No measure appeared at this season to Henry and Cranmer more desirable for the establishment of the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical causes, as well as the promotion of reformed religion, than the abolition of the great number of monastic foundations dispersed over the realm. They were filled, generally speaking, with friars, who were either carrying on intrigues against the new regulations, or, under the mask of separation from the world, indulging in the grossest sensuality. These men had it in their power to thwart the designs of the government to an indefinite extent, by wielding an instrument, some of whose motions were open, and others secret, and in perpetual exercise. Their easy access to all families, from the mansion to the cottage, and their opportunities of inflaming the minds of the people in familiar conversation or private confession, rendered them the most formidable of opponents. Cromwell, the King's vicegerent, therefore began to concert with his friends the means of dissolving these establishments, which had been for a length of ages growing excrescences on the diseased body of Christianity; while the archbishop, in consistency with his pastoral character, encouraged the plan of a general visitation to inspect the interior of their dwellings, and investigate the existing state of their morals.

FEB. 1827.

The visitors were instructed to declare all absolved from any rules or oaths binding them to the Pope, and to order such statutes as were connected with this kind of obligation to be erased from their books. They were to direct that the abbots should abridge their sumptuous fare, and keep plain tables for hospitable purposes; that the scriptures should be read at their meals; that they should have lectures in divinity daily read to them; and that they should maintain some of their order at the university. The abbots were required to instruct the monks in true religion, and teach them that the gospel enjoined spirituality of heart and life. But what scenes of iniquity and debauchery were discovered! They detected the commission of enormities which cannot be named; the monks were convicted of criminal intercourse with prostitutes and married women; while many of the nuns were found to be pregnant. Some houses increased their funds by carrying on traffic in relics and images and the most trifling baubles, and imposing on the credulity of the people by the most shameless pretences. the recesses of others were apprehended implements for clipping and coining; while many convents were divided into factions, which exercised in turn the most barbarous cruelties on each other.

In

As soon as these disorders were made generally known by the re

G

ports of the commissioners, the whole kingdom was scandalized, and the parliament were ready to second the monarch in adopting measures for their partial suppression, or total abolition. Cranmer desired, that out of the revenues of the monasteries, the King should found more bishoprics; that the dioceses being reduced into less compass, the bishops might execute their office with more conformity to scriptural rule and primitive condition. He hoped also, that from these ruins there would be new foundations raised in every cathedral, to be nurseries of learning, under the inspection of the bishop, for the use and benefit of the whole diocese. But these wishes were frustrated through the cupidity of the sovereign and the arts of his courtiers, who endeavoured to obtain ample establishments for their own families from the secularization of the property of the church.

Paul the Third, succeeding Clement in the papacy, and perceiving no hopes of accommodation with England, excommunicated the King, absolved all his subjects from their allegiance, ordered all ecclesiastics to quit his territories, and the nobility to take up arms against him. He forbade Christians of all nations to have any commerce with the English people, laid the kingdom under an interdict, and annulled all the treaties which foreign princes had made with Henry since his second marriage, declaring the issue illegitimate.

On the eighth of January 1536, Queen Catharine died at Kimbolton, after having sustained a long series of afflictions. She had been harrassed by repeated messages from Henry, importuning her to resign the title of Queen; to which requisition she could on no account be brought to consent, claiming it from all her attendants, though enjoined by the King to arrogate no higher stile than that of Princess Dowager of Wales. With all the

indignant feeling of an injured wife, and the respect of a devotee for the sanction which Rome continued to attach to her union with Henry, she watched over the rising years of the princess Mary, and by precept and example laid probably in that young female's mind the germ of bigotry, which was afterwards to appear and increase with such baleful influence to her native land.

In consequence of a representation from the crown, the parliament passed an act, suppressing all monasteries whose revenues did not exceed two hundred pounds; and appropriated their income for the use of his Majesty, who gained an annual income of thirty-two thousand pounds, besides a capital of above one hundred thousand on the plate, ornaments, and effects of churches and convents. On this occasion Henry erected a new court of justice, called, the Court of Augmentation of the King's Revenue, for taking cognizance of such sequestrations. A convocation of the clergy, now assembled in London, were engaged in discussing the expediency of a new translation of the Bible into the vernacular tongue, and its publication for the use of the nation at large, as well as its introduction into all the parish churches. Cranmer and his friends strenuously urged the decision of the question in the affirmative, from a conviction that no measure could more directly tend to root out papal errors, and favour the introduction of purer doctrine. When it was proposed to petition the King on the subject, Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, took the lead in the opposition, declaring, "that all the heresies and absurd opinions which had been spreading in Germany, and were now making their appearance in England, would not have arisen, but for the free and unrestrained use of the Scriptures; that he was himself the more satisfied, that such a preposterous and

