THE DISSOLUTION OF MONASTERIES IN SOMERSETSHIRE.*
IT has for some time been only too legitimate a cause of complaint against the Cambridge historical school that it is unproductive, and in this respect contrasts very unfavour- ably with Oxford. This charge will soon be unjust if Cambridge University prizes can stimulate into being a few more such works as Mr. Archbold's on the Dissolu- tion. Signs have not been wanting that the historical school could do more than train Members of Parliament ; but it has been chiefly in the legal and archaeological branches of history that the lively impulse of creation has shown itself.
Any contribution to the history of the Dissolution of Monasteries meets with a welcome now-a-days, and Mr. Arch- bold's scholarly essay deserves the heartiest praise. The subject set last' year for the Prince Consort Dissertation was the effect of the Dissolution of Monasteries in a particular district of England, and Mr. Archbold's essay proves that the subject was wisely chosen, and calculated to bring out new aspects of a vexed question. The author chose Somerset- shire, a county for which he obviously feels the warm affection of a native. Although he modestly disclaims any intention of making generalisations from particular instances, it may well be doubted whether an equally careful examination of the facts which concern other counties would produce any widely different results.
The Dissolution has never before been appreciated in so entirely impartial a spirit, and it is a relief even at the present day to read an historical essay written to probe the truth rather than to prove a case ; nevertheless, the writer escapes the other pit-fall, and does not treat a great subject with the coldness which is apt to come of impartiality. The method of the book is admirable ; each chapter is followed by illustrations from manuscript authority, which have been transcribed with an accuracy which ardour alone could inspire. It is rare to find so much industry coupled with clear historical judgment, but it is impossible in a short notice to call atten- tion to the many comments on the social state of the Tudor period, which show originality and penetration. The brief sketches of the chief actors in the Dissolution drama are vivid, and show that the writer has read widely, and not merely for the purpose of enlarging his note-book collections. It is unusual to find a historian treading with so sure a step in fields which are more or less out of his beaten track and yet require a cursory exploration.
Those who turn to Mr. Archbold's book in the hope of finding " more awful revelations," and " startling disclosures," such as he may find in Mr. Wright's Letters on the Suppression, will be disappointed ; still, it is only fair to lay some stress on the state of affairs the visitors profess to have found at Bath, at Muchelney, and Maiden Bradley. The author is erring on the side of leniency when he maintains that the Somersetshire monasteries were not bad, even if the " Comperta" were accurate. It is trying to prove more than is necessary ; the prior of Maiden Bradley was a person to be abhorred, if what the visitors say of him was true, or only partly true ; and although he may have been but one black sheep among many of various degrees of whiteness, that the monastic system could allow vice in high places to pass unpunished is enough to con- demn it. But be it remembered that we are far from admitting that the charges of men like Legh and Layton were necessarily true. If their letters stood alone, we might avoid reading them ; but any one who knows the monasticism of earlier and purer centuries must admit that the monks, on their own showing, could allow their abbots and priors to be guilty of the grossest crimes, and yet make no effort to remove them from office ; and this not because they condoned the crime, but because they loved the reputation of their houses more than they loved morality. If a house was believed to be impure, and scandals were breathed of the abbot's conduct, that house would soon become im- poverished; wealthy novices would not pay large sums to be admitted there, and the great men of the neighbourhood would bequeath their lands elsewhere. Therefore the monks kept their domestic scandals to themselves, and would no more make public the sins of the abbot, than children will make public the sins of their fathers. To appeal to superior • Cambridge Historical Essays. No. VI., "The Somerset Religious Houses." By W. A. J. Archbold. Prince Consort Ilissertation, 1890. Cambridge University Press. 1892.
ecclesiastical authorities was, at best, a risky proceeding ; to do so might lower the value of the convent's much-prized immunities. This being the case, it would have been sur- prising indeed if, at such a time of corruption as was the era of the Dissolution, the visitors could find no genuine skeleton in the monastic cupboard.
Mr. Archbold's first three chapters on the Somerset Houses, Somerset Monks and Nuns, the Property of the Houses, together with the chapter on Land Tenure, seem to as his best. The weakest are those which deal with the change of economic conditions, perhaps because there really is but little more to say on that subject, and with education in religious houses, which lacks illustrative material. We do not for a moment doubt that many monasteries, and more nunneries, either were themselves places of education for persons not destined for the religious life, or supplied the endowments for schools in their neighbourhood. Still less can it be doubted that in the best houses much care was taken in the education of novices and choristers. The Monasticon gives instances of all three forms of educational activity. We have the statements of the Pilgrims of Grace to prove that monasteries in Yorkshire educated the sons of gentlemen ; we have the list of twenty- nine daughters of lords, knights and gentlemen educated at St. Mary's Nunnery, Winchester ; and we have the school founded at Bury by an Abbot of St. Edmund's, and maintained during the fifteenth century. The scholarships by which monasteries maintained their members at the Uni- versity are frequently referred to in the visitations ; the want of a " Master of Grammar " for the novices is noted with such frequency as to be evidence of his existence where his absence is not mentioned. The educational activity of the monasteries still, however, sufficiently needs positive proof for it to be well worth while to note every additional point of evidence. Miss Drane's Christian Schools and Scholars, though rich in facts, is so strong in religious bias and so weak in critical discrimination, as to be a very unreliable authority on this subject.
The chapters on monastic land tenure bring out many neglected facts ; the complicated monastic accounts which seem to be so clear in what they say, and yet say everything so obscurely, for the first time receive an intelligent interpre- tation, an interpretation which could only be given by one who possessed something of mediaeval industry. The historian of the Dissolution in Somersetshire has the singular good- fortune to find the works of Mr. Green and Bishop Hobhouse to aid him in two of the most difficult, because least explored, bye-ways of the subject,—the fall of the Chantries and the churchwardens' accounts. Not every county is so fortunate in its historical workers.
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