to be recovered to his use in any of his courts of record. The arrears whereof, if rigorously exacted, would amount to a vast sum from such offenders, whose hospitality was contracted to a shepherd and his dog; neither relieving those that would work by their industry, nor such as could not work by their charity. These penalties stood in full force above 80 years, viz. till the 21st of King James, when by Aet of Parliament they were repealed. Indeed, such who are obnoxious to Penal Statutes are only innocent by courtesy, and may be made guilty at the Prince's pleasure. And tho' some statutes may be dormant, as disused, they are never dead till revoked, seeing commonly Princes call on such statutes when they themselves are called on by their necessities. Many of the English gentry knew themselves subject to such penalties, when, instead of maintaining tillage, they had converted the granges of Abbies into inclosures; and therefore provided for their own safety, when they wrought the King into a revocation of those statutes."-Vid. Stat. 21 K. J. c. 28.

These observations are sufficiently plain and intelligible. There is not a word of obscurity in them, if we except corrodies of which antiquated term we shall give our Reader an explication from the same writer.

"Corrodies were so called à corrodendo, from eating together for the heirs of the founders had the privilege to send a set number of their poor servants to Abbies to diet there. Thus many aged servants, (past working, not feeding, costly to keep, and cruel to cast off,) were sent by their masters to the Abbies, where they had plentiful food during their lives. But these corrodies, after the dissolution of the Abbies, were totally extinct, and no such diet after given, when both table and house were overturned."

8.-Some previous Remarks upon the King's destructive Scheme of A general Dissolution of all the Monasteries in England.

THE demolition of the lesser Monasteries having given King Henry a taste of monastic gold, it was not long before he resolved to glut his voracious appetite with the downfall of all the rest, and make a prize of the Church. He had already prevailed with himself to pass the Rubicon! from *Fuller's Ch. Hist. Book VI. p. 326.

whence he continues his desolating march; still advancing by degrees from less to more, till at last he left not so much as a single Monastery (little or great) standing within the precincts of his realm of England.

Since therefore it may be questioned if the British Annals can furnish us with a more astonishing emergency, than the general Dissolution of the Religious Houses; and since this was an affair that touched the Regular Clergy in a very sensible manner, and occasioned an extraordinary Revolution in the Church, we beg leave, and hope to be indulged the freedom and liberty to open the scene a little, and enlarge upon the circumstances. And this indeed we have endeavoured to perform, but with no other view than that of doing justice to the memory of the injured sufferers, and of exposing, at the same time, the unjustifiableness and insignificancy of the King's motives for pushing his destructive project into execution. But before we enter upon a detail of this blessed work, we imagined it might not be amiss (by way of introduction) to premise the following remarks.

1. When and as often as the reader calls to mind the ma-" ny stately Monasteries and Churches that were formerly in England, and considers the dismal end they were brought to; if he does not, as a Christian, abhor the sacrilege of destroying Churches dedicated to the service of God, only for the vile profit made of the materials, he may at least, as a man, reflect on the inhumanity of demolishing such noble structures (heretofore, perhaps, the greatest ornaments of this island) by the hands of the natives themselves; and that with such stubborn rage and relentless fury, as if the work had been done by a victorious army of barbarians.

2. Our Monasteries have long since perished, nor have we, at this day, any footsteps left of the piety of our ancestors, to shew to inquisitive strangers, besides a few tattered walls and deplorable ruins! Nay, the ruins of most of them are not only gone to ruin themselves, but their very situations are quite lost to us, and remembered no more! “Jam seges est ubi Troja fuit !”

3. The shocking hostilities committed by King Henry. VIII. against the Church (to make use of Lord Herbert's

expression) astonished the Christian world. And well they might for with some, I find, it is even doubted, whether the destruction of Christian Churches at this juncture was not equal to the sacrilegious ravages of Julian the Apostate.

4. This woful work was both projected and carried into execution by Commissary-General Crommel [a name ever fatal to the Church!] And he acted, in this business, in quality of principal agent; being not only the King's Vicar General, but his Scout-Master-General too, as Mr. Fuller humorously styles him *. In which capacity he employed a world of spies and hungry emissaries, whom he empowered with orders and instructions, to go from one religious house to another, in quest of monastic irregularities and disorders. These Visitors (for so they were called) exerted their power to the utmost stretch, and were far enough from partiality in their inquisition. In short, upon their return to London, they gave in a most tragical relation of the immorality of the monks, &c. And the consequence of their informations was this, that Cromwel, by virtue of his high commission, and without further proofs, dissolved all the Abbies and Monasteries in England. Some few of them indeed capitulated, but by far the greater part were taken by storm, plundered, and demolished! This done, Cromel politicly advised the King to alienate the Abbey Lands by sale or deed of gift; that by this means the ejectment of the former possessors might become to all intents and purposes irrevocable, and repossession impossible.

