CHAPTER IIPRECEDENTS FOR SUPPRESSION
The Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII is popularly represented as an isolated act, standing alone in the nation’s history. Except that it was on an exceptionally large scale, such is very far from being the fact. It was, indeed, only the last stage in a process which had long been in progress. The Suppression, in 1312, of the Knights Templars, who had a Preceptory in Staffordshire at Keele, was the first great destruction of a Religious Order, and it must not be forgotten that it was the work of the Papacy. A century later Henry V, for financial and political reasons, suppressed the Alien Priories, Lapley, in Staffordshire, among them. During the following hundred years, which intervene before we arrive at the time with which we are more immediately concerned, such great ecclesiastics as Wykeham, Chichele, Waynflete, Fisher, and Alcock, had all laid hands on monastic wealth for educational purposes. Even the great Dissolution of the sixteenth century was no idea suddenly conceived at the moment. It was itself, again, the last phase of a movement which naturally developed. It was one of the Acts of a great drama.
The suppressions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had fatally weakened the idea that property devoted to religious purposes was for ever inviolable. The intentions of Founders could no longer be sacrosanct. The tendency was, not even to ask whetherthe monasteries were fulfilling the objects for which they had been founded, but rather, whether they were needed. The New Learning had little respect for old foundations, and Staffordshire had an early example of the way it would deal with endowments.
William Smythe was Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry from 1493 to 1496. As Lord President of the Welsh Marches he was mainly employed in unepiscopal work, Thomas Fort, Prior of Stone, acting as his suffragan. He founded Brasenose College, at Oxford, and boldly diverted monastic endowments into new channels. In 1495 he suppressed the Austin Priory of St. John at Lichfield, and used the site and property for a Grammar School and Almshouses. Such action obviously indicates that at Lichfield, at any rate, there was neglect of charity and education by the “religious,†otherwise Bishop Smythe would have had no need to suppress St. John’s Priory.
Bishop Smythe was an early Wolsey, on a small scale. The Cardinal, like the Bishop, was a politician rather than an ecclesiastic, and he, too, laid bold hands on monastic endowments for educational purposes.
Of course Wolsey’s work was much more important than Bishop Smythe’s, and the history of Staffordshire shows in some measure how it was accomplished. He became Chancellor in 1515 and sought from the Pope visitatorial powers over the English monasteries. Such authority for a royal official was little of a novelty. The King had always claimed to have considerable power in the religious houses, and had often exercised it. The royal license was necessary before a new Superior could be elected, and during the vacancythe temporalities were taken over and administered by royal officials. The election, when made, required the royal assent. In all sorts of ways the royal power made itself felt in the religious houses. It was continually interfering in their internal affairs, as we shall see fully when we approach the time of the General Dissolution. It was able to bring such considerable influence to bear in elections that requests were made for headships just as for other appointments which were properly in the gift of the Government.[15]The right of nominating to corrodies, always claimed and constantly exercised, would of itself ensure the presence of representatives of the King and his opinions in the religious houses. How widely the right was interpreted in the sixteenth century may be gathered from the claim made by the Duke of Richmond, Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, in 1532. In that year he wrote from Calais to the Prior of Tutbury, informing him that he had been sent on a mission to France and that the King’s pleasure was that such of his servants as remained behind in England should be established in religious houses, “of whom,†the letter says, “Robert Amyas, clerk of my jewel house, is appointed to abide at your monastery.â€[16]Even so recently as 1490 the King had exercised the powers which Wolsey desired, and by papal authorisation.
Wolsey, therefore, knew he was on safe ground inmaking his request to the Pope. After some delay, Leo X granted the desired authority (1518), and Wolsey issued statutes for the Austin Canons next year.
He soon began his splendid educational schemes. With some difficulty he obtained the Pope’s consent (April, 1524) to use the revenues of St. Frideswide’s at Oxford (where Reginald Pole, a Staffordshire man, while a student at Oxford, had had a pension, though he was of Royal lineage) towards the endowment of the college he was founding.[17]This, of course, was quite insufficient for the splendid scheme he had in mind, and many further negotiations with the Pope resulted in a series of grudgingly granted Bulls during several years. Meanwhile, Wolsey proceeded with his work. The single house he had obtained was by no means all he intended to appropriate, and he had already drawn up the draft of a license for incorporating for the use of his college at Oxford twenty-one other houses, including those at Canwell and Sandwell,[18]in Staffordshire. It is a Latin document of eleven pages, and is in Wriothesley’s handwriting.
