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[Illustration: “WHAT HAVE WE HERE? S. JOSEPH HELP US!”

_Page 3._]


THE LAST ABBOT OF GLASTONBURY.

A Tale of the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

by the

REV. A. D. CRAKE, B.A.,

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; Vicar of Havenstreet, I.W.;

Author of
Fairleigh Hall, The Chronicles of Æscendune, The Camp on the
Severn, etc., etc.







Oxford and London:
A. R. Mowbray & Co.




HISTORICAL PREFACE.


The Author humbly ventures to offer the ninth of his series of original
tales, illustrating Church History, to the public; encouraged by the
favourable reception the previous volumes have found.

In the tales, “Æmilius,” “Evanus,” and “The Camp on the Severn,” he has
endeavoured to describe the epoch of the Pagan persecutions, under the
Roman Empire; in the “Three Chronicles of Æscendune,” successive epochs
of Early English history; in the “Andredsweald,” the Norman Conquest;
in “Fairleigh Hall,” the Great Rebellion; and in the _present_ volume,
one of the earliest of the series of events ordinarily grouped
under the general phrase “The Reformation,” the destruction of the
Monasteries.

It is many years since the writer was first attracted and yet saddened
by the tragical story of the fate of the last Abbot of Glastonbury, and
amongst the tales by which he was wont to enliven the Sunday evenings
in a large School, this narrative found a foremost place, and excited
very general interest.

A generation ago, few English Churchmen cared to say a good word for
the unhappy monks, who suffered so cruel a persecution at the hands of
Henry the Eighth and his vicar-general, Thomas Cromwell. Many, indeed,
confessed a sentimental regret when they visited the ruins of such
glorious fanes as Tintern, Reading, or Furness, and reflected that but
for the vandalism of the period, such buildings might yet vie with the
cathedrals, with which they were coeval, and if not retained for their
original uses, might yet be devoted to the service of religion and
humanity, in various ways; but the fear of being supposed to betray
a leaning to the doctrines once taught within these ruined walls, has
prevented many a writer from doing justice to the sufferers under
atrocious tyranny.

Yet did an act of parliament now pass the legislature giving the
various episcopal palaces, deaneries, rectories, and vicarages in
England, with