chattels, to the high displeasure of Almighty God, slander of good religion, and to the great infamy of the king's Highness and the realm, if redress should not be had thereof: And albeit that many continual visitations hath been heretofore had by the space of two hundred years and more, for an honest and charitable reformation of such unthrifty, carnal, and abominable living, yet nevertheless little or no amendment is hitherto had, but their vicious living shamefully increaseth and augmenteth, and by a cursed custom so grown and infested, that a great multitude of the religious persons in such small Houses do rather choose to rove abroad in apostasy, than to conform themselves to the observation of good religion; so that without such small Houses be utterly suppressed, and the religion therein committed to the great and honourable monasteries of religion in this realm, where they may be compelled to live religiously for reformation of their lives, there can else be no redress nor reformation in that behalf. In consideration whereof, the king's most royal Majesty, being supreme head in earth, under God, of the church of England, daily studying and devising the increase, advancement, and exaltation of true doctrine and virtue in the said church, to the only glory and honour of God, and the total extirping and destruction of vice and sin, having knowledge that the premises be true, as well by the compts of his late visitations, as by sundry credible informations; considering also that divers and great solemn monasteries of this realm, wherein, thanks be to God, religion is right well kept and observed, be destitute of such full numbers of religious persons as they ought and may keep, have thought good that a plain declaration should be made of the premisses, as well to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, as to other his loving subjects, the Commons in this present Parliament assembled.

"Whereupon the said Lords and Commons by a great deliberation finally be resolved, that it is and shall be much more to the pleasure of Almighty God, and for the honour of this his realm, that the possessions of such small religious houses, not being spent, spoiled, and wasted for increase of maintenance of sin, should be used and converted to better uses; and the unthrifty religious persons so spending the same, to be compelled to reform their lives. And hereupon most humbly desire the king's Highness, that it may be enacted by authority of this present Parliament, that his Majesty shall have to him and to his heirs for ever, all and singular such monasteries.

"His majesty shall have and enjoy," &c. as it followeth in the printed statute.*

In this preamble two principles are laid down of infallible truth, * Cap. xxviii.

and posterity must not be so presumptuous as to question them: 1. The smallest convents were the greatest sinners, and they who had the least lands led the lewdest lives. 2. It was harder to reform little convents than those that were greater. It seems such small Houses, like little fishes, could not be caught with the net of reformation, as slipping through the holes thereof; and, therefore, no way to repress their faults except by suppressing their foundation. All I will add is, God first punished great Sodom, and spared little Zoar, though, probably, also in fault. Here Zoar was first punished; let great Sodom beware, and the larger monasteries look to themselves.

5-8. Exact Measuring to the Standard of Dissolution. Many aged Persons at a Loss for Livelihood. Abbey-Lands politicly scattered among many Purchasers. The Number of the lesser Monasteries.

And now adieu all religious Houses in England that could not clearly spend above two hundred pounds per annum; and we must not believe any sinister dealing was used by favour to rack the revenues of some above, and out of dislike to shrink the rents of others beneath, the standard of dissolution, when twenty shillings a year, under or over the aforesaid sum, might save or destroy a small monastery. As for such (if any in that posture) who had just two hundred pounds and no more, they were obnoxious to the statute; whilst five shillings more saved all, as that is a fair ball in the tennis-court which toucheth the line, yet goeth over it.

Ten thousand persons were by this Dissolution sent to seek their fortunes in the wide world. Some, indeed, had fathers or friends to receive them, others none at all. Some had twenty shillings given them at their ejection, and a new gown, which needed to be of strong cloth to last so long till they got another. Most were exposed to want. I see no such certainty for a comfortable livelihood as a lawful calling; for monkish profession was no possession, and many a young nun proved an old beggar. I pity not those who had hands and health to work; but, surely, the gray hairs of some impotent persons deserved compassion; and I am confident such, had they come to the doors of the charitable reader hereof, should have had a meal's meat and a night's lodging given unto them.

A clear revenue of thirty thousand pounds per annum was here advanced to the crown, besides ten thousand pounds in plate and movables; though the king enjoyed it but a short time, as passing it away by grant, sale, and exchange to his subjects. This was done by the politic counsel of the wise lord Cromwell; not hoping

that these small morsels to so many mouths should satisfy their hunger, but only intending to give them a taste of the sweetness of abbey-lands. And here papists plentifully rail upon him in scattering these lands all abroad, that if any should be so scrupulous as to find fault with the fact, a general guiltiness should amount unto innocence. 66 Thus," say they, "there is no fear that a man shall be condemned for felony, who hath so many receivers in the county; that scarcely a judge can sit, and surely no jury can be empanneled upon him, saving such who had been parties with him."

No fewer than three hundred seventy-five convents (as Sanders doth account them) were dissolved at this time. Sure I am, none was left standing in the whole diocess of Bangor, where no foundation was valued at full seventy pounds per annum.*

9-12. Why the King cajoleth the great Monasteries. Specious Uses pretended on heavy Penalties. Such Penalties gra

ciously repealed by King James. Some grudge at so great a Grant.

We must not forget how, in the foresaid preamble, the king fairly claweth the great monasteries; wherein, saith he, "religion, thanks be to God, is right well kept and observed;" though he clawed them soon after in another acceptation. The truth is, king Henry could not suppress the lesser abbeys but by the consent of the greater abbots, whereof twenty-six (as barons) voted in the parliament, who mollified them by this commendation into a concurrence with his desire.

