1536: The Year That Changed Henry VIII (14 page)

The Dissolution of the Monasteries

The first religious innovation of 1536 was the Act for the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries. In 1535, Thomas Cromwell had directed and ordered royal commissioners to examine under oath all monks, nuns, clergy and ecclesiastical officials, in order to produce a catalogue of the annual income of every ecclesiastical benefice and monastic house in the country. These detailed investigations were collected together as the
Valor Ecclesiasticus
. Before they were finished, in late 1535, Cromwell ordered a second visitation of monastic houses, which sought to identify vice, laxity and the practice of ‘superstitions’ and ‘abuses’, such as the reverence of suspect relics, shrines, pilgrimages and sexual corruption among the monks. It is no surprise that they found what they were looking for. The private questioning of individual monks and nuns about the leadership of the abbots, the adherence to their Rule and the sincerity of their vocation and their chastity by determined, worldly-wise lawyers inevitably produced the scandal and rumour that the commissioners expected to find. Very few were given the glowing references of Catesby Nunnery, where the commissioners reported that they had found ‘the house in very perfect order, the prioress a wise, discreet and religious woman, with nine devout nuns under her, as good as we have ever seen… If any religious house is to stand, none is more meet for the King’s charity and pity than Catesby’. The apparent offences and superstitions of other nuns and monks were listed remorselessly in a document called the
Compendium Compertorum
, alongside the name of their founder and annual rent:

…Lichfield Cathedral. –
Here a pilgrimage is held to St Chad. Annual rent, 400l. Founder, the King.

Monastery of Repyngdon
, alias
Repton.
– Thomas Rede, sub-prior and three others named as sodomites
per voluntaries polluciones.
Superstition: a pilgrimage is made to St Guthlac and his bell, which they put upon people’s heads to alleviate headache…

Garadon. –
5 names noted as sodomites, one with 10 boys. 3 of the monks seek release from religion. Foundress, the Countess of Oxford…

Grace Dieu Monialium. –
2 nuns charged with incontinence, with note “
pepererunt
”. Superstition: they hold in reverence the girdle and part of the tunic of St Francis, which are supposed to help lying-in women.

Nuns of St. Mary Derby. –
Superstition: they have part of the shirt of St Thomas, which is reverenced among pregnant women…

Shelford
. – 3 sodomites, 3 guilty of incontinence, 3 desire release from religion. They venerate the girdle and milk of St Mary and part of a candle which it is believed she carried at the time of her purification…

Kaldham Monialium
. – Here they have part of Holy Cross and a finger of St Stephen, which is lent to lying-in women…

The extraordinary scepticism of these notes, which treats monastic devotion to relics as subjects fit for mockery, is only surpassed by the prurient focus on sexual misconduct. The category ‘sodomites’ may have been designed, intentionally, to blacken the reputation of the monks, as to the vast majority was added the appellation
per voluntaries polluciones
(‘by voluntary pollutions’ or self-abuse), which implies masturbation, not homosexuality. The commissioners also left each monastery with a strict list of injunctions on how to conduct themselves in future.
⁶

These commissioners worked up until February 1536, but even before their work was completed, their accumulating evidence was sufficient basis for the king and Cromwell to present a bill to parliament requiring all religious houses with an annual income of less than £200 to be dissolved. The bill, which became law in March 1536, focused its attack on the ‘manifest sin, vicious, carnal and abominable living [that] is daily used and committed among the little and small abbeys, priories and other religious houses of monks, canon and nuns’ and how their ‘vicious living shamelessly increases’. The lands, goods and property of the suppressed monasteries would pass directly to the crown, via a newly created government department called the Court of Augmentations. Chapuys commented on 1 April,

the King and Council are busy setting officers for the provision and exaction of the revenues of the churches which are to be suppressed; which, it is said, will be in number above 300, and are expected to bring in a revenue of 120,000 ducats. The silver plate, chalices and reliquaries, the church ornaments, bells, lead from the roofs, cattle and furniture belonging to them, which will come to the King, will be of inestimable amount.

