The Necessity for Dissolution.
It remains for us, taking our stand at the year in which the Monastery
was dissolved, to survey the period that has elapsed since the death
of Thomas de la Mare. It was a time of stagnation, followed by rapid
decline. At the end of the fifteenth century the Abbey was financially
more embarrassed and morally even more depraved than in the first years
of our period. Without attempting a defence either of the motives of
Henry VIII or the methods of the Dissolution, no other conclusion
is possible but that the abolition of St. Albans was both just and
necessary. The Abbey had long since outlived its useful functions.
The necessity for the dissolution rests on a twofold argument. There
was first, the decay of religion, and even morality itself, within the
cloister; and secondly, there was the decay of the manorial system, the
economic basis of monasticism.
(A). _Economic History of the Abbey, 1300–1539._
[Sidenote: The Abbot as Landlord.]
A great spiritual peer who as a mitred abbot took his place in
Parliament among the magnates, the Abbot of St. Albans was a no less
important personage in virtue of his huge landed possessions. Indeed,
it has never been determined whether the right of such abbots to
sit in the Upper House rested upon their spiritual dignity or their
position as tenants-in-chief and great landlords. The Abbot of St.
Albans exercised a wide seignorial jurisdiction over the Hundred of
Cashio from early times, and later, over numerous manors in the eastern
counties,[47] monuments to the piety of wealthy donors through the
centuries. At the commencement of the fourteenth century the relations
existing between the Abbey and its tenants were solely those of the
manorial system, now fast decaying on all but monastic estates. The
symmetry of this arrangement had been broken at an early date by
the growth of the town at the very gates of the Abbey. The townsmen
were ruled with the same despotic power as the country tenants,
from whom they differed only in being more concentrated. As in the
closely parallel case of Bury St. Edmunds, St. Albans was governed
by a bailiff chosen by the Abbot and holding office during his
pleasure; the townsmen were tried in the Abbot’s court, and offenders
incarcerated in the monastic prison. The Abbot secured the profits
arising from his court--‘the court of St. Albans under the ash-tree
every three weeks’--and from fairs, as also the heavy tolls imposed
upon all merchandise passing through the town. This antiquated tyranny
contrasted ill with the wide municipal independence enjoyed by other
towns.
[Sidenote: Abbey and Town.]
There were thus substantial reasons why the townsmen should free
themselves at the first opportunity from the hated tutelage of the
Abbey, though it must be confessed that their civic disabilities
weighed less with them than the strict preservation of the Lord Abbot’s
warrens and fish ponds, the close fencing in of his estates, and a host
of galling and antiquated signs of subjection, the chief of which was
the obligation to full their cloth and grind their corn at the Abbot’s
mill.
It was typical of the monastery’s conservatism that each succeeding
abbot refused all concession. Discontent culminated in revolt. In 1274,
taking as their pretext the matter of the Abbot’s mill, the townsmen
inaugurated a mild rebellion by setting up handmills in their own
houses. Abbot Roger easily suppressed the rising, and an outbreak in
1314, provoked by the tactless, overbearing Hugh of Eversdon, collapsed
even more ignominiously. A more serious disturbance, which broke out
in 1327, was not finally crushed for seven years. Taking advantage of
the death of Abbot Hugh, and the temporary anarchy which followed the
death of Edward II, the townsmen rose again and blockaded the Abbey.
The affair was rendered the more serious by the existence among the
monks of a party in league with the malcontents. The internal danger
was averted by sending away the disaffected monks to distant cells,
but Abbot William was compelled to give verbal consent to the demands
of the townsmen for a charter embodying the right of choosing their
own members of Parliament, liberty to use handmills, to fish in the
Abbey waters, and to hunt its preserves, the privilege of executing
writs without the interference of the bailiff of the liberty, and
finally, the title of free burgesses.[48] By royal help the Abbot at
length crushed the rising; the old subjection was once more firmly
rivetted upon the townsmen, and the Abbey parlour was paved with their
handmills as a token of their defeat and a warning for the future.[49]
It is significant of the cruelty and selfishness of the Abbey that no
sort of concession was made to the defeated townsmen. At this time,
as subsequently, the Abbot showed himself incapable of appreciating
the real trend of events. For a moment the Abbey had triumphed and all
was well. Under the firm rule of Thomas de la Mare there was no hope
of success for an isolated rising, but the outbreak of the Peasants’
Revolt in 1381 gave the tenants their opportunity, and the Abbey reaped
the fruit of its foolish and short-sighted policy.
[Sidenote: The Country Tenants.]
