Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

rumors of her amours to his Council; it investigated, and reported

to the King that she had committed adultery with five members of the

court- Sir William Brereton, Sir Henry Norris, Sir Francis Weston,

Mark Smeton, and her brother Lord Rochford. The five men were sent

to the Tower, and on May 2, 1536, Anne followed them.

Henry wrote to her holding out hopes of forgiveness or lenience if

she would be honest with him. She replied that she had nothing to

confess. Her attendants in prison alleged that she had admitted

receiving proposals of love from Norris and Weston, but that she

claimed to have repulsed them. On May 11 the grand jury of

Middlesex, having been asked to make local inquiries into offenses

allegedly committed by the Queen in that county, reported that it

found her guilty of adultery with all five of the accused men, and

gave specific names and dates. `062468 On May 12 four of the men

were tried at Westminster by a jury including Anne's father, the

Earl of Wiltshire. Smeton confessed himself guilty as charged; the

others pleaded not guilty; all four were convicted. On May 15 Anne and

her brother were tried by a panel of twenty-six peers under the

presidency of the Duke of Norfolk, her uncle but political enemy.

Sister and brother affirmed their innocence, but each member of the

panel announced himself convinced of their guilt, and they were

sentenced to be "burned or beheaded, as shall please the King." On May

17 Smeton was hanged; the other four men were beheaded as befitted

their rank. On that day Archbishop Cranmer was required by royal

commissioners to declare the marriage with Anne invalid, and Elizabeth

a bastard; he complied. The grounds for this judgment are not known,

but presumably Anne's alleged prior marriage with Lord

Northumberland was now pronounced real.

On the eve of her death Anne knelt before Lady Kingston, wife of the

warden, and asked a last favor: that she should go and kneel before

Mary and beseech her, in Anne's name, to forgive the wrongs that had

come to her through the pride and thoughtlessness of a miserable

woman. `062469 On May 19 she begged that her execution should take

place soon. She appeared to derive some comfort from the thought

that "the executioner I have heard to be very good, and I have a

little neck"- whereupon she laughed. That noon she was led to the

scaffold. She asked the spectators to pray for the King, "for a

gentler and more merciful prince was there never; and to me he was

ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign lord." `062470 No one could be

sure of her guilt, but few regretted her fall.

On the day of her death Cranmer gave the King a dispensation to

marry again in renewed quest for a son; on the morrow Henry and Jane

Seymour were secretly betrothed; on May 30, 1536, they were married;

and on June 4 she was proclaimed queen. She was of royal lineage,

being descended from Edward III; she was related to Henry in the third

or fourth degree of consanguinity, which called for another

dispensation from the obedient Cranmer. She was of no special

beauty, but she impressed all with her intelligence, kindness, even

modesty; Cardinal Pole, Henry's most thoroughgoing enemy, described

her as "full of goodness." She discouraged the King's advances while

Anne lived, refused his gifts, returned his letters unopened, and

asked him never to speak to her except in the presence of

others. `062471

One of her first acts after marriage was to effect a

reconciliation between Henry and Mary. He did it in his own way. He

had Cromwell send her a paper entitled "The Confession of the Lady

Mary": it acknowledged the King as supreme head of the Church in

England, repudiated "the Bishop of Rome's pretended authority," and

recognized the marriage of Henry with Catherine as "incestuous and

unlawful." Mary was required to sign her name to each clause. She did,

and never forgave herself. Three weeks later the King and Queen came

to see her, and gave her presents and 1,000 crowns. She was again

called Princess; and at Christmas, 1536, she was received at court.

There must have been something good in Henry- and in "Bloody Mary"-

for in his later years she almost learned to love him.

When Parliament met again (June 8, 1536) it drew up at the King's

request a new Act of Succession, by which both Elizabeth and Mary were

declared illegitimate, and the crown was settled on the prospective

issue of Jane Seymour. In July Henry's bastard son, the Duke of

Richmond, died; now all the hopes of the King lay in Jane's pregnancy.

England rejoiced with him when (October 12, 1537) she was delivered of

a boy, the future Edward VI. But poor Jane, to whom the King was now

as deeply attached as his self-centered spirit allowed, died twelve

days after her son's birth. Henry was for some time a broken man.

