To be entirely just in our estimate of other ages is not
difficult--it is impossible. Even what is passing in
our presence we see but through a glass darkly. The
mind as well as the eye adds something of its own,
before an image, even of the clearest object, can be
painted upon it,
And in historical inquiries, the most instructed
thinkers have but a limited advantage over the most
illiterate. Those who know the most, approach least
to agreement. The most careful investigations are
diverging roads--the further men travel upon them, the
greater the interval by which they are divided. In
the eyes of David Hume, the history of the Saxon
Princes is "the scuffling of kites and crows." Father
Newman would mortify the conceit of a degenerate
England by pointing to the sixty saints and the hundred
confessors who were trained in her royal palaces for the
Calendar of the Blessed. How vast a chasm yawns
between these two conceptions of the same era!
Through what common term can the student pass from
one into the other?
Or, to take an instance yet more noticeable. The
history of England scarcely interests Mr. Macaulay
before the Revolution of the seventeenth century. To
Lord John Russell, the Reformation was the first outcome
from centuries of folly and ferocity; and Mr.
Hallam's more temperate language softens, without
concealing, a similar conclusion. These writers have all
studied what they describe. Mr. Carlyle has studied the
same subject with power at least equal to theirs, and to
him the greatness of English character was waning with
the dawn of English literature; the race of heroes was
already failing. The era of action was yielding before
the era of speech.
All these views may seem to ourselves exaggerated;
we may have settled into some moderate via media,
or have carved out our own ground on an original
pattern; but if we are wise, the differences in other
men's judgments will teach us to be diffident. The
more distinctly we have made history bear witness
in favour of our particular opinions, the more we
have multiplied the chances against the truth of our
own theory.
Again, supposing that we have made a truce with
"opinions," properly so called; supposing we have
satisfied ourselves that it is idle to quarrel upon points
on which good men differ, and that it is better to attend
rather to what we certainly know; supposing that, either
from superior wisdom, or from the conceit of superior
wisdom, we have resolved that we will look for human
perfection neither exclusively in the Old World nor
exclusively in the New--neither among Catholics nor
Protestants, among Whigs or Tories, heathens or
Christians--that we have laid aside accidental differences
and determined to recognize only moral distinctions, to
love moral worth, and to hate moral evil, wherever we
find them;--even supposing all this, we have not much
improved our position--we cannot leap from our
shadow.
Eras, like individuals, differ from one another in
the species of virtue which they encourage. In one
age, we find the virtues of the warrior, in the next of
the saint. The ascetic and the soldier in their turn
disappear; an industrial era succeeds, bringing with it
the virtues of common sense, of grace, and refinement.
There is the virtue of energy and command, there is
the virtue of humility and patient suffering. All these
are different, and all are, or may be, of equal moral
value; yet, from the constitution of our minds, we are
so framed that we cannot equally appreciate all; we
sympathize instinctively with the person who most
have been especially cultivated. Further, if we leave
out of sight these refinements, and content ourselves
with the most popular conceptions of morality, there is
this immeasurable difficulty--so great, yet so little
considered,--that goodness is positive as well as negative,
and consists in the active accomplishment of certain
things which we are bound to do, as well as in the
abstaining from things which we are bound not to do.
And here the warp and woof vary in shade and pattern.
Many a man, with the help of circumstances may pick
his way clear through life, never having violated one
prohibitive commandment, and yet at last be fit only
for the place of the unprofitable servant--he may not
have committed either sin or crime, yet never have felt
the pulsation of a single unselfish emotion. Another,
meanwhile, shall have been hurried by an impulsive
nature into fault after fault, shall have been reckless,
improvident, perhaps profligate, yet be fitter after all
for the kingdom of Heaven than the Pharisee--fitter,
because against the catalogue of faults there could
perhaps be set a fairer list of acts of comparative
generosity and self-forgetfulness--fitter, because to those
who love much, much is forgiven. Fielding had no
occasion to make Blifil, behind his decent coat, a traitor
and a hypocrite. It would have been enough to have
coloured him in and out alike in the steady hues of
selfishness, afraid of offending the upper powers as he
was afraid of offending Allworthy,--not from any love
for what was good, but solely because it would be
imprudent--because the pleasure to be gained was not
worth the risk of consequences. Such a Blifil would
have answered the novelist's purpose--he would still
have been a worse man in the estimation of some of us
than Tom Jones.
So the truth is; but unfortunately it is only where
accurate knowledge is stimulated by affection, that we
are able to feel it. Persons who live beyond our own
circle, and still more persons who have lived in another
age, receive what is called justice, not charity; and
justice is supposed to consist in due allotments of censure
for each special act of misconduct, leaving merit
unrecognized. There are many reasons for this harsh
method of judging. We must decide of men by what
we know, and it is easier to know faults than to know
virtues. Faults are specific, easily described, easily
appreciated, easily remembered. And again, there is,
or may be, hypocrisy in virtue; but no one pretends to
vice who is not vicious. The bad things which can be
proved of a man we know to be genuine. He was a
spendthrift, he was an adulterer, he gambled, he fought
a duel. These are blots positive, unless untrue, and
when uncorrected tinge the whole character.
This also is to be observed in historical criticism.
All men feel a necessity of being on some terms with
their conscience, at their own expense, or at another's.
If they cannot part with their faults, they will at least
call them by their right name when they meet with such
faults elsewhere; and thus, when they find accounts of
deeds of violence or sensuality, of tyranny, of injustice
of man to man, of great and extensive suffering, or any
of those other misfortunes which the selfishness of men
has at various times occasioned, they will vituperate the
doers of such things, and the age which has permitted
them to be done, with the full emphasis of virtuous
indignation, while all the time they are themselves
doing things which will be described, with no less
justice, in the same colour, by an equally virtuous
posterity.
Historians are fond of recording the supposed sufferings
of the poor in the days of serfdom and villanage;
yet the records of the strikes of the last ten years, when
told by the sufferers, contain pictures no less fertile
in tragedy. We speak of famines and plagues under
the Tudors and Stuarts; but the Irish famine, and
the Irish plague of 1847, the last page of such horrors
which has yet been turned over, is the most horrible
of all We can conceive a description of England
during the year which has just closed over us, true in
all its details, containing no one statement which can
be challenged, no single exaggeration which can be
proved. And this description, if given without the
correcting traits, shall make ages to come marvel why
the Cities of the Plain were destroyed, and England
was allowed to survive. The frauds of trusted men,
high in power and high in supposed religion; the whole-sale
poisonings; the robberies; the adulteration of food
--nay, of almost everything exposed for sale--the cruel
usage of women--children murdered for the burial fees
--life and property insecure in open day in the open
streets--splendour such as the world never saw before
upon earth, with vice and squalor crouching under its
walls--let all this be written down by an enemy, or
let it be ascertained hereafter by the investigation of
a posterity which desires to judge us as we generally
have judged our forefathers, and few years will show
darker in the English annals than the year which has
so lately closed behind us. Yet we know, in the honesty
of our hearts, how unjust such a picture would be. Our
future advocate, if we are so happy as to find one,
may not be able to disprove a single article in the
indictment--and yet we know that, as the world goes,
he will be right if he marks the year with a white stroke
--as one in which, on the whole, the moral harvest
was better than an average.
