anno 1531, the twenty-third year of the king's reign, in the month of July, he surrendered the same to the king's use. As for the canons, they were sent to other Houses of the same Order; who now, being severally disposed in other convents, they might serve them as monitors to warn all the rest, seasonably to prepare for the time of their dissolution.

The rooting out of this priory wrought a middle effect in people : for they were neither dumb nor clamorous thereat, but grumbled out their discontentment for a time, and then returned to their former temper. However, at first they were so abstemious, that, whereas the priory church, and steeple was proffered to whomsoever would take it down, no man would undertake the offer. Whereupon, Sir Thomas Audley was fain to be at more charges than he could make of the materials; the workmen with great labour beginning at the top, loosed stone from stone, and throwing them down, most part of them were broken in the fall, and remained useless.*

6,7. This the ancientest of all Priories; at this Day called the Duke's Place.

What might move the king to single this priory out of all the rest, to lead this sad dance, is variously conjectured. Indeed, this was the ancientest of all England of that Order since the Conquest; I mean, of canon-regulars, as our author telleth us. And therefore

it was but reasonable, the oldest should go first, the first-born should be first buried. But, surely, no such consideration moved king Henry to this choice, who was not so methodical in his deeds of undoing.

As for the lord Audley, on whom this priory was bestowed, Margaret his sole daughter and heir was married to Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, who dwelt therein, and which from him was called the Duke's Place. No ingenuous soul will envy so honourable a person the accommodation of so handsome a habitation; only some, perchance, will bemoan that the Lord's Place, (for so, in their and Jacob's language, Gen. xxviii. 17, they called the church,) whither alone the numerous neighbour-inhabitants repaired for public service, should be so destroyed that the people were for many years left churchless, till their wants very lately were supplied by the re-edifying thereof out of the ruins, by the charity of others; I am sure, none of the heirs of him who demolished the same.

STOW, ut prius.

Idem, ut prius.

Namely, anno Domini 1621.

III. OF THE SUPPRESSION OF THE ORDER OF OBSERVANT FRIARS, AND A PREPARATORY FOR THE DISSOLUTION OF ALL THE REST.

1, 2. Observant Friars, why first falling under King Henry's Displeasure: totally and finally dissolved.

It is the practice of advised physicians, in purging of long-corrupted bodies, (where the ill humours may prescribe peaceable possession for many years,) to proceed not violently, all at once; but gently, by degrees. The same course was embraced by king Henry in dissolving of abbeys, gradually (and therefore the less visibly) to work their subversion, so to avoid the danger of a sudden and extreme alteration. And first he began with the Minorites, or Franciscan Observant Friars, whose chief seats were Greenwich and Canterbury. Two motives mainly incensed him against this Order: One, because two of their most eminent fathers, Hugh Rich, prior of a convent in Canterbury, and Richard Risby, had tampered with Elizabeth Barton, aliàs the holy maid of Kent, and were convicted, and executed with her for high treason: A second, because this Order generally manifested most contumacy and contempt against the king, in the matter of queen Catherine's divorce, inveighing both in their sermons and disputations against the unlawfulness thereof,* especially Elston and Payton, two famous friars in London. A great papist beholds it as ominous,† and a prognostic of sad success, that the lady (afterward queen) Elizabeth, just eleven months before, had been christened in these friars' church at Greenwich; as if her baptizing therein portended, that those friars should soon after be washed away from this their convent.

Hereupon, in the year of our Lord 1534, the aforesaid whole Order of Friars Observant were suppressed, and Augustine Friars substituted in their places. Nor were these Observants (like the canon-regulars in the last chapter) disposed of in other foundations, but totally and finally banished out of all religious societies. For, king Henry's smiles complimented the former out of their Houses, by their own willing condescension; whilst his frowns outed these, as delinquents, by a violent expulsion. Yea, probably, some of them had been expelled their lives, as well as their livings, (two hundred of them being at once imprisoned,) had not Sir Thomas Wriothesley, their great friend and favourer, seasonably interceded for them to the king, on hopes of some of their future conformity to his majesty's desires.+

SANDERS De Schis. Anglic. lib. i. page 81. ↑ Idem, page 80. Idem, page 89.

3, 4. The Supplication of Beggars, with the Sense thereof. The Geometry, Arithmetic, and Chronology of the Author thereof. Immediately after, a famous petition, called "the Supplication of Beggars," came into public view. It was made some years before by one Mr. Simon Fish,* a gentleman of Gray's-Inn, and solemnly presented by George Eliot, an English merchant, and entertained by king Henry for a great rarity: though indeed the same long since had been tendered him by queen Anna Boleyn,† and the king acquainted with the passages therein. So that possibly this supplication might first come from some near his majesty, as contrivers thereof. And, as Moses was sent to be nursed unto her who, though generally unknown, was indeed his own mother which bare him, Exod. ii. 8; so petitions may sometimes be recommended back to the same power that first framed them; great ones delighting, not only for the greater solemnity, but also for their better security, to transfer their intentions to be others' entreaties; their private designs finding more acceptance, when passing under the notion of a public desire. The effect thereof was to complain, how a crew of strong, puissant, counterfeit-holy, idle beggars and vagabonds, by their luxury starved a number of needy, impotent, blind, lame, and sick people, which otherwise might comfortably be maintained; as also to discover the foul enormities and filthy conversation used amongst those pretended pious fraternities, as the same is set forth at large in "the Book of Martyrs," whither we remit the reader.