So much for the townsmen. The bulk of the Abbot’s subjects, however,
were country tenants, living on his various manors. Under the manorial
system rural tenants lived in a state of political and economic
subjection to their lord. Of such tenants a certain number were free
labourers, but the large majority were bound to the lord by varying
degrees of servile tenure. The serfs or villeins divided their time
between cultivating their own patches of land and rendering labour
services on that part of the manor which was cultivated by the lord
or his bailiff for the supply of his own granaries. On many of the
St. Albans manors a small money rent was also paid by the serf for
his land.[50] By long tradition, though scarcely by law, the villein
could not be evicted; on the other hand, he was bound to the soil, owed
many feudal dues to his lord, and so many days’ work per year on the
lord’s domain. A series of regulations of the close of the thirteenth
century[51] discloses the harsh policy of St. Albans with regard to
its villeins. Freemen were forbidden to buy villein lands; villeins
were forbidden to sell to anyone either lands or produce;[52] money
payments and labour services were rigorously exacted, and the huge
warrens in possession of the Abbey were strictly preserved. The effect
of these regulations was to prevent the serf increasing his holding,
and to maintain the distinction between free and unfree tenants. By
this means alone could the Abbot combat the general tendency towards
fusion of the two classes.[53]
While the Abbey was thus fighting to continue the old tyranny
manumissions were becoming frequent on lay lands, and all over the
country labour services were being given up in favour of money
payments. Further, the practice of letting out lands in farms to
rent-paying tenants was growing more general. By diminishing the
population the Black Death (1349) hastened this process,[54] for
landlords were compelled to offer high wages to secure the cultivation
of their demesnes, and they had perforce to bring in rent-paying
tenants to till the lands of such of their villeins as had succumbed.
Nor was the break-up of the old system retarded by the Statute of
Labourers (1352). The Act, which provided that food prices as well as
wages should remain fixed, was not so much a blow aimed at the poorer
classes as an attempt to restore the state of affairs existing before
1349. The process of manumission continued; the numbers of freemen
steadily increased, and, in spite of the Statute, wages and prices rose
higher than ever before. This increase in the numbers of free labourers
inspired those who were still in villeinage with the ambition to become
themselves free and to cease rendering labour services which, as the
token of their servile tenure, were regarded as degrading.
Such were the grievances of the peasants who in 1381 formed the
backbone of the Revolt. The unwillingness to allow manumission which
has been seen to exist towards the end of the thirteenth century at
St. Albans, and the harsh provisions made to retain labour services,
continued in full force.[55] In the case of one manor,[56] it is true,
the two systems appear to have existed side by side about 1340, but
the rest of the evidence points to the retention in full of the old
system both on the St. Albans estates and on the estates of its cells.
Thus in 1381 the rural tenants of St. Albans were ready to join in the
general revolt. Simultaneously the townsmen made a final attempt to win
from the Abbot privileges identical with those demanded in 1327.
[Sidenote: The Revolt of 1381.]
There is little reason to linger over the details of the Revolt. The
townsmen rose in a body and set themselves to destroy all visible
tokens of their subjection. The fences of the Abbot’s woods were pulled
down, his game was killed freely, and a show was made of dividing his
domain into small individual holdings. Many houses were burnt, and the
Abbey itself was mildly raided; but from first to last there was no
wish to take life. The leader of the insurgents was William Grindcob,
who appears to have been something of an enthusiast, and the most
disinterested of all the leaders in this revolt. In compliance with his
demands the Abbot was compelled to deliver up all the Abbey charters,
and then to draw up a new charter granting to the townsmen (1) rights
of pasturage on his common, (2) permission to use private handmills,
(3) entire freedom to hunt and fish over the monastic estates, and (4)
self-government by freely-elected officials. These were a repetition
of the demands of 1327, except that in the interval the notion of
self-government had become more clearly defined.
In spite of the townsmen’s boast that they were in alliance with the
country tenants, the two bodies seem to have acted independently. Each
had its own grievances to redress. Indeed, the country tenants were
still further divided, but the Abbey was powerless to resist even
such small bodies as the villeins of individual manors. The villeins
on most of the Hertford manors--Tittenhanger, Northaw, Watford,
Berkhamstead--marched to the Abbey and in a curiously restrained spirit
secured charters satisfying their various local grievances. The tenants
of the manor of Redburn, for example, extracted charters containing the
abolition of serfdom, of villein services (in favour of money rents),
and also, in common with the townsmen, the rights of the chase and of
fishing. Those of Rickmansworth obtained all these privileges and the
right besides of disposing freely of lands and movables; and so it was
done by most other manors in the county.
But the privileges were secured only to be lost almost immediately. The
King’s officers arrived at St. Albans, no attempt at resistance was
made, and the trouble subsided as quickly as it had arisen. The fifteen
executions that followed (Grindcob being the most notable victim and
dying finely) were, for the age, mild enough retaliation on the part
of a panic-stricken government. As a matter of course, the Abbey was
restored in its privileges, and the town subjected to it until the
Dissolution.
[Sidenote: After 1381.]
In this way the Abbey was officially confirmed in its retention of an
economic system which had become both unjust and unprofitable. Yet
economic change was inevitable, and received a grudging recognition.
