Page:Henry VIII and the English Monasteries.djvu/19

Rh monly believed to be true. "Two Royal Commissioners," he writes, "were dispatched on a general visitation of the religious houses, and their reports formed a 'black-book,' which was laid before Parliament in 1536. It was acknowledged that about a third of the houses, including the bulk of the larger abbeys, were fairly and decently conducted. The rest were charged with drunkenness, with simony, and with the foulest and most revolting crimes."

I believe I am right in taking this account as presenting a version—and a fairly moderate version—of the reasons which induced the nation to consent to perhaps the greatest piece of confiscation the world has ever seen. Yet how far does this version represent the truth—the whole truth, or any part of the truth? We have now the means of judging with certainty as to the facts, and we can say that in these sample statements, brief though they be, there are some assertions that are absolutely false, some incapable of proof and unlikely, and some distinctly misleading. It is quite certain, for instance, that before the meeting of Parliament more than two Commissioners were employed in the work of visiting the monasteries. It is quite certain, moreover, that the Commissioners never reported to Parliament at all, and even in the reports (or Comperta) forwarded to Crumwell, his agents do not assert that "two-thirds of the monks were leading vicious lives under cover of their cowls and hoods," nor again that Parliament declared that "about a third" of the monasteries "were fairly and decently conducted." Lastly, there is no evidence of any kind that the celebrated "black-book" ever had any existence outside the minds of writers of a later date; and distinct testimony makes it highly improbable that any such book was "laid before Parliament in 1536."

Further than this: bad as the charges made by Henry's