Once more: our knowledge of any man is always
inadequate--even of the unit which each of us calls
himself; and the first condition under which we can
know a man at all is, that he be in essentials something
like ourselves; that our own experience be an interpreter
which shall open the secrets of his experience;
and it often happens, even among our contemporaries,
that we are altogether baffled. The Englishman and
the Italian may understand each other's speech, but
the language of each other's ideas has still to be learnt.
Our long failures in Ireland have risen from a radical
incongruity of character which has divided the Celt
from the Saxon. And again, in the same country,
the Catholic will be a mystery to the Protestant, and the
Protestant to the Catholic. Their intellects have been
shaped in opposite moulds; they are like instruments
which cannot be played in concert. In the same way,
but in a far higher degree, we are divided from the
generations which have preceded us in this planet--we
try to comprehend a Pericles or a Caesar--an image rises
before us which we seem to recognize as belonging to
our common humanity. There is this feature which
is familiar to us--and this--and this. We are full of
hope; the lineaments, one by one, pass into clearness;
when suddenly the figure becomes enveloped in a
cloud--some perplexity crosses our analysis, baffling it
utterly; the phantom which we have evoked dies away
before our eyes, scornfully mocking our incapacity to
master it.
The English antecedent to the Reformation are nearer
to us than Greeks or Romans; and yet there is a large
interval between the baron who fought at Barnet field,
and his polished descendant at a modern levee. The
scale of appreciation and the rule of judgment--the
habits, the hopes, the fears, the emotions--have utterly
changed.
In perusing modern histories, the present writer has
been struck dumb with wonder at the facility with
which men will fill in chasms in their information with
conjecture; will guess at the motives which have
prompted actions; will pass their censures, as if all
secrets of the past lay out on an open scroll before
them. He is obliged to say for himself that, wherever
he has been fortunate enough to discover authentic
explanations of English historical difficulties, it is rare
indeed that he has found any conjecture, either of his
own or of any other modern writer, confirmed. The
true motive has almost invariably been of a kind which
no modern experience could have suggested.
Thoughts such as these form a hesitating prelude to
an expression of opinion on a controverted question.
They will serve, however, to indicate the limits within
which the said opinion is supposed to be hazarded.
And in fact, neither in this nor in any historical
subject is the conclusion so clear that it can be
enunciated in a definite form. The utmost which can
be safely hazarded with history is to relate honestly
ascertained facts, with only such indications of a judicial
sentence upon them as may be suggested in the form in
which the story is arranged.
Whether the monastic bodies of England, at the time
of their dissolution, were really in that condition of moral
corruption which is laid to their charge in the Act of
Parliament by which they were dissolved, is a point
which it seems hopeless to argue. Roman Catholic,
and indeed almost all English, writers who are not
committed to an unfavourable opinion by the ultra-
Protestantism of their doctrines--seem to have agreed
of late years that the accusations, if not false, were
enormously exaggerated. The dissolution, we are told,
was a predetermined act of violence and rapacity; and
when the reports and the letters of the visitors are
quoted in justification of the Government, the discussion
is closed with the dismissal of every unfavourable
witness from the court, as venal, corrupt, calumnious--
in fact, as a suborned liar. Upon these terms the
argument is easily disposed of; and if it were not that
truth is in all matters better than falsehood, it would
be idle to reopen a question which cannot be justly
dealt with. No evidence can affect convictions which
have been arrived at without evidence--and why should
we attempt a task which it is hopeless to accomplish?
It seems necessary, however, to reassert the actual state
of the surviving testimony from time to time, if it be
only to sustain the links of the old traditions; and the
present paper will contain one or two pictures of a
peculiar kind, exhibiting the life and habits of those
institutions, which have been lately met with chiefly
among the unprinted Records. In anticipation of any
possible charge of unfairness in judging from isolated
instances, we disclaim simply all desire to judge--all
wish to do anything beyond relating certain ascertained
stories. Let it remain, to those who are perverse
enough to insist upon it, an open question whether
the monasteries were more corrupt under Henry VIII.
than they had been four hundred years earlier. The
dissolution would have been equally a necessity; for no
reasonable person would desire that bodies of men
should have been maintained for the only business of
singing masses, when the efficacy of masses was no
longer believed. Our present desire is merely this--to
satisfy ourselves whether the Government, in discharging
a duty which could not be dispensed with, condescended
to falsehood in seeking a vindication for
themselves which they did not require; or whether
they had cause really to believe the majority of the
monastic bodies to be as they affirmed--whether, that
is to say, there really were such cases either of flagrant
immorality, neglect of discipline, or careless waste and
prodigality, as to justify the general censure which was
pronounced against the system by the Parliament and
the Privy Council.
Secure in the supposed completeness with which
Queen Mary's agents destroyed the Records of the
visitation under her father, Roman-catholic writers have
taken refuge in a disdainful denial; and the Anglicans,
who for the most part (while contented to enjoy the
fruits of the Reformation) detest the means by which
it was brought about, have taken the same view.
Bishop Latimer tells us that, when the Report of the
visitors of the abbeys was read in the Commons
House, there rose from all sides one long cry of "Down
with them." But Bishop Latimer, in the opinion of
High Churchmen, is not to be believed. Do we produce
letters of the visitors themselves, we are told that
they are the slanders prepared to justify a preconceived
purpose of spoliation. No witness, it seems, will be
admitted unless it be the witness of a friend. Unless
some enemy of the Reformation can be found to confess
the crimes which made the Reformation necessary, the
crimes themselves are to be regarded as unproved.
This is a hard condition. We appeal to Wolsey.
Wolsey commenced the suppression. Wolsey first
made public the infamies which disgraced the Church;
while, notwithstanding, he died the devoted servant of
the Church. This evidence is surely admissible? But
no: Wolsey, too, must be put out of court. Wolsey was
a courtier and a timeserver. Wolsey was a tyrant's
minion. Wolsey was--in short, we know not what
Wolsey was--or what he was not. Who can put confidence
in a charlatan? Behind the bulwarks of such
objections, the champion of the abbeys may well believe
himself secure.
And yet, unreasonable though these demands may be,
it happens, after all, that we are able partially to gratify
them. It is strange that of all extant accusations
against any one of the abbeys, the heaviest is from a
quarter which even Lingard himself would scarcely call
suspicious. No picture left us by Henry's visitors
surpasses, even if it equals, a description of the condition
of the Abbey of St. Albans, in the last quarter of
the fifteenth century, drawn by Morton, Henry VII.'s
Minister, Cardinal Archbishop, Legate of the Apostolic
See, in a letter addressed by him to the Abbot of St.
Albans himself.
We must request our reader's special attention for
the next two pages.
In the year 1489, Pope Innocent VIII.--moved with
the enormous stories which reached his ear of the
corruption of the houses of religion in England--granted a
commission to the Archbishop of Canterbury to make
inquiries whether these stories were true, and to proceed
to correct and reform as might seem good to him. The
regular clergy were exempt from episcopal visitation,
except under especial directions from Rome. The
occasion had appeared so serious as to make extraordinary
interference necessary.
