THE SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES.* THI8 book is the work

of an English monk, and is dedicated to the Pope as "the first-fruit of work undertaken in obedience to his command." We must confess that we began to read it with some dread, knowing how often " historical " works relating to the Reformation turn out to be simply stuffed with stale polemics. We may say at once that Dom Gasquet has not inflicted on us one of these overgrown pamphlets. We think his bias occasionally misleads him (no doubt he would say as much of us), and we shall have to differ from him on some points of importance; but we must recognise that his work is really history, the result of studies that have given him the right to form an independent judgment, although they may not have added much to the material used by his predecessors in the same field.

In dealing with the suppression of the monasteries, two questions naturally arise,—as to the need of suppression, and the way in which it was accomplished. With regard to the latter, the friend of the monasteries has an easy course, and his chief difficulty is in finding fresh terms of reproof for conduct that has been already so severely handled, since here there is no real difference of opinion between those who approve the suppression and those who denounce it. The whole operation was carried out in so disgraceful a manner, that individual or personal scandals, numerous as they are, seem scarcely worth attention in presence of the astounding waste and greed that governed the business. The beginning was fair, as shown in the Colleges of Jesus and St. John's at Cambridge, and in the magnificent undertakings of Wolsey at Ipswich and Oxford ; but when the great Minister was dis- graced, Henry's thought was not of outdoing his liberality, but of plundering his foundations. One might make some excuse for this, if the money had been needed for any serious purpose,—for defence against invasion, or even for foreign war. As it was, the vast endowments were simply squandered or muddled away, and the merest fragments doled out for the educational and charitable ends which had been put forward as one of the main objects of the spoliation.

Thus far we can go with Dom Gasquet, but we come to the more interesting point whether the monasteries invited sup- pression; and his judgment is, "that the monasteries, up to the day of their fall, had not forfeited the good-will, the veneration, the affection of the English people." He will not say that they had maintained their primitive fervour, but he considers that they were not seriously corrupt, and were healthful and useful members of the body politic. In deciding this question, much must depend on the weight we attach to .the comperta, or reports of the Commis- sioners sent round to investigate the state of the monasteries. Our older historians, and some recent ones, not only accept their reports as true, but take them to be merely samples from a large mass of the same character, and in consequence indulge in a wholesale condemnation which the text of the reports does not justify. Lately there has been a reaction, and the fashion is now to discredit the visitors, and treat their reports as utterly valueless. Cromwell, we are told, wanted evidence against the monks, and his servants found what they were sent to look for. Moreover, their letters show them to be coarse-minded, foul-mouthed, unscrupulous men, who bullied the monks, and took money from the Abbots both for them- selves and their employer. All this has some truth in it, and in reading their reports, allowance must be made for their readiness to believe evil and to accept charges without suffi- cient proof. But we think any one who goes through the comperta with an unbiassed mind will come to the conclusion that the statements are made in good faith. Against many monasteries no charge is made ; against others qualifying circumstances are set down, as that of two incontinent nuns, one was so before profession, while a distinction is continually to be noted between charges and confessions,—a distinction which Dom Gasquet disregards when he translates fatentur "are reported." No doubt the visitors were not gentle in their ways. At Leicester, Layton writes that he is going to charge the monks with sundry vices, beginning at the grossest, to see if he cannot obtain some confes- sion. Mr. Gairdner suggests that, in some such eager, • Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries: an Attempt to Illustrate rat. History of their Suppression. By Francis Aidan Gasquet, Monk of the Order of St. Benedia-. sometime Prior of fit. Gregory's Monastery, Downside, Bath. Vol. I. London : John Hodges. 1888.

silence might be taken as acknowledgment of guilt ; but no instances sUppert the suggestion, and as a means of obtaining false confessions, the plan seems to us marked by an ingenuous simplicity which would render it as useless as it was unpleasant. As a general rule, we may suppose that the visitors did not arrive at a monastery without some knowledge of its character, and some hints, from the gossip of the neigh- bourhood, of the direction their inquiries should take. What legal forms were observed we have no means of telling (Mr. Gairdner suggests that the visitors pursued the old methods of inquiry at episcopal visitations) ; but we know from the pace of their work that the judgments must have been summary, and may often have been unjust. On the other hand, we cannot doubt that there was some foundation for the suspicion, often repeated, that the monks were confederate and had agreed to divulge nothing.

Dom Gasquet sets against the report of the visitors the records of the episcopal visitations, which, he says, do not show much corruption in the monasteries. Such visitations, he says,

were made in accordance with formal notice, and comprised "a secret and individual examination of the members of the community." All complaints and suggestions were listened to and summed up in the comperta, and a final judgment was delivered in the injunctions of the Bishop.

