My few worldly goods were soon gathered together—very few they were—Mistress Davis had been thoughtful enough to send me a riding dress and mask, such as were worn by people of her quality, and I was ready to take leave of the house where I had lived so long, and where I had thought to spend the rest of my days. The dear mothers gave me their blessing and farewells, and in a moment, I was outside the gate. I have never seen the place again.
The king kept it in his own hands for a time, and, I believe, sojourned there more than once. After that, in King Edward's reign, it was the home of Lady Anne of Cleves, the King's divorced wife and adopted sister. Afterward, Queen Mary granted it to some preaching friars, who began a work of restoration which they had no time to finish. Now it belongs to our good queen.
To make an end here of the subject of nunneries—while I think great greed, injustice, falsehood, and cruelty wore exercised in their abolition—I must needs say the land is well rid of them. The secrecy, and the absolute rule, gave opportunity to the exercise of much oppression and cruelty on the part of their rulers, and the victims had no redress. They were made use of, as I have said, by people who wished to get rid of inconvenient relations, and so many persons thus entered, who had no religious sentiment to sustain them, great disorders were likely to prevail (and often did) among companies of young persons with no natural outlet for the passions and affections which God himself hath implanted in our bosoms. Their promiscuous almsgiving did more harm than good, especially with the cloistered orders, who had no means of judging who were worthy and who were mere idle beggars.
Nevertheless, I will always maintain that the work of suppressing them was prompted far more by greed of gain than by any principle of right, and that it was carried on in many cases with great oppression and cruelty, as I have said. However, the king was not, after all, nearly so bad as Cardinal Wolsey, who began the work with the full consent of the pope himself. The king did grant pensions to the older men, and in some cases to the women; which pensions have been paid with tolerable regularity. * (Father Austin receives his, but what he does with it, I cannot say, since he can hardly spend it all in sweets for the children.)
* The last of these pensioners died in the fifth year of James First. See Fuller, for a good account of the matter.
But the cardinal made no provision whatever for those he turned out. Many of the younger nuns married, after a while. (The king changed his mind so often about that matter, that it was hard to know what he would or would not have.) Others took service in families, like Sister Regina, who got a chambermaid's place with my Lady Denny, and, I believe, filled it fairly well for a fool. Some, but I think not many, went wholly to the bad; like Sister Perpetua, who, to be sure, had not far to go.
Our honored mother went to her brother's house, and he losing his wife soon after, she staid to govern his household, and brought up a large family of children who honored her as a mother. Mother Joanna went also to her own home, but she did not live long. Of the rest of the family, I know nothing, save of old Adam, the gardener, who kept his place through all the changes, and died, nearly a hundred years old, in the reign of our present queen.
[CHAPTER VII.]
OLD FRIENDS AND NEW.