Though he married thrice again, he asked, at his death, to be buried

beside the woman who had given her life in bearing his son.

What were the reactions of the English people to the events of

this world-shaking reign? It is difficult to say; the testimony is

prejudiced, ambiguous, and sparse. Chapuys reported in 1533 that, in

the opinion of many Englishmen, "the last King Richard was never so

much hated by his people as this King." `062472 Generally the people

sympathized with Henry's desire for a son, condemned his severity to

Catherine and Mary, shed no tears over Anne, but were deeply shocked

by the execution of Fisher and More. The nation was still

overwhelmingly Catholic, `062473 and the clergy- now that the

government had appropriated the annates- were hoping for

reconciliation with Rome. But hardly any man dared raise his voice

in criticism of the King. Criticism he received, and from an

Englishman, but one with the Channel between him and the King's

practiced arm.

Reginald Pole was the son of Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of

Salisbury, herself the niece of Edward IV and Richard III. He was

educated at Henry's expense, received a royal pension of 500 crowns

a year, and was apparently destined for the highest offices in the

English Church. He studied in Paris and Padua, and returned to England

in high favor with the King. But when Henry insisted on hearing his

opinion of the divorce, Reginald frankly replied that he could not

approve of it unless it should be sanctioned by the Pope. Henry

continued the youth's pension, and permitted him to return to the

Continent. There Pole remained twenty-two years, rose in papal

esteem as scholar and theologian, and was made a cardinal at the age

of thirty-six (1536). In that year he composed in Latin a passionate

attack upon Henry- Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione ( In

Defense of Church Unity ). He argued that Henry's assumption of

ecclesiastical supremacy in England invited the division of the

Christian religion into national varieties, and that the resultant

clash of creeds would bring social and political chaos to Europe. He

charged Henry with egomania and autocracy. He scored the English

bishops for yielding to the enslavement of the Church by the state. He

denounced the marriage with Anne as adultery, and predicted (not too

wisely) that the English nobility would forever rank Elizabeth as "a

harlot's bastard." `062474 He called upon Charles V to waste no

ammunition on the Turks, but to turn the Imperial forces against

England's impious King. It was a powerful invective, spoiled by

youthful pride in eloquence. Cardinal Contarini advised the author not

to publish it, but Pole insisted, and sent a copy to England. When

Paul III made Pole a cardinal Henry took it as an act of war. The King

abandoned all thought of compromise, and agreed with Cromwell that the

monasteries of England should be dissolved, and their property added

to the Crown.

CHAPTER XXV: Henry VIII and the Monasteries: 1535-47

I. THE TECHNIQUE OF DISSOLUTION

-

IN 1535 Henry, too busy with love and war to play pope in retail as

well as gross, appointed the agnostic `06251 Cromwell "viceregent of

the King in all his ecclesiastical jurisdiction." Cromwell now

guided foreign policy, domestic legislation, the higher judiciary, the

Privy Council, the intelligence service, the Star Chamber, and the

Church of England; Wolsey at apogee had never had so many long and

grasping fingers in so many juicy pies. He kept an eye, too, on all

printing and publication; he persuaded the King to forbid the

printing, sale, or importation of books except after approval by

agents of the Crown; and he had anti-papal literature published at the

government's expense. Cromwell's innumerable spies kept him informed

on all movements or expressions of opposition to Henry or himself. A

remark of pity for Fisher or More, a jest about the King, could

bring a secret trial and long imprisonment; `06252 and to predict

the date of the King's death was to incur one's own. `06253 In special

cases, to make conclusions certain, Cromwell acted as prosecutor,

jury, and judge. Nearly everyone in England feared and hated him.

