Victor R. Claveau, MJ
The great abbeys and monasteries,[1] lying quiet and calm and unexciting ruled their extensive lands with masterful charity. They were good neighbors and hospitable. The organization of these properties, the hospitals and leper houses were managed with solicitude for the poor. The “monks of old” enjoyed the favorable opinion of the laity. In times of violence monastery lands were inviolate and the monks traveled without guards.
The poor and weak were the special solicitude of the abbeys and monasteries. “The monks,” said Edmund Burke,[2] “were were unmarried; austere in their lives; regular in their duties; possessed of the learning of the times; well united under a proper subordination; full of art, and implacable towards their enemies.”[3]
James MacCaffrey, S.J., Professor of Ecclesiastical History, St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, comments:
Prior to the Protestant Reformation, virtually every town, of any size, had at least one abbey, priory, convent or friary. Additionally, “there is no indication during the thirty years preceding the revolt of any marked hostility to the doctrines and practices of the Church.…It is certain that during the first quarter of the sixteenth century the student of history will search in vain for any evidence of opposition among the clergy and people of England to the spiritual supremacy of the Holy See.…The English clergy and people did, indeed, object to allow papal supremacy to be pushed too far in what they regarded as purely domestic affairs, but even in the most prolonged and heated discussions they never once questioned the fact that the Pope was Supreme Head of the Church in England, or that he was Supreme Head of the Catholic Church throughout the world.… That the Pope was above the law and that to dispute the authority of a papal decree was to be guilty of heresy was a principle recognized by the English ecclesiastical authorities and accepted also in practice by English jurists. The oaths of loyalty to the Holy See taken by all the archbishops and bishops, the tone and form of the letters addressed to the Pope, the assertion of papal rights against the errors and attacks of Wycliff and Luther, the full admission of papal supremacy contained in Henry VIII.’s Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, and in the formal dying declaration of Archbishop Warham of Canterbury (1533), and the resolute attitude of two such learned representatives of the English clergy and laity as Bishop Fisher of Rochester and Sir Thomas More, are in themselves sufficient to establish the fact that in the days of Henry VIII. England joined with the rest of the Catholic world in recognizing the supreme spiritual jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome.”[4]
As a general rule the monasteries were regarded with kindly by the vast majority of the English populace, because they were often centers of learning and provided the only schools, hospitals and poor relief for ordinary people. Their leniency and generosity as compared with other employers and landlords, their schools which did so much for the education of the district, and their orphanages and hospitals.
David Matthew in his Catholicism in England – 1535-1935, states:
“Certain monasteries and notably the Carthusian houses had a deserved reputation for austerity and devotion: most perhaps possessed that cheerful well-ordered character which is associated with a filtered and urbane variant of a religious rule: many were probably functioning at a rather low spiritual pressure. Here the question of scandal arises. Difficult as it is to determine the exact state of affairs it is necessary to note that the government of Henry VIII passed abruptly from a condition of polite non-interference to exacerbated opposition. Evidence of monastic immoralities were eagerly received and it is generally agreed that many of the royal servants were unequalled in their brave, copious and groundless assertions of corruption. In the prevalence of a contented rather worldly good order arguments may be found against the probability of many cases of individual sanctity. But it is still more unlikely that open and notorious sin came to disturb the tranquility of communities where personal reputation and respectability were evidently highly valued.
“The conventional story of the English Reformation has been told by Protestants. It begins by describing the Catholic Church as moribund and lacking popular support. Protestants triumphed over a decadent church that was in collusion with power-hungry political rulers. The incident above, and others like it, suggests another story. Unfortunately, many historians have overlooked a significant fact: the Church of England’s victory over the Pope was possible only because the king and Parliament seized absolute control of English religion. Henry grabbed the power of the church for himself, and his regime systematically destroyed the symbols, institutions, and customs that had sanctified English daily life for a thousand years.
“Historians Eamon Duffy (in The Stripping of the Altars) and Christopher Haigh (in English Reformations) have shown that the Reformation in England largely came from the top down. Protestants accused Catholic bishops and monks of manipulating the common folk to believe superstitions and practice idolatry, but some of the most blatant examples of manipulation and intimidation came from Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell.