On the receipt of the Papal commission, Cardinal
Morton, among other letters, wrote the following:--
"John, by Divine permission. Archbishop of Canterbury,
Primate of all England, Legate of the Apostolic
See, to William, Abbot of the Monastery of St. Albans,
greeting.
"We have received certain letters under lead, the copies
whereof we herewith send you, from our most holy Lord
and Father in Christ, Innocent, by Divine Providence
Pope, the eighth of that name. We therefore, John, the
Archbishop, the visitor, reformer, inquisitor, and judge
therein mentioned, in reverence for the Apostolic See,
have taken upon ourselves the burden of enforcing the
said commission; and have determined that we will
proceed by, and according to, the full force, tenour, and
effect of the same.
"And it has come to our ears, being at once publicly
notorious and brought before us upon the testimony of
many witnesses worthy of credit, that you, the abbot
afore-mentioned, have been of long time noted and
diffamed, and do yet continue so noted, of simony, of
usury, of dilapidation and waste of the goods, revenues,
and possessions of the said monastery, and of certain
other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written.
In the rule, custody, and administration of the goods,
spiritual and temporal, of the said monastery, you are
so remiss, so negligent, so prodigal, that whereas the
said monastery was of old times founded and endowed
by the pious devotion of illustrious princes of famous
memory, heretofore kings of this land, the most noble
progenitors of our most serene Lord and King
that now is, in order that true religion might flourish
there, that the name of the Most High, in whose honour
and glory it was instituted, might be duly celebrated
there;
"And whereas, in days heretofore the regular observance
of the said rule was greatly regarded, and hospitality
was diligently kept;
"Nevertheless, for no little time, during which you
have presided in the same monastery, you and certain
of your fellow monks and brethren (whose blood, it is
feared, through your neglect, a severe Judge will require
at your hand) have relaxed the measure and form of
religious life; you have laid aside the pleasant yoke of
contemplation, and all regular observances; hospitality,
alms, and those other offices of piety which of old time
were exercised and ministered therein have decreased,
and by your faults, your carelessness, your neglect and
deed, do daily decrease more and more, and cease
to be regarded--the pious vows of the founders are
defrauded of their just intent; the antient rule of your
order is deserted; and not a few of your fellow monks
and brethren, as we most deeply grieve to learn, giving
themselves over to a reprobate mind, laying aside the
fear of God, do lead only a life of lasciviousness--nay,
as is horrible to relate, be not afraid to defile the holy
places, even the very churches of God, by infamous
intercourse with nuns, &c.
"You yourself, moreover, among other grave enormities
and abominable crimes whereof you are guilty, and for
which you are noted and diffamed, have, in the first
place, admitted a certain married woman, named
Elena Germyn, who has separated herself without just
cause from her husband, and for some time past has
lived in adultery with another man, to be a nun or sister
in the house or Priory of Pray, lying, as you pretend,
within your jurisdiction. You have next appointed the
same woman to be prioress of the said house,
notwithstanding that her said husband was living at the time,
and is still alive. And finally, Father Thomas Sudbury,
one of your brother monks, publicly, notoriously,
and without interference or punishment from you, has
associated, and still associates, with this woman as an
adulterer with his harlot.
"Moreover, divers other of your brethren and fellow
monks have resorted, and do resort, continually to her
and other women at the same place, as to a public
brothel or receiving house, and have received no
correction therefore.
"Nor is Pray the only house into which you have
introduced disorder. At the nunnery of Sapwell, which
you also contend to be under your jurisdiction, you
change the prioresses and superiors again and again at
your own will and caprice. Here, as well as at Pray,
you depose those who are good and religious; you
promote to the highest dignities the worthless and the
vicious. The duties of the order are cast aside, virtue
is neglected; and by these means so much cost and
extravagance has been caused, that to provide means for
your indulgence you have introduced certain of your
brethren to preside in their houses under the name
of guardians, when in fact they are no guardians, but
thieves and notorious villains; and with their help you
have caused and permitted the goods of the same priories
to be dispensed, or to speak more truly to be dissipated,
in the above-described corruptions and other enormous
and accursed offences. Those places once religious are
rendered and reputed as it were profane and impious;
and by your own and your creatures' conduct are so
impoverished as to be reduced to the verge of ruin.
"In like manner, also, you have dealt with certain other
cells of monks, which you say are subject to you, even
within the monastery of the glorious proto-martyr, Alban
himself. You have dilapidated the common property;
you have made away with the jewels; the copses, the
woods, the underwood, almost all the oaks and other
forest trees, to the value of eight thousand marks and
more, you have made to be cut down without distinction,
and they have by you been sold and alienated. The
brethren of the abbey, some of whom, as is reported,
are given over to all the evil things of the world, neglect
the service of God altogether. They live with harlots
and mistresses publicly and continuously, within the
precincts of the monastery and without. Some of them,
who are covetous of honour and promotion, and desirous
therefore of pleasing your cupidity, have stolen and
made away with the chalices and other jewels of the
church. They have even sacrilegiously extracted the
precious stones from the very shrine of St. Alban; and
you have not punished these men, but have rather
knowingly supported and maintained them. If any of
your brethren be living justly and religiously, if any be
wise and virtuous, these you straightway depress and
hold in hatred ... You ..."
But we need not transcribe further this overwhelming
document. It pursues its way through mire and filth
to its most lame and impotent conclusion. After all
this, the abbot was not deposed; he was invited merely
to reconsider his doings, and if possible amend them.
Such was Church discipline, even under an extraordinary
commission from Rome. But the most incorrigible
Anglican will scarcely question the truth of a picture
drawn by such a hand; and it must be added that this
one unexceptionable indictment lends at once assured
credibility to the reports which were presented fifty
years later, on the general visitation. There is no
longer room for the presumptive objection that charges
so revolting could not be true. We see that in their
worst form they could be true, and the evidence of
Legh and Leghton, of Rice and Bedyll, as it remains
in their letters to Cromwell, must be shaken in detail,
or else it must be accepted as correct. We cannot
dream that Archbishop Morton was mistaken, or was
misled by false information. St. Albans was no obscure
priory in a remote and thinly-peopled county. The
Abbot of St. Albans was a peer of the realm, taking
precedence of bishops, living in the full glare of notoriety,
within a few miles of London. The archbishop had
ample means of ascertaining the truth; and, we may be
sure, had taken care to examine his ground before he
left on record so tremendous an accusation. This story
is true--as true as it is piteous. We will pause a
moment over it before we pass from this, once more to
ask our passionate Church friends whether still they will
persist that the abbeys were no worse under the Tudors
than they had been in their origin, under the Saxons,
or under the first Norman and Plantagenet kings. No,
indeed, it was not so. The abbeys which towered in
the midst of the English towns, the houses clustered at
their feet like subjects round some majestic queen, were
images indeed of the civil supremacy which the Church
of the Middle Ages had asserted for itself; but they
were images also of an inner spiritual sublimity, which
had won the homage of grateful and admiring nations.
