Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/356

Rh 336 ENGLAND [HISTORY. dering ast o l&amp;gt;erty. Henry usefulness, chiefly to the great educational foundations which were then rising. In the suppression under Henry VIII., by far the greater part of the vast revenues of the of monastic houses was squandered or gambled away among Henry s courtiers. Churches and churchyards were granted to private men, to be destroyed or desecrated at their pleasure. The tithe which the monasteries had taken to themselves, to the great wrong of the parish priests and their flocks, was now seized with their other property, and was granted away to lay rectors. Cranmer, who gave up several estates of his see to the king, did not scruple to ceceive grants of lands and tithe for the enrichment of his own family. Only a small portion of the monastic revenues was saved for public purposes of any kind. A little was spent on the defence of the coasts. Of a magnificent scheme for the foundation of new bishoprics, a small part only was carried out in the foundation of six slenderly endowed s seea Those cathedral churches which had been served by monks, and which therefore came into the king s hands with the other monasteries, were, with the exceptions of Bath and Coventry, refounded as churches of secular canons. Henry also gained the reputation of a benefactor in both universities. At Oxford his claim rests on several suppressions and refouudations of the college which had been begun by Wolsey, and on his charging the chapters of Oxford and Westminster with the maintenance of certain professors. At Cambridge the like reputation was gained by rolling several small colleges into one large one. The statutes of Henry s various foundations, drawn up in some cases by his own hand, breathe a spirit of piety and zeal worthy of Alfred or St Lewis. Here again there is no need to suspect conscious hypocrisy. It only makes the character of Henry a more wonderful moral study. Besides the suppression- of monasteries, a great deal of wealth, to be squandered in the like sort, was brought in by the destruction of shrines and by the seizure of the movable ornaments of many churches which were not suppressed. On the other hand, most of the inmates of the suppressed monasteries 1 received pensions, small in many cases, but enough for their maintenance ; and these pensions seem to have been honestly paid. With the usual long life of annuitants, some of them still received their pensions in the reign of James I. The foundations and refoundation* just spoken of went on to the very end of Henry s reign. An Act of 1545 placed the secular foundations, the colleges and hospitals, at his mercy ; and he destroyed, refounded, or left un touched, according to his pleasure. But the two great suppressions, the suppression of the greater and of the esser monasteries, were all done under the rule of Crom well, and in his time came their immediate political results. It is not easy to say what was the general feeling of the nation towards the suppressed monasteries. It doubtless differed widely in different places, according to the character of particular houses. It is certain that in 1536 the whole north of England rose in revolt on occasion of the sup pression of the lesser monasteries. This revolt, called the Pilgrimage of Grace, was distinctly a religious movement ; but it was a political movement as well. We seem to have gone back to the days of Edward the Confessor, when we find the northern insurgents demanding that no man north of Trent should be compelled to appear in the ordinary course of justice anywhere but at York. They demanded also the holding of a parliament at York, which Henry pro mised, but neglected, to summon. The revolt began again, and it was suppressed with a large amount of hanging, beheading, and burning of the abbots, lay lords, ladies, and others who were concerned. A Lord President and Council 1 All perhaps, except the nuns of the lesser monasteries, who Trere sent away with only a gown apiece. of the North were now appointed to keep that dangerous region in order. But after all, in Henry s reign it is the marriages, the divorces, and the beheadings of his several queens which form, if not the causes, at least the occasions, of the greatest changes. Henry s dissatisfaction with one marriage had led to the fall of Wolsey and the rise of Cromwell ; his dissatis faction with another marriage led to the fall of Cromwell himself. England and Europe had been turned upside down in order that Henry might marry Anne Boleyn. Three years after her marriage, she was got rid of by the twofold process of a divorce pronounced by Cranmer which declared the nullity of her marriage, and of a conviction for adultery by the House of Lords which implied its validity. Anne Behei was beheaded, and the next morning Henry, acting, as we iS 01 have been told, from the severest principles of public duty, ~l ne married her maid Jane Seymour. It was now made treason able to assert the validity of Anne s marriage, as before it had been treasonable to deny it. Anne s daughter Elizabeth was declared illegitimate, as Katharine s daughter Mary had been declared illegitimate, and the crown was settled on the issue of Jane only. The new queen, by unusual good luck, died, Jane neither divorced nor beheaded, at the birth of her only child, lllour Henry s only legitimate son, the future Edward VI. Ex cept as regards the succession of the crown, all this is little more than an episode. Henry s fourth marriage was of greater political importance. Katharine, Anne, and Jane had been at least his own choice. Anne of Cleves wa&amp;gt; chosen for him by his vicegerent. Her marriage was part Marri of a political scheme for an union between Henry and the of Protestant princes of Germany against the emperor. p f Cromwell, it is plain, went further than the king approved ^i ^ in advances towards these heretical allies, and the queen su !ts. whom he found for Henry among them found no favour in Henry s eyes. Cromwell had in fact chosen his time badly for any advances in a Protestant direction. While hi.-- negotiations with the German princes were going on, the statute of six articles was passed by the parliament of 1539, which enforced the old belief under the deadliest penalties. The marriage took place at the very beginning of 1540. In the course of the year Cromwell was created Earl of Essex, arrested, attainted without a hearing, and beheaded. In Fall the interval between his attainder and his execution, the exee marriage which he&quot; had brought about was annulled by. , r( convocation, and on the day of his beheading Henry married his fifth wife, Katharine Howard. The administration of Cromwell, remarkable as it is in other ways, derives its greatest constitutional importance from the new relations between crown and parliament which now begin. Wolsey, after the example of Edward IV. and Henry VII., had shrunk from meeting the assembly of the nation. Under his rule parliaments were summoned as seldom as might be. Cromwell, on the other from hand, never feared to face parliament. From the time of y e his accession to power till the end of Henry s reign, parlia ^t nients were constantly held. And from this time, a prac- tice which had been already followed sometimes rose into special importance. The king s powers of prorogation and dissolution of parliament now come into notice. The early parliaments met; they did the business* for which they were summoned, and then they went home again. The prolongation of the life of the assembly beyond the time of its session was not thought of. Each meeting implied a new election of the House of Commons. But it was gradually found that a parliament which suited the king s purposes might be kept in being by prorogations Practi from one session to another. This practice began to be of P ro used under Henry VI. and Edward IV., in which last gatlo: reign the practice became usual ; under Henry VIII.