In spite of the Act of Parliament, which declared that the monks were either to be pensioned, or else moved to some other religious house, there is no doubt that great misery and wretchedness invariably accompanied the dissolutions. Chapuys writes: ‘It is a lamentable thing to see a legion of monks and nuns, who have been chased from their monasteries, wandering miserably hither and thither, seeking means to live, and several honest men have told me, that what with monks, nuns, and persons dependent on the monasteries suppressed, there were over 20,000, who knew not how to live[406].’ The Act for the protection of the exiled inmates cannot have been at all strictly enforced, and there were certainly many monks, to whom no homes or means of living were assigned. Sir Henry Ellis has printed a document, concerning the dissolution of some of the monasteries, which was written in 1591 by one whose father and uncle witnessed the scenes he describes. It tells how ‘it would have made an heart of flint to have melted and wept to have seen the breaking up of the House, and their sorrowful departing; and the sudden spoil that fell the same day of their departure from the House. And every person had everything good cheap; except the poor Monks, Friars, and Nuns, that had no money to bestow of any thing.’ The people entered the church, ‘and took what they found, and filched it away. . . . It would have pitied any heart to see what tearing up of the lead there was, and plucking up of boards, and throwing down of the sparres; . . . and the tombs in the Church (were) all broken, . . . and all things of price either spoiled, carped away, or defaced to the uttermost[407].’ Nor is this tendency of the people of the neighbourhood to plunder in the least to be wondered at. They knew that as the monasteries were to be pulled down they would lose all the old charities, easy rents, and other advantages to which they had so long been accustomed, and they naturally wished to make good the loss. Cromwell probably did not object to this ruthless waste as much as one would expect, for he saw that if he attempted to stop it, the feeling against the suppression would be so strong, that it would be impossible to continue it. As it was, the famous rebellion of the Pilgrimage of Grace, which broke out in the northern counties, just as the first houses were being suppressed, gave him a terrible warning of the general unpopularity of the change. The insurrection, however, was soon quelled, and Cromwell’s genius was able to turn it to his own advantage, and make it the pretext for carrying out the scheme which had probably been part of his original plan, namely the suppression of all the monasteries; a step which, without some valid excuse, he would have hardly dared to take.
In 1537 the visitors began to go to the larger monasteries, and intimidate their inmates into surrender, mainly by threatening them with punishment for complicity in the rebellion which had just been put down. An excellent example of the way in which this was done, is given by the story of the suppression of the two large Cistercian abbeys in Lancashire, Whalley and Furness[408]. John Pasleu, Abbot of Whalley, had been executed in March, 1537, by the Earl of Sussex for his treason in taking part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. The Earl was commended for this action by the King, who further desired him with ‘good dexteritie’ to ‘laye unto the charges of all the monkes there their grevous offences, . . . and therwith assaye their myndes, whither they woll conforme themselfes gladly for the redubbing of their former trespaces to goo to other houses of their cote . . . or rather take capacities and soo receyve seculer habite[409].’ The Abbot of Furness was doubtless threatened with death if he refused to surrender his house, for a month after the execution of his brother at Whalley, he signed a document, by virtue of which he handed over to the King his abbey, and all its lands and possessions, ‘knawyng the mysorder and evyll liff both unto God and our prynce of the bredren of the said monasterie[410].’
Another method of intimidation was to threaten punishment for superstition and image worship. Against the latter Henry’s minister was particularly zealous. Some of the images were very valuable, and could be sold for a high price. Two of the most extraordinary of the venerated relics found in the ‘defacement’ of the monasteries have become famous to posterity, under the names of the Rood of Grace, and the Blood of Hailes. The former was a wonder-working crucifix, held in great veneration at Boxley Abbey, which Geoffrey Chambers[411], an agent of Cromwell’s, found full of ‘certen ingynes and olde wyer wyth olde roton stykkes in the backe of the same, that dyd cause the eyes of the same to move and stere in the hede thereof lyke unto a lyvelye thyng[412].’ It was seized and exhibited, first in Kent, and then in London, and the ‘abusion thereof dyvulged.’ The Blood of Hailes was a phial of liquid, which a tradition of three centuries asserted to have been the blood of the Saviour[413]. The head of the monastery brought it to Cromwell in great perplexity, swearing that he was willing to suffer the most shameful death, if the phial had been meddled with in his day. A commission, appointed to inquire into it, took the liquid out of the phial, and found it to be a thick, red, sticky substance. They then gave it back to the abbot, to keep until he heard the King’s pleasure concerning it. Meantime Bishop Hilsey had preached a sermon in denunciation of the fraud, in which he asserted that a former abbot had told his paramour that the phial contained only drake’s blood; but he was later compelled to take back this last statement, as a result of the Commissioners’ inquiry. What ultimately became of the Blood of Hailes has remained a mystery, but it is noteworthy that Cromwell was so annoyed, at having unearthed a relic which proved valueless from a financial point of view, that when the ‘bluddy abbot,’ as Latimer called him, came to consult him about it, he was forced to pay £140, his best mitre, cross, and ‘another thyng or two,’ to make good the amount which Cromwell had expected to obtain from the relic. The iconoclastic zeal of the Vicar-general varied in proportion to the value of the image[414].
