Page:Henry VIII and the English Monasteries.djvu/20

xiv visitors were, "drunkenness and simony" were not among them, neither, do I think, that any one who has studied the available documents could possibly assert that two-thirds —or anything approaching two-thirds are—charged in them with being guilty of "the foulest and most revolting of crimes." Probably the only item of Mr. Green's account which has any sure foundation in fact, is the remark appended to the account just given: "that the character of the visitors, the sweeping nature of their report, and the long debate that followed on its reception, leave little doubt that the charges were grossly exaggerated."

Let me state what we know for certain about this matter. We know that the proposal to suppress the smaller religious houses gave rise to a long debate, and that Parliament passed the measure with great reluctance. Indeed, so unwilling was the assembly to vote for the measure, that according to Sir Henry Spelman, who gave the traditional account of the event an account which bears the stamp of substantial truth when "the Bill had stuck so long in the Lower House," Henry sent for the Commons and declared that if they did not pass it he would "have some of their heads." Acting under such threats as these, which they had ample reason to know were no idle form of words, and seeing that public opinion was turned against the monks by public orations, and in favour of a measure which was destined to relieve taxation by devoting the confiscated monastic revenues to public purposes, the faithful Commons consented to the King's bill. It is remarkable, however, that in the Act itself Parliament is careful to throw the entire responsibility for the measure upon the King himself, and to declare, if words mean anything at all, that they took the truth of the charges against the good name of the religious, solely upon the King's "declar-