The heavenly graces had once descended upon the
monastic orders, making them ministers of mercy,
patterns of celestial life, breathing witnesses of the
power of the Spirit in renewing and sanctifying the
heart. And then it was that art and wealth and genius
poured out their treasures to raise fitting tabernacles for
the dwelling of so divine a soul. Alike in the village
and the city, amongst the unadorned walls and lowly
roofs which closed in the humble dwellings of the laity,
the majestic houses of the Father of mankind and of
his especial servants rose up in sovereign beauty. And
ever at the sacred gates sat Mercy, pouring out relief
from a never-failing store to the poor and the suffering;
ever within the sacred aisles the voices of holy men
were pealing heavenwards in intercession for the sins of
mankind; and such blessed influences were thought to
exhale around those mysterious precincts, that even the
poor outcasts of society--the debtor, the felon, and the
outlaw--gathered round the walls as the sick men
sought the shadow of the apostle, and lay there sheltered
from the avenging hand, till their sins were washed from
off their souls. The abbeys of the middle ages floated
through the storms of war and conquest, like the ark
upon the waves of the flood, in the midst of violence
remaining inviolate, through the awful reverence which
surrounded them. The abbeys, as Henry's visitors
found them, were as little like what they once had been,
as the living man in the pride of his growth is like the
corpse which the earth makes haste to hide for ever.
The official letters which reveal the condition into
which the monastic establishments had degenerated, are
chiefly in the Cotton Library, and a large number of
them have been published by the Camden Society.
Besides these, however, there are in the Rolls House
many other documents which confirm and complete the
statements of the writers of those letters. There is a
part of what seems to have been a digest of the Black
Book--an epitome of iniquities, under the title of the
Compendium Compertorum. There are also reports
from private persons, private entreaties for inquiry,
depositions of monks in official examinations, and other
similar papers, which, in many instances, are too offensive
to be produced, and may rest in obscurity, unless
contentious persons compel us to bring them forward.
Some of these, however, throw curious light on the
habits of the time, and on the collateral disorders which
accompanied the more gross enormities. They show
us, too, that although the dark tints predominate, the
picture was not wholly black; that as just Lot was in
the midst of Sodom, yet was unable by his single presence
to save the guilty city from destruction, so in the
latest era of monasticism, there were types yet lingering
of an older and fairer age, who, nevertheless, were not
delivered, like the patriarch, but perished most of them
with the institution to which they belonged. The
hideous exposure is not untinted with fairer lines; and
we see traits here and there of true devotion, mistaken
but heroic.
Of these documents two specimens shall be given
in this place, one of either kind; and both, so far as
we know, new to modern history. The first is so
singular, that we print it as it is found--a genuine
antique, fished up, in perfect preservation, out of the
wreck of the old world.
About eight miles from Ludlow, in the county of
Herefordshire, once stood the Abbey of Wigmore.
There was Wigmore Castle, a stronghold of the Welsh
Marches, now, we believe, a modern, well-conditioned
mansion; and Wigmore Abbey, of which we do not
hear that there are any remaining traces. Though now
vanished, however, like so many of its kind, three
hundred years ago the house was in vigorous existence;
and when the stir commenced for an inquiry, the
proceedings of the abbot of this place gave occasion to
a memorial which stands in the Rolls collection as
follows*:--
____
*Rolls House MS., Miscellaneous Papers, First Series. 356.
____
"Articles to be objected against John Smart, Abbot
of the Monastery of Wigmore, in the county of Hereford,
to be exhibited to the Right Honourable Lord Thomas
Cromwell, the Lord Privy Seal and Vicegerent to the
King's Majesty.
"1. The said abbot is to be accused of simony, as well
for taking money for advocation and putations of benefices,
as for giving of orders, or, more truly, selling
them, and that to such persons which have been
rejected elsewhere, and of little learning and light
consideration.
"2. The said abbot hath promoted to orders many
scholars, when all other bishops did refrain to give any
for certain good ordinances devised by the King's Majesty
and his Council for the common weal of this realm.
Then resorted to the said abbot, scholars out of all
parts, whom he would promote to orders by sixty at a
time, and sometimes more, and otherwhiles less. And
sometimes the said abbot would give orders by night
within his chamber; and otherwise in the church early
in the morning, and now and then at a chapel out of
the abbey. So that there be many unlearned and light
priests made by the said abbot, and in the diocese of
Llandaff, and in the places afore named--a thousand,
as it is esteemed, by the space of this seven years he
hath made priests, and received not so little money of
them as a thousand pounds for their orders.
"3. Item, that the said abbot now of late, when he
could not be suffered to give general orders, weekly for
the most part doth give orders by pretence of
dispensation; and by that colour he promoteth them to orders
by two and three, and takes much money of them,
both for their orders and for to purchase their
dispensations after the time he hath promoted them to
their orders.
"4. Item, the said abbot hath hurt and dismayed his
tenants by putting them from their leases, and by
enclosing their commons from them, and selling and utter
wasting of the woods that were wont to relieve and
succour them.
"5. Item, the said abbot hath sold corradyes, to the
damage of the said monastery.
"6. Item, the said abbot hath alienate and sold the
jewels and plate of the monastery, to the value of five
hundred marks, to purchase of the Bishop of Rome his
bulls to be a bishop, and to annex the said abbey to his
bishopric, to that intent that he should not for his
misdeeds be punished, or deprived from his said abbey.
"7. Item, that the said abbot, long after that other
bishops had renounced the Bishop of Rome, and professed
them to the King's Majesty, did use, but more
verily usurped, the office of a bishop by virtue of his
first bulls purchased from Rome, till now of late, as it
will appear by the date of his confirmation, if he have
any.
"8. Item, that he the said abbot hath lived viciously,
and kept to concubines divers and many women that
is openly known.
"9. Item, that the said abbot doth yet continue his
vicious living, as it is known, openly.
"10. Item, that the said abbot hath spent and wasted
much of the goods of the said monastery upon the
foresaid women.
"11. Item, that the said abbot is malicious and very
wrathful, not regarding what he saith or doeth in his
fury or anger.
"12. Item, that one Richard Gyles bought of the abbot
and convent of Wigmore a corradye, and a chamber for
him and his wife for term of their lives; and when the
said Richard Gyles was aged and was very weak, he
disposed his goods, and made executors to execute his
will. And when the said abbot now being perceived
that the said Richard Gyles was rich, and had not
bequested so much of his goods to him as he would have
had, the said abbot then came to the chamber of the
said Richard Gyles, and put out thence all his friends
and kinsfolk that kept him in his sickness; and then
the said abbot set his brother and other of his servants
to keep the sick man; and the night next coming after
the said Richard Gyles's coffer was broken, and thence
taken all that was in the same, to the value of forty
marks; and long after the said abbot confessed, before
the executors of the said Richard Gyles, that it was his
deed.
"13. Item, that the said abbot, after he had taken
away the goods of the said Richard Gyles, used daily
to reprove and check the said Richard Gyles, and
inquire of him where was more of his coin and money;
and at the last the said abbot thought he lived too long,
and made the sick man, after much sorry keeping, to
be taken from his feather-bed, and laid upon a cold
mattress, and kept his friends from him to his death.
"15. Item, that the said abbot consented to the death
and murdering of one John Tichhill, that was slain at
his procuring, at the said monastery, by Sir Richard
Cubley, canon and chaplain to the said abbot; which
canon is and ever hath been since that time chief of
the said abbot's council; and is supported to carry
crossbowes, and to go whither he lusteth at any time,
to fishing and hunting in the king's forests, parks, and
chases; but little or nothing serving the quire, as other
brethren do, neither corrected of the abbot for any
trespass he doth commit.
