5. The Dissolution of the Smaller Monasteries. 1536.—Money never came amiss to Henry, and Cromwell now rooted himself firmly in his master's favour by pointing out to him fresh booty. The English monasteries were rich and weak, and it was easy to trump up or exaggerate charges against them. Cromwell sent commissioners to inquire into their moral state (1535), and the commissioners, who were as unscrupulous as himself, rushed round the monasteries in such a hurry that they had no time to make any real inquiry, but nevertheless returned with a number of scandalous tales. These tales referred to some of the larger monasteries as well as the smaller, but, when Parliament met in 1536, Henry contented himself with asking that monasteries having property worth less than 200l. a year should be dissolved, and their estates given to himself, on the ground that whilst the smaller ones were dens of vice the larger ones were examples of virtue. Parliament granted his request, and the work of spoliation began. There can be no doubt that vice did exist in the monasteries, though there was not so much of it as the commissioners asserted. It would have been indeed strange if innocence had been preserved in communities living in enforced celibacy, with no stress of work to occupy their thoughts, and with the high ideals of their profession neglected or cast aside. On the other hand, the monks were easy landlords, were hospitable to the stranger and kindly to the poor, whilst neither the king himself nor those to whom he gave or sold the lands which he acquired cared for more than to make money. The real weakness of the monks lay in their failure to conciliate the more active minds of the age, or to meet its moral needs. The attack upon the vast edifice of Henry's despotism in Church and State could only be carried on successfully by the combined effort of men like the scholars of the Renascence, whose thoughts were unfettered, and of those who, like the Protestants, were full of aggressive vigour, and who substituted for the duty of obedience the duty of following their own convictions.
Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, brother of Jane Seymour, afterwards Duke of Somerset, known as 'the Protector', at the age of 28 (1535), 1507-1552: from a painting at Sudeley Castle.
6. The Execution of Anne Boleyn. 1536.—Before the end of 1536 there was a new queen. Henry became tired of Anne, as he had been tired of Catharine, and on a series of monstrous charges, so monstrous as to be hardly credible, he had her tried and executed. Her unpardonable crime was probably that her only living child was a daughter, and not a son. Ten days after Anne's death Henry married a third wife, Jane Seymour. As Catharine was now dead, there could be no doubt of the legitimacy of Jane's offspring, but to make assurance doubly sure, a new Parliament passed an Act settling the succession on Jane's children, and declaring both Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate.
7. The Ten Articles. 1536.—It is probable that when Henry took the title of Supreme Head he intended to maintain the doctrines and practices of the Church exactly as he found them. In 1536 the clergy were crying out not merely against attacks on their faith, but against the ribaldry with which these attacks were often conducted. One assailant, for instance, declared the oil used in extreme unction to be no more than the Bishop of Rome's grease or butter, and another that it was of no more use to invoke a saint than it was to whirl a stone against the wind. Many of the clergy would have been well pleased with mere repression. Henry, however, and the bishops whom he most trusted wished repression to be accompanied with reasonable explanations of the doctrines and practices enforced. The result was seen in the Ten Articles which were drawn up by Convocation, and sent abroad with the authority of the king. There was to be uniformity, to be obtained by the circulation of a written document, in which the old doctrines were stripped of much that had given offence, and their acceptance made easy for educated men. Of the seven sacraments, three only, Baptism, Penance, and the Sacrament of the Altar, were explained, whilst the other four—those of Marriage, Orders, Confirmation, and Extreme Unction—were passed over in silence. On the whole the Ten Articles in some points showed a distinct advance in the direction of Lutheranism, though there was also to be discerned in them an equally distinct effort to explain rather than to reject the creed of the mediæval Church.