Cromwell's Power
In 1535 Henry, busy with his many love affairs and wars and with little time to wrestle with the pope, appointed Cromwell, a man of no declared creed, "vicegerent in all his ecclesiastical affairs." Cromwell now held in his hands foreign policy, domestic legislation, the high courts, the privy council, the intelligence office, the supreme court and the administration of the Church of England. Even at the height of his power Wolsey never bore responsibility for so many vast organizations. Cromwell also controlled the press and the printing houses. He moved the king to place the printing, sale and import of printed matter under the license of royal officers, and at government expense he himself printed and issued pamphlets against the pope. His countless spies informed him of every movement or remark that harmed Henry or himself. A single word of sympathy for Fisher and More, or of contempt for the king, was enough to bring a long sentence. Anyone who predicted the date of the king's death was sure to die. At times, to secure the result he wanted, Cromwell acted as both judge and prosecutor. No one in England did not fear and hate him.
A Treasury in Need
Henry's bankruptcy, despite his unlimited power, was the basic difficulty of Cromwell's work. Henry thought of expanding a navy, with harbors and docks; but the heavy cost of the court and of his own person weighed on him, and Cromwell's administration also required a huge budget. What way was there to find money? The taxes people paid were so heavy that raising them would meet stiff resistance. The bishops, to win the king's favor, had drained their dioceses dry, and from America England received nothing like what flowed into the treasury of its enemy, the emperor. Only one institution in England was rich yet weak, suspect and defenseless: the monasteries.
They were suspect because their threads ran to the pope, and the oath of supremacy their members were asked to take was read as evidence of evasion and obstinacy. To the king and those around him they were a foreign body within the English nation, supporting every Catholic movement against the king. They were weak because in many cases they had neglected education, hospitality and charity, their ancient duties. They were defenseless because the bishops had reluctantly refused obedience to the pope; the nobles, who had squandered their fortunes in the civil wars, wished to recover their endowments; the merchants thought monks idle parasites; and the common people no longer believed in the objects the monks displayed as relics of saints, or in the Masses they said for the dead for pay. Besides, there was precedent for closing monasteries: Zwingli in Zurich, the Lutheran rulers of Germany and Wolsey in England had all done it. In 1533 Parliament had allowed the government to visit the monasteries and make reforms in them.
The Visitation and the Lesser Houses
In the summer of 1535 Cromwell appointed three "visitors," each with many assistants, to inquire into and report on the outward state, the morals and the finances of England's monasteries and nunneries. "These visitors were young and bold men who did their work vigorously, though not delicately." They did not scruple to accept bribes. "The aim of their mission was to serve the interests of the Crown, and they used every means they had to make the men and women of the cloisters appear disgraced and shamed." Among some six hundred English monasteries it was not hard to find misguided houses tainted with sexual vice, laxity, fraud in selling objects ascribed to saints in order to increase the house's wealth and the comfort of its inmates, and neglect of hospitality and charity (I mention the vices only in general terms). But the reports did not mention the chaste and upright monks, did not weigh the astray against the pious, and did not distinguish rumor from evidence.
On 4 February 1536 Cromwell presented his "Black Book" to Parliament, drew back the curtain on the monks' misdeeds, and asked the members to close the houses whose income was £200 a year or less. The members, most of them Cromwell's own nominees, accepted the proposal. A court set up by royal order seized for the government the property and income of three hundred and seventy-six "lesser monasteries." Two thousand monks were either transferred to other houses or turned out, and those turned out were given a small sum or pension to find themselves work. Of the hundred and thirty nunneries, only eighteen had an income above £200, and half of those were already closed.
The Northern Risings
The dissolution met a threefold revolt in the north. Just as Christianity first appeared in cities and then spread to the villages, religious reform in Switzerland, Germany and England began in cities and met resistance from country people. Protestant influence in England and Scotland diminished with distance from London or Edinburgh; it reached Wales and the north of England late and found fewer followers in Ireland. In the northern counties of England the seizure of the lesser monasteries lit a fire whose causes had long been prepared by heavy taxes, the king's pressure on the clergy and the secret stirring of priests. Monks expelled from their houses, who collected their pensions with difficulty, joined the great crowd of discontented unemployed. Nuns turned out, wandering from refuge to refuge, angered the people against the government. Cromwell's visitors stoked the people's wrath by plundering the property of chapels and monasteries, turning priests' copes and robes into undergarments, pulpit vestments into saddle-cloths and the covers of sacred vessels into dagger sheaths.