"16. Item, that the said abbot hath been perjured oft,
as is to be proved, and is proved; and as it is supposed,
did not make a true inventory of the goods, chattels,
and jewels of his monastery to the King's Majesty and
his council.
"17. Item, that the said abbot hath infringed all the
king's injunctions which were given him by Doctor
Cave to observe and keep; and when he was denounced
in pleno capilula to have broken the same, he would
have put in prison the brother as did denounce him to
have broken the same injunctions, save that he was let
by the convent there.
"18. Item, that the said abbot hath openly preached
against the doctrine of Christ, saying he ought not to
love his enemy, but as he loves the devil; and that he
should love his enemy's soul, but not his body.
"19. Item, that the said abbot hath taken but small
regard to the good-living of his household.
"20. Item, that the said abbot hath had and hath yet
a special favour to misdoers and manquellers, thieves,
deceivers of their neighbours, and by them [is] most
ruled and counselled.
"21. Item, that the said abbot hath granted leases of
farms and advocations first to one man, and took his
fine, and also hath granted the same lease to another
man for more money; and then would make to the last
taker a lease or writing, with an antedate of the first
lease, which hath bred great dissension among gentlemen
--as Master Blunt and Master Moysey, and other takers
of such leases--and that often.
"22. Item, the said abbot having the contrepaynes of
leases in his keeping, hath, for money, raised out the
number of years mentioned in the said leases, and writ
a fresh number in the former taker's lease, and in the
contrepayne thereof, to the intent to defraud the taker
or buyer of the residue of such leases, of whom he hath
received the money.
"23. Item, the said abbot hath not, according to the
foundation of his monastery, admitted freely tenants
into certain alms-houses belonging to the said monastery;
but of them he hath taken large fines, and some of
them he hath put away that would not give him fines:
whither poor, aged, and impotent people were wont to
be freely admitted, and [to] receive the founder's alms
that of the old customs [were] limited to the same--
which alms is also diminished by the said abbot.
"24. Item, that the said abbot did not deliver the
bulls of his bishopric, that he purchased from Rome,
to our sovereign lord the king's council till long after
the time he had delivered and exhibited the bulls of
his monastery to them.
"25. Item, that the said abbot hath detained and yet
doth detain servants' wages; and often when the said
servants hath asked their wages, the said abbot hath
put them into the stocks, and beat them.
"26. Item, the said abbot, in times past, hath had a
great devotion to ride to Llangarvan, in Wales, upon
Lammas-day, to receive pardon there; and on the even
he would visit one Mary Hawle, an old acquaintance
of his, at the Welsh Poole; and on the morrow ride to
the foresaid Llangarvan, to be confessed and absolved,
and the same night return to company with the said
Mary Hawle, at the Welsh Poole aforesaid, and Kateryn,
the said Mary Hawle her first daughter, whom the said
abbot long hath kept to concubine, and had children
by her, that he lately married at Ludlow. And [there
be] others that have been taken out of his chamber and
put in the stocks within the said abbey, and others that
have complained upon him to the king's council of the
Marches of Wales; and the woman that dashed out
his teeth, that he would have had by violence, I will not
name now, nor other men's wives, lest it would offend
your good lordship to read or hear the same.
"27. Item, the said abbot doth daily embezzle, sell,
and convey the goods, and chattels, and jewels of the
said monastery, having no need so to do; for it is
thought that he hath a thousand marks or two thousand
lying by him that he hath gotten by selling of orders,
and the jewels and plate of the monastery and corradyes;
and it is to be feared that he will alienate all the rest,
unless your good lordship speedily make redress and
provision to let the same.
"28. Item, the said abbot was accustomed yearly to
preach at Leyntwarden on the Festival of the Nativity
of the Virgin Mary, where and when the people were
wont to offer to an image there, and to the same the
said abbot in his sermons would exhort them and
encourage them. But now the oblations be decayed,
the abbot, espying the image then to have a cote of
silver plate and gilt, hath taken away of his own
authority the said image, and the plate turned to his
own use; and left his preaching there, saying it is no
manner profit to any man, and the plate that was
about the said image was named to be worth forty
pounds.
"29. Item, the said abbot hath ever nourished enmity
and discord among his brethren; and hath not
encouraged them to learn the laws and the mystery of
Christ. But he that least knew was most cherished
by him; and he hath been highly displeased and [hath]
disdained when his brothers would say that 'it is God's
precept and doctrine that ye ought to prefer before your
ceremonies and vain constitutions.' This saying was
high disobedient, and should be grievously punished;
when that lying, obloquy, flattery, ignorance, derision,
contumely, discord, great swearing, drinking, hypocrisy,
fraud, superstition, deceit, conspiracy to wrong their
neighbour, and other of that kind, was had in special
favour and regard. Laud and praise be to God that
hath sent us the true knowledge. Honour and long
prosperity to our sovereign lord, and his noble council
that teaches to advance the same. Amen.
"By John Lee, your faithful bedeman, and canon of
the said monastery of Wigmore.
"Postscript. My good lord, there is in the said abbey
a cross of fine gold and precious stones, whereof one
diamond was esteemed by Doctor Booth, Bishop of
Hereford, worth a hundred marks. In that cross is
enclosed a piece of wood, named to be of the cross
that Christ died upon, and to the same hath been
offering. And when it should be brought down to the
church from the treasury, it was brought down with
lights, and like reverence as should have been done
to Christ Himself. I fear lest the abbot upon Sunday
next, when he may enter the treasury, will take away
the said cross and break it, or turn it to his own use,
with many other precious jewels that be there.
"All these articles afore written be true as to the
substance and true meaning of them, though peradventure
for haste and lack of counsel some words be
set amiss or out of their place. That I will be ready
to prove forasmuch as lies in me, when it shall like your
honourable lordship to direct your commission to men
(or any man) that will be indifferent and not corrupt
to sit upon the same, at the said abbey, where the
witnesses and proofs be most ready and the truth is
best known, or at any other place where it shall be
thought most convenient by your high discretion and
authority."
