The fall of Sir Thomas More left Thomas Cromwell the chief power
under the king, and for seven years he devoted his great administrative
abilities to making his royal patron absolute ruler in church and
state.
Cromwell, Earl of Essex, was of lowly origin, but his energy and
shrewdness, together with the experience acquired by extensive travels,
commanded the attention of Cardinal Wolsey, who took him into his
service. He was successively merchant, scrivener, money-lender, lawyer,
member of parliament, master of jewels, chancellor, master of rolls,
secretary of state, vicar-general in ecclesiastical affairs, lord privy
seal, dean of Wells and high chamberlain.
Close intimacy with Wolsey enabled Cromwell to grasp the full
significance of Henry's ambition, and his desire to please his royal
master, coupled with his own love of power, prompted him to throw
himself with characteristic energy into the work of centralizing all
authority in the hands of the king and of his prime minister. In
secular affairs, this had already been accomplished. The task before
him was to subdue the church to the throne, to execute which he became
the protector of Protestantism and the foe of Rome. Green says: “He had
an absolute faith in the end he was pursuing, and he simply hews his
way to it, as a woodman hews his way through the forest, axe in hand.”
Froude says: “To him ever belonged the rare privilege of genius to see
what other men could not see, and therefore he was condemned to rule a
generation which hated him, to do the will of God and to perish in his
success. He pursued an object, the excellence of which, as his mind saw
it, transcended all other considerations, the freedom of England and
the destruction of idolatry, and those who, from any motive, noble or
base, pious or impious, crossed his path, he crushed and passed on over
their bodies.”
There seems to be a general agreement that Cromwell was not a
Protestant. His struggle against the temporal power of the pope
fostered the reformatory movement, but that did not make Cromwell a
Protestant any more than it did his master, Henry VIII. Foxe describes
Cromwell “as a valiant soldier and captain of Christ,” but Maitland
retorts “that Foxe forgot, if he ever knew, who was the father of
lies.”
Without doubt Cromwell ruled with an iron hand. He was guilty of
accepting bribes, and, as some maintain, “was the great patron of
ribaldry, and the protector of the low jester and the filthy.” But,
sadly enough, that is no serious charge against one in his times. It is
said that Henry used to say, when a knave was dealt to him in a game of
cards, “Ah, I have a Cromwell!” Francis Aidan Gasquet, a Benedictine
monk, in his valuable work on “Henry VIII. and the English
Monasteries,” says of Cromwell: “No single minister in England ever
exercised such extensive authority, none ever rose so rapidly, and no
one has ever left behind him a name covered with greater infamy and
disgrace.”
In 1535, Henry, as supreme head of the church, appointed Cromwell as
his “Vicegerent, Vicar-General and Principal Commissary in causes
ecclesiastical.” His immediate duty was to enforce recognition of the
king's supremacy. The monks and the clergy were now to be coerced into
submission. A royal commission, consisting of Legh, Layton, Ap Rice,
London and various subordinates, was appointed to visit the monasteries
and to report on their condition.
Henry Griffin says in his chronicle: “I was well acquainted with all
the commissioners; indeed I knew them well; they were very smart men,
who understood the value of money, for they had tasted of adversity. I
think the priests were the worst of the whole party, although they had
a good reputation at the time, but they were wicked, deceitful men. I
am sorry to speak thus of my own order, but I speak God's truth.” “It
is a dreadful undertaking,” said Lord Clinton. “Ah! but I have great
faith in the tact and judgment of the men I am about to select,”
retorted Cromwell.
Dr. John London was a base tool of Cromwell, and a miserable
exponent of the reform movement. He joined Gardiner in burning
heretics, was convicted of adultery at Oxford, was pilloried for
perjury and died in jail. The other royal agents were also questionable
characters. Dean Layton wrote the most disgusting letters to Cromwell.
Once he informed his patron that he prayed regularly for him, prefacing
this information with the remark, “I will now tell you something to
make you laugh.”