In 1424 the Abbot secured a papal bull[57] allowing the Abbey complete
freedom to let out its lands in farms to rent-paying tenants--the
system long since in vogue on lay estates. Later in the century
manumissions of bondmen become more and more frequent. At first
manumission is regarded as a privilege by the serfs, and the price paid
for it is commonly entered in the margin of the document; but gradually
examples grow more common; no more money entries occur, and it seems
that the Abbot was only too happy ‘to be rid of the presence of persons
who had claims upon him as a landowner without any power on his part to
exact a return to himself of commensurate advantage.’[58] Thus the old
agricultural system slowly broke up, despite the monks who to the last
retarded the transition to the new order.
Towards the town the Abbey remained to the last unbending, though
not on account of any diminution in the resentment with which it was
regarded by the inhabitants. In 1424 a large crowd appeared at the
gate of the Abbey, armed with swords, to demand concessions similar to
those of the extorted charter of 1381; but they were still cowed by the
recollection of their late rising, and the affair came to nothing.[59]
The last mention of open resistance occurs in 1455 when John Chertsey
erected a private mill, and so withdrew corn from that of the Abbot.
To such an act of daring he seems to have been inspired by his wife,
a woman of spirit. Chertsey, however, was a timid creature; his heart
failed him, and he was induced to make humble apology to the Abbot and
to destroy the mill.
There can be little or no doubt that in the sixteenth century monastic
lands were far behind lay estates in economic development. According to
M. Savine, the agricultural revolution had scarcely affected the lands
of the monks at the time of the Dissolution.[60] ‘Arable land occupies
... a very considerable part of the area that the monks kept in their
own hands; it was very little, if at all, less than the area of the
several pastures. As agriculturists the monks carried on a large, or
at any rate, a fair-sized business. Now if the conversion of arable
land into pasture land had become general under the first two Tudors,
then in these thriving monastery farms it ought to be in much greater
evidence than in the small homesteads of the peasants, who tilled the
land for their own subsistence, and were fettered on all sides by
communal regulations.’ But that the revolution was in full swing on lay
estates we know from More’s _Utopia_, which was written as early as
1516.[61] Even at this date agriculture was being widely abandoned by
lay farmers who were converting what was formerly arable into pasture
land, the growing woollen industry being found more profitable.[62]
[Sidenote: Summary.]
To the last St. Albans strove to check economic development. At what
was perhaps the great crisis in its history--the revolt of 1381--it
had definitely refused to adapt itself to altered conditions. By that
refusal it ensured its economic decay, and finally its ruin. For while
it was highly desirable that religion should flourish within the
monastery, it was absolutely essential that such a huge establishment
should rest on a sound economic basis if it was to continue. In the
sixteenth century, or even earlier, this condition was no longer
fulfilled. It is, however, scarcely a matter for which blame attaches
to the House. The mediaeval ideal, which in one aspect was the monastic
ideal, was stability, not progress. St. Albans was identical in its
attitude with the other great monasteries; it was neither more nor
less conservative. Its inability, rather than its refusal, to change
or admit change was its condemnation. Such a splendid immobility has
something of grandeur about it. At the same time the picture of a
town deprived of its ‘natural right of self-government,’ and hindered
accordingly in its prosperity, and of the mass of the Abbey’s country
tenants living unprosperously under an antiquated agricultural system,
constitutes a crushing argument for the necessity of its dissolution.
(B). _The Decay of the Monastic Spirit in the 15th century._
[Sidenote: St. Albans in the 15th Century.]
The task of interpreting the Abbey’s history during the fifteenth
century is difficult in the extreme. The confusion, the aimlessness
which characterised political history are reflected in the records of
St. Albans. Although the material is at least as plentiful as before,
the impression conveyed by the facts is blurred and uncertain. With
the death of De la Mare the lines of development become obscured. The
fourteenth century had witnessed a steady upward movement culminating
in the Abbacy of De la Mare. There is a temptation to see in the
fifteenth century a consistent, growing degeneracy: the more as it
is beyond question that by the year 1490 the Convent had sunk into
deeper degredation than ever before. In one sense such a theory is
true. The tide of economic decline and growing material decrepitude,
stemmed by De la Mare’s careful administration, proceeded unchecked
after his death. Within the convent the decay of the monastic spirit
was everywhere apparent. Living became inevitably more luxurious, and
the religious life grew cold and formal.[63] Yet the reputation of St.
Albans was as great in 1460 as in the days of Abbot Thomas. Up to 1464
(the year in which Whethamstede died) no flagrant abuses appear to have
invaded the cloister, nor was there any considerable slackening of the
discipline. The problem, of which we can offer no adequate solution,
is to account for the extraordinary rapid decay between 1464 and 1489,
by which time the Abbey had become publicly scandalous. The history of
these twenty-five years is quite obscure.
[Sidenote: Whethamstede’s first Abbacy.]