In 1514 there had been but a single inmate at Canwell available for appointment to the office of Prior. As a Cluniac house it had never received adequate supervision, and had often been unsatisfactory: long ago one of its canons had become a murderer.[19]Sandwell had been on the verge of bankruptcy, with discreditable canons, wasteful and unbusiness-likemanagement, violent altercations with neighbours and armed “religious†rivals. Its buildings were in bad repair. Both houses were ripe for dissolution.
The deed for the dissolution of St. Mary’s, Sandwell, by William Burbank, LL.D., is dated February, 1524.[20]It is a Latin document of twenty-three pages, written on vellum, signed by Prior John and sealed by Burbank. The witnesses are Thomas Cromwell, John Clifton (chaplain), Roland Rokyn, and John Lupton. The house was not absolutely closed; provision was made for the religious services to be maintained, and the servants and inmates who were dismissed were recompensed. The yearly value was £12 in spiritualities and £26 8s. 7d. in temporalities.[21]
Clement VII’s Bull authorising this did not issue till six months later. It permitted the suppression of monasteries to the value of 3,000 ducats, and was dated September 11th. It received the royal assent on October 1st.[22]It included Sandwell and, obviously, Canwell, though the writing is partly defaced. On the 13th of January, 1526, Letters Patent were signed at Greenwich, and delivered at Westminster on January 20th, granting to Wolsey the sites, etc., of St. Mary’s, Sandwell, and St. Giles’s, Canwell,[23]with lands in Staffordshire at Sandwell, West Bromwich, Dudley, Tipton, Magna and Parva Bar, Harborne, Wernell, Coston, Wombourn, Wednesbury, Feccham, Canwell,Drayton, Hyns, Wyfford, Packington, Bittertone, Tamworth, Whittington, Elford, and Farysley. Canwell was worth £10 in spiritualities and £15 0s. 3d. in temporalities. No time was lost. On February 10th the houses were transferred to John Higden, dean of Cardinal’s College, the grant being sealed with Wolsey’s seal, which, enclosed in an iron case at the foot of the vellum, remains to this day a splendid impression.[24]The records of the estates were put into excellent order. William Brabazon surveyed the Manor of Canwell, and has left a full and detailed description of church, manor-house, ou-buildings, and land, with full details, measurements, rental, amount of timber, etc. The church was 84 feet long and 23 feet wide, with a tiled roof. It had a ruinous Lady Chapel on the north side 42 feet long and 14 feet wide, and bells worth £33 6s. 8d. The manor-house was 69 feet long by 15 feet wide, with one side tiled and the other thatched, and three rooms above and below, but its timber was in a bad state. There was a hall and kitchen, the latter also ruinous, a three-roomed stable, a kiln, bolting house, and chamber for corn, dove-house, and a large barn 112 feet by 28 feet. We have also a detailed list of the cottagers by name, with their rents (1d. per annum per cottage), dated the 13th of March, 1526.[25]Apræcipefor a fine relating to the possessions of Canwell, and a lease and a conveyance of Sandwell, show that the former had been dissolved by the year 1527.[26]Its founder, Lord Lisle, hadreleased his title by fine. The latter was “given†by Edward, Lord Dudley.
The same business-like procedure was followed in making over the endowments to the College. The estates having been carefully and fully surveyed, a complete “Register†of all the documents was delivered to Dr. Higden, under date 21st of June, 1527. The Dean himself was a keen business man, like all the men who enjoyed Wolsey’s favour, and at once set about improving the revenues, visiting the estates, and raising the rents where it was possible to do so.[27]
The suppression of the monasteries formed part of the charges laid against Wolsey on his impeachment. Dean Higden’s raising of the rents was charged against the Cardinal, who was also accused of “shamefully slandering many good religious houses and good virtuous men living in them,†as well as often forcing suppressions by “crafty persuasions.†The houses alleged to be so wrongfully suppressed were, however, by no means restored on his fall. Full details of them were obtained by Commissions of local gentry: Sir John Gifford, Sir Edward Aston, Edward Lyttleton, and John Vernon, acted in Staffordshire. Then, whatever still remained was sold. William Burbank and Thomas Cromwell did this work at Canwell and Sandwell.[28]The sale at the former reached £8 and at the latter £21. The bells at Sandwell were worth £33 6s. 8d., and at Canwell £13 6s. 8d., and debts and rents due at Lady-day amounted to £189 10s. On the other hand, there were the costs of Burbank and Cromwell for theirjourney from Tickford to Sandwell, and for their five days’ stay at Sandwell and three days’ at Canwell. The fees of the “Praysors†were 3s. 4d.; and one of the monks at Canwell was paid £1 in wages, and another 6s. 8d. The Prior’s father and the servants also received payments. The work was done thoroughly. The establishment evidently had been leniently dealt with, and indeed to a considerable extent maintained, so long as Wolsey lived, but now the religious life, at least, ceased, for we may conclude that the sale of the bells implies that the churches were closed or put to secular uses.