promiscuous use of the Scriptures ought to be prohibited rather than forwarded; for the whole English nation would easily ruin itself with such a dangerous weapon; and it would be much more advisable to send out in the vulgar language a short exposition of the principal articles of faith, whereby subjects might be instructed in their duty to their king and the church.' Cranmer however carried his point, and it was resolved in parliament, not however without much debate; some affirming that the consequence would be a variety of opinions among the people, and a weakening of the royal authority; others maintaining with equal force and more reason, that it would rather conduce to render the supremacy recently assumed by the king acceptable to the people, by whom the papal power was generally disliked. Queen Anne seconded the petition to Henry, who gave orders for its accomplishment. Cranmer commenced the work by dividing Tindal's New Testament into ten parts, and employing some learned divines in its revision and correction: he then sent it over to some printers in Paris who began the impression, which was finished in England by Richard Grafton. The work was three years in progress, and many of the copies were seized by the Sorbonne.

The queen was much esteemed for the readiness with which she promoted every useful undertaking, and the bounty which she exercised towards the poor. Cromwell and Cranmer always found in her a firm support; but the affections of her unprincipled husband began now to be estranged from her, and to be fixed on a new object in the person of Lady Jane Seymour, one of her attendants, while she herself was delivered of a dead male child, to the bitter disappointment of Henry, who, conscious as he must have been of his presumptuous offences against heaven, considered

this event as a mark of the divine displeasure against his second marriage, as he had before regarded the death of two sons by Catharine in a similar point of view. The dissolution of his second marriage was now the grand wish of his heart. This could not be effected by any pretence of unlawfulness, as in the prior connexion; but a party at court, headed by the Duke of Norfolk, who were attached to the old superstitions in religion, and hoped to ingratiate themselves in the royal favour, took advantage of his majesty's state of mind, and fomented reports calculated at once to awaken his jealousy, and furnish him with an excuse to cut her off by a violent death. Lady Rochford, the wife of her own brother, with a baseness of which there are few parallels in history, declared her suspicions of incestuous intercourse between the Queen and her lord, and she was at the same time charged with adultery with several other persons. The poor victim of this cruel conspiracy, knowing her innocence of such abominable criminality, on hearing that the King had ordered her to be confined to her chamber, and the suspected delinquents to be sent to the Tower, smiled at first, thinking that Henry was in jest; but on the assurance that he was in earnest, she fell into hysterical convulsions and incoherent ravings, but at intervals of composure prepared for her trial, and the death which she could not but anticipate from the sentence of a monarch and a husband who refused to admit her to his presence.

No person in authority stood by the falling princess but the Archbishop of Canterbury. He ventured to write to the King a long letter in her behalf, declaring that he never had a better opinion of any woman than of the Queen; that, next the King, he was more bound to her than to all persons living; and that he loved her, because of the love which she bore to God and his

gospel. Cranmer seems to have been thoroughly persuaded of her freedom from conjugal infidelity; but the servile court before which she was tried, condemned her to be burned or beheaded, at the King's pleasure. The vindictive monarch desired to find some means of annulling his marriage, that her daughter Elizabeth might be declared illegitimate. He remembered a report of a previous contract between her and Lord Percy, now Earl of Northumberland. That nobleman swore that no such contract had ever existed; but the hope of escaping the punishment which threatened her, induced the unhappy Queen to make a contrary declaration.

She was secretly conveyed to Lambeth, where she had an interview with her afflicted friend, to whom and some other persons of distinction she confessed a just and lawful impediment; on which he was obliged to pronounce her marriage with the King to be null and void. It is evident that this sentence contradicted the former, for if she had been illegally wedded to his Majesty, she could not be attainted for adultery, and it afforded a good opportunity to Henry to spare her life; but his heart was completely steeled against her sufferings, and to the outrage of all decency, he mar ried Jane Seymour the day after her execution!

Though this melancholy event belongs to civil history, yet it can→ not be overlooked by the ecclesiastical narrator, for it is generally allowed, that her attachment to the Reformation was an indirect cause of her cruel treatment, and excited against her the malice and envy of an interested and bigotted party, who longed for her ruin, as well as that of her friend the Archbishop. This impression was so strong on the continent, that the Protestant princes of Germany were determined to refuse to make the English monarch the head of their confe deracy, on perceiving the ascen

dency which the popish adherents still possessed at his court.