However, most specious uses were pretended, (though few perchance had faith firm enough to believe their full performance,) "that all should be done to the pleasure of Almighty God, and for the honour of the realm." And particular care is taken in the statute, as it is printed, "for the reservation of many rents and services, corrodies, and pensions to founders, donors, and benefactors." Order also was taken, "that those to whom abbey-lands were passed, should keep, or cause to be kept, a continual house and household in the same site or precinct." They were also " occupy yearly as much of the domains in tillage as the abbots did, or their farmers under them, within the time of twenty years next before this Act, otherwise forfeiting to the king's Highness for every month so offending £6. 138. 4d. to be recovered to his use in any of his courts of record." The arrears whereof, if rigorously exacted, would amount to a vast sum from such offenders, whose hospitality was contracted to a shepherd and his dog; neither

• See SPEED's "Catalogue of Valuations."

"to

relieving those that would work, by industry; nor such who could not work, by their charity.

These penalties stood in full force above eighty years; namely, until the twenty-first of king James, when by Act of Parliament they were repealed. Indeed, such who are obnoxious to penal statutes are only innocent by courtesy, and may be made guilty at their prince's pleasure. And though such statutes may be dormant as disused, they are never dead till revoked, seeing commonly princes call on such statutes when themselves are called on by their necessities. Many of the English gentry knew themselves subject to such penalties, when, instead of maintaining tillage, [they] had converted the granges of abbeys into inclosures; and, therefore, provided for their own safety, when they wrought the king to a revocation of those statutes.*

But the courtiers grudged at this grant and great indulgence given by the king without any valuable compensation, some sticking not to say, that hereby the king at once gave his subjects more than ever they gave him in subsidies, benevolences, contributions, or any other way whatsoever, all the time of his reign; which if so, let no man's eye be evil, because the king's was so good to his subjects.

V. THE NORTHERN REBELLION OCCASIONED BY

DISSOLUTION.

THIS

1-4. Northern Rebellion, begun, suppressed, punished; excused by Sanders unjustly.

WHEN all in the school are equally guilty, and the master beginneth at the bottom to correct the least boys first, no wonder if those in the highest form begin to shake; as here no doubt the bigger abbeys did, except some few, who, to follow the metaphor, like sturdy striplings, counting themselves above correction, began to prepare themselves to make resistance; hence presently arose the northern rebellion, wherein all the open undertakers were in the North of England; though, no doubt, many secret compliers south of Thames were engaged.

This commotion began first in Lincolnshire, where the rebels presented Six Articles to the king; in the last whereof they complained, that divers bishops of England, of his Grace's late promotion, had subverted the faith of Christ, as they thought; which is, the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Rochester, Salisbury, St. David's, and Dublin.

See the Statutes the twenty-first of king James, cap. 28.

This Lincolnshire commotion being quickly suppressed, and a right understanding begotten betwixt the king and his subjects, the rebellious humour removed into Yorkshire; where no fewer than fifty thousand, saith Sanders, were assembled in a body under Robert Aske (a mean gentleman) their captain, and one Diamond, though a knave of another suit, who termed himself the Earl of Poverty. Yet this distemper also was seasonably cured by the King's pardon and their submission; till soon after a great part of them fell into a relapse of rebellion, carrying in their ensigns the five wounds of our Saviour, the chalice, with the host, and the name of Jesus betwixt them; who, being vanquished by the king's forces, under the command of the earl of Shrewsbury, were condignly executed for the same.

Indeed, Sanders (to whom it is as natural to defame, as for a stone to descend) complaineth that the king executed those whom formerly he had pardoned for the same offence, contrary to God's proceedings, with whom peccata remissa non recurrunt; yea, contrary to equity, and all common justice. But our Chronicles make it plain, that they ran on the score of a new rebellion, (their faults specifically not numerically the same,) and justly suffered for their offences therein.

5, 6. Persons executed.

Thomas lord Darcy, and the lord Hussey, (first and last baron of his family,) were beheaded on this account: the first of these being much bemoaned both for what he had been, (a martial man of merit by sea and land,) and for what he was: (decayed, being almost eighty, with old age :) Insomuch that there goeth a tradition, that he had the king's pardon in his pocket, and slept while the sentence of condemnation was passed on him, and then produced it too late: such (it seems) were the rigorous proceedings against him.

Aske and Diamond were executed in this rebellion, and so also were six abbots, namely, of Sawley, Barling, Gerveaux, Whaley, Rivers, with the prior of Burlington,* besides many gentlemen of prime account, whereof these the chief: Robert Constable, Thomas Piercy, Francis Bigot, Nicholas Musgrave, Nicholas Temple, Stephen Hamilton, Thomas Gilby, William Lumley, John Bulmer and his wife. However, some pity may seem proper to these persons, as ignorantly zealous, and grieved to behold the destruction of the old religion before they had received any competent instruction for a new. And thus was there a rout of the most ancient of the northern gentlemen of the Romish persuasion, who in the next generation had scarcely rallied

In BURNET'S "History of the Reformation," the names of the rebellious abbots are thus given: The abbots of Walley, Jerveux, Bridlington, Lenton, Woburn, and Kingstead, and Mackrall the monk, that first raised the Lincolnshire rebellion."-EDIT.