The first half of the century was singularly barren of incident. The
best known Abbot of the time was John Whethamstede (circa 1420–1440),
a famous scholar and churchman. Significantly enough he was one of
those chosen to represent the English nation at the Councils of
Pavia and Basle. He was popular with the convent, perhaps on account
of his ardent orthodoxy. The singularly bitter attitude adopted
towards Lollards in de la Mare’s time was carefully maintained, and
Whethamstede, by means of synods and commissions, extirpated heresy
within the Liberty.[64] The Abbot was regarded by the monks as having
conferred notable benefits upon them; the chief of these were his
acquisition of the Priory of Pembroke (1439), his generosity to the
Abbey’s students at Oxford and certain financial innovations.[65]
To-day, as one digs him out of the very inferior chronicle of the
time, he seems rather wanting in purpose, and somewhat vain and
foolish; nevertheless, he certainly had the confidence of the convent,
who, after his voluntary retirement for some years insisted upon
re-electing him Abbot in 1452. The reason was probably that he was old,
experienced, and cautious. At the time these qualities were invaluable;
the Abbey was acquiring a political significance, and skilful guidance
was necessary to avoid disaster amid the intrigues of Henry VI’s reign,
which were threatening to culminate in Civil War. The second abbacy of
Whethamstede, within which fell the Wars of the Roses, was therefore an
anxious and, as it proved, disastrous time for the monks.
It was maintained by Hallam that the sympathies of Abbot Whethamstede
were wholly Lancastrian during the Wars of the Roses. Riley, after a
more careful study, affirmed that the reverse was the case,[66] and
without doubt he was nearer the mark than Hallam. The great affection
consistently displayed for Humphrey Duke of Gloucester (a lavish patron
of the Abbey), and the attempt in the chronicle to clear his memory,
in themselves indicate with which party the Abbot’s sympathies lay.
Further proof is supplied by florid verses, strongly Yorkist in tone,
from the Abbot’s own hand; and finally, there is the fact that the
Abbey was pillaged by the Lancastrian troops in 1461. But the question
is of the slightest importance.[67] As a matter of fact, the Abbey
enjoyed the full favour of Henry VI. as much as of Edward IV; it was
only in the actual fighting that its political proclivities affected
its fortunes.
Henry VI was a frequent visitor at St. Albans, and bestowed, among many
other marks of his favour, a notable extension of the franchise. The
seignorial jurisdiction of the Abbot over the Hundred of Cashio, which
was based on a charter of Henry II, had gradually been diminished by
the encroachments of neighbouring Lords. In 1440 the King granted a
new interpretation of the words of Henry II’s Charter, by which the
Abbot’s authority was restored to its full limit, if not rendered
greater than ever before.[68] In order to obtain such a grant it is
obvious that the Abbot must have been in high favour with Henry VI, who
indeed is always mentioned in these chronicles in terms of respect.
Nevertheless, when in 1455 the Yorkist party triumphed at the first
battle of St. Albans, only the fact that the direction of the Abbey’s
sympathies was well known can have saved it from being plundered.[69]
[Sidenote: Second Battle of St. Albans.]
The continual fighting in its neighbourhood reduced the Abbey to
dire straits, and the next six years were among the darkest in its
history. Its troubles culminated in the disaster of 1461, when, after
a Lancastrian victory at the second battle of St. Albans, the Northern
troops plundered the Abbey and horribly ravaged the surrounding
country. The Queen even condescended to rob the Abbey of its most
precious jewels and treasures.[70] The result was sheer famine; the
convent were dispersed, and the Abbot retired to his native town. Thus
for the only time in its history the continuity of conventual life at
St. Albans was broken. The final triumph of Edward IV in the same year
ensured such amelioration of the Abbey’s fortunes as was possible.
The battle had taken place in February, and by November the convent
had re-assembled, to enter upon the last stage of its existence with
a fresh grant of privileges. A complicated jurisdiction, which far
exceeded the grant of 1440, was bestowed upon the Abbey.[71]
[Sidenote: Hostility of Bishops in 15th Century.]
The unsoundness of the Abbey’s economic practice and the consequent
increasing financial embarrassment were at the root of all its troubles
in the fifteenth century. Its poverty weakened its independence, and
was at once the cause of the decline of its hospitality and the reason
for its growing obsequiousness toward the great. The bishops especially
were quick to realise the weakness of the Abbey.[72] Always jealous of
exempt houses, they exhibited in the fifteenth century an unusually
bitter hostility towards St. Albans. In 1399, Henry Bishop of Lincoln
had formally notified the Abbot that he claimed no jurisdiction over
the Abbey[73]; this was nothing more than an acknowledgment of an
old and undoubted privilege pertaining to St. Albans as an exempt
monastery. Only twenty years later, at the Council of Pavia, a new
Bishop of Lincoln claimed full jurisdiction over St. Albans, and called
for the reform of exempt houses. This was followed by the revival of
the Archbishop of Canterbury’s claims to jurisdiction, but these the
Abbot was still strong enough to resist. A few years later a dispute
concerning the Bishop of Norwich’s jurisdiction over the Cell of Binham
broadened out into an organised attack by the English bishops upon the
privileges of St. Albans. This was evidently regarded as a test case.
