knowledge of the house; we hold a clue to these in the letters forwarded by Cromwell’s agents when on their tours of inspection, and in their ‘comperts’ or accounts rendered. The condensed accounts (comperta compertorum) rendered by Layton and Legh for the province of York including one hundred and twenty monasteries are extant, as also two other reports, one on twenty-four houses in Norfolk, another on ten[1086].
It has been remarked that the evidence collected differs according to the character of the informers; the reports of Tregonwell for example are by no means so full of scandal as those of Layton and Legh. Moreover Layton and Legh gave a specially bad character to houses in the north where, as we shall see later on, both the people and the gentry were in favour of their continuance. It should also be noted that the state of the lesser houses which fell under the act was not uniformly worse than that of the larger. Many difficulties of course stood in the way of the men who collected evidence. They were received with suspicion and hatred, which their proceedings were not likely to dissipate, and they naturally lent a willing ear to any one who gave information of the character required. It has been shown that in several instances their reports were directly contradicted by those made by the leading men in the different counties, who after the passing of the act were appointed to make a new and exact survey, so that, considering the evidence forthcoming from both sides, it seems reasonable to accept that while the mode of life within convents no longer compared favourably with the mode of life outside them, their standard had not fallen so low, as to render these institutions uniformly despicable.
An example of how the visitors were received is afforded by a letter from Layton to Cromwell, in which he describes how after meeting Legh in the north they visited Chicksand, a Gilbertine house in Bedfordshire[1087]. The nuns here at first refused to admit him, and when he forced an entrance the two prioresses would not admit the accusations made against two of their nuns, ‘nor the parties concerned, nor the nuns, only one old beldame.’ He tried intimidation and was told by the prioress ‘that they were bound by their religion never to confess the secret faults done among them except only to their visitor of religion, and to that they were sworn every one of them at their first admission.’
A similar esprit de corps was manifested by a house of Gilbertine canons[1088]. Layton in the same letter gives a bad character to the nunnery of Harwold, in Bedfordshire, which was inhabited by Austin canonesses[1089], and the inmates of which had been foolish enough to sign a Latin document in favour of Lord Mordaunt without knowing what it contained.
The accusations brought by the visitors can be summarised under two headings, superstitions and scandalous living. The accounts of superstitions are full of most interesting particulars for the student of art and of folklore; the properties which were attached to relics, the character of the images and paintings which were held in reverence, and the construction of saint-images, will amply repay study[1090]. The instances of scandalous living recorded are numerous and affect alike the inmates of men’s and of women’s houses. Coloured as they may be to suit the temper of inquisitor and informer, there is no denying that they point to an advanced state of monastic decay.
It has been estimated that the lesser houses including those of monks and nuns which fell under the act numbered about three hundred and eighty; they were to surrender to the crown within a year. Of these the women’s houses, owing to their comparative poverty, were relatively more numerous than those of the men. Out of about one hundred and thirty nunneries which existed at this period only fifteen were exempt through having a yearly income exceeding £200, but in addition to these over twenty by some means or other secured a reprieve.
As the act abolishing the lesser houses was based on the assumption of their corruption, the heads of some of the houses which bore a good character asked leave on this ground to remain. Among those who wrote to Cromwell in this sense was Jane Messyndyne, prioress of a convent of about ten nuns at Legbourne in Leicestershire, who pleaded that no fault had been found with her house[1091]. ‘And whereas,’ she wrote, ‘we do hear that a great number of abbeys shall be punished, suppressed and put down because of their misliving, and that all abbeys and priories under the value of £200 be at our most noble prince’s pleasure to suppress and put down, yet if it may please your goodness we trust in God you shall hear no complaints against us neither in our living nor hospitality keeping.’ But petitions such as hers apparently passed unheeded, for in the autumn of the same year (Sept. 1536), the process of dissolution was going on at her house[1092].