Father Gasquet sums up his view of the commissioners in the words of
Edmund Burke: “It is not with much credulity that I listen to any when
they speak ill of those whom they are going to plunder. I rather
suspect that vices are feigned, or exaggerated, when profit is looked
for in the punishment—an enemy is a bad witness; a robber worse.”
Burke indignantly declares: “The inquiry into the moral character of
the religious houses was a mere pretext, a complete delusion, an
insidious and predetermined foray of wholesale and heartless plunder.”
Such are the protests from the defenders of the monasteries even
before a hearing is granted. “What,” say they, “believe such perjurers,
adulterers and gamblers; men forsworn to bring in a bad report; men who
were selected because they were worthless characters who could be
relied on to return false charges against an institution loved by the
people?”
The commissioners began their work at Oxford, in September, 1535.
The work was vigorously pushed. On reaching the door of a monastery,
they demanded admittance; if it was not granted, they entered by
breaking down the gate with an axe. They then summoned the monks before
them, and plied them with questions. An inventory was taken of
everything; nothing escaped their searching eyes. When the king decided
to suppress the lesser monasteries, and ordered a new visitation of the
larger ones, they seized and sold all they could lay their hands on;
“stained glass, ironwork, bells, altar-cloths, candles, books, beads,
images, capes, brewing-tubs, brass bolts, spits for cooking, kitchen
utensils, plates, basins, all were turned into money.” Many valuable
books were destroyed; jewels and gold and silver clasps were torn from
old volumes, and the paper sold as waste; parchment manuscripts were
used to scour tubs and grease boots. Out of the wreck about a hundred
and thirty thousand manuscripts have been saved. It must be admitted
that the commissioners were not delicate in their labors; that they
insulted many nuns, robbed the monks, violated the laws of decency and
humanity, and needlessly excited the rage of the people and outraged
the religious sentiments of the Catholics. They even used sacred
altar-cloths for blankets on their horses, and rode across the country
decorated in priestly and monkish garments. There seems to be some
ground for the statement that Henry was ignorant, or at least not fully
informed, of their unwarranted violence and gross sacrilege. The abbey
of Glastonbury was one of the oldest and finest cloisters in England.
It was a majestic pile of buildings in the midst of gardens and groves
covering sixty acres; its aisles were vocal with the chanting of monks,
who marched in gorgeous processions among the tall, gray pillars. The
exterior of the buildings was profusely decorated with sculpture;
monarchs, temple knights, mitered abbots, martyrs and apostles stood
for centuries in their niches of stone while princes came and passed
away, while kingdoms rose and fell. The nobles and bishops of the realm
were laid to rest beneath the altars around which many generations of
monks had assembled to praise and to pray. The royal commissioners one
day appeared before the walls. The abbot, Richard Whiting, who was then
eighty-four years of age, was at Sharphorn, another residence of the
community. He was brought back and questioned. At night when he was in
bed, they searched his study for letters and books, and they claimed to
have found a manuscript of Whiting's arguments against the divorce of
the king and Queen Catharine; it had never been published; they did not
know whether the venerable abbot had such intent or not. Stephen
declares the spies themselves brought the book into the library.
However, the abbot was chained to a cart and taken to London. The abbey
had immense wealth; every Wednesday and Friday it fed and lodged three
hundred boys; it was esteemed very highly in the neighborhood and
received large donations from the knights in the vicinity. The abbot
was accused of treason for concealing the sacred vessels; he was old,
deaf, and sick, but was allowed no counsel. He asked permission to take
leave of his monks, and many little orphans; Russell and Layton only
laughed. The people heard of his captivity and determined “to deliver
or avenge” their favorite, but Russell hanged half a dozen of them and
declared that “law, order and loyalty were vindicated.” Whiting's body
was quartered, and the pieces sent to Wells, Bath, Chester and
Bridgewater, while his head, adorned with his gray hairs clotted by
blood, was hung over the abbey gate.