In the re-arrangement of the endowments of Wolsey’s College, Canwell was spared for it, and so was Sandwell, but the rectories belonging to the latter and the manor at the former were assigned to the College at Windsor. The Prior of Shene also received some of the lands at Sandwell, and John Voysey,aliasHarmon, Bishop of Exeter, made purchases at Canwell. The “total issues†from the Staffordshire houses are set down in the Account Book of the College for 1530 as £31 7s. from Sandwell and £14 6s. from Canwell.[29]
Bishop Geoffrey Blythe was another of the products of the New Learning: a suspect by reason of his advanced opinions, yet a burner of heretics; the ordainer of Colet and the rejector asindoctus et indignusof a Canon of Ronton nominated to a vicarage in 1530; the acceptor so early as 1530 of Henry VIII’s refusal to allow an appeal to Rome which the Bishops of the Province of Canterbury made against Archbishop Warham in regard to probate.
While Wolsey was appropriating monastic endowments for the benefit of learning, Bishop Blythe was engaged in similar work, and he obtained Wolsey’s help in suppressing the Benedictine Nunnery at Fairwell.
In 1526 the diocese had received a visit from the Cardinal in person. In March he came to the Cathedral in his capacity of Legatea latere, formally to investigate a complaint of the vicars. It did not contribute to his popularity, and was met by a protest on the part of the Great Chapter. However, he examined and ratified the Cathedral statutes; and probably during the Visitation, which lasted from March 5th to April 4th, Bishop Blythe discussed the condition of Fairwell with the Cardinal, and received from him advice and encouragement.
Fairwell Nunnery had been founded by Bishop Roger de Clinton (1129–1148), a few miles from Lichfield. Bishop Norbury, on a visitation, had found various delinquencies which caused him to issue a series of detailed injunctions in 1331.[30]They had to be translated into French as the nuns did not understand Latin. In 1367 Bishop Stretton again exercised his authority and in the same way. From the orders he issued[31]we are able to gather the nature of the things complained of. The laudable practice of going for walks in common was commended, but none were to go out without two others for company, and then only by leave of the Prioress. The threefold vow was to be observed, and also the periods of silence. Suchsecular women, except necessary servants, as were living within the nunnery were to obtain the Bishop’s license or to be dismissed, and the same order was issued with regard to male children. The accounts were to be laid before the whole Convent yearly at least, and grants of land were to require the Bishop’s authorization. There had been too much luxury, and all were ordered to take their meals in the Guest Hall, where, alone, except in cases of sickness or other reasonable cause, a fire was permissible.
In March, 1527, a Commission was sealed by Wolsey at Hampton Court empowering Richard Strete, B.D., Archdeacon of Salop and Canon of Lichfield, and William Clayborough, LL.D., Canon of York, to complete the suppression of Fairwell.[32]The nuns and chaplains were to be translated to other houses, and the goods of the house were to go to the Dean and Chapter of Lichfield for the support of the choristers. The formal grant to the Dean and Chapter, of the Nunnery and all its possessions, was made on August 28th following.[33]In return they bound themselves to say an annual Obit for the Bishop.
Such work as that which has been described—work on a small scale by Bishops Smythe and Blythe, and on a larger scale by Wolsey—became of very great historical importance. It revived the memory of the destruction of the Knights Templars and the confiscation of the Alien Priories, and familiarised public opinion in the earlier years of the sixteenth century withthe idea of monastic dissolutions. That no suspicion of personal cupidity or of self-interest could be laid against any of the authors was in itself of great value to the men who afterwards followed in their footsteps with very different motives. The genuine disinterestedness of purpose which prompted these earlier “reformers†went far to blind the public to the real objects of the later. And Wolsey’s dissolutions did much more. They not only supplied contemporary examples and revived old precedents; they not only gave practical effect to the tendency of the New Learning to disparage old forms of religious life; they actually trained up experts in the work of suppressing religious houses. Thomas Cromwell made, as Wolsey’s secretary, his first essays in the art which was afterwards to gain for him the name of the “Hammer of the Monks.†We have seen him busy in the case of both the Staffordshire houses which were dissolved by the Cardinal. Richard Strete, too, we shall soon meet again.
Cromwell, even at this early stage of his career, earned a reputation for unscrupulous harshness, and susceptibility to bribery; but on the whole it is evident that these suppressions were accomplished with the least possible friction. The interests of all who were involved—patrons, monks, servants, tenants, were considered and recognised. And the general results to learning were undoubtedly good.