“For instance, facing widespread defiance of royal efforts to eliminate veneration of the saints, in 1538 Vicar General Thomas Cromwell staged an elaborate set of demonstrations rigged to ‘prove’ that miracles associated with images of saints were hoaxes. Cromwell and Henry made sure the Bible was made available to the English people. But they soon became alarmed that, instead of leading to ‘meekness’ among his subjects, Bible reading fostered arguments in taverns, churches, and ale houses. So in April 1539, Henry drafted a degree that forbade anyone but licensed graduates of universities and parish priests to expound the Scriptures.
“This desire to control the religion of the populace was not restricted to the king. Cranmer was a strong and persistent advocate of the king’s headship of the English church. In his homily at Edward VI’s coronation, he said to his new sovereign, ‘Your majesty is God’s vice-regent and Christ’s vicar within your own dominions.’ Nowhere is this absolutism clearer than in the decree of March 1551 that ‘for as much as the King’s Majestie had neede presently of a mass of money,’ all the remaining precious metal and valuable church furnishings were taken by the government. Such church furnishings belonged to the parish, and they were cherished by descendants of the donors. This decree from on high struck at the heart of local religion and history.
“Those who think the Protestant Reformation threw off the yoke of tyrannical church leaders and restored a New Testament church must realize that not Scripture but a sacralized king was in charge of the English Reformation from start to finish.”[5]
Viewed merely in its social aspect, the English Reformation was in reality the rising of the rich against the poor. “Despite what has sometimes been said or implied, it is probable that the English Church was in no worse condition, spiritually speaking, in 1529 than it had been fifty, a hundred, or a hundred and fifty years before. The picture of slow, steady decline unto nemesis is suspect. Not only is it factually questionable (for it is arguable that on the eve of the Reformation the English Church, though still largely wretched, was in some ways in better case than it had been in decades); worse, it misguides.”[6]
William Cobbett commented on this period of English history:
“The dissolution of the monastic houses, the confiscation of the property of the guilds, hospitals and alms-houses, and even the introduction of a married clergy, were all calculated to injury the poor and deprive them of their inheritance, or what by immemorial custom they had come to regard as such. In particular the possessions of the monastic houses are popularly understood to be, as an old writer expresses it, ’oblations to the Lord’ and the patrimony of the poor, to be bestowed accordingly. In them the monks’ made such provision daily for the people that stood in need thereof, as sick, sore, lame, or otherwise impotent, that none or very few lacked relief in one place or another.”[7]
The effect of the dissolution of the Religious Houses in London is thus described by Dr. Reginald Sharpe:
The sudden closing of these institutions caused the streets to be thronged with the sick and poor, and the small parish churches to be so crowded with those who had been accustomed to frequent the larger and more commodious churches of the friars that there was scarce room left for the parishioners themselves. The city authorities saw at once that something would have to be done, if they wished to keep their streets clear of beggars and of invalids and not invite the spread of sickness by allowing infected persons to wander at large. As a means of affording temporary relief, collections for the poor were made every Sunday at Paul’s Cross, after the sermon, and the proceeds were distributed weekly among the most necessitous.”[8] … “After petitioning the king in vain to grant the city some of the dissolved houses and their revenues, in order that provision might be made for the sick and needy, the authorities resolved in 1540 to make an offer to purchase some of them for 1000 marks, “yf thei can be gotten no better chepe [market].” Henry only upbraided them for being “pynch pence” or stingy in their offer, and so nothing was done in the matter for four years.” [9]
Written history is a sometime a matter of perspective and/or bias. Objectivity is colored by religious conviction. Many Protestant sources allege that the the Protestant Reformation came about due to abuses of church practices by corrupt clergy in addition to theological disputes.
In order to try to justify the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII and his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, claimed the monasteries were corrupt and loyal to the Catholic Church.