Exactly how the struggle ended is not recorded, but probably it left
matters in the old uncertain condition. These attempts mark a fresh
stage in the growing unpopularity of the Abbey, and it is worthy of
notice that the increasing hatred towards exempt houses on the part of
the bishops might well of itself have led to the fall of the monastic
system in England. As it was, the support of the bishops made it more
easy for Henry VIII to carry through the Dissolution.
[Sidenote: Decay of the Monastic Spirit (1396 to 1464).]
Even during the fourteenth century there had been a natural and almost
inevitable growth of luxury in the monastic life: in the course of the
fifteenth it progressed by leaps and bounds. A host of insignificant
facts illustrate the tendency. The food of the novices was rendered
more sumptuous on the plea that the youths had not such strong
constitutions as their fathers. Papal Bulls were secured remitting
fasts, and the allowance of spices was doubled. As with the convent,
so was it with the Abbots themselves. William Heyworth (1401–1420),
who was considered so excellent a cleric as to be raised to episcopal
dignity as Bishop of Lichfield, spent large sums of money on the
completion of a splendid Abbot’s mansion at Tittenhanger, contrary,
needless to say, to all Benedictine precedent. A parallel tendency was
a perceptible decline of zeal and interest in the religious life. In
1428, for instance, owing (as the Abbot confessed) to its uselessness,
the ancient cell of Beaulieu[74] was abandoned, and twenty years later
the Priory of Wymondham, as the result of a trifling dispute broke away
from the mother house, and was erected into an Abbey. The tendency is
further illustrated by the Constitutions published by Whethamstede
after a formal visitation of the convent.[75] No gross abuses were
discovered, but a certain laziness and indifference towards religious
services and observance was found to have pervaded the convent. It was
much the same in the cells which the Abbot visited a little later. It
appeared that the monks were lazy, and slept too long; just correction
for offences had not always been inflicted; services were apt to be
carried out indifferently, and sometimes to be omitted altogether. It
was slothfulness, not positive vice, that had to be fought against.
A subtle illustration of this is unconsciously supplied by the
chronicler. The Abbot had promulgated a set of rigorous constitutions
which went to the root of the trouble more than was usual; but the
convent murmured, refused to accept them, and finally carried their
will against the Abbot; as for the Constitutions they became a dead
letter. When Whethamstede was re-elected in 1452[76] he was informed
that three great defects existed in the Monastery. Scarcely one in the
Abbey, it appeared, could be found competent to teach grammar; there
were hardly any students from St. Albans at Gloucester Hall; and it was
only with difficulty that persons could be found prepared to undertake
the burden of preaching.
These facts point to a rapid raising of the standard of comfort, to
growing indifference, and a sad decay of the monastic spirit. But in
view of the dreadful condition of the convent in 1490 it is important
to observe that they give us no reason to suppose the existence of
immorality in the cloister or even of any serious relaxation of the
discipline.
[Sidenote: Abbot Wallingford.]
Abbot Whethamstede’s successor was a certain William Albon (1464–1476),
‘who,’ says the chronicler, ‘followed diligently in the footsteps of
his predecessor. During all the time he was Abbot he strove after the
good of his Church in things temporal and spiritual.’[77] His reign and
that of William Wallingford (1476-?1490) carry us to the year 1490,
when a letter of Cardinal Morton reveals the monastery in a state
of utter degradation. The decay must be placed entirely between the
years 1476 and 1490, and it is impossible to account for its rapidity.
Perhaps it was due to the bad influence of William Wallingford, but the
whole matter is not a little mysterious. In 1451 Wallingford is found
holding the joint offices of Archdeacon, Cellarer, Bursar, Forester
and Sub-Cellarer of the Abbey, and in some of these offices he was
continued during Whethamstede’s second abbacy (1452–1464). During this
same period he was to all intents and purposes convicted of having
laid hands upon the moneys of the previous Abbot. The matter is dealt
with at length in the chronicle, and in most violent terms Wallingford
is accused again and again of habitual perjury.[78] Yet on the death
of Whethamstede he was elected prior, and in 1476 Abbot.[79] Finally,
in an account of _The Lives and Benefactions of the Later Abbots_[80]
he is spoken of in terms of the most extravagant praise. On the whole
the general impression of this difficult character derived from the
Chronicle is that of a bad man but a vigorous Abbot, who, however evil
his influence upon the convent, nevertheless rendered it important
services. The monks, perhaps, forgot his vices in their admiration
of what was to them the first of virtues--his strenuous efforts to
preserve the independence of the house. For it was during his rule
that the most determined, and, as it proved, successful attacks were
made upon the Abbey’s highly-prized exemption from archiepiscopal
visitation.