His chief difficulty was that Henry, though omnipotent, was

bankrupt. The King was anxious to enlarge the navy, to increase or

improve his harbors and ports; his court and personal expenses were

extravagant; and Cromwell's system of government required a broad

stream of funds. How to raise money? Taxes were already high to the

point where resistance made further collection more costly than

lucrative; the bishops had drained their parishes to appease the King;

and no gold poured in from America such as daily succored England's

enemy, the Emperor. Yet one institution in England was wealthy,

suspect, decrepit, and defenseless: the monasteries. They were suspect

because their ultimate allegiance was to the pope, and their

subscription to the Act of Supremacy was considered insincere and

incomplete; they were, in the eyes of the government, a foreign body

in the nation, bound to support any Catholic movement against the

King. They were decrepit because they had in many cases ceased to

perform their traditional functions of education, hospitality, and

charity. They were defenseless because the bishops resented their

exemption from episcopal control; because the nobility, impoverished

by civil war, coveted their wealth; because the business classes

looked upon monks and friars as idling wasters of natural resources;

and because a large section of the commonalty, including many good

Catholics, no longer believed in the efficacy of the relics that the

monks displayed, or in the Masses that the monks, if paid, offered for

the dead. And there were excellent precedents for closing monasteries;

Zwingli had done it in Zurich, the Lutheran princes in Germany, Wolsey

in England. Parliament had already (1533) voted authority to the

government to visit the monasteries and compel their reform.

In the summer of 1535 Cromwell sent out a trio of "visitors," each

with a numerous staff, to examine and report on the physical, moral,

and financial condition of the monasteries and nunneries of England,

and, for good measure, the universities and episcopal sees as well.

These "visitors" were "young, impetuous men, likely to execute their

work rather thoroughly than delicately"; `06254 they were not immune

to "presents"; `06255 "the object of their mission was to get up a

case for the Crown, and they probably used every means in their

power to induce the monks and the nuns to incriminate

themselves." `06256 It was not difficult to find, among the 600

monasteries of England, an impressive number that showed sexual-

sometimes homosexual- deviations, `06257 loose discipline, acquisitive

exploitation of false relics, sale of sacred vessels or jewelry to add

to monastic wealth and comforts, `06258 neglect of ritual,

hospitality, or charity. `06259 But the reports usually failed to

state the proportion of offending to meritorious monks, and to

discriminate clearly between gossip and evidence. `062510

To the Parliament that met on February 4, 1536, Cromwell submitted a

"Black Book," now lost, revealing the faults of the monasteries, and

recommending, with strategic moderation, that monasteries and convents

having an income of L200 ($20,000?) or less per year should be closed.

The Parliament, whose members had been largely chosen by Cromwell's

aides, `062511 consented. A Court of Augmentations was appointed by

the King to receive for the royal treasury the property and revenues

of these 376 "lesser monasteries." Two thousand monks were released to

other houses or to the world- in the latter case with a small sum or

pension to tide them over till they found work. Of the 130 nunneries

only eighteen had an income over L200, but only half were now closed.

The drama of dissolution was interrupted by a triple rebellion in

the north. Just as Christianity had been born in the cities and had

reached the villagers- pagani - last, so, in Switzerland, Germany,

and England the Reformation rose in the towns and was long resisted in

the countryside. Protestantism in England and Scotland decreased as

distance from London or Edinburgh increased; it reached Wales and

northern England tardily, and found scant welcome in Ireland. In the

northern shires of England the spoliation of the lesser monasteries

kindled a fire of resentment that had long been prepared by mounting

taxation, the royal dictatorship over the clergy, and clandestine

priestly exhortations. Dispossessed monks who found it hard to collect

their pensions or to get work joined the already numerous and

plaintive unemployed; dispossessed nuns, wandering from shelter to

shelter, stirred public anger against the government; and the aides of

Cromwell's visitors fed the fury by decking themselves in the spoils

of the monastic chapels, making copes into doublets, priestly tunics

into saddlecloths, and relic cases into dagger sheaths. `062512

On October 2, 1536, a visitor who had just closed a convent in

Legbourne was attacked by a crowd in neighboring Louth; his records

and credentials were seized and burned, and, with a sword at his

breast, he was compelled to swear loyalty to the commons. All in the

crowd took an oath to be faithful to the King and the Roman Catholic

Church. On the morrow a rebel army gathered at Caistor, a few miles

away; priests and homeless monks exhorted them; the local gentry

were forced- some were willing- to join. On the same day a larger

muster of villagers took place at Horncastle, another town in

Lincolnshire. The chancellor of the bishop of Lincoln was accused of

being an agent of Cromwell; he was taken from his bed and beaten to

death with staves. The rebels designed a banner picturing a plow, a

chalice, a horn, and the five "last words" of Christ, and they drew up

demands which were dispatched to the King: the monasteries should be

restored, taxes should be remitted or eased, the clergy should no more

pay tithes or annates to the Crown, "villein blood" (namely, Cromwell)