Only a word of the geometry, arithmetic, and chronology, used by the author of this supplication. For his geometry: I conceive he faileth not much in proportion, when, in measuring the content of this kingdom, he affirmeth, that they had got into their hands more than the third part of all the realm. But, whereas he auditeth the revenues of the friars in England, beside their lands, to amount yearly to four hundred thirty thousand three hundred thirty-andthree pounds, allowing their quarterage to arise out of fifty-two thousand parishes, he highly over-reacheth their number, not completing ten thousand. Indeed, the papists tell us of ten thousand churches in England destroyed all in one year: Millia dena unus templorum destruit annus. Yet these, being conventual not parochial churches, add nothing to the former computation. should all the chapels-of-case in this land be admitted to take a new degree, and to commence churches in this catalogue, it would not make up the number. But it is given to beggars sometimes to hyperbolize, to make their case the more pitiful; and, indeed, if we

Fox's "Acts and Monuments," vol. ii. page 279. CAMDEN'S Brit, in his Division of Brit. page 162.

+ Idem, ibidem.

Yea,

1 See

defalk a third part of that sum, yet still vast was the remainder of such friars' revenues. But, whereas the said author of this Supplication saith, that, four hundred years past, these friars had not one penny of this money; query, Whether he be not mistaken in his chronology, and whether some of the same profits accrued not tɔ the Benedictines before the Conquest?

5. The Anti-supplication of the Souls in Purgatory.

In answer to this, an anti-supplication was made, and set forth by Sir Thomas More, (extant amongst his other works,) called, "the Supplication of the Souls in Purgatory." The scope whereof is, to press the continuation of those lands, given to pious uses, for the good of the deceased, and that they might not be aliened without danger of sacrilege. In this Supplication, pleasant dallying and scoffing are so intermixed with complaints, that the author thereof discovereth himself more satirist than saint in his expressions. So hard it is for an actor so to divest himself of himself, as not to vent some of ✓ his own humours, with the property of that person whom he is to represent! And, seeing Sir Thomas More would have his own jests when dying, no wonder if he makes others to jeer when dead.

6. The first Supplication best received.

These two Supplications pressing both together for audience and reception, that of the beggars on earth found the best entertainment whether because it came first, which we know is great advantage in beggars,-" first come, first served:" or, because these terrestrial beggars were nearer at hand, (and so best able to manage their own suit,) whilst those in Purgatory were conceived at a greater distance; or, chiefly, because their Supplication suggested matter of profit to the king and his courtiers; and such whispers sound loud, and commonly meet with attentive ears. And as an introduction to the Dissolution of all abbeys, spies were sent forth to make strict discovery of men's behaviours therein. Indeed, the lord Cromwell, scout-master-general in this design, stayed at the court, whilst his subordinate emissaries, men of as prying eyes as afterwards they proved of gripple hands, sent unto him all their intelligence, in manner and form as in due time shall ensue.

IV. THE LESSER MONASTERIES BESTOWED ON THE KING.

1-3. A gainful Motion made for the King: reported, by Mistake, opposed by Bishop Fisher; easily passed in Parliament.

Now, because some months were employed in that service before a perfect account was returned to the lord Cromwell, the suppressing

of the smaller monasteries may here seasonably be ingerted. For in the twenty-seventh of the king's reign, anno 1539, a motion was made in parliament, "that to support the king's states, and supply his wants, all religious Houses might be conferred on the crown, which were not able clearly to expend above two hundred pounds a-year."

Some may report, that John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, earnestly, though pleasantly, opposed the motion, by alleging an apologue out of sop, that the helve of the axe craved a handie of the wood of oaks, only to cut off the sere-boughs of the tree; but when it was a complete instrumental axe, it felled down all the wood: applying it, that the grant of these smaller Houses would in fine prove destructive to all the rest. But Fisher being now in his grave, this could not be spoken in this Parliament; which, with more probability, was formerly urged by him against cardinal Wolsey, in dissolving the forty Houses; whereof before.

This proposition found little opposition in either House. Henry VIII. was a king, and his necessities were tyrants; and both suing together for the same thing, must not be denied. Besides, the larger thongs they cut out of other men's leather, the more entire they preserved their own hide, which made the parliament to ease their own purses by laying the load on those lesser Houses, which they accordingly passed to the crown.

4. A Preamble of Importance restored out of the Records to the printed Statute. Two Principles which must not be questioned.

The lord Herbert in his "History"* complaineth, and that justly, that "this statute for dissolution of the lesser monasteries doth begin very bluntly; without any formal preamble in the printed books they are published." It seemeth that herein he never searched the record itself, (otherwise industrious in that kind,) to which a solemn preface is prefixed, showing some reasons of the Dissolution, and pious uses to which they were attained, in form as followeth : The preamble is this:-" Forasmuch as manifest sin, vicious, carnal, and abominable living, is daily used and committed commonly in such little and small abbeys, priories, and other religious Houses of monks, canons, and nuns, where the congregation of such religious persons is under the number of twelve persons, whereby the governors of such religious Houses and their convent, spoil, destroy, consume, and utterly waste as well the churches, monasteries, priories, principal houses, farms, granges, lands, tenements, and hereditaments, as the ornaments of the churches, and their goods and

• Of Henry VIII. page 376.