[Sidenote: Traffic in Patronage.]
In the register of Wallingford’s abbacy there is only one indication
of the bad turn conventual life was taking. This is the record of an
enormous traffic in patronage, a new and bad feature at St. Albans,
confined for the most part to Wallingford’s abbacy.[81] Economically
bankrupt, the Monastery was reduced at last to bartering the livings in
its gift, and even to trafficking in the monastic offices.[82] In the
register of William Wallingford there is a long list of entries noting
the gift by the Abbot to all sorts of important persons of the right
to present to the next vacancy in many of the Abbey’s livings. These
transactions, whether accompanied by a money consideration or simply
to gain the support and protection of persons of high rank, indicate a
willingness on the part of the Abbot to trifle with some of his most
sacred responsibilities. More sinister still are the frequent changes
of the vicars in the various livings. At Elstree, for example, there
were as many as nine rectors in sixteen years; at Shephale five occur
in six years.[83]
[Sidenote: Morton’s Commission.]
The case of St. Albans may have been exceptional. In the general decay
of English monasticism the Abbey incurred an unenviable notoriety,
which indeed still clings to it. But that the English monasteries as
a body were in a depraved condition was fully realised by the heads of
Church and State. In 1490 Archbishop Morton applied for and received
from Innocent VIII the special powers necessary for a visitation
of Cluniac, Cistercian and Premonstratension Houses with foreign
heads.[84] Armed with the Papal commission Morton wrote letters to the
heads of the various monasteries, in which he imperatively called upon
them to reform.
In a letter which he addressed to the Abbot, Morton wrote[85]: ‘It has
come to our ears, being at once publicly notorious and brought before
us on the testimony of many witnesses worthy of credit, that you the
Abbot aforementioned have been of long time noted and diffamed, and do
yet continue so noted, of simony, of usury, of dilapidation and waste
of goods, revenues and possessions of the said monastery and of certain
other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written.... You and
certain of your fellow monks and brethren ... have relaxed the measure
and form of religious life; you have laid aside the pleasant yoke of
contemplation and all regular observances, hospitality, alms[86] ...
and the ancient rule of your order is deserted ... you have dilapidated
the common property; you have made away with the jewels and the woods
to the value of 8,000 marks or more.’ The letter goes on to specify
‘the enormous crimes and excesses’ in a most complete manner; names
and details are given in every case, and the Abbot and Thomas Sudbury,
a monk, are accused of the most disgusting offences. The nunneries of
Prez and Sopwell--cells of the Abbey--are stated to be little better
than brothels. ‘The brethren of the Abbey, some of whom, as it 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.’
The Archbishop adds that he had warned the Abbot to cure these abuses
before securing the papal commission. The Abbot and the Prioresses of
Prez and Sopwell are strictly enjoined to correct these enormities
within thirty days, and the Priors of the more distant cells within
sixty days. Unless they comply the Archbishop himself will be compelled
to make a personal visitation and to carry out the necessary reforms.
The Abbot, making no attempt to answer the charges, instantly appealed
to the Pope against the authority of the Archbishop to hold a
visitation.[87] The Pope consented to prohibit any action on Morton’s
part pending the hearing of the appeal by two papal chaplains. Abbot
Wallingford must now have won his case but for the intervention of
Henry VII. The combined pleadings of King and Archbishop prevailed with
the Pope. On July 30th, 1490, Innocent VIII, without pronouncing on the
question of exemption, granted special faculties to the Archbishop for
this particular visitation notwithstanding all rights and privileges.
And there can be little doubt but that the visitation was in due course
carried out.[88] Whether all these charges were substantiated we do not
know; but it is impossible to doubt that the bulk of them was true.
St. Albans was too large, too famous a house, and too near London, for
Morton to have been misled by idle rumour. The outcome of Morton’s
letter is unrecorded; probably the reforms were effected, though the
Abbot, it would appear, was not deposed. It is in the Abbey’s favour
that no further trace of immorality is to be found in the history of
the fifty years of life which lay before it.
[Sidenote: Events 1489–1539.]
It seems strange that the Abbey should have gone on after this shock
without a suspicion of coming destruction. Such, however, was the
case; and even Henry VII is found to endow the monastery in return
for certain prayers for his soul to be rendered ‘for ever and ever.’
As late as 1530, indeed, there is mention of a grant to the Abbey of
an annual fair. Of these last years a wealth of detail has survived,
albeit in unlikely places. In 1511 the House had fallen into the King’s
debt; in 1515 Abbot Ramrygge, Wallingford’s successor, refused to pay
Peter Pence,[89] and in 1519 the Prior of Rochester was appointed
coadjutor to the old Abbot.[90] Monastic affairs, it appears, were in
complete disorder, and a large debt (4,000 marks) had been accumulated.
