He was nat pale as a for-pyned goost
A fat swan loved he best of any roost.[45]
But Chaucer’s satire, once so true,[46] was a spent shot in De la Mare’s time.
There was other contemporary criticism which was perhaps harder to meet. Langland looked forward with certainty to the time when the monastic system should be destroyed—‘shall have knock of a king and incurable the wound.’ The criticism of Wycliffe was more severe. His rejection of the Pope, with whose interests those of the exempt monasteries were bound up, his doctrine of evangelical poverty, and the practical proposal that the Government should disendow a delinquent church undermined the very foundations of monasticism. Wycliffe’s position rested upon the double argument of the decay of the monastic life and the superiority of a life lived in the world. Of this contention St. Albans could refute only the half. The vicious handling which the reformer receives in its chronicles almost suggests an anticipation of defeat, a tacit recognition of the weakness of the writer’s position. Thomas Walsingham, in his Historia Anglicana, dubs him ‘Wyk-believe’ and ‘disciple of anti-Christ’; speaks not of his opinions, but of his ravings (deliramenta), and unhesitatingly attributes to his inspiration such varied ills as the Peasants’ Revolt and the profanation of the Sacrament by a Wiltshire knight. When he chronicles the death of ‘that limb of Satan, idol of heretics, mirror of hypocrites and fabricator of lies—John Wycliffe,’ it is only to repeat cruel gossip about his last hours. The life of Wycliffe, in fact, marks a fresh step in the growing unpopularity of the monastic system, and with a sure instinct St. Albans recognised the fact, and so far as it was able, dealt with him accordingly.
II.
The Necessity for Dissolution.
It remains for us, taking our stand at the year in which the Monastery was dissolved, to survey the period that has elapsed since the death of Thomas de la Mare. It was a time of stagnation, followed by rapid decline. At the end of the fifteenth century the Abbey was financially more embarrassed and morally even more depraved than in the first years of our period. Without attempting a defence either of the motives of Henry VIII or the methods of the Dissolution, no other conclusion is possible but that the abolition of St. Albans was both just and necessary. The Abbey had long since outlived its useful functions.
The necessity for the dissolution rests on a twofold argument. There was first, the decay of religion, and even morality itself, within the cloister; and secondly, there was the decay of the manorial system, the economic basis of monasticism.
(A). Economic History of the Abbey, 1300–1539.
The Abbot as Landlord.
A great spiritual peer who as a mitred abbot took his place in Parliament among the magnates, the Abbot of St. Albans was a no less important personage in virtue of his huge landed possessions. Indeed, it has never been determined whether the right of such abbots to sit in the Upper House rested upon their spiritual dignity or their position as tenants-in-chief and great landlords. The Abbot of St. Albans exercised a wide seignorial jurisdiction over the Hundred of Cashio from early times, and later, over numerous manors in the eastern counties,[47] monuments to the piety of wealthy donors through the centuries. At the commencement of the fourteenth century the relations existing between the Abbey and its tenants were solely those of the manorial system, now fast decaying on all but monastic estates. The symmetry of this arrangement had been broken at an early date by the growth of the town at the very gates of the Abbey. The townsmen were ruled with the same despotic power as the country tenants, from whom they differed only in being more concentrated. As in the closely parallel case of Bury St. Edmunds, St. Albans was governed by a bailiff chosen by the Abbot and holding office during his pleasure; the townsmen were tried in the Abbot’s court, and offenders incarcerated in the monastic prison. The Abbot secured the profits arising from his court—‘the court of St. Albans under the ash-tree every three weeks’—and from fairs, as also the heavy tolls imposed upon all merchandise passing through the town. This antiquated tyranny contrasted ill with the wide municipal independence enjoyed by other towns.