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* Coke’s 4th Inst. fol. 44. ** Dugdale’s Warwickshire, p. 800. *** Fuller.
Besides the lands possessed by the monasteries, the regular clergy enjoyed a considerable part of the benefices of England, and of the tithes annexed to them; and these were also at this time transferred to the crown, and by that means passed into the hands of laymen; an abuse which many zealous churchmen regarded as the most criminal sacrilege. The monks were formerly much at their ease in England, and enjoyed revenues which exceeded the regular and stated expense of the house. We read of the abbey of Chertsey, in Surrey, which possessed seven hundred and forty-four pounds a year, though it contained only fourteen monks: that of Furnese, in the county of Lincoln, was valued at nine hundred and sixty pounds a year, and contained but thirty.[*] In order to dissipate their revenues, and support popularity, the monks lived in a hospitable manner; and besides the poor maintained from their offals, there were many decayed gentlemen who passed their lives in travelling from convent to convent, and were entirely subsisted at the tables of the friars. By this hospitality, as much as by their own inactivity, did the convents prove nurseries of idleness; but the king, not to give offence by too sudden an innovation, bound the new proprietors of abbey lands to support the ancient hospitality. But this engagement was fulfilled in very few places, and for a very short time.
* Burnet, vol. i p. 237.
It is easy to imagine the indignation with which the intelligence of all these acts of violence was received at Rome; and how much the ecclesiastics of that court, who had so long kept the world in subjection by high-sounding epithets and by holy execrations, would now vent their rhetoric against the character and conduct of Henry. The pope was at last incited to publish the bull which had been passed against that monarch; and in a public manner he delivered over his soul to the devil, and his dominions to the first invader. Libels were dispersed, in which he was anew compared to the most furious persecutors in antiquity; and the preference was now given to their side: he had declared war with the dead, whom the pagans themselves respected; was at open hostility with Heaven; and had engaged in professed enmity with the whole host of saints and angels. Above all, he was often reproached with his resemblance to the emperor Julian, whom, it was said, he imitated in his apostasy and learning, though he fell short of him in morals. Henry could distinguish in some of these libels the style and animosity of his kinsman Pole; and he was thence incited to vent his rage, by every possible expedient, on that famous cardinal.
Reginald de la Pole, or Reginald Pole, was descended from the royal family, being fourth son of the countess of Salisbury, daughter of the duke of Clarence. He gave in early youth indications of that fine genius and generous disposition by which, during his whole life, he was so much distinguished and Henry, having conceived great friendship for him, intended to raise him to the highest ecclesiastical dignities; and, as a pledge of future favors, he conferred on him the deanery of Exeter,[*] the better to support him in his education. Pole was carrying on his studies in the university of Paris at the time when the king solicited the suffrages of that learned body in favor of his divorce; but though applied to by the English agent, he declined taking any part in the affair. Henry bore this neglect with more temper than was natural to him; and he appeared unwilling, on that account, to renounce all friendship with a person whose virtues and talents, he hoped, would prove useful as well as ornamental to his court and kingdom. He allowed him still to possess his deanery, and gave him permission to finish his studies at Padua: he even paid him some court, in order to bring him into his measures; and wrote to him, while in that university, desiring him to give his opinion freely with regard to the late measures taken in England for abolishing the papal authority. Pole had now contracted an intimate friendship with all persons eminent for dignity or merit in Italy—Sadolet, Bembo, and other revivers of true taste and learning; and he was moved by these connections, as well as by religious zeal, to forget, in some respect, the duty which he owed to Henry, his benefactor and his sovereign. He replied by writing a treatise of the Unity of the Church, in which he inveighed against the king’s supremacy, his divorce, his second marriage; and he even exhorted the emperor to revenge on him the injury done to the imperial family and to the Catholic cause. Henry, though provoked beyond measure at this outrage, dissembled his resentment; and he sent a message to Pole, desiring him to return to England, in order to explain certain passages in his book which he found somewhat obscure and difficult. Pole was on his guard against this insidious invitation; and was determined to remain in Italy, where he was universally beloved.
The pope and emperor thought themselves obliged to provide for a man of Pole’s eminence and dignity, who, in support of their cause, had sacrificed all his pretensions to fortune in his own country. He was created a cardinal; and though he took not higher orders than those of a deacon, he was sent legate into Flanders about the year 1536.[**]
* Goodwin’s Annals ** Herbert.
Henry was sensible that Pole’s chief intention in choosing that employment, was to foment the mutinous disposition of the English Catholics; and he therefore remonstrated in so vigorous a manner with the queen of Hungary, regent of the Low Countries, that she dismissed the legate, without allowing him to exercise his functions. The enmity which he bore to Pole was now as open as it was violent; and the cardinal, on his part, kept no further measures in his intrigues against Henry. He is even suspected of having aspired to the crown, by means of a marriage with the lady Mary; and the king was every day more alarmed by informations which he received of the correspondence maintained in England by that fugitive. Courtney, marquis of Exeter, had entered into a conspiracy with him; Sir Edward Nevil, brother to the lord Abergavenny; Sir Nicholas Carew, master of horse, and knight of the garter; Henry de la Pole, Lord Montacute, and Sir Geoffrey de la Pole, brothers to the cardinal. These persons were indicted, and tried, and convicted, before Lord Audley, who presided in the trial as high steward; they were all executed, except Sir Geoffrey de la Pole, who was pardoned; and he owed this grace to his having first carried to the king secret intelligence of the conspiracy. We know little concerning the justice or iniquity of the sentence pronounced against these men: we only know, that the condemnation of a man who was at that time prosecuted by the court, forms no presumption of his guilt; though, as no historian of credit mentions in the present case any complaint occasioned by these trials, we may presume that sufficient evidence was produced against the marquis of Exeter and his associates.[*]
* Herbert in Kennet, p. 216.
1538.
THE rough hand of Henry seemed well adapted for rending asunder those bands by which the ancient superstition had fastened itself on the kingdom; and though, after renouncing the pope’s supremacy and suppressing monasteries, most of the political ends of reformation were already attained, few people expected that he would stop at those innovations. The spirit of opposition, it was thought, would carry him to the utmost extremities against the church of Rome; and lead him to declare war against the whole doctrine and worship, as well as discipline, of that mighty hierarchy. He had formerly appealed from the pope to a general council; but now, when a general council was summoned to meet at Mantua, he previously renounced all submission to it, as summoned by the pope, and lying entirely under subjection to that spiritual usurper. He engaged his clergy to make a declaration to the like purpose; and he had prescribed to them many other deviations from ancient tenets and practices. Cranmner took advantage of every opportunity to carry him on in this course; and while Queen Jane lived, who favored the reformers, he had, by means of her insinuation and address, been successful in his endeavors. After her death, Gardiner, who was returned from his embassy to France, kept the king more in suspense; and by feigning an unlimited submission to his will, was frequently able to guide him to his own purposes. Fox, bishop of Hereford, had supported Cranmer in his schemes for a more thorough reformation; but his death had made way for the promotion of Bonner, who, though he had hitherto seemed a furious enemy to the court of Rome, was determined to sacrifice every thing to present interest, and had joined the confederacy of Gardiner and the partisans of the old religion. Gardiner himself, it was believed, had secretly entered into measures with the pope, and even with the emperor; and in concert with these powers, he endeavored to preserve, as much as possible, the ancient faith and worship.