should be removed from the Privy Council, and heretic bishops- chiefly

Cranmer and Latimer- should be deposed and punished. Recruits for

the rebellion came in from the northern and eastern counties. Some

60,000 men assembled at Lincoln, and awaited the answer of the King.

His answer was furious and uncompromising. He charged the rebels

with ingratitude to a gracious ruler; insisted that the closing of the

lesser monasteries was the will of the nation expressed through

Parliament; and bade the insurgents surrender their leaders and

disperse to their homes on pain of death and confiscation of goods. At

the same time Henry ordered his military aides to collect their forces

and march under the Earl of Suffolk to the assistance of Lord

Shrewsbury, who had already organized his retainers to withstand

attack; and he wrote privately to the few nobles who had joined the

revolt. These, now perceiving that the King could not be awed, and

that the poorly armed insurgents would soon be overwhelmed,

persuaded so many of them to return to their villages that the rebel

army, over the protests of the priests, rapidly melted away. Louth

gave up fifteen leaders; a hundred more were captured, and a royal

pardon was declared for the rest. The captives were taken to London

and the Tower; thirty-three, including seven priests and fourteen

monks, were hanged; the rest were leisurely freed. `062513

Meanwhile a still more serious uprising had developed in

Yorkshire. A young barrister, Richard Aske, found himself caught,

physically and emotionally, in the movement; another lawyer, William

Stapleton, was frightened into the captaincy of a rebel division at

Beverley; Lord Darcy of Templehurst, an ardent Catholic, lent the

revolt his secret support; two Percys joined, and most of the northern

nobility followed suit. On October 15, 1536, the main army of some

9,000 men, under Aske, laid siege to York. The citizens of the city

compelled the mayor to open the gates. Aske kept his men from pillage,

and in general maintained remarkable order in his untrained host. He

proclaimed the reopening of the monasteries; the monks joyfully

returned to them, and gladdened the hearts of the pious with the new

ardor of their chants. Aske advanced and captured Pomfret, and

Stapleton took Hull, without shedding blood. To the demands

presented by the Lincolnshire men others were added and sent to the

King: to suppress all heretics and their literature, to resume

ecclesiastical ties with Rome, to legitimize Mary, to dismiss and

punish Cromwell's visitors, and to annul all enclosures of common

lands since 1489.

This was the most critical point in Henry's reign. Half the

country was in arms against his policies; Ireland was in revolt; and

Paul III and Cardinal Pole were urging Francis I and Charles V to

invade England and depose the King. With a last burst of his declining

energy, he sent out orders in all directions for the mustering of

loyal troops, and meanwhile instructed the Duke of Norfolk to bemuse

the rebellious leaders with negotiations. The Duke arranged a

conference with Aske and several nobles, and won them over by a

promise of pardon to all. Henry invited Aske to a personal conference,

and gave him a safe-conduct. He came to the King, was charmed by the

aura of royalty, and returned meek and unharmed to Yorkshire

(January 1537); there, however, he was arrested, and was sent to

London as a prisoner. Shorn of its captains, the insurgent host fell

into angry divisions and wild disorder; defections multiplied; and

as the united levies of the King approached, the rebel army

disappeared like a vanishing mirage (February 1537).

