raise money either for supply of their present wants, or payment of their debts, and so be necessitated to surrender. Nay to some, as in particular to the Canons of Leicester, the Commissioners threatened, that they would charge them with adultery and b unless they would submit. And D. London told the Nuns of Godston, that because he found them obstinate, he would dissolve the house by virtue of the King's Commission, in spite of their teeth. And yet all was so managed, that the King was solicited to accept of them, not being willing to have it thought they were by terror moved thereunto; and special notice was taken of such as gave out that their surrender was by compulsion.

"Which courses (after so many that through underband corruption led the way) brought on others apace; as appears by their dates, which I have observed from the very instruments themselves; insomuch that the rest stood amazed, not knowing which way to turn themselves. Some therefore, thought fit to try whether money might not save their houses from this dismal fate, so near at hand. The Abbot of Peterborough offered 2500 marks to the King, and three hundred Pounds to the Visitor General. Others with great constancy refused to be accessary in violating the donations of their pious founders. But these, as they were not many, so did they taste of no little severity. For touching the Abbot of Fountaines, in Yorkshire, I find, that being charged by the Commissioners for taking into his private. hands some jewels belonging to the Monastery, which they called theft and sacrilege, they pronounced him perjured, and so deposing him, extorted a private resignation. And it appears that the monks of the Charter-house, in the suburbs of London, were committed to Newgate, where, with hard and barbarous usage, five of them died, and five more lay at the point of death, as the Commissioners signified; but withal alledged, that the suppression of that house, being of so strict a rule, would occasion great scandal to their doings, forasmuch as it stood in the face of the world, infinite concourse coming from all parts to that populous city; and therefore desired it might be altered to some other use. And lastly, I find that, under the like pretence of robbing the Church, wherewith the aforesaid Abbot of Fountaines was charged, the Abbot of Glastonbury, with two of his Monks, being condemned to death, was drawn from Wells upon a hurdle, then hang'd upon the hill called Tor, Bear Glastonbury, his head set upon the Abbey gate, and his quarters disposed of to Wells, Bath, Ilchester, and Bridgwater.

X

Nor did the Abbots of Colchester and Reading fare much better, as they that will consult the story of that time may see. And for farther terror to the rest, some Priors and other Ecclesiastical Persons, who spoke against the King's Supremacy, a thing then somewhat uncouth, were condemned as traitors, and executed.

"And now, when all this was effected, to the end it might not be thought that these things were done with a high hand, the King having protested that he would suppress none without the consent of his Parliament, (it being called April 28, 1539, to confirm these surrenders so made) there wanted not plausible insinuations to both Houses, for drawing on their consent with all smoothness thereunto the nobility being promised large shares in the spoil; either by free gift from the King, easy purchases, or most advantageous exchanges; and many of the active gentry, advancement to honours, with increase of their estates: all which we see happened to them accordingly. And the better to satisfy the vulgar, it was represented to them, that by this deluge of wealth the kingdom would be strengthened with an army of forty thousand men, and that for the future they should never be charged with subsidies, fifteenths, loans, or common aids. By which means, the Parliament ratifying the above surrenders, the work became compleated. For the more firm settling whereof, a sudden course was taken, to pull down and destroy the buildings; as had been done before upon the dissolution of the smaller houses, whereof I have touched. Next, to distribute a great portion of their lands amongst the Nobility and Gentry, as had been projected; which was done accordingly the Visitor General having told the King, that the. more had interest in them, the more they would be irrevocable.

:

"And lest any domestick stirs, by reason of this great and strange alteration, should arise, rumours were spread abroad, that Cardinal Pole laboured with divers Princes to procure forces against this realm, and that an invasion was threaten'd, which seemed the more credible, because the truce between the Emperor and the French King was generally known, neither of them wanting a pretence to invade England. And this was also seconded by a sudden journeyof the King to the sea coasts, unto divers parts whereof he had sent sundry expert persons, to visit the coasts and places of danger, who failed not, for their discharge upon all events, to affirm the peril in each place to be so great,

as one would have thought every place needed a fortification. All which preparations being made against a danger believed imminent, seemed to excuse the suppression of the Abbies, as that the people, willing to save their own purses, began to suffer it easily; especially when they saw order taken for building such forts.

"But let us look a little upon the success, wherein I find that the Visitor General, the grand actor in this tragical business, having contracted upon himself such an odium from the nobility, by reason of his low birth, (though not long before made Knight of the Garter, Earl of Essex, and Lord High Chancellor of England) as also from the Catholics, for having thus operated in the dissolution of Abbies, that (before the end of the above-said Parliament, wherein that was ratified which he had with so much industry brought to pass) the King not having any more use of him, gave way to his enemies' accusations. Whereupon being arrested by the Duke of Norfolk at the council table when he least dreamed of it, and committed to the Tower, he was condemned by the same Parliament for heresy and treason, unheard and little pitied; and on the 28th of July, viz. four days after the Parliament was dissolved, had his head cut off on Tower-hill.