The statutes of Provisors, commonly called Premunire
statutes, which forbade all purchases of bulls
from Rome under penalty of outlawry, have been
usually considered in the highest degree oppressive;
and more particularly the public censure has fallen
upon the last application of those statutes, when, on
Wolsey's fall, the whole body of the clergy were laid
under a premunire, and only obtained pardon on payment
of a serious fine. Let no one regret that he has
learnt to be tolerant to Roman Catholics as the nineteenth
century knows them. But it is a spurious
charity, which, to remedy a modern injustice, hastens to
its opposite; and when philosophic historians indulge
in loose invective against the statesmen of the Reformation,
they show themselves unfit to be trusted with the
custody of our national annals. The Acts of Parliament
speak plainly of the enormous abuses which had
grown up under these bulls. Yet even the emphatic
language of the statutes scarcely prepares us to find an
abbot able to purchase with jewels stolen from his own
convent a faculty to confer holy orders, though he had
never been consecrated bishop, and to make a thousand
pounds by selling the exercise of his privileges. This
is the most flagrant case which has fallen under the eyes
of the present writer. Yet it is but a choice specimen
out of many. He was taught to believe, like other
modern students of history, that the papal dispensations
for immorality, of which we read in Fox and other
Protestant writers, were calumnies, but he has been
forced against his will to perceive that the supposed
calumnies were but the plain truth; he has found
among the records--for one thing, a list of more than
twenty clergy in one diocese who had obtained licences
to keep concubines [Tanner MS. 105, Bodleian Library,
Oxford]. After some experience, he advises
all persons who are anxious to understand the English
Reformation to place implicit confidence in the Statute
Book. Every fresh record which is brought to light
is a fresh evidence in its favour. In the fluctuations of
the conflict there were parliaments, as there were
princes, of opposing sentiments; and measures were
passed, amended, repealed, or censured, as Protestants
and Catholics came alternately into power. But whatever
were the differences of opinion, the facts on either
side which are stated in an Act of Parliament may be
uniformly trusted. Even in the attainders for treason
and heresy we admire the truthfulness of the details
of the indictments, although we deplore the prejudice
which at times could make a crime of virtue.
We pass on to the next picture. Equal justice, or
some attempt at it, was promised, and we shall perhaps
part from the friends of the monasteries on better terms
than they believe. At least, we shall add to our own
history and to the Catholic martyrology a story of
genuine interest.
We have many accounts of the abbeys at the time
of their actual dissolution. The resistance or acquiescence
of superiors, the dismissals of the brethren, the
sale of the property, the destruction of relics, &c., are
all described. We know how the windows were taken
out, how the glass appropriated, how the "melter"
accompanied the visitors to run the lead upon the roofs,
and the metal of the bells into portable forms. We
see the pensioned regulars filing out reluctantly, or
exulting in their deliverance, discharged from their vows,
furnished each with his "secular apparel," and his purse
of money, to begin the world as he might. These
scenes have long been partially known, and they were
rarely attended with anything remarkable. At the
time of the suppression, the discipline of several years
had broken down opposition, and prepared the way for
the catastrophe. The end came at last, but as an issue
which had been long foreseen.
We have sought in vain, however, for a glimpse
into the interior of the houses at the first intimation
of what was coming--more especially when the great
blow was struck which severed England from obedience
to Rome, and asserted the independence of the Anglican
Church. Then, virtually, the fate of the monasteries was
decided. As soon as the supremacy was vested in the
crown, inquiry into their condition could no longer be
escaped or delayed; and then, through the length and
breadth of the country, there must have been rare dismay.
The account of the London Carthusians is indeed
known to us, because they chose to die rather than
yield submission where their consciences forbade them;
and their isolated heroism has served to distinguish
their memories. The Pope, as head of the Universal
Church, claimed the power of absolving subjects from
their allegiance to their king. He deposed Henry.
He called on foreign princes to enforce his sentence;
and, on pain of excommunication, commanded the
native English to rise in rebellion. The king, in
selfdefence, was compelled to require his subjects to
disclaim all sympathy with these pretensions, and to
recognize no higher authority, spiritual or secular,
than himself within his own dominions. The regular
clergy throughout the country were on the Pope's side,
secretly or openly. The Charter-house monks, however,
alone of all the order had the courage to declare their
convictions, and to suffer for them. Of the rest, we
only perceive that they at last submitted; and since
there was no uncertainty as to their real feelings, we
have been disposed to judge them hardly as cowards.
Yet we who have never been tried, should perhaps be
cautious in our censures. It is possible to hold an
opinion quite honestly, and yet to hesitate about dying
for it. We consider ourselves, at the present day,
persuaded honestly of many things; yet which of them
should we refuse to relinquish if the scaffold were the
alternative, or at least seem to relinquish, under silent
protest?
And yet, in the details of the struggle at the
Charterhouse, we see the forms of mental trial which must have
repeated themselves among all bodies of the clergy
wherever there was seriousness of conviction. If the
majority of the monks were vicious and sensual, there
was still a large minority labouring to be true to their
vows; and when one entire convent was capable of
sustained resistance, there must have been many where
there was only just too little virtue for the emergency,
where the conflict between interest and conscience was
equally genuine, though it ended the other way. Scenes
of bitter misery there must have been--of passionate
emotion wrestling ineffectually with the iron resolution
of the Government: and the faults of the Catholic party
weigh so heavily against them in the course and progress
of the Reformation, that we cannot willingly lose the
few countervailing tints which soften the darkness of the
case against them.
Nevertheless, for any authentic account of the abbeys
at this crisis, we have hitherto been left to our
imagination. A stern and busy Administration had little leisure
to preserve records of sentimental struggles which led to
nothing. The Catholics did not care to keep alive the
recollection of a conflict in which, even though with
difficulty, the Church was defeated. A rare accident
only could have brought down to us any fragment of a
transaction which no one had an interest in remembering.
That such an accident has really occurred, we
may consider as unusually fortunate. The story in
question concerns the abbey of Woburn, and is as
follows:-
At Woburn, as in many other religious houses, there
were representatives of both the factions which divided
the country; perhaps we should say of three--the
sincere Catholics, the Indifferentists, and the Protestants.
These last, so long as Wolsey was in power, had been
frightened into silence, and with difficulty had been able
to save themselves from extreme penalties. No sooner,
however, had Wolsey fallen, and the battle commenced
with the Papacy, than the tables turned, the persecuted
became persecutors--or at least threw off their disguise,
and were strengthened with the support of the large
class who cared only to keep on the winning side. The
mysteries of the faith came to be disputed at the
public tables; the refectories rang with polemics; the
sacred silence of the dormitories was broken for the first
time by lawless speculation. The orthodox might have
appealed to the Government: heresy was still forbidden
by law, and if detected, was still punished by the stake.
But the orthodox among the regular clergy adhered
to the Pope as well as to the faith, and abhorred the
sacrilege of the Parliament as deeply as the new opinions
of the Reformers. Instead of calling in the help of the
law, they muttered treason in secret; and the Reformers,
confident in the necessities of the times, sent reports to
London of their arguments and conversations. The
authorities in the abbey were accused of disaffection;
and a commission of inquiry was sent down towards the
end of the spring of 1536, to investigate. The
depositions taken on this occasion are still preserved; and
with the help of them, we can leap over three centuries
of time, and hear the last echoes of the old monastic
life in Woburn Abbey dying away in discord.
Where party feeling was running so high, there were
of course passionate arguments. The Act of Supremacy,
the spread of Protestantism, the power of the Pope, the
state of England--all were discussed; and the possibilities
of the future, as each party painted it in the
colours of his hopes. The brethren, we find, spoke
their minds in plain language, sometimes condescending
to a joke.
Brother Sherborne deposes that the sub-prior "on
Candlemas-day last past (February 2, 1536), asked him
whether he longed not to be at Rome where all his
bulls were?" Brother Sherborne answered that "his
bulls had made so many calves, that he had burned
them. Whereunto the sub-prior said he thought there
were more calves now than there were then."
Then there were long and furious quarrels about "my
Lord Privy Seal" (Cromwell), to one party the incarnation
of Satan, to the other the delivering angel. Nor did
matters mend when from the minister they passed to the
master.
