Henry VIII,the Reign - Holinshed's Articles
By Mark Holinshed
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In March 1533, Henry promised that he would repair the insult to Kings Henry II and John, who had been tricked into offering the realm in tribute to the Holy See. He was also determined to reunite the crown with the goods churchmen had appropriated from it.
Letters & Papers No 235 1533 Volume 6, dated 15 March 1533 |
An army of about forty thousand stood ready to march south when at Doncaster in early December the rebels accepted an offer for the king to visit the north in person and hold a parliament at York to air the rebel’s grievances and debate their demands.
The leader of the insurgents, Robert Aske, was invited to spend Christmas with Henry VIII, and the Pilgrims as they have been called since, agreed to a compromise. However, they failed to extract any form of guarantee. The army was disbanded, that was their undoing because miss trusting the government, the following January, Sir Francis Bigod headed an unsuccessful rising at Beverley. The crown by now, however, had superior forces, and Cromwell turned his wrath on the north.
The Duke of Norfolk was back to exact revenge on the monks and with him was the Earl of Sussex and they ‘must cause dreadful execution upon a good number of the inhabitants, hanging them on trees, quartering them, and setting their heads and quarters in every town.’
They went after the ringleaders.
The leader of the insurgents, Robert Aske, was invited to spend Christmas with Henry VIII, and the Pilgrims as they have been called since, agreed to a compromise. However, they failed to extract any form of guarantee. The army was disbanded, that was their undoing because miss trusting the government, the following January, Sir Francis Bigod headed an unsuccessful rising at Beverley. The crown by now, however, had superior forces, and Cromwell turned his wrath on the north.
The Duke of Norfolk was back to exact revenge on the monks and with him was the Earl of Sussex and they ‘must cause dreadful execution upon a good number of the inhabitants, hanging them on trees, quartering them, and setting their heads and quarters in every town.’
They went after the ringleaders.
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‘For so much as all these troubles have ensued by the solicitation and the traitorous conspiracy of the monks and canons of these parts; we desire and pray you at you repair to Sawley, Hexham, Newminster, Lanercost, Saint Agatha, and all such other places as have made any manner of resistance, or in any way conspired, or kept their house with any force, sithens the appointment of Doncaster, you shall without any pity circumstance…cause all the monks and canons, that be in anyway wise faulty to be tied up, without further delay or ceremony, to the terrible example of others.’
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Surrender of Larger Monasteries
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News of the dreadful retributions had reached the wealthy abbey of Furness by the time the Earl of Sussex arrived. Here, the abbot offered his surrender and declared that ‘knowing the missorder and evil life both unto God and our prince of the brethren of the said monastery’, he gave freely ‘in discharge of [his] conscience’ to the king and his heirs all such interest and titles as I have had, had, or may have’, in the abbey. The deed was signed by the abbot and the monks, the surrender was complete, and a precedent had been set.
Thus, on 11 November Lewes, another of the larger monasteries surrendered, it took with it Castleacre. Titchfield Abbey fell soon afterwards and went to Thomas Wriothesley who later became Earl of Southampton, and so others followed; Peterborough, Ramsey, Sawtry and St Albans. ‘The pears were falling off one by one.’ There are various accounts of the surrenders of the larger houses, by force or more often by some form of a pension arrangement. Cromwell issued a denial of a suppression policy towards ‘any religious house that standeth.’ That was true enough, the abbots and brethren waited for their turn to offer up the deeds and accept a tidy sum in settlement, and so leave their monasteries. Some went with more bluster than others. ‘The abbot of St Albans who in December 1538, had stated haughtily that he would ‘rather choyse to begge his bread alle the days of his lif than consent to any surrender;’ did, in fact, accept some kind of pension when he was deposed. The End Waltham Abbey
The process famously continued until 1540, and by accident or design, it ended where it started, at Waltham Abbey. Waltham was the last of the eight hundred and fifty or so monastic buildings to surrender, reputedly on 23 March that year. Among those there who received a settlement to leave was Thomas Tallis, who was organist and master of the choristers, his musical legacy is famously popular to this day. Click to set custom HTML
If through Thomas Tallis’s legacy at least some of the music of the monasteries has been saved what has been lost?
Probably a lot more music. David Knowles (1896 – 1974) was an English Benedictine monk, a Catholic priest, historian and Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge. He was also an excellent writer, unrivalled in command of his subject, English Monasticism. His book Bare Ruined Choirs is a remarkably balanced history of Monasticism in England and in his epilogue, he reflects on the loss of the monasteries. He is candid and concludes that on a spiritual level the dissolution was not of itself a great catastrophe, by and large the body ecclesiastical was lukewarm and the monasteries had little warmth to spare for others. However, even a reasonably run house had an encouraging influence upon the neighbourhood, and he reminds us of the practical uses of monasteries, such as employment as a school, an alms-house, a bank or an inn. Also lost was the rich liturgical life of chant and ceremony, only the parish church remained and they to awaited reform. Knowles concludes his assessment. |
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‘Finally, and most important of all, there was a negative result. Good or bad, the monasteries were an important and integral part of the traditional church life of the Middle Ages. Had they stood, the tide of Protestantism in this country would have been, if not halted, at least checked and divided. Their disappearance, especially when their lands and wealth were held by a great number of all the higher classes, rendered any complete revival of the old ways extremely difficult.
Without the support and example of the revitalized religious orders on a fairly huge scale, Mary, had she lived to be eighty would have had a hard task to re-establish Catholicism, and any large restitution would have been met with sullen hostility and fear on the part of the landowners of the country. Probably neither Henry VIII nor Cromwell fully realized in this respect what they were doing. They thought of the religious orders primarily as a source of wealth, and only very occasionally as a potential enemy of change.’ |
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David Knowles knowledge of his subject is undisputed, and history aside his literary skills are rightly acknowledged as being quite outstanding, and no student of the reign of Henry VIII should be without a copy of Bare Ruined Choirs.
However, I do take issue with the above piece of narrative, in that the first two paragraphs surely defeat the third. Cromwell (Henry went with the flow) did fully realise what he was doing. He set out, primarily, to achieve exactly what Dom Knowles describes in the first two paragraphs, it was intended in the long term to defeat monasticism and Catholicism in England and extinguish hopes of a revival. That the closures brought with them a short-term – indeed very short-term – financial benefit was of subordinate importance. Notwithstanding, David Knowles, however, does not suggest for one moment the dissolution was orchestrated to satisfy the greed of one man – Henry VIII – as all too often appears as the popular explanation, and to propagate that fairy tale is at best naive. M.H. |
