CHAP. II. £3,500, the second of £2,100, while the third was the richest in the kingdom. Others, on the other hand, had just sufficient for their wants. Dr. Lingard rates the whole annual income of the suppressed houses at £142,914. 12s. 94d. Burnet makes it nearly ten times as much. The moveables of the smaller houses alone, says Hallam,* were reckoned at £100,000, and as the rents of these were less than a fourth of the whole, we may calculate the aggregate value of moveable wealth in the same proportion. What became of them after The greatest portion of this enormous wealth was gradually distributed amongst Henry's courtiers, either by grant or sale. It was at first intended to appropriate a large confiscation part of it to the advancement of religion, and an act of parliament was passed authorising the King to establish new bishoprics, deaneries, and colleges, and endow them with the lands of the suppressed monasteries. But out of eighteen new sees originally intended, only six were established, viz., Westminster, Bristol, Oxford, Chester, Peterborough, Gloucester. Fourteen abbeys and priories were at the same time converted into cathedral and collegiate churches, viz., Canterbury, Winchester, Worcester, Carlisle, Peterborough, Rochester, Bristol, Chester, Durham, Ely, Westminster, Gloucester, Burton-uponTrent, Thornton. To each of these was allotted a dean and prebendaries, who were bound by an obligation to distribute a certain sum amongst the poor annually, and to devote another yearly sum for the repair of the King's highway. IV. POLITICAL EXECUTIONS. 59. Execution of Pole's relatives and his mother, the Countess of Salisbury. The King now took a dreadful revenge for Cardinal Pole's opposition to his measures. After the execution of Fisher and More, Pope Paul III., who had succeeded Clement VII. ten months before, immediately drew up a bull of excommunication and interdict against Henry and his kingdom. But when Paul cast his eyes over Europe, and reflected that Charles and Francis, the only two princes whom he could call upon to give effect to the sentence, were, from their rivalry of each other, more eager to court the friendship than to risk the enmity of the King of England, he determined not to publish the bull for the present. Four years afterwards (June 18th, 1538), he Papal bull against Henry. Harmer, quoted in Hallam's Const., Hist., I., 76. CHAP. II. prevailed upon the rivals to agree to a ten years' truce at Nice, and then obtained from them a promise, that if he published the bull they would publicly protest against Henry's schism, and cut off all their communications with him and his subjects. Pole conducted these negotiations, and thus provoked Henry to his revenge. Lord Montague, the cardinal's elder brother; his mother, the Countess of Salisbury; Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, with many other relatives and friends of the family, were arrested; and Montague, Exeter, and others were arraigned and charged with the very improbable offence of conspiring to place upon the throne Reginald Pole, whose title was not even so good as Exeter's. They were all found guilty and executed, with the exception of Geoffrey Pole, the cardinal's younger brother, who saved his life by revealing the secrets of his companions (March, 1539). These severities did not deter the cardinal from continuing to excite foreign powers against England, and Henry, therefore, caused his mother, together with the son of Lord Montague, the Marchioness of Exeter and others, to be attainted of treason, and condemned to death, without their having been tried or heard in their own defence. The marchioness was pardoned after six months' imprisonment; what became of the young Montague is unknown; the old countess was kept in the Tower for two years, and then executed, May 27th, 1541. 60. The Disgrace and Execution of Cromwell. During these prosecutions Cromwell suddenly fell from his power and greatness. The political influence of the two religious parties had lately undergone some modifications, and the statute of the Six Articles had been passed (31 Hen. VIII., c. 14), which filled the Reformers with terror and dismay. But Cromwell still retained his influence, because his services were needed to complete the dissolution of the monasteries, and they were almost indispensable to the King in his transactions with the parliament. He had identified himself with the Reformers, and had gone to such great lengths against the Romanists, that reconciliation with them was impossible. He therefore saw with concern the growing influence of Norfolk and Suffolk, and of Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and to check their progress, as well as to counteract the alliance between France and the Empire, he laboured hard to persuade Henry to marry a Protestant princess, and thus become the ally of the German Reformers. In an evil hour, he prevailed upon the King to seek in marriage the Princess Anne, sister of the Duke of Cleves, a prince of considerable power on the lower Rhine, who had lately 1539-40 established Lutheranism in his principality. Hans Holbein, the court painter, was sent over to take the lady's portrait. He