Chapuys was right in that the ‘lesser’ religious houses totalled nearly 300 – 191 monasteries and 103 nunneries. It is sobering to read the pleas written to Cromwell by abbots asking for clemency or politely declining the opportunity to resign their offices. One John Shepey, abbot of Faversham, to Cromwell’s suggestion he resign his charge because of his age and debility, responded that he ‘trusts he is not yet so far enfeebled but he can govern as well as ever’ and explained that while it might be to his comfort, his resignation and the consequent taxes would put his house into ruin and ‘Christ forbid that I should so heinously offend against God and the King as to further the ruin of so godly and ancient a foundation’. Chapuys commented in 1537 that it was a

lamentable thing to see a legion of monks and nuns who have been chased from their monasteries wandering miserably hither and thither seeking means to live, and several honest men have told me that what with monks, nuns and persons dependent on the monasteries suppressed, there were over 20,000 who knew not how to live.

Other letters to Cromwell came from those coveting monastic lands and hoping to get a share of the spoils.
⁷

The real question is why the monasteries were attacked in this way. It is certainly true that their great wealth made them an obvious target for a revenue-hungry king. It is hardly laudable that Henry installed the church windows of Rewley Abbey outside Oxford in his bowling alley at Hampton Court. The monasteries were also suspected of treasonous tendencies, being tainted by their allegiance to a foreign ruler, the Pope. Equivocation towards the monasteries perhaps also represented Henry VIII’s ambiguity towards the idea of purgatory. One of the primary roles of monasteries was to pray for the souls of the dead in purgatory but Henry VIII’s official statements from 1536 would start to cast doubt on this belief. Until late 1536, though, there are reasons to believe that the dissolution of the smaller monasteries was also positively intended to bring about religious reform. The act of 1536 specifically refers to monks and nuns moving from the smaller monastic houses into ‘such honourable great monasteries in this realm wherein good religion is observed’, suggesting that a wholesale destruction of monasticism was not intended and that morally upright monasteries were thought to exist. The act was the first deployment of the power of the supremacy to change the religious landscape of England by reforming abuses and rectifying vice.
⁸

The Ten Articles and Royal Injunctions

In July 1536, the Ten Articles were agreed and published. These Articles were a quickly composed yet authoritative statement of doctrine for the new Anglican Church. According to a letter Henry sent to his bishops in November 1536, the Articles were largely conceived by the king himself. Like many of Henry’s later proclamations, they show a preoccupation with bringing unity and concord to his kingdom. They were entitled ‘articles devised by the King’s Highness Majesty, to establish Christian quietness and unity among us, and to avoid contentious opinions’. The preamble explained that they were written because ‘of late, to our great regret, [we are] credibly advertized of such diversity in opinions, as have grown and sprung in this realm’. In order to avoid ‘the danger of souls’ and ‘outward inquietness’, after much pain, study, labour and travail, the king and his clergy had agreed which matters are ‘commanded of God and are necessary to our salvation’. It was a striking new implementation of the king’s prerogative as Supreme Head to assert his competence with his clergy to determine precisely what beliefs and practices were necessary for the salvation of souls.
⁹

The doctrine was an odd mix of conservative and evangelical. The first noticeable feature of this doctrinal statement was the recognition of only three sacraments: baptism, Eucharist and penance. This was in contrast to the Roman Catholic Church, which recognized seven sacraments. On the other hand, the articles stated, in line with traditional belief, that baptism was necessary for attaining everlasting life, because infants were born in original sin. Penance, that is, confession and absolution by priests and the performance of good works, was ‘necessary for man’s salvation’. For ‘although Christ and his death be the sufficient oblation, sacrifice, satisfaction and recompense… yet all men truly penitent, contrite and confessed must needs also bring forth the fruits of penance… and also must do all other good works of mercy and charity… or else they shall never be saved’. This, taken with the fifth article that declared sinners attain ‘justification by contrition and faith
joined with charity
’, was a clear rejection of the evangelical conviction that man was made righteous in the sight of God by faith alone, and not by the performance of good works. The articles added that Christ’s body and blood were ‘verily, substantially and really’ present in the Eucharist, though the emotive term ‘transubstantiation’, associated with Catholicism, was absent.
¹⁰

The Articles also modified certain traditionally integral religious practices. One article praised the honouring of saints, but ‘not with that confidence and honour which are only due unto God’, nor in the ‘vain superstition’ that prayer to a saint would be more readily answered than that to God. Another proclaimed that while it was right to have images in church, people should not cense them, kneel before them, offer things to them or ‘other like worshippings’. Finally, the last article ambiguously concluded that, while it was a good and charitable deed to pray for souls departed, it was admitted that ‘the place where they be, the name thereof and kinds of pain there’ were uncertain and unknown, and that the abuses committed by the Roman church under the name of ‘purgatory’ should ‘be clearly put away’. One could pray for the dead, but what such prayers would do was unclear.