Dan John Croxton being in "the shaving-house" one
day with certain of the brethren having their tonsures
looked to, and gossiping, as men do on such occasions,
one "Friar Lawrence did say that the King was dead."
Then said Croxton, "thanks be to God, his Grace is in
good health, and I pray God so continue him;" and
said further to the said Lawrence, "I advise thee to
leave thy babbling." Croxton, it seems, had been among
the suspected in earlier times. Lawrence said to him,
"Croxton, it maketh no matter what thou sayest, for
thou art one of the new world." Whereupon hotter still
the conversation proceeded. "Thy babbling tongue,"
Croxton said, "will turn us all to displeasure at length."
"Then," quoth Lawrence, "neither thou nor yet any
of us all shall do well as long as we forsake our head of
the Church, the Pope." "By the mass!" quoth Croxton,
"I would thy Pope Roger were in thy belly, or thou in
his, for thou art a false perjured knave to thy Prince."
Whereunto the said Lawrence answered, saying, "By the
mass, thou liest! I was never sworn to forsake the Pope
to be our head, and never will be." "Then," quoth
Croxton, "thou shall be sworn spite of thine heart one
day, or I will know why nay."
These and similar wranglings may be taken as
specimens of the daily conversation at Woburn, and we
can perceive how an abbot with the best intentions
would have found it difficult to keep the peace. There
are instances of superiors in other houses throwing down
their command in the midst of the crisis in flat despair,
protesting that their subject brethren were no longer
governable. Abbots who were inclined to the Reformation
could not manage the Catholics; Catholic abbots
could not manage the Protestants; indifferent abbots
could not manage either the one or the other. It would
have been well for the Abbot of Woburn--or well as far
as this world is concerned--if he, like one of these, had
acknowledged his incapacity, and had fled from his
charge.
His name was Robert Hobbes. Of his age and
family, history is silent. We know only that he held his
place when the storm rose against the Pope; that, like
the rest of the clergy, he bent before the blast, taking
the oath to the King, and submitting to the royal
supremacy, but swearing under protest, as the phrase went,
with the outward, and not with the inward man--in fact,
perjuring himself. Though infirm, so far, however, he
was too honest to be a successful counterfeit, and from
the jealous eyes of the Neologians of the abbey he could
not conceal his tendencies. We have significant evidence
of the espionage which was established, over all
suspected quarters, in the conversations and trifling
details of conduct on the part of the abbot, which were
reported to the Government.
In the summer of 1534, orders came that the Pope's
name should be rased out wherever it was mentioned
in the Mass books. A malcontent, by name
Robert Salford, deposed that "he was singing mass
before the abbot at St. Thomas's altar within the
monastery, at which time he rased out with his knife the
said name out of the canon." The abbot told him to
"take a pen and strike or cross him out." The saucy
monk said those were not the orders. They were to
rase him out. "Well, well," the abbot said, "it will
come again one day." "Come again, will it?" was the
answer. "If it do, then we will put him in again; but
I trust I shall never see that day." The mild abbot
could remonstrate, but could not any more command;
and the proofs of his malignant inclinations were
remembered against him for the ear of Cromwell.
In the general injunctions, too, he was directed to
preach against the Pope, and to expose his usurpation;
but he could not bring himself to obey. He shrank
from the pulpit; he preached but twice after the visitation,
and then on other subjects, while in the prayer
before the sermon he refused, as we find, to use the
prescribed form. He only said, "You shall pray for
the spirituality, the temporality, and the souls that be
in the pains of purgatory; and did not name the King
to be supreme head of the Church in neither of the
said sermons, nor speak against the pretended authority
of the Bishop of Rome."
Again, when Paul the Third, shortly after his election,
proposed to call a general council at Mantua, against
which, by advice of Henry the Eighth, the Germans
protested, we have a glimpse how eagerly anxious
English eyes were watching for a turning tide. "Hear
you," said the abbot one day, "of the Pope's holiness
and the congregation of bishops, abbots, and princes
gathered to the council at Mantua? They be gathered
for the reformation of the universal Church; and here
now we have a book of the excuse of the Germans,
by which we may know what heretics they be, for if
they were Catholics and true men as they pretend to be,
they would never have refused to come to a general
council."
So matters went with the abbot for some months
after he had sworn obedience to the King. Lulling his
conscience with such opiates as the casuists could provide
for him, he watched anxiously for a change, and
laboured with but little reserve to hold his brethren to
their true allegiance.
In the summer of 1535, however, a change came over
the scene, very different from the outward reaction for
which he was looking: a better mind woke in the
abbot; he learnt that in swearing what he did not
mean with reservations and nice distinctions, he had
lied to Heaven and lied to man: that to save his
miserable life he had perilled his soul. When the oath
of supremacy was required of the nation, Sir Thomas
More, Bishop Fisher, and the monks of the Charterhouse,
mistaken, as we believe, in judgment, but true
to their consciences, and disdaining evasion or subterfuge,
chose, with deliberate nobleness, rather to die than
to perjure themselves. This is no place to enter on
the great question of the justice or necessity of those
executions; but the story of the so-called martyrdoms
convulsed the Catholic world. The Pope shook upon
his throne; the shuttle of diplomatic intrigue stood
still; diplomatists who had lived so long in lies that
the whole life of man seemed but a stage pageant, a
thing of show and tinsel, stood aghast at the revelation
of English sincerity, and a shudder of great awe ran
through Europe. The fury of party leaves little room
for generous emotion, and no pity was felt for these
men by the English Protestants. The Protestants knew
well that if these same sufferers could have had their
way, they would themselves have been sacrificed by
hecatombs; and as they had never experienced mercy,
so they were in turn without mercy. But to the
English Catholics, who believed as Fisher believed,
but who had not dared to suffer as Fisher suffered, his
death and the death of the rest acted as a glimpse of
the judgment day. Their safety became their shame
and terror: and in the radiant example before them of
true faithfulness, they saw their own falsehood and their
own disgrace. So it was with Father Forest, who had
taught his penitents in confession that they might perjure
themselves, and who now sought a cruel death in
voluntary expiation; so it was with Whiting, the Abbot
of Glastonbury; so with others whose names should be
more familiar to us than they are; and here in Woburn
we are to see the feeble but genuine penitence of Abbot
Hobbes. He was still unequal to immediate martyrdom,
but he did what he knew might drag his death upon
him if disclosed to the Government, and surrounded by
spies he could have had no hope of concealment.
"At the time," deposed Robert Salford, "that the
monks of the Charter-house, with other traitors, did
suffer death, the abbot did call us into the Chapterhouse,
and said these words:--'Brethren, this is a
perilous time, such a scourge was never heard since
Christ's passion. Ye hear how good men suffer the
death. Brethren, this is undoubted for our offences.
Ye read, so long as the children of Israel kept the
commandments of God, so long their enemies had no
power over them, but God took vengeance of their
enemies. But when they broke God's commandments,
then they were subdued by their enemies, and so be we.
Therefore let us be sorry for our offences. Undoubted
He will take vengeance of our enemies; I mean those
heretics that causeth so many good men to suffer thus.