The work of reformation however still proceeded. Pope Paul III. be. ginning to conceive hopes of a recon→ ciliation with England, and showing a readiness to enter into fresh negociation, it became necessary to give him some unequivocal mark of the resolution of the nation to reject his claim to ecclesiastical interference. Henry was as am. bitious on the one hand, as libidinous on the other, and could never be persuaded to renounce his assumed supremacy. In the parliament of 1536, two more acts were passed against the papal power. On a complaint from the enemies of the Reformation, that no less than sixty-seven opinions obtained on religious topics, which proved the necessity of an infallible tribunal, Cromwell was sent to the convoca→ tion with a message from the King, that they should reform the rites and ceremonies of the church ac cording to the rules of scripture, which ought to be preferred to all glosses or decrees of popes. Cran mer took occasion to show the vanity of the school-divinity, and proved the absolute necessity of the scriptures to all the purposes of religion. After long and warm debates, the convocation agreed to certain articles reduced into the form of constitutions, importing; That the holy scripture was the foundation of faith, together with the creed of the apostles, the Nicene, and the Athanasian, expressive of the sense of scripture; that baptism was absolutely necessary, as well as penitence, comprehended in the three acts of contrition, auricular confession, and amendment of life; that the real body of Christ was present in the eucharist; that justification was acquired by regeneration, in contrition, faith, and charity; that images ought to be preserved in churches; hut that the worship should not be paid to the image, but to God himself;

that the saints ought to be honoured, though without a belief that they could grant what was in the gift of God alone; that they might nevertheless be invoked, without superstition, and their festivals observed; but that some of these might be retrenched by the King's authority; that the customary ceremonies of the church should be retained, such as the sacradotal ornaments, holy water, consecrated bread, tapers on Candlemas-day, ashes on Ash-Wednes day, palms on Palm-Sunday, pros→ trations before the cross on GoodFriday, hallowing of the font, exorcisms, and benedictions; that prayers should be put up for departed souls, and alms given for masses and exequies; but as the place they were in, and the pains they suffered, had not been ascertained by scripture, they ought to be remitted wholly to God's mercy; that the notions of purgatory should be exploded, such as that souls could be delivered from it by the Pope's pardon, or by masses said in certain places, or before particular shrines. These constitutions, corrected in some places by the King's own hand, were signed by Cromwell, Cranmer, seventeen Bishops, forty Abbots or Priors, and fifty Archdeacons, or deputies from the lower house of convocation.

In 1537, the Archbishop, with the joint authority of the Bishops, issued the well-known "Erudition of a Christian Man." It contained an exposition of the creed, the Lord's prayer, the ave-maria, justification, and purgatory; declared the universal pastorship of the Bishop of Rome to have no foundation in the word of God; affirmed the Church of England to be as truly and properly a catholic and apostolic church as that of Rome; directed that the sacrament should be used with all due reverence and honor; condemned prostration be. fore images; restricted the invocation of saints to begging their in

tercession; forbad the clergy to pretend to temporal jurisdiction, independent of civil magistracy; and cautioned the people against mistaking the hymn to the Virgin for a prayer. Justification is ascribed to the merits and satisfaction of Christ alone; and the Pope's pardon, masses at Scala Cali, or before any celebrated statues, are declared unprofitable to deliver souls out of the middle state of punishment. Amid the darkness which still continued, especially on the doctrine of transubstantiation, it is pleasing to see that Cranmer could so far prevail.

But his satisfaction received a great check, when Henry drew up the Six Articles, which the Duke of Norfolk offered to the parliament, and whose import was, to establish the doctrine of the corporal presence, communion in one kind, observation of the vow of chastity, private masses, clerical celibacy, and auricular confession. He boldly argued against them three days together; and though the King was obstinate in passing them, he desired a copy of the Archbishop's reasons against them, and discovered no resentment against him for his opposition. His Majesty would have persuaded him to withdraw from the house, on the passing of the bill; but he frankly replied that he thought himself bound in conscience to stay and manifest his dissent. When the measure was finally carried, he entered his protest against it; and soon after, anticipating probably a trying time for all inclined to a purer system, sent his wife away privately to her friends in Germany. Henry, impressed with esteem of his unbending probity, sent the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, with Comwell, to acquaint him with the continuance of his favour.

Burnet mentions a curious circumstance relating to this transaction." Cranmer put his reasons