executed such a flattering likeness that Henry, believing it faithful, readily agreed upon the marriage, and he rode to Rochester to meet his bride on her way from Dover to Greenwich (December 31st, 1539). But he immediately betrayed his disappointment; and though he was compelled to complete the nuptials on account of Cromwell's inability to devise some scheme for putting them off, he determined to have a divorce as soon as possible. After six months, the ministers consulted parliament on the matter; the latter referred it to the convocation, which eagerly declared the marriage to be null and void by Anne's consent, and an act was immediately passed to this effect (July, 1540). The discarded queen was endowed with an income of £3,000 a year, and at the King's desire she consented to remain in England, with the right and precedence of a princess of the blood. In the meantime, Cromwell had been arrested and attainted of high treason. His fall was hastened by a theological dispute between Dr. Barnes, one of his secretaries, and Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. In a sermon at St. Paul's Cross, the latter had severely censured the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith. A fortnight afterwards, Dr. Barnes, in the same place, defended it; on which he was summoned before the King, prevailed upon to recant, and ordered to preach again at the Cross on the same subject. On the appointed day he read his recantation, and then maintained the Lutheran doctrine in stronger terms than before (April, 1540). On the 10th of June following, Cromwell was arrested at the council board; on the 17th, the day on which he first took his place among the peers as Earl of Essex and Vicegerent of the King, the bill attainting him of high treason was read a first time, and two days afterwards was read a second and a third time, passed unanimously, and sent down to the House of Commons. On the 29th it was returned from the Commons, and once more passed by the Lords without a dissentient voice. The offences with which Cromwell was charged were: The (1) As minister he had received bribes, released many prisoners confined for misprision of treason, and performed several acts of royal accusations authority without the King's sanction. brought against (2) As Vicar-general he had betrayed his duty by favouring him. heretical preachers, patronising their works, and discouraging informations against them. (3) And he had declared that he would fight in defence of his own religious opinions against the King himself.* • Mackintosh, II., 116; Froude, III., 499. CHAP. 11. These charges "were so ungrounded, that had Cromwell been permitted to refute them, his condemnation, though not less certain, might perhaps have caused more shame.”* But he was not heard in his own defence, a violation of justice which he himself had first sanctioned, and of which it seemed an appropriate retribution of Providence, that he should be an early victim. During the prosecution of the family of Cardinal Pole, he had, at Henry's command, inquired of the judges whether, if parliament should condemn a man of treason without hearing him, the attainder could be disputed? The judges replied, after long hesitation and many threatenings, that parliament, being the highest court in the land, none of its decisions could be reversed in a court of law. He was executed on the 28th of July, and though his execution was an act of flagrant injustice, it was for a time popular; for being an upstart he was hated by the nobility, and his suppression of the monasteries had made his name infamous amongst the people generally. Triumph of the 61. Execution of Queen Catherine Howard. The fall of Cromwell made way for the Roman Catholic party to resume their ascendancy, and enabled them to procure the King's marriage with Catherine Howard, niece of the Duke of Romanists. Norfolk, (August, 1540). But in November of the following year, while Henry was vainly waiting at York to have an interview with his nephew, the King of Scotland, such information was received of Catherine's dissolute life before her marriage, as immediately caused a rigid inquiry into her behaviour. The first who accused the Queen was a domestic servant of the old Duchess of Norfolk, who had been Catherine's nurse: she gave the information to Lascelles, the Queen's brother, and he communicated it to Cranmer. The facts, which are too gross to be stated, are contained in a despatch from the privy council to the ambassador at Paris, dated 12th of November, 1541, and they are related with a circumstantial exactness which forms a remarkable contrast to the vagueness of all former proceedings of a similar nature. The confessions of Catherine and of her companion, the infamous Lady Rochford, upon which they were attainted in parliament, and executed in the Tower (14th of February, 1542), do not appear to have ever been questioned; but these confessions related to Catherine's vices before marriage, and could not therefore legally criminate her. To bring the charge, therefore, within the Statute of Treasons, some acts of infidelity after the marriage were recited, but not proved; and to Hallam's Const. Hist., I., 30. |