In the same year the Prior of Tynemouth was freed from the jurisdiction
of St. Albans,[91] a measure which illustrates the enfeebled condition
of the Abbey.
The first hint of the final catastrophe occurred upon the death of
Ramrygge in 1521. By a dispensation of Adrian VI, Wolsey was commended
to the vacant abbacy,[92] the convent apparently allowing this
infringement of its rights without protest. Perhaps, as Abbot Gasquet
has said, the motive for this action was in part a desire to reward
the cardinal for secular services. If so, it was a poor compliment
to Wolsey to receive an abbey so loaded with debt as to be unable to
pay its contribution to Convocation.[93] It is far more likely that
he secured it, knowing that the House was bankrupt, and that strong
measures were required to save it.[94]
The death of Wolsey necessitated a fresh election. No interference was
attempted by Henry VIII, who confirmed the convent’s choice in the
person of Robert Catton. It was during his abbacy the Visitation of the
monasteries was carried out.
[Sidenote: Social Influence of the Abbey.]
Owing to the disappearance of the Hertfordshire surveys, St. Albans
can furnish no certain evidence upon the numerous questions arising
out of the Dissolution.[95] Such facts as we have tend to confirm the
conclusions of M. Savine.[96] There is no doubt, for example, that the
social sympathies of the Abbey were pre-eminently aristocratic. Most
of the monks do not themselves appear to have come from the lower
strata of society. The Abbey bestowed its corrodies for the most part
upon persons of the well-to-do classes. Moreover, a close connection
existed between the Abbey and the neighbouring gentry, whose sons it
had long been wont to board and educate. On members of the same class
many of the lay offices of the monastery were conferred.[97] Even the
apparently democratic practice of alms-giving was a perfunctory duty,
a mere compliance with the wishes of donors who had in times past
liberally endowed the Abbey. At a wealthy House like St. Albans, which
relied so completely on the patronage of the great, it could scarcely
have been otherwise.
In fact, evidence compels us to reduce the generally accepted estimates
of the Abbey’s social and economic importance. Such social services as
it did render were chiefly on the side of hospitality and education. Of
these, hospitality[98]--which had always been at least as aristocratic
as otherwise--had seriously diminished by the sixteenth century.[99]
Nevertheless, after the Dissolution this common shelter for rich and
poor must have been deeply regretted.[100]
[Sidenote: Education.]
The Abbey perhaps did its best work in the sphere of education; from
first to last during our period particular care was expended upon the
education of the monks, within the monastery and at the University.
The Abbey deserves still greater credit for creating and maintaining
St. Albans Grammar School. The first mention of the School occurs in
1100, when it was ruled by a secular head master and received fees from
scholars. In the thirteenth century arose the practice of boarding
within the monastery and teaching the sons of neighbouring lords;
for the future no fees were to be received from the sixteen poorest
scholars; the master was given the rare privilege of excommunicating
the disobedient, and allowed, after an examination, to confer degrees
upon the scholars after the manner of the Universities. All illicit
or adulterine schools were to be rooted out of the Liberty. Towards
the end of the century the Abbey began to board and educate a number
of poor scholars; this custom, as a charity, fell to the Almoner, who
soon devolved his duties upon a serjeant, who, like the schoolmaster,
was not a monk. The school was thus in no sense ‘an avenue to the
monastery’; on the contrary, there was an entire separation of the
school from the Abbey. It was, perhaps, for this reason that the
institution flourished when the Abbey itself was in decay[101] till,
by a wide interpretation of terms, it was dissolved in 1539 as a part
of the Abbey. This continuous interest in secular education for four
centuries was perhaps the best word that could be said for the Abbey at
the Dissolution.[102]
The Visitation of the monasteries was carried out by Cromwell, as
Vicar-General, in 1535.[103] John ap Rice, the commissioner at St.
Albans, wrote to his master: ‘At St. Albans we found little although
there was much to be found.’[104] The commissioner spoke the simple
truth if it was disorder and faction to which he referred. In the same
year the prior and about half of the monks petitioned Sir Francis
Brian[105] to save them from their own Abbot, who had contracted
large debts, had sold the woods belonging to the convent, and had
compelled the convent to affix their seal to transactions of which they
disapproved, threatening to expel anyone who should inform against
him. Within a year there was civil war within the Abbey, and the same
section of the convent wrote a second desperate appeal to Sir Brian,
saying that the Abbot would surely take vengeance upon them unless Sir
Brian secured the appointment of a coadjutor.[106] ‘Our monastery is
in much decay and misery,’ they confess sadly, and their words obtain
confirmation from another extraordinary incident of that year, the
trial of the third Prior for making various treasonable remarks, as for
example, that the King intended to leave only four churches in England.