In other words, the Ten Articles, as a doctrinal statement of a reformed church, actually set out an ambiguous programme of a little reform mixed in with substantial amounts of conservatism, especially because salvation depended on good works as much as faith, a tenet that Henry held to until his death. This was perhaps partly because it was not a full and comprehensive statement of doctrine but a limited one only dealing with the controversial issues of the day. But as we shall see, it also seems to have reflected Henry VIII’s key concerns and convictions. The most significant innovation was to reduce the number of sacraments from seven to three (which was bumped up to four in 1543, when marriage was reinstated, an unsurprising addition for a king who obviously esteemed it greatly). In one fell swoop, this downgraded the sacraments which boosted clerical power and status: confirmation, extreme unction and priestly ordination. By reducing the power of the clergy, Henry boosted his own sacred status. It was crucial, in this year, for Henry to defend the supremacy that he had created.
¹¹

The theme of Henry’s Supreme Headship was also dominant in a set of royal injunctions issued to the clergy in August 1536. These were essentially designed to enforce the Ten Articles at parish level and suggest that the impact of the Articles in practice may have been more than mildly reformist. The crux of them was to ensure that the clergy continued to preach against papal supremacy while expounding the content of the Ten Articles, so people would know ‘which of them be necessary to be believed and observed for their salvation, and which be not necessary’. The clergy were reminded that for the

abolishing and extirpation of the Bishop of Rome’s pretended and usurped power and jurisdiction… and for the establishment and confirmation of the king’s authority and jurisdiction within the same, as of the supreme head of the Church of England, [they] shall to the uttermost of their wit, knowledge and learning, purely, sincerely, and without any colour or dissimulation declare, manifest, and open for the space of one quarter of a year now next ensuing, once every Sunday, and after that at the leastwise twice every quarter, in their sermons and other collations, that the Bishop of Rome’s usurped power… was of most just causes taken away and abolished…

This was not the first time that the clergy had been ordered to preach on royal supremacy – in June 1535, they had similarly been instructed to preach on the subject every Sunday – but this reiteration suggested that the issue remained – or had again become – deeply topical and important. In July 1536, Henry also revoked a number of licences to preach, citing the number of ‘indiscreet persons, with neither learning nor judgment, who… blow abroad their folly’, and instructing Cranmer to ensure that ‘our people may be fed with wholesome food, neither savouring the corruption of the bishop of Rome nor led into doubt by novelties’. The corruption meant was repeated in the injunctions, which repeated the command that no one should extol images, relics, miracles or go on pilgrimages for any saint, ‘to the intent that all superstition and hypocrisy, crept into divers man’s hearts, may vanish away’. This was in keeping with the Ten Articles but a radical departure from traditional religion. For the vast majority of illiterate people in early Tudor England, their faith was something forged in the visual and kinaesthetic – it was a religion of the eye and not the written word. These alterations to their relationship with objects they could see and touch, while stopping far short of the iconoclasm of Edward VI’s reign, was to make that relationship fraught and uncertain; it was to rob their faith of some of its colour and confidence. In addition, the rhythm of their faith was also to change. A proclamation, issued between the Articles and injunctions, decreed that saints’ feast days were to be issued between the Articles and injunctions, decreed that saints’ feast days were to be kept on the first Sunday in October and not on the traditional saints’ days, when work would continue as usual. ‘At one stroke,’ says one commentator, ‘the Crown decimated the ritual year’. The church had been shaken up, while still maintaining conservative perspectives that would have disappointed those hoping for the sort of reform seen on the Continent. It was a peculiarly Henrician settlement.
¹²