If immorality was disclosed, it was duly punished, and of this we have an instance in the penance (not, to our mind, very severe) inflicted on an offending nun. It is much to be

wished that the records of these visitations were printed, and we are glad to see that Dom G-asquet's mention of them has led to the publication of one (in the Abbey of Thome) in the current number of the English Historical Review. While we

do not doubt that they would contain much matter of interest, we do not think that their evidence as to the morality of the monks would be final. When an abbot was trying to do his duty, the Bishop would no doubt assist him in enforcing dis- cipline; but when the government was lax, little was likely to come of the visitation, unless, indeed, matters were so bad as to be a public scandal. A monk would need much courage to accuse his superiors. Only very clear and strong evidence would remove dignitaries of importance ; and if they remained, their delator's position would be at least uncomfortable. Dom Gasquet furnishes us with an instance in an account of the visitation of the Abbey of Wigmore :—

"We have," he says, "in the injunctions for Wigmore, entered in the register of Bishop Fox, issued in the spring of 1537, an in- dependent judgment as to the state of the abbey and the character of its superior. As to the charges of incontinence against him, Dr. Hugh Coren, the Vicar-General, who held the visitation, appears to have reported mere imprudence on his part. The Bishop only enjoins him to avoid being too much with women. That no case had been proved against him, however, appears tolerably certain from the insertion of the clause 'if there be any' (si glue sint) into the body of this injunction. He is ordered to let the brethren know whether he has redeemed the jewels which he has pledged,' and to restore them to the monastery. The usual regulations are made for the yearly accounts and for the custody of the monastic deeds. The Abbot is warned to treat his subjects with mildness and not too roughly, and the subjects, on their part, are warned to be obedient to their Abbot and to look upon the virtue of chastity as the gem of the religious life. Finally, the Abbot's chaplain, Richard Cubley, about whom Lee had complained in his letter, is ordered to attend the choir like the rest of the Canons, and to desist from hunting and other unmonastic occupations. Thus, after a careful examination, little appears against the character of Wigmore and its Abbot, John Smarte."

Dom Gasquet is lenient—to an Abbot. It seems to us that a gentleman who was imprudent with women, even if nothing worse was proved, who pledged the monastery jewels for his own uses, and encouraged his chaplain to hunt instead of

attending the choir, was not likely to stir up devotion in his subjects. We may judge that so much at least was made out, when we find this sharp monition issued to a prelate of high position, both Abbot and Bishop, as was John Smarte. And when we note the admonition about treating his subjects roughly, we wonder what sort of a time John Lee had in April, 1537.

After all, the list of vices and disorders, however useful as weapons to an opponent, have really little weight in the matter. It was not shown in the reports that the mass of the monks were vicious, or that most of tile houses were disorderly.

Many of the vices charged were purely personal, and such as the most devout and energetic Abbot could not hope com- pletely to suppress. Even at its times of highest achievement, monasticism, trying to foster a superhuman saintliness, had always been dogged by a shadow of bestial vice. So, too, even when the monastic impulse was at its height, and new Orders vied with each other in asceticism, there were always abbots and convents that had yielded to sloth and worldliness. But then, in spite of failure and shortcoming, there was always an ideal, recognised not merely by the monks, but by the mass of the people. In the early days of the Cistercians and kindred Orders, knight, burgher, and peasant looked up to the true monk as the highest type of saintliness ; and in consequence, men of every class were led by their noblest impulses to join • the monastic army. New bodies swarmed out of the older ones, needing but little endow/tent, since they were ready to work for the scanty living they required. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries all this was altered. The monks might be, and often were, respectable members of society ; in culture and decency of life they were probably above the average country gentleman. Though they did not act (as is sometimes absurdly represented) as a kind of Providence to the poor, making a Poor-Law needless, they were easier land- lords and more generous to their dependants than the private landowners. One thing was wanting in them, and that the chief thing ; they no longer represented the aspira- tions in which the Orders had their rise. Holiness was no longer the attraction to the •monastery, but convenience or comfort. Naturally, under these conditions the endowments did not go so far, and the convents, with far smaller numbers than of old, were mostly in debt. Dom Gasquet apologises for them on account of the ruin caused by the Black Death in the fourteenth century, and the civil wars of the fifteenth. We think he has exaggerated the mischief due to these mis- fortunes; but it is unnecessary to discuss this in detail, when we remember that at no time did monasteries increase more rapidly than in the turbulent and miserable days of Stephen, when certainly England was not better off than under Henry VII. This alone is enough to show that what was lacking was fervour and devotion, not population or wealth.

In fact, the monasteries were somewhat in the condition that the City Guilds are now,—the causes which led to their existence had ceased to act, and they had become a property rather than a trust.

The change was widely felt, as was shown in the dissolution of the alien priories, and in occasional later suppressions.

Wolsey was the first to carry out the work on a large scale, and there is no reason to suppose that in so doing he was actuated by any dislike to the existing Church system. Rather he may have thought that he was strengthening it by turning

to useful and holy purposes money that was running to waste. Dom Gasquet bitterly classes him with Henry as a robber ; but it was not till some time after his fall that Henry's

mingled lavishness and greed began to work their full mischief. We note, as characteristic, that Dom Gasquet believes the Maid of Kent to have been inspired, and even defends the truth of her prophecy that Henry would cease to be-King in

seven months, on the ground that, having been excommuni- cated, he was then de jure no longer King. When our author's

standpoint is so far from ours, it seems useless to discuss differences in detail ; but we do not think that any belief justifies a writer in repeating the exploded scandal that Catharine of Arragon was poisoned, "if not at the instigation, at least with the connivance of Anne Boleyn." There is no reason whatever for doubting that Catharine died a natural death, and it is superfluous uncharity to keep alive the

foolish gossip of the day. Lastly, we would recommend Dom Gasquet to correct the quotation from More's Utopia on p. 17.

What can have induced him to admit to his pages such a sentence as this?—" So that as an unsatiable glutton and a direful plague of the country, the fields being laid all in one, some thousands of acres were fenced only with one hedge." It may be hard to Dom Gasquet to be indebted to Gilbert Burnet ; but if this is his translation, he had better con- descend to borrow Burnet's.