The first Act of dissolution had only given to the King the monasteries of which the annual income was less than £200. But now that Cromwell, on the plea of complicity in the late rebellion, had contrived to bring in all the larger religious houses, so that a general suppression had in fact begun, a fresh Act was needed to legalize his proceedings. So in the spring of 1539, a new statute was passed for the dissolution of all monasteries and abbeys[415]. But long before this the main part of the work had been accomplished. When the monks refused to be terrorized into submission, attainder and death invariably followed. It is but justice to Cromwell’s agents to say, however, that their methods of intimidation were so highly effectual that attainder was the exception, and surrender the rule. The Commissioners may well have been surprised that any of the abbots dared to stand out against them.
From 1537 to the end of 1539, the story of the suppression of the monasteries is simply a catalogue of houses surrendered or confiscated, on more or less unjust pretexts. So rapidly and thoroughly did Cromwell and his Commissioners accomplish the work, that by the end of December no monastery in the country had been left untouched, except Westminster Abbey, and a few other larger houses. The climax of cruelty and injustice was reached in the executions of the Abbots of Glastonbury and Reading. Cromwell’s famous remembrance concerning the latter was literally obeyed. There was no pretence of a fair hearing of his case. He was sent down ‘to be tryed and excecutyd,’ as Cromwell had ordered it[416]. The punishment of the Abbot of Glastonbury was, if possible, even more unjust. Though weak and broken with age and illness, he was arrested and sent up to the Tower, simply on the charge of having in his monastery a book against the King’s divorce, divers pardons and bulls, and a printed life of Becket[417]. It is stated that on examination Cromwell discovered that he had lent money to the rebels in the Pilgrimage of Grace, but it mattered little whether this serious charge was proved or not. His execution was determined on long beforehand, and his rich and ancient abbey was plundered immediately after his arrest. His fate was sealed long before his mock trial at Wells took place; the verdict of the ‘worshypfull jury’ was of course ‘guilty,’ and he was executed two days later on Glastonbury Tor[418].
Hand in hand with the suppression of the monasteries came the fall of the various houses of the friars. This had probably been a part of Cromwell’s scheme from the very first; it will be remembered that several houses suffered in the early part of his ministry, as a penalty for permitting their inmates to preach against the King’s divorce. A sort of preliminary visitation had been carried on in 1534, at Cromwell’s command, by his agents Browne and Hilsey[419]: but a far more energetic person was found in Richard Ingworth, Bishop of Dover, who, on the 6th of February, 1538, was commissioned by the Vicar-general to carry on a second investigation, in which he was to visit all the houses of the various orders of friars in England, to examine into and correct abuses, and to expel and punish the guilty inmates[420]. As he refers to the King’s Vicegerent, as his ‘synguler helper for XII yeres past[421],’ there is reason to think that he had been an intimate of Cromwell’s before the latter had entered the royal service: it is possible that they had worked together in the suppression of the monasteries which furnished funds for Wolsey’s colleges. A greater traveller than Ingworth could scarcely have been found in those days. The number of houses he visited during the first six months of 1538 is perfectly amazing, but with all his energy, Richard of Dover was far less efficient than his terrible master. When he hesitatingly wrote to Cromwell to ask whether he should meddle with the White Friars of Winchester, he received a smart rebuke for his doubts, and was told that though he had changed his friar’s habit, he had not changed his friar’s heart[422]. The Vicar-general found it necessary to give him a coadjutor, and chose a singularly apt man for his purpose in Dr. John London, Warden of New College, Oxford, who received a special commission with the mayor and two others to ‘loke vpon’ the friars of that town[423]. The friars gave the Commissioners more trouble than the monks. They seemed to have secret ways of learning when the visitors were going to arrive, and either carefully hid, or else sold all their valuables beforehand, a fact which affords the most probable explanation of the amount of poverty reported by the visitors. Still the houses fell without ceasing; if not by voluntary surrender, by compulsion. Nor did the visitors hesitate in the case of nunneries, to resort to the most shameful devices to elicit a surrender. London’s conduct was so disgraceful, that Cromwell was obliged to recognize the justice of the complaints of the Abbess of Godstow against him, and ‘steye his procedinges[424].’ ‘Doctor Londone,’ wrote the abbess to the Vicar-general, ‘whiche . . . was ageynste my promotyon and hathe ever sence borne me greate malys and grudge like my mortall enmye, is sodenlie cummyd unto me withe a greate rowte with him, and here dothe threten me and my susters, sayeng that he hathe the kynges commyssyon to suppres the house spyte of my tethe[425].’ It appears that London himself wrote to Cromwell the day after to beg him to favour the abbess and her sisters[426]. Did he perhaps feel that he had gone too far, or are we to infer that his usual methods were even more brutal than this?