Alas, it is a piteous case that so much Christian blood
should be shed. Therefore, good brethren, for the
reverence of God, every one of you devoutly pray, and
say this Psalm, "O God, the heathen are come into
thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled,
and made Jerusalem a heap of stones. The dead bodies
of thy servants have they given to be meat to the fowls
of the air, and the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of
the field. Their blood have they shed like water on
every side of Jerusalem, and there was no man to bury
them. We are become an open scorn unto our enemies,
a very scorn and derision unto them that are round
about us. Oh, remember not our old sins, but have
mercy upon us, and that soon, for we are come to great
misery. Help us, oh God of our salvation, for the glory
of thy name. Oh, be merciful unto our sins for thy
name's sake. Wherefore do the heathen say, Where is
now their God?" Ye shall say this Psalm,' repeated
the abbot, 'every Friday, after the litany, prostrate,
when ye lie upon the high altar, and undoubtedly God
will cease this extreme scourge.' And so," continues
Salford, significantly, "the convent did say this aforesaid
Psalm until there were certain that did murmur at
the saying of it, and so it was left."
The abbot, it seems, either stood alone, or found but
languid support; even his own familiar friends whom
he trusted, those with whom he had walked in the
house of God, had turned against him; the harsh air of
the dawn of a new world choked him; what was there
for him but to die. But his conscience still haunted
him: while he lived he must fight on, and so, if
possible, find pardon for his perjury. The blows in
those years fell upon the Church thick and fast. In
February, 1536, the Bill passed for the dissolution of
the smaller monasteries; and now we find the sub-prior
with the whole fraternity united to accuse him, so that
the abbot had no one friend remaining.
"He did again call us together," says the next deposition,
"and lamentably mourning for the dissolving
the said houses, he enjoined us to sing 'Salvator mundi,
salva nos omnes,' every day after lauds; and we murmured
at it, and were not content to sing it for such
cause; and so we did omit it divers days, for which
the abbot came unto the chapter, and did in manner
rebuke us, and said we were bound to obey his
commandment by our profession, and so did command us to
sing it again with the versicle 'Let God arise, and let
his enemies be scattered. Let them also that hate him
flee before him.' Also he enjoined us at every mass
that every priest did sing, to say the collect, 'Oh God,
who despisest not the sighing of a contrite heart.'
And he said if we did this with good and true devotion,
God would so handle the matter, that it should be to
the comfort of all England, and so show us mercy as
he showed unto the children of Israel. And surely,
brethren, there will come to us a good man that will
rectify these monasteries again that be now supprest,
because 'God can of these stones raise up children to
Abraham.'"
"Of these stones," perhaps, but less easily of the stonyhearted
monks, who with pitiless smiles watched the
abbot's sorrow, which should soon bring him to his
ruin.
Time passed on, and as the world grew worse, so the
abbot grew more lonely. Lonely and unsupported, he
was unequal to the last effort of repentance, but he
slowly strengthened himself for the trial. As Lent
came on, the season brought with it a more special call
to effort, which he did not fail to recognize. The
conduct of the fraternity sorely disturbed him. They
preached against all which he most loved and valued,
in language purposely coarse; and the mild sweetness
of the rebukes which he administered, showed plainly
on which side lay, in the abbey of Woburn, the larger
portion of the spirit of his Master and theirs. Now,
when the passions of those times have died away, and
we can look back with more indifferent eyes, how
touching is the following. There was one Sir William,
curate of Woburn chapel, whose tongue, it seems,
was rough beyond the rest. The abbot met him
one day, and spoke to him. "Sir William," he said,
"I hear tell ye be a great railer. I marvel that ye rail
so. I pray you teach my cure the scripture of God, and
that may be to edification. I pray you leave such railing.
Ye call the pope a bear and a banson. Either he
is a good man or an ill. Domino suo stat aut cadit.
The office of a bishop is honourable. What edifying is
this to rail? Let him alone."
But they would not let him alone, nor would they
let the abbot alone. He grew "somewhat acrased," they
said, vexed with feelings of which they had no experience.
He fell sick, sorrow and the Lent discipline
weighing upon him. The brethren went to see him in
his room, Brother Dan Woburn among the rest, who
said that he asked him how he did, and received for
answer, "I would that I had died with the good men
that died for holding with the pope. My conscience,
my conscience doth grudge me every day for it." Life
was fast losing its value for him. What was life to him
or any man when bought with a sin against his soul?
"If he be disposed to die, for that matter," the
insolent Croxton said, "he may die as soon as he will."
All Lent he fasted and prayed; and his illness grew
upon him; and at length in Passion week he thought
all was over, and that he was going away. On Passion
Sunday he called the brethren about him, and as they
stood round his bed, with their cold, hard eyes, "he
exhorted them all to charity," he implored them "never
to consent to go out of their monastery; and if it
chanced them to be put from it, they should in no
wise forsake their habit." After these words, "being in
a great agony, he rose out of his bed, and cried out and
said, 'I would to God, it would please him to take me
out of this wretched world; and I would I had died
with the good men that have suffered death heretofore,
for they were quickly out of their pain.'" * Then, half
wandering, he began to mutter to himself aloud the
thoughts which had been working in him in his
struggles; and quoting St. Bernard's words about the
pope, he exclaimed, "Tu quis es. Primatu Abel,
gubernatione Noah, auctoritate Moses, judicatu Samuel
potestate Petrus, unctione Christus. Aliae ecclesiae
habent super se pastores. Tu pastor pastorum es."
____
* Meaning, as he afterwards said, More and Fisher and the
Carthusians.
____
Let it be remembered that this is no sentimental
fiction begotten out of the brain of some ingenious
novelist, but the record of the true words and sufferings
of a genuine child of Adam, labouring in a trial too
hard for him.
He prayed to die, and in good time death was to
come to him; but not, after all, in the sick bed, with
his expiation but half completed. A year before, he
had thrown down the cross, when it was offered him.
He was to take it again; the very cross which he had
refused. He recovered. He was brought before the
council; with what result, there are no means of knowing.
To admit the papal supremacy when officially
questioned was high treason. Whether he was constant,
and received some conditional pardon, or whether his
heart again for the moment failed him--whichever he
did--the records are silent. This only we ascertain of
him: that he was not put to death under the statute of
supremacy. But two years later, when the official list
was presented to the parliament of those who had
suffered for their share in "the Pilgrimage of Grace,"
among the rest we find the name of Robert Hobbes,
late Abbot of Woburn. To this solitary fact we can
add nothing. The rebellion was put down, and in the
punishment of the offenders there was unusual leniency;
not more than thirty persons were executed, although
forty thousand had been in arms. Those only were
selected who had been most signally implicated. But
they were all leaders in the movement; the men of
highest rank, and therefore greatest guilt. They died
for what they believed their duty; and the king and
council did their duty in enforcing the laws against
armed insurgents. He for whose cause each supposed
themselves to be contending, has long since judged
between them; and both parties perhaps now see all
things with clearer eyes than was permitted to them
on earth.
We too can see more distinctly in a slight degree.
At least we will not refuse the Abbot Hobbes some
memorial, brief though it be. And although twelve
generations of Russells--all loyal to the Protestant
ascendancy--have swept Woburn clear of Catholic
associations, they, too, in these later days, will not regret
to see revived the authentic story of its last abbot.
____