"And as for the fruit which the people reaped from all their hopes, built upon these specious pretences which I have mentioned, it was very little. For it is plain, that subsidies from the clergy, and fifteenths of laymen's goods, were soon after exacted; and that in Edward the Sixth's time, the Commons were constrained to supply the King's wants by a new invention, viz. sheep, cloaths, goods, debts, &c. for three years. Which tax grew so heavy, that the year following they prayed the King for a mitigation thereof. Nor is it a little observable, that whilst the Monasteries stood, there was no Act for the Relief of the Poor. So amply did those houses give succour to them that were in want. Whereas in the next age, viz. 39 Elizab. no less than eleven Bills were brought into the House of Commons for that purpose."

Hence we may remark, that the plundering of churches proved, in the end, as fatal to Thomas Cromwel, as the gold of Thoulouse was inauspicious to Cepio Servilius, the Roman Consul.

As for the King, he enjoyed but a short temporary advantage from the downfal of Abbies, &c. and the seizure of consecrated treasures. For, having prodigally squandered

away (within less than seven years after the general Suppression, as D. Heylin informs us) that deluge of wealth, and those immense riches which he had purloined from the Church, and his wants still increasing, he soon found himself necessitated to extend his rapacity to Bishoprics, Chanteries, Free Chapels, &c. of which more in the next section,

§7.-King Henry makes a second Irruption into the Patrimony of the Church... He puts the Bishoprics under Contribution, and procures a Grant of the Chanteries, Free Chapels, &c.

"MOST true it is, that it was something of the latest before he cast his eye on the lands of Bishopricks; tho' there were some that thought the time long till they fell upon them. Concerning which there goes a story, that after the court-harpies had devoured the greatest part of the spoil which came by the Suppression of Abbies, they began to seek some other way to satiate that greedy appetite, which the division of the former booty had left unsatisfied and for the satisfying whereof they found not any thing so necessary as the Bishop's lands.

"This to effect, Sir Thomas Seymour is employed as the fittest man, being in favour with the King, and brother to Queen Jane, his most beloved and best wife; and having opportunity of access to him, as being one of his privy chamber. And he not having any good affection to Archbishop Cranmer, desired that the experiment should be tried upon him.

"And therefore took his time to inform the King, that my Lord of Canterbury did nothing but fell his woods, letting long leases for great fines, and making havock of the royalties of his Archbishoprick, to raise thereby a fortune to his wife and children. Withal he acquainted the King, that the Archbishop kept no hospitality in respect of such a large revenue; and that, in the opinion of many wise men, it was more convenient for the Bishops to have a convenient yearly stipend out of the Exchequer, than to be so much encumbered with temporal royalties, being so great a hin

Heylin's Hist. Ref. p. 17.

drance to their studies and pastoral charge; and that the lands and royalties being taken to his Majesty's use, would afford him (besides the said stipends) a great yearly re

Venue.

"The King considering of it, could not think fit that such a laudable proposition as taking to himself the lands of the Bishops should be made in vain; only he was resolved to prey farther off, and not to fall upon the spoil too near the court, for fear of having more partakers in the booty than might stand with his profit.

"And to this end he deals with Holgate, preferred not long before from Landaff to the See of York; from whom he takes, at one time, no fewer than seventy Manors of good old rents, giving him in exchange to the like yearly value, certain impropriations, pensions, tithes, and portions of tithes, (but all of an extended rent) which had accrued to the Crown by the fall of Abbies: which lands he laid, by Act of Parliament, to the Duchy of Lancaster. For which see Stat. 37. H. 8. c. 16.

"He dismembered also, by these Acts, certain Manors from the See of London, and others in like manner from the See of Canterbury; but not without some reasonable compensation for them.

"And altho', by reason of his death, which followed within a short time after, there was no further alienation made, in this time, of the Church's patrimony, yet having opened such a gap, and discovered this secret, that the Sacred Patrimony might be alienated with so little trouble, the courtiers of King Edward's time would not be kept from breaking violently into it, and making up their own fortune in the spoil of Bishopricks. So impossible a thing it is for the ill example of great Princes, not to find followers in all ages; especially where profit or preferment may be furthered by it."

But the King, it seems, was not satisfied with dismembering Bishopries only. They had, indeed, furnished him with a fresh supply of rhino, but nothing equal to his prodigious expences. And besides, there were some pious foundations which had hitherto escaped his rapacious eyes and hands. These were the Chanteries, Free Chapels, [see the Appendix, No. XI.] Hospitals, and Colleges of all which he had the address to procure a grant from his obsequious Parliament, though he lived not long enough to see it executed.