And thus the work was finished. Within five years of the time that the first visitation of the monasteries had begun, a complete devastation of all the religious houses had been accomplished, and a torrent of wealth had been poured in upon the Crown, ‘such,’ says Hallam, ‘as has seldom been equalled in any country, by the confiscations following a subdued rebellion[427].’ The suppression which included the larger houses was evidently a far greater financial success than the first. A new device for gaining revenue had been invented, and put in operation during the last few years. It consisted in imposing a fine on every place in which a religious house had existed, ‘for the toleracyon and contynuaunce of the monastery ther[428]’; an ingenious device, which yielded a most substantial income. ‘The King had then in his hand,’ says Burnet, ‘the greatest opportunity of making royal and noble foundations that ever King of England had. But whether out of policy, to give a general content to the gentry by selling to them at low rates, or out of easiness to his courtiers, or out of an unmeasured lavishness of expense, it came far short of what he had given out he would do. . . . He designed to convert £18,000 into a revenue for eighteen bishoprics and cathedrals. But of these he only erected six. . . . Great sums were indeed laid out on building and fortifying many ports in the Channel, and other parts of England[429].’
Lacking any evidence from the sources on the subject of the use to which the revenues from the suppression of the monasteries were put, one must judge from this passage, and from subsequent events. An Act giving Henry the power to erect bishoprics by letters patent, was passed in Parliament, May 23, 1539[430]. It was by the authority of this statute, that the King founded the six new bishops’ sees above mentioned, and also converted some of the old houses, such as Beverley, Ripon, and Manchester, into collegiate churches. But the passage in Burnet also hints at other methods of employing the money gained from the suppression of the monasteries, which it seems likely that Cromwell suggested. The use of the funds to strengthen the coast defences along the Channel was always one of his favourite schemes; it is probable that he found no difficulty in persuading the King how necessary such a precaution was, in view of the danger of foreign invasion, which threatened England at the close of 1539. But the plan of selling the lands of the confiscated houses to the nobles at low prices, is even more Cromwellian. It immediately reminds the reader of the course which Wolsey, ten years before, had pursued at his servant’s advice, when he bought off the popular hatred by grants out of his own lands and revenues. Cromwell plainly saw that after the suppression, steps must be taken to ensure the permanence of the reform he had effected. By judicious grants he turned aside the hatred of some of the rural gentry, who were at first opposed to the destruction of the monasteries, and thus, by rendering the work popular at home, he secured himself and it from the attacks of Catholic potentates abroad. But his action at this juncture had another more subtle and more important result. For by the grants which he made to the rural gentry, he laid the basis for the foundation of a territorial aristocracy, destined at a later day to wrest from the Crown the power which he had wrung from the older nobility, lay and clerical. This after-effect of Cromwell’s policy, which was in direct opposition to the aims of his government, did not take place till long after his fall. It was rendered possible solely by the movement of events over which he had no control, and he could have scarcely anticipated it. But it is only fair to mention it here, in order that we may be able to look on the suppression of the monasteries and its after-effects as a connected whole. If we do this, the cruelty and treachery of Cromwell and his agents in gaining their ends will not make us blind to the fact, that in the end the destruction of the religious houses in England certainly accomplished other and better results than those it was originally intended to compass.