THE ENGLISH MONASTERIES ON THE EVE OF THE DISSOLUTION.* THE
Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence appropriately gives the first place in the series of monographs he proposes to issue once a year to an essay on the English monasteries on the eve of the Dissolution by a former pupil, Alexander Savine, now Professor of History in the University of Moscow. This essay was originally published as part of a Russian thesis, but Professor Vinogradoff has rightly thought that "a painstaking and critical investigation of the principal source of our knowledge of property held by the Church before the Dissolution" ought not to remain inaccessible to English readers. It is a pleasant incident of the growing friendship between the two countries that an examination of a little-known document relating to English history should be undertaken by a Russian Professor and intro- duced to us by a countryman of his own who is himself a Professor in an English University. The document in question is the Valor Ecclesiastic:us, the record of the Returns made by the Commissioners appointed under the Act giving Firstfruite and Tenths to the Crown. In 1533 Convocation had petitioned the King for the repeal of the Papal Annates, in the belief possibly that the Church would be allowed to retain for her own use the money thus set free. Three years later they gained a clearer view of the Royal purpose in granting their prayer. By the 26 H. VIII. " the King not only got possession of the Papal Annates, but imposed them upon all spiritual benefices, and added thereto as a fixed tax the Tenth of all the net income of the English Church."
The business of the Commissioners was to ascertain the annual value of each benefice, deducting from it all payments in the nature of fees. Professor Savine does not claim any absolute value for the Valor Ecclesiastiens. Its figures have been attacked on opposite grounds, and undoubtedly there are serious omissions here and there. But on the whole he considers " that an attitude of confidence towards the Great Survey of 1535 is more justifiable than one of scepticism," and that the returns he has examined may fairly be taken as the basis of his inquiry into monastio economy on the eve of the Dissolution.
The most interesting feature in this inquiry is the area of the monastic lands. This has been variously estimated at from one-tenth to seven-tenths of the whole kingdom. The larger figure may be at once dismissed; the smaller is probably too low. Professor Savine prefers to take the proportion as at least one-sixth. But even this figure, precise as it appears, is really very indefinite. The lands that were said to belong • Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History. Edited by Paul Vinogradar. Vol. I. Oxford: at the Clarendon Preen. [12i. ed. set.] to the monasteries were held by very various titles. On many estates the monasteries could only claim the tithe, and yet these estates seem to have been reckoned as belonging to them. Of other lands the monasteries were only co-owners or co-tenants. Then the acreage is for the most part inferred from the income; but monasteries possessed other property salt-works, mines, fisheries—the income from which cannot easily be expressed in acres. Even if these sources of revenue be left out, and only land under cultivation taken, the incomes per acre yielded by arable or pasture or woodland or mere waste would be very different. Upon these points the Valor Ecelesiasticus gives hardly any information. The larger part, however, of Professor Savine's essay is devoted to the non-agricultural income of the monasteries. In this the first place belongs to the income derived from Cathedrals and parish churches which had passed into the hands of the monks. A very large number of benefices belonged entirely to the monasteries ; others paid only a part of their tithes or a fixed sum of money. The transfer of these monastic tithes to the Crown proved an easy business. The monks had left the collection of them largely to laymen, either the bailiff of the nearest manor or a special lay receiver appointed by themselves. The reason of this was that where the greater part of the revenue was spent elsewhere, the parishioners paid tithe just as they paid rent. "The idea that they were parting with a portion of their crops to satisfy their own spiritual needs was gradually effaced from their minds," and where tithe was collected for a distant monasteryby the same laymen who collected the lord's rent, they "grew accustomed to the lay control of the 'spiritual' revenue." More and more, too, it had become customary to lease monastic estates to laymen. In this case the farmer " stood between the monks and the parish ; he collected the parochial receipts for himself, and naturally tried to collect more than he had to pay to the monks." This system of middlemen proved as disastrous to the monks in England as it afterwards proved to landlords in Ireland. It broke up the connexion between owner and payer, and when the storm came left the owner helpless. The transfer of tithe from the Church to the Crown, and its subsequent sale to the laity, may easily have passed almost unnoticed when the change in the manner of collection and in the disposition of the money when collected was so slight. The main source of monastic incomes was the land, either in hand or let to tenants. The uses made of the land were greatly limited by statute. The monks "were not allowed to work for the market or for profit in any way. The only motive of their agricultural activity was to be production for the consumption of themselves or their guests." There are occasional notices of the working of minerals; but the gains from this source are almost infinitesimal. Corn-mills form a more important item. The profit derived from them was usually in the nature of a monopoly. Other sources of revenue are the letting of stalls and booths in the markets, the market-tolls, and the "curial" income derived from fees paid in the Manor Courts; The best evidence of the manner of life in the monasteries is the number of their servants. At the Dissolution the Nunnery of Grace Dieu, in Leicestershire, had fifteen nuns and a Prioress and forty-eight other people engaged in the work of the house. In fifty-one monasteries there were six hundred and thirty religious and nineteen hundred and twenty-seven laymen. The proportion was greater in monasteries than in convents. The nuns had fewer servants than the monks, and "it was evidently only in a few of the rich houses that they could live like great ladies and do no manual work at all." At St. Peter's, Gloucester, there were eighty-six servants to thirty monks. Even after the staff was reduced, at the time of the surrender, the twenty-seven Canons were allowed to retain a " elerke of the kitchen, fowle cater, cooke, under- coke, two scolyons, painter, underpainter, waterman, butler, underbutler, baker, underbaker, brner, underbruer, porter at the hall door and verger, underporter, common barber eleemosiner." It will be seen, however, that this list includes many who rendered services in no sense personal.
Professor Savine does not rate the social influence of the monasteries as highly as some Roman Catholic historians. He thinks that Dr. Gasquet's picture of the condition of England before and after the Dissolution "is more typical of the democratic Roman Catholicism of the present day than of the English monasteries of the sixteenth century." The
idea that the monasteries were democratic institutions had no foundation except in individual cases. The monks belonged to a variety of classes, and each reflected the
views of the particular class from which they were drawn. The great monasteries were, for the most part, aristo-
cratic establishments whose Abbots sat in the House of Lords. Next to these came monasteries resembling the oldest Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. Both these types would naturally sympathise with the upper and middle classes. Below them came the poorer houses in which the monks, " judged by the standard of income, were on a par with the average small farmer." Any active sym- pathy with democratic ideas in any of these houses would be
as rare as in the same classes outside. With the friars no doubt the case was different. They led for the most part the life of the working man. They understood his feelings, shared his hardships, and probably were often touched by the revolutionary temper which manifested itself from time to time during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We shall not attempt to judge between the Professor and Dr. Gasquet ;
but no one who is interested in the recurrent controversy as to the economic character of the English Reformation can afford to neglect the evidence drawn in this volume from the Valor Ecclesiasticus. Nor is it easy to disregard Professor Savine's not unreasonable conclusion as to the inevitable attitude of the Roman Catholic Church in critical times :—
" It undoubtedly expressed sympathy with the masses and the poor, but at the same time it continued to be on good terms with the few and the rich. It enjoined simplicity, poverty, privation, but at the same time it knew how to find excuse for riches and luxury. In the great drama of class warfare it was compelled to shift its fighting place or to stand between the hostile camps."
Previous page