When Henry was assured that the revolt and invasion had both

collapsed, he repudiated Norfolk's promise of a general pardon,

ordered the arrest of such disaffected leaders as could be found,

and had several of them, including Aske, put to death. To the Duke

he wrote:

-

Our pleasure is that before you close up our banner again you

shall cause such dreadful execution to be done upon a good number of

the inhabitants of every town, village, and hamlet that have offended,

as they may be a fearful spectacle to all others hereafter that

would practice any like matter.... Forasmuch as all these troubles

have ensued by the solicitation and traitorous conspiracies of the

monks and canons of these parts, we desire you, at such places as have

conspired and kept their houses with force... you shall, without

pity or circumstance, cause all the monks and canons that be in any

wise faulty to be tied up without further delay or ceremony. `062514

-

With the opposition so sternly terrified, Cromwell proceeded to

close the remaining religious houses in England. All the monasteries

and nunneries that had joined the revolt were dissolved forthwith, and

their property was confiscated to the state. Visitations were

extended, and yielded reports of indiscipline, immorality, treason,

and decay. Many monks, anticipating closure, sold relics and valuables

from their houses to the highest bidder; a finger of St. Andrew

fetched L40. `062515 The monks at Walsingham were convicted of

faking miracles, and their lucrative image of the Virgin was cast into

the fire. The historic tomb of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury was

demolished; Henry VIII proclaimed the victor over Henry II to have

been no real saint; the relics that had offended Colet and amused

Erasmus were burned; the precious objects donated by the piety of

pilgrims during 250 years were carted away to the royal treasury

(1538); and thereafter Henry wore on his thumb a great ruby taken from

the shrine. Some monasteries sought to fool fate by sending Cromwell

money or gifts; Cromwell accepted everything and closed all. By 1540

all monasteries, and all monastic property except cathedral abbey

churches, had passed to the King.

All in all 578 monasteries were closed, some 130 convents; 6,521

monks or friars were dispersed, 1,560 nuns. Among these some fifty

monks and two nuns willingly abandoned the religious habit; but many

more pleaded to be allowed to continue somewhere their conventual

life. `062516 Some 12,000 persons formerly employed by, or dependent

upon, the religious houses lost their places or alms. The

confiscated lands and buildings had enjoyed an annual revenue of

some L200,000 ($20,000,000?), but quick sales reduced the annual

income of the properties after nationalization to some L37,000. To

this should be added L85,000 in confiscated precious metal, so that

the total spoils in goods and income accruing to Henry during his life

may have been some L1,423,500. `062517

The King was generous with these spoils. Some of the properties he

gave- most of them he sold at bargain prices- to minor nobles or major

burgesses- merchants or lawyers- who had supported or administered his

policies. Cromwell received or bought six abbeys, with an annual

revenue of L2,293; his nephew Sir Richard Cromwell received seven,

with an income of L2,552; `062518 this was the origin of the fortune

that made Richard's great-grandson Oliver a man of substance and

influence in the next century. Some of the spoils went to build ships,

forts, and ports; some helped to finance war; some went into the royal

palaces at Westminster, Chelsea, and Hampton Court; some the King lost

at dice. `062519 Six monasteries were returned to the Anglican

Church as episcopal sees; and a small sum was assigned to continue the

most urgent of the charities formerly provided by the monks and

nuns. The new aristocracy created by Henry's gifts and sales became

a powerful support to the Tudor throne, and a bulwark of economic

interest against any Catholic restoration. The old feudal

aristocracy had decimated itself; the new one, rooted in commerce

and industry, changed the nature of the English nobility from static

conservatism to dynamic enterprise, and poured fresh blood and

energy into the upper classes of England. This- and the spoils- may

have been one source of the Elizabethan exuberance.

The effects of the dissolution were complex and interminable. The

liberated monks may have shared modestly or not in the increase of

England's population from about 2,500,000 in 1485 to some 4,000,000 in

1547. `062520 A temporary increase in the unemployed helped to depress

the earnings of the lower classes for a generation, and the new

landlords proved more grasping than the old. `062521 Politically the

effect was to augment still further the power of the monarchy; the

Church lost the last stronghold of resistance. Morally the results

were a growth of crime, pauperism, and beggary, and a diminished

provision of charity. `062522 Over a hundred monastic hospitals were

closed; a few were rehabilitated by municipal authorities. The sums

that fearful or reverent souls had bequeathed to priests as

insurance against infernal or purgatorial fire were confiscated in

expectation that no harm would come to the dead; 2,374 chantries, with

their endowments for Masses, were appropriated by the King. `062523

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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