"The writers that lived near that time," says Bishop Burnet, 66 represent the matter very odiously, and say, about 10,000 persons were sent to seek for their livings, only forty shillings in money and a gown being given to every religious man. And it is generally said, and not improbably, that the commissioners were as careful to enrich themselves, as to increase the King's revenue. The churches and cloisters were, for the most part, palled down, and the lead, bells, and other materials, were sold. The people, that had been well entertained at the Abbots' tables, were sensible of their loss; for generally as they travelled over the country, the Abbies were their stages, and were houses of reception to travellers and strangers. The poor that fed on

"The Lord Crommel, Scout-Master-General in this design, stayed at court, whilst bis subordinate emissaries sent unto him all their intelligence." Fuller's Ch. Hist. B. vi. p. 306.

+ Burnet's list. Ref. Vol. I. B. iii. p. 223.

their daily alms were deprived of that supply. But to allay these discontents, Cromwel advised the King to sell their lands at very easy rates, to the gentry in the several countries. This drew in the gentry apace, both to be satisfied with what was done, and to assist the crown for ever in defence of these laws; their own interest being so interwoven with the rights of the crown.

§ 4.-King Henry absolves the Religious from any farther Obligation or Observance of their Monastic Vows... Cromwel is appointed his Majesty's principal Commissary in the grand Affair of the General Dissolution. The Names of some of his sub-deputies... Copy of an Instrument or Act of Surrender...A remarkable Letter from Richard Bellasis to Lord Cromwel.

To

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pave the way to the astonishing Ecclesiastical Revolution we are going to recount, the King, in virtue of his dispensing power, and, as Head of the Church, took upon him to secularize religious persons, and to absolve and free them entirely from the servitude of their Monastic Vows; as it is expressed in a statute enacted for that purpose: 'Where all and singular religious persons, of what order, rule, or habit soever, are said to be put at their liberty, from the danger, servitude, and condition of their religion and profession, whereunto they were professed, and have free liberty given them to purchase to themselves and their heirs, in fee-simple, fee-tail, &c. manors, lands, &c. in like manner as though they, or any of them, had never been professed, or enter into any such religion.'-Vid. Stat. 31 H. 8. c. 13.

And here we beg leave to observe, first, that it is impossible to reconcile this absolution-statute with the doctrine delivered in the famous Six Articles. For, according to the fourth article, the monks, &c. were obliged, upon pain of death, to live up to the duties of their religious profession. [The second offence, in this matter, being declared felony by the law.] Whereas the statute now before us, at one single blow, knocks off the spiritual fetters of a cloistered life, and secularizes the religious as effectually, to all intents and purposes, as if they, or any of them, had never been professed. These proceedings are truly surprising. But our surprise, perhaps, will abate something, when we con

sider that the conduct of K. Henry VIII. after his revolt from the See of Rome, was nothing else but a continued series of inconsistencies. From that unlucky period, he was always doing and undoing he knew not what, nor why. And thus was be perplexed thro' the remainder of his reign, and (what is still worse) was so unfortunate at his death, as to leave the nation entangled in religious labyrinths, wherein it has been, for many generations, and still is, unhappily, bewildered to this day!

Secondly, it is to be observed, that the above mentioned statute is generally represented as this King's last public act in quality of Supreme Ordinary. For after this, we are told his Majesty stept behind the scene, and acted only the part of a prompter; resigning to another man the honour of being the hero of the tragedy.

And who should this man be, but the celebrated Thomas Cromwel? The destructive scheme was of his own projectment; and who more fit to be employed in the management and execution of it than himself? No wonder then, if, at this juncture, and upon so extraordinary an occasion, we find him advanced to the dignity of the King's *Commissary General, and surrounded by a crowd of commissioners, or sub-delegates amongst whom the following are particularly mentioned by Mr. Fuller, viz.

"Richard Layton, Thomas Leigh, William Petre, Doctors of the Law, D. John London, Dean of Wallingford. Of the three first I can say nothing; but I find the latter (tho' employed to correct others) no great saint himself for afterwards he was publicly convicted of perjury, and adjudged to ride with his face to the horse's tail, thro' Windsor and Ockingham, with papers about his head denoting his crime; which was done accordingly."

To these sub-delegates were afterwards added Southwell, Gage, Price, Bellasise, Cave, &c. who, with Cromwel at their head, invaded the Church with such unexampled fury, and carried on the blessed work so vigorously, that, in one year's time, ten thousand parochial, abbatial, conventual, &c. churches, chapels, oratories, &c. were entirely ruined, if there be no exaggeration in this noted verse:

“Millia dena unus Templorum destruit annus!”

*The patent for Cromwel's Vicar-Generalship styles him Vicemgerentem, Vicarium Generalem, ac Commissarium Specialem et Principalem. "Vid. Mr. Collier's Collection of Records, No. XXX.

+ Fuller's Ch. Hist. B. vi. p. 317,