On 2 October 1536 a visitor who had closed a monastery at Legbourne was seized by an angry crowd in the nearby town of Louth. His letters and orders were burned, a sword point was set against his chest, and he was made to swear loyalty to the people. All those in the crowd swore allegiance to the king and the Roman Catholic Church. The next day a rebel force gathered at Caistor, a few kilometers from Louth. Homeless priests and monks stirred the soldiers of this force, and local gentry either had to join them or joined of their own will. The next day a great crowd of villagers rose at Horncastle, another Lincolnshire town. The rebels dragged out of his bed the representative of the Bishop of Lincoln, whom they took for Cromwell's agent, and beat him with clubs to the point of death. They carried a banner showing a plough, a chalice, a horn and the five wounds of Christ. They drew up a letter to the king demanding the reopening of the monasteries, the repeal or reduction of taxes, exemption of the clergy from tithe or annual payments to the king, the removal of the "low-born" man (meaning Cromwell) from the privy council, and the removal and rebuke of misguided bishops, especially Cranmer and Latimer. Their numbers grew with people continually joining from the northern and eastern counties. Nearly sixty thousand had gathered at Lincoln to receive the king's answer.
The king's answer was sharp and unwelcome. He accused the rebels of ingratitude and disobedience to a kind ruler, and claimed that the dissolution of the lesser monasteries was the people's own wish, carried out by their representatives in Parliament. He commanded them to hand over the leaders of the revolt to the king's officers and go home, or expect death and the confiscation of their property. Meanwhile Henry ordered his military aides to raise an army under the Earl of Suffolk and hasten to help Lord Shrewsbury, who had readied his forces to stand against the rebels, and he secretly wrote letters to a number of nobles who had joined the rebels. These nobles, seeing that the king was firm and that unarmed rebels could achieve nothing, dispersed them, and the rebel army, at the priests' regret, vanished like snow in the July sun. Louth handed fifteen leaders to the government's officers and a hundred others were arrested; the king pardoned the rest. The prisoners were taken to London and jailed, thirty-three of them, among whom were seven priests and fourteen monks, were hanged, and the rest were freed.
Meanwhile a wider revolt broke out in Yorkshire. A young lawyer, Robert Aske (the book writes Richard), was drawn into the movement; another lawyer, William Stapleton, took command of a band of rebels at Beverley; Lord Darcy of Templehurst, a firm Catholic, secretly supported the rebels; two men of the Percy family joined them, and most of the gentry followed. On 15 October 1536 the main rebel army, nine thousand fighting men under Aske, took the city of York. The townspeople persuaded the mayor to open the gates to the invaders. Aske kept his soldiers from looting and disorder and reopened the monasteries; the monks returned joyfully to their houses, and the rebels cheered the faithful with the singing of hymns. Aske pressed on and took Pontefract, while at the same time Hull fell to Stapleton without bloodshed. The victorious rebels added new demands to those of the people of Lincolnshire and sent them to the king: that he suppress heretics, burn their writings, restore the Church of England's tie with Rome, treat Mary as his lawful daughter, dismiss and punish Cromwell's visitors, and annul the ownership of all lands seized since 1489.
The most critical moment of Henry VIII's life had come. Half the country had risen against him; Ireland too had revolted; and Paul III and Cardinal Reginald Pole were urging Francis I and Charles V to conquer England and remove Henry from the throne. Henry gathered all the forces left to him and sent out orders to raise troops everywhere, while at the same time instructing the Duke of Norfolk to tame the rebels by gentleness and negotiation. The duke talked with Aske and a group of nobles and, promising a general pardon, kept them from disobedience. Henry guaranteed Aske's life and called him to treat with him. After meeting the king, Aske was captivated by his splendor and in January 1537 returned to Yorkshire humble, devout and in good health. There he was arrested and sent to London. With his arrest the rebel army was left leaderless and fell apart, and when the king's troops approached, no trace of it remained (February 1537).
Once Henry was sure the rising was over, he forgot the promise of a general pardon Norfolk had given the rebels and ordered the leaders arrested and several of them, Aske among them, put to death. He then wrote to the Duke of Norfolk: we expect that before you leave off, you will so chastise the people of the towns and villages that rebelled that it will be a lesson to posterity ... Since all these disorders sprang from the treacherous plots of the monks and canons of these regions, we require that in these places where they have plotted ... without any pity or relenting you immediately punish severely all monks and canons who have committed even the slightest offense.