Yet other Protestant sources, such as Lane’s Illustrated Notes on English Church History willingly admit that many of the monasteries “had a rich heritage of historic memories. Some, like Glastonbury, had an uninterrupted existence from obscure Celtic ages; and others like Canterbury and Lindisfarne, from early Anglo-Saxon times. Their life and traditions were bound up with the national history, while a thousand recollections endeared them to gentle and simple alike. Some were for men, such as Edmondsbury and Saint Albans; and others were homes for gentlewomen and schools for young ladies, as at Godstow nunnery in Oxfordshire.”[10]
Lane, the author cited above, endeavors to justify the dissolution of the monasteries by condemning the moral stature of the inhabitants of these institutions by stating, “There is no need to recount in detail the misdeeds recorded against them; suffice it to say charges of immorality, hypocrisy, and luxurious living were proved against the majority up to the hilt and not denied. If vows of chastity, self-denial, and poverty could not furnish safeguards against breaches of the moral law they deserved to be done away.”[11]
Cobbett, in his History asks, “If the monasteries had been the cause of evil, would they have been protected with such care by so many wise and virtuous kings, legislators, and judges? But we know of them two things; namely, that they were most anxiously cherished by Alfred[12] and his tutor Saint Switnun, and that they were destroyed by the tyrant, Henry the Eighth, and the ruffian, Thomas Cromwell. Upon these two facts alone we might safely decide on the merits of these institutions.”[13]
In 2010, Professor George Bernard, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Southampton, in a lecture entitled, Dissolution of the Monasteries, described the state of the Catholic monasteries before the Protestant revolt in England:
“Religious houses were everywhere; in towns, in remote rural areas. Monks, nuns and friars were altogether a familiar part of everyday life.
Some monasteries were great landowners, on the scale of secular noblemen. Monastic buildings, especially their churches, were among the largest buildings to be seen, the largest on a par with cathedrals.
To varying degrees, monasteries were involved in hospitality, charity, artistic and musical patronage, scholarship and education.
So comprehensive and rapid a change as the complete dissolution of monasteries could not but have a dramatic and dramatically visible effect. A society without monks, nuns and friars is qualitatively different from one with them.”[14]
However, many believed that the King was more interested in their vast wealth rather that the welfare of his subjects.
The immense property of the Catholic Church in England, Ireland, and Wales, in which, the poor had a good share was taken from the Catholics monks and nuns and given to the Protestant bishops and other of the kings supporters or sold.
“The dissolution of the monasteries in the late 1530s was one of the most revolutionary events in English history. There were nearly 900 religious houses in England, around 260 for monks, 300 for regular canons, 142 nunneries, and 183 friaries: some 12,000 people in total, 4,000 monks, 3,000 canons, 3,000 friars and 2,000 nuns. If the adult male population was 500,000, that meant that 1 adult man in 50 was in religious orders.[15]
On average, the monasteries or abbeys where a traveler could find food and shelter were about eight miles apart throughout the England and Wales.
Cobbett, in his History explains how Cromwell plundered the Church and her English subjects:
“Cromwell and his myrmidons beset the heads of these great establishments; they threatened, they promised, they lied, and they bullied. By means the most base that can be conceived they obtained from some few what they called a “voluntary surrender.” However, where these unjust and sanguinary men met with sturdy opposition they resorted to false accusations, and procured the murder of the parties under pretence of their having committed high treason. It was under this infamous pretence that the tyrant hanged and ripped up and quartered the abbot of the famous abbey of Glastonbury, whose body was mangled by the executioner, and whose head and limbs were hung up on what is called the Tor, which overlooks the abbey. So that the surrender, wherever it did take place, was precisely of the nature of those ‘voluntary surrenders’ which men make of their purses when the robber’s pistol is at their temple or his blood-stained knife at their throat.
“After all, however, even to obtain a pretence of voluntary surrender was a work too troublesome for Cromwell and his ruffian visitors, and much too slow for the cormorants who waited for the plunder. Without more ceremony, therefore, an act was passed giving all these “surrendered” monasteries to the King, his heirs and assigns, and also all other monasteries, and all hospitals and colleges into the bargain![16]
“Tyrants have often committed robberies on their people; but in all cases but this, in England at least, there was always something of legal process observed. In this case there was no such thing. The base parliament who were to share, and who did most largely share, in the plunder, had given not only the lands and houses to the tyrant, or rather, had taken them to themselves, but had disposed, in the same short way, of all the moveable goods, stock on farms, crops and, which was of more consequence, of the gold, silver and jewels. Let the reader judge of the ransackings that now took place. The poorest of the convents had some images, vases, and other things of gold or silver. Many of them possessed a great deal in this way. The altars of their churches were generally enriched with the precious metals, if not with costly jewels; and, which is not to be overlooked, the people in those days were honest enough to suffer all these things to remain in their places without a standing army and without police officers.