Other monks of the Abbey had informed against him to ‘avoid guilty
participation.’ The result was indecisive, but the whole matter is an
indication of the complete demoralisation of the convent.[107]
By this time it was becoming known to the world that St. Albans
must fall.[108] Robert Catton was deprived of the Abbacy in the
early days of 1538. The convent was induced to renounce its right
to elect a successor in favour of Thomas Cromwell, who appointed a
certain Richard Boreman (or Stevynache) to the vacancy. According
to Abbot Gasquet, Boreman was chosen simply to effect a voluntary
surrender of the Abbey, and it certainly is true that in December,
1537, Cromwell’s commissioners had tried in vain to induce Catton to
resign the Abbey into their hands. He had declared himself ready,
they wrote to Cromwell, ‘to beg his bread all the days of his life
rather than surrender, although by the confession of the Abbot
himself there is just cause of deprivation, not only for breaking the
King’s injunctions, but also for the manifest dilapidation, making
of shifts, negligent administration, and sundry other causes.’[109]
It seems plain, in fact, that Catton’s deprivation was in large part
due to his own misdeeds,[110] a conclusion which is supported by the
fact that Boreman himself was soon involved in difficulties with the
Government which appointed him. He was sent for a time to gaol, which
is difficult of explanation on the assumption that he was a Government
tool appointed only to effect a quiet surrender. Eventually the Act
of Surrender was signed on December 5th, 1539. Some forty signatures
were appended, indicating a decrease of one-third in the normal numbers
of the convent.[111] The net monastic income was estimated at £2,102,
the fourth highest in the Kingdom.[112] It only remained to divide
the spoils, which was done with astonishing quickness. By the year
1544 every acre of the St. Albans estates was disposed of. The Abbey
buildings were acquired by the townsmen (and so saved from destruction)
at a cost of £400.
The history of St. Albans is sufficient proof that the time is past
when we can rest content with generalisations about monasticism in the
later Middle Ages. During the fourteenth century the trend of events in
the Abbey was entirely contrary to that in most English Houses. While
they decayed, St. Albans revived. A century later it is probable that
the monasteries as a whole were in a far less degraded condition than
St. Albans. Perhaps similarly startling differences will be revealed
when the history of other abbeys has been worked out in detail. Many
loose generalisations on the subject of the monasteries are due to
the assumption that decay or reform proceeded at an equal pace in
different abbeys. Froude, for example, sought to trace a growing
corruption of monasticism from Norman times. His view was founded
simply on his study of St. Albans records, and even here his account
was worthless. The decadence, the immorality of which he spoke was
largely confined to the early years of the fourteenth century, and the
Abbacy of William Wallingford (1476–1490). To see in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries a consistent, uniform process of decay is largely
to misunderstand St. Albans’ history.
It is true, nevertheless, that the best days of the Abbey were already
past at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The evolution of
modern from mediaeval society, which was effected during our period,
was fatal to monasticism. The country grew more and more out of
sympathy with the monasteries; amid uncongenial surroundings, St.
Albans, in common with other abbeys, became increasingly unpopular.
By its unintelligent conservatism St. Albans alienated the sympathies
of section after section of the community, until at the Dissolution it
stood well-nigh in isolation. Recent defence of the monastic system
has failed as completely as Froude’s indictment. In the Dissolution of
St. Albans we may not, like Froude, ‘see the workings of the ineffable
Being,’ but we are no less unable to regret it, to look upon it as a
great social calamity.
Appendix:
_See Note 88, p. 60._
The account of William Wallingford’s abbacy in the _Lives and
Benefactions_[113] ... is inconsistent with all that is known of him
from other sources. The Abbot is described in a tone of excessive
admiration which cannot be reconciled with the account of him supplied
by Morton’s letter. In the _Lives and Benefactions_ ..., for instance,
he is stated to have left the Monastery entirely free of debt. This
is not only intrinsically improbable, but is directly contradicted by
Morton’s statement. Again, it is difficult to imagine any adequate
reason why the convent should solemnly fix its seal as a testimony
to the proof of the narrative, especially when the Abbot was, as it
seems, still living. Indeed, considered apart from other evidence, this
last passage, without explicitly stating it, distinctly implies that
Wallingford did die in 1484. Doubtless the error of Newcome (followed
by the editors of Dugdale’s _Monasticon_), who states that Wallingford
died in 1484, is to be explained in this way.
It may be well, therefore, to repeat that the folio of the Register
containing the account of Wallingford’s election is missing, having
been apparently torn from the MS.; that he had been convicted of
appropriating Abbot Stoke’s treasure in 1451; that in the ‘Register
of John Whethamstede’ he is continually mentioned in terms of extreme
disgust; and finally, that the Register of his own abbacy breaks off
abruptly the year before Morton’s Commission.
In view of these facts we must regard the story of his abbacy, as
told in the _Lives and Benefactions_, with extreme mistrust. It is
not improbable that this account was written by a convent fearful of
offending a tyrannical Abbot; it is by no means impossible that the
Abbot himself caused the narrative to be written as an answer to the
charges contained in Morton’s letter.