The Dissolution Completed
Using the fear that had fallen on his opponents, Cromwell was able to close England's remaining religious houses too. All monasteries and nunneries whose inmates had joined the rebels were at once dissolved and their property seized for the state. The number of visitors grew, and more reports of laxity, decay, treachery and moral corruption among monks were sent to the government. Monks, fearing the closure of their houses, sold the relics of saints and their costly objects at auction; the finger of St. Andrew sold for forty pounds. The monks of Walsingham were accused of forging holy objects, and their costly image of the Virgin was thrown into the fire. The historic tomb of Thomas Becket at Canterbury was destroyed, and Henry VIII declared that the man who had triumphed over Henry II was no true saint. The surviving relics of saints, which Colet had hated and Erasmus had treasured, fell prey to the flames. The precious objects pilgrims had given to holy places over two hundred and fifty years passed into the king's hands (1538), and from then on Henry VIII adorned his thumb with a large ruby plundered from a shrine. Some monks tried to save their houses by giving Cromwell money and presents. Cromwell took their gifts, but dissolved every house. By 1540 all the monasteries of England, with their property, except for the houses attached to cathedrals, had passed into the king's hands.
In all, 578 monasteries and 130 nunneries were dissolved (the book's wording for the second figure is unclear). Some 6,521 monks and 1,560 nuns were driven out to wander. Of these about fifty monks and two nuns renounced the religious life, but many others asked leave to continue it. About 12,000 people who had been employed by religious organizations, or lived on their charity, lost their livelihood. The annual income of the confiscated lands and buildings reached £200,000, but their hasty sale after confiscation reduced the income from these estates to £37,000 a year. If we add precious metals worth £85,000 to the confiscated property, the value of what Henry took amounted to £1,423,500.
Who Received the Spoils
The king handed out the estates he had taken, with an open hand, to his loyal subjects. Some he gave to town nobles, merchants and lawyers who had helped and supported him; but most he sold to them cheaply. Cromwell bought, or received free, six monasteries with an annual income of £2,293. Seven more, with an annual income of £2,552, were given to his nephew Sir Richard Cromwell, and this first capital made the Cromwell family so rich that his descendant Oliver became, in the next century, one of the most powerful and influential men of his day. Henry VIII devoted a part of the spoils to building ships and constructing forts and harbors; he lost a part in war; a part went to the royal palaces at Westminster, Chelsea and Hampton Court; and a part he lost at gambling. Six monasteries became the seats of dioceses of the Anglican Church, and a small sum was assigned to the charitable works that had formerly been in the hands of monks and nuns. The new wealthy class that arose with Henry's help supported the House of Tudor and, relying on its financial strength, stood against Catholicism. The old feudal aristocracy was destroyed; and the new rich class of upstarts, made up of merchants and owners of industry, set England's stagnant economy in motion by investment. The rise of this capitalist class, together with the spoils Henry had gathered, was among the factors that gave the Elizabethan age its unequalled splendor.
Consequences
The dissolution had complex and long-lasting results. The release of monks from monastic vows seems to have been one of the causes that raised England's population, which in 1485 did not exceed 2,500,000, to 4,000,000 in 1547. Growing unemployment, over the span of one generation, plunged the lower classes of England into poverty and misery. The new landowners were greedier than the old. Politically, the dissolution extended the king's power, for the Church lost its last stronghold of resistance. With the monasteries gone, crime and begging increased and charitable institutions declined. More than a hundred hospitals that monasteries had founded and monks had run were closed, and a few were later reopened by local authorities. Funds that fearful or devout believers had given priests to ease their suffering in the next world were confiscated on the argument that the dead would come to no harm. Some 2,374 chantries, founded to pray for the dead, with all their endowments, passed into the king's hands. The saddest result of the dissolution appeared in education: through the efforts of monks and nuns many schools had been set up for girls and boys, among them ninety colleges. All these institutions were dissolved.
After describing events impartially, any historian can weigh them on the scales of conjecture and judgment. Henry's greed and Cromwell's hardness reduced the number and influence of England's monasteries. In education, charity and the care of the sick, monasteries and nunneries had rendered valuable services, but even in the Catholic countries of western Europe such services were being passed to civil and secular authorities. The weakening of people's religious faith and their turning from the world beyond the grave diminished the standing and importance of institutions tied to the monasteries. It is a pity that Wolsey's wiser plan to convert monasteries gradually into colleges was swept up in Cromwell's hasty and harsh measures. Henry's way of dissolving the monasteries, like the acts he carried out from his longing for a male heir, stained his lofty aim.
The deceptive exploitation of simple believers was bound in the end to cease. What pains the observer most in this affair is the sad fate of the nuns, most of whom, with sincere faith, had given their whole lives to religious duties, to teaching, to charity and to caring for the suffering, the sick and the needy.