“Never in all probability since the world began was there so rich a harvest of plunder. The ruffians of Cromwell entered the convents, they tore down the altars to get away the gold and silver, ransacked the chests and drawers of the monks and nuns, tore off the covers of books that were ornamented with the precious metals. These books were all in manuscript. Single books had taken in many cases half a long life-time to compose and to copy out fair. Whole libraries, the getting of which together had taken ages upon ages and had cost immense sums of money, were scattered abroad by these hellish ruffians when they had robbed the covers of their rich ornaments. The ready money in the convents down to the last shilling was seized. In short, the most rapacious and unfeeling soldiery never, in town delivered up to be sacked, proceeded with greediness, shamelessness, and brutality to be at all compared with those of these heroes of the Protestant Reformation; and this, observe, towards persons, women as well as men, who had committed no crime known to the laws, who had had no crime regularly laid to their charge, who had had no hearing in their defense, a large part of whom had within a year been declared by this same parliament to lead most godly and useful lives, the whole of whose possessions were guaranteed to them by the Great Charter as much as the King’s crown was to him, and whose estates were enjoyed for the benefit of the poor as well as for that of these plundered possessors themselves.”[17]
While Bishop John Fisher and Thomas More and many others gave up their lives rather than subverting truth, others led away by specious reasoning, sold their souls by signing the Oath of Supremacy, thereby retaining possession of their Friary but for a short while longer. Like Adolph Hitler who claimed he only wanted Austria, the king’s commissioners could not endure that such desirable property should remain in the hands of poor Friars, and their houses were eventually dissolved.
By 1541, every monastery had been dissolved and the buildings seized by the Crown to be sold off or leased to new lay occupiers. More than 10,000 monks and nuns had been displaced. Glastonbury Abbey was one of principal victims of this action by the King. Glastonbury Abbey was established as a Benedictine monastery during the years 670 to 678 A.D.
Glastonbury Abbey was one of principal victims of this action by the King. The abbey was established as a Benedictine monastery, under Beorhtwald, its first Saxon abbot, during the year 670 A.D.[18]
The Abbot of Glastonbury, Richard Whyting was condemned on evidence which was never made public, on a charge of treason in that he and his fellow monks John Thorne and Roger James, (who were in charge of the treasury at Glastonbury) had feloniously concealed from the king some of the treasures of the abbey. On Saturday 15 November 1539, Whyting and his companions were delivered for execution. They were taken to Glastonbury and hanged on the summit of Saint Michael’s Tor. Whyting’s head was removed from his body and stuck on the gateway of the abbey; his body, divided into four parts, was distributed to Bridgwater, Ilchester, Wells, and Bath.
Catholic historian Dennis Martin, who teaches medieval and Reformation history at Loyola University in Chicago, offered a Catholic perspective:
“On May 4, 1535, in London, three Carthusian monks and one Bridgettine monk were hanged until partially conscious. Then their bellies were cut open, their intestines wrenched out and tossed on a fire, and their hearts ripped out by hand. The bodies were beheaded and quartered, and the pieces were posted at various locations throughout England.
As the executioner slit open his belly, John Houghton, prior of the London Carthusian monastery, said, “O most holy Jesus, have mercy upon me in this hour.” This was the punishment for treason in sixteenth-century England. Their crime? Refusal to recognize “the king, our sovereign, to be the supreme head of the Church of England afore the Apostles of Christ’s Church.”
“No one had ever questioned the piety, learning, and spiritual vitality of the Carthusians and the Bridgettines. Their monastic houses were frequented by devout lay people for prayer and spiritual growth. In fact, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who knew two of the victims personally, opposed the executions, but only because he hoped the monks could eventually be convinced to recognize the king as head of the church. And that gives us a clue as to what many recent historians think is the real nature of the English Reformation.” [19]
On January 28, 1547, after a reign of 37 years, 9 months and 6 days, Henry VIII died at Whitehall Palace at age 55.
The exact number of Henry’s victims varies widely. Some suggest that as many as 72,000 people were executed during his reign, yet other estimates are much lower. It was a violent age and, compared to other monarchs, he was not considered particularly bloodthirsty. It was his daughter, Mary, who would earn the epithet, ‘Bloody’. [20]
Emil Reich, A New Student’s Atlas of English History, (London: MacMillian and CO., Limited), 1903[21]
The second half of Henry’s reign was stained with the executions of wives, relatives, close friends and confidantes. Henry must have feared for his soul as only nine days before his death, his last victim, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, was beheaded on Tower Hill on January 19 1547, at the age of 29.[22]
It was not until the morning of 31 January that Lord Chancellor Thomas Wriothesley announced to parliament that Henry VIII was dead.
On that same day young Edward VI was brought to the Tower and proclaimed King. The heralds cried ‘The King is dead! Long live the King!’
On 14 February Henry VIII’s body began its final journey from Whitehall to Windsor. It took sixteen very strong Yeomen of the Guard to carry the coffin into the church and lower it into the vault in the choir of St George’s Chapel.
The great Henry now lies under a simple, 19th century black marble floor slab that reads, “In a vault beneath this marble slab are deposited the remains of Jane Seymour, Queen of King Henry VIII, 1537, and King Henry VIII, 1547.
[4] MacCaffrey, James S.J., History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French Revolution, Volume II, Chapter I, (Dublin, Waterford: M.H. Gill and Sons, 1914).
[5] Matthew, David, Catholicism in England – 1535-1935, (New York: Longmans Green, 1936), p. 2.
[6] Scarisbrick, J.J., Henry VIII, (Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1968), p. 242.
[7] Corbett, preface, p vii.
[8] Reginald R. Sharpe, London and the Kingdom – Vol. I, (London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1894), p. 404.
[9] Ibid. p. 406.
[10] Lane, Rev. C. Arthur, Illustrated Notes on English Church History: From the Earliest Times to the Reformation and Modern Church Work, (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Revised edition, 1910), p. 295.
[11] Ibid. p. 297.
[12] Alfred the Great was King of Wessex from 871 to 899. Alfred successfully defended his kingdom against the Viking attempt at conquest, and by the time of his death had become the dominant ruler in England.
[13] Corbett, pp. 107-108.
[14] Bernard lecture delivered at the 8th Roy Wake Memorial Lecture, Winchester Catholic History Group, 8 Nov. 2010.
[15] Knowles, M. D., and Hadcock, R. N., Medieval Houses: England and Wales (London: Longmans, Green and CO, 1971), p. 494.
[16] This Suppression of Religious Houses Act, passed on May 19, 1539, merely secured to the King any property which “by any means had come into his hands by supersession, dissolution or surrender since the 4th of February, 1536.” It was in no sense an act of suppression, as is often taken for granted, and the last declaration of the Parliament as to the state of the greater monastic house is that they were in excellent state. No general measure of compulsory resolution was passed at this or any subsequent time.
[17] Corbett, pp. 128-130.
[18] “Cenwalh the seventh king of the west Saxons after Cerdec, was converted to Christ through Birinus (c. 600 – 649). The stout-hearted stranger from Rome, venerated as a saint, was the first Bishop of Dorchester) apostle of the west Saxons, in the twenty-ninth year of his reign; he gave the Abbot Beorhtwald the land which is called Meare, and two small islands, to wit, Westhay and Godney, on either side of the pool, along with the fishery, marches, woods, and very wide moors that belong to those lands.” –James P. Carley, The Chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey, (New York: Boydell Press), 1985, p. 89.
[19] Dennis Martin, Christian History, Issue 48, Volume XIV, Number 4.
[20] See more at: http://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/visit-us/top-things-to-see-and-do/young-henry-viii-exhibition/learning-discovery/frequently-asked-questions/#4
[21] By 1540, over 800 monasteries had been dissolved. The process had taken just about four years.
[22] Childs, Jessie, Henry VIII’s Last Victim: The Life and Times of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007), p. 311.