Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/590

576 implacable enemies too. He took upon him to bestow benefices, though the real right of patronage lay in others. He called all offending persons before him, whether of the laity or clergy, and compelled them to compound as his officers thought fit."

But this swollen apparition of mortal grandeur was but the creature of the most violent and capricious of men. A breath had made him, and a breath unmade. A single word and he fell headlong, assuredly shaking in his fall the great hierarchy of which he had seemed the most gorgeous pillar and ornament; for the whole system was corrupt and rotten to the core. The wealth of the monastic orders had especially demoralised them. Both the regular and secular clergy were accused of not only spending their time in taverns and gambling houses, but of abandoning in such resorts the very costume which distinguished thorn from the laity; of wearing daggers, gowns, and hoods of silk and embroidery, and letting their hair grow long and fall on their shoulders. The interiors of the monastic houses were described as very dens of licentiousness, both in monks and nuns. We have it on the evidence of one of the letters of reproof addressed by Archbishop Morton to the Abbot of St. Albans, that that famous abbey was filled with every species of vice and sensuality. The abbot is declared to have turned out all the nuns of two nunneries under his charge and filled them with women of scandalous character, and that both he and his monks led the most vile lives amongst them; that they besides this kept concubines, who are especially named, and indulged in still more monstrous excesses. He charges them with cutting down the woods, wasting and embezzling the property of the Church, stealing the plate, and even picking out the jewels from the shrine of the patron saint.

Whilst such was the corruption of the clergy—a corruption so complete that no warnings nor censures availed to produce amendment; though the criminal horde was well aware that every day the Reformers were growing in numbers and noting their enormities with vigilant eyes—these infatuated men fell to quarrelling amongst themselves, thus giving the last sign of a falling house, the being divided against itself. The most remarkable circumstance, moreover, in this schism is, the very question which has just recently furnished such a fiery theme of discussion in both Romanist and Protestant Churches—the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin.

The Star Chamber.

The Franciscans, or Grey Friars, were the champions of this doctrine; the Dominicans assumed the opposite position, admitting, however, that the Virgin became entirely purified in her mother's womb; so that the difference of opinion was so little that it might have satisfied any but ecclesiastical combatants. But these two parties divided the whole Catholic community, and thus threw the public into a very blaze of animosity. In vain did the Pope himself endeavour to conclude the strife by stepping forth as the champion of the immaculate dogma. The feud burned on; but the Franciscans, by the sanction of the Vatican, carrying the people with them, the Dominicans resorted to one of those pious frauds so frequent in the Church of Rome, and produced an image of the Virgin, which, besides moving her eyes, shedding tears, rising up and sitting down, also denied the immaculateness of holy conception, and declared the Franciscans impostors. The people, overcome by this miracle, at once abandoned the Franciscans; who, however, too well versed in such mysteries, seized the image and exhibited to the public the springs and machinery by which it had been worked. This fatal exposure being made, the four Dominicans who had been most active in the trick, were delivered over to their enemies, the provincial of the order being one of them, and were burned at the stake. The Franciscans triumphed, but the Church received a mortal wound.

With the blind tenacity which often induces falling bodies to assert their prerogatives with an arrogant obstinacy, the Church, in the fourth year of Henry VIII., commenced a daring opposition to the Government, in defence of the benefit of clergy. Henry VII., as we have stated, had limited this much abused privilege, by his statute ordering such laymen as claimed it under charge of murder to be burnt in the brawn of the thumb with the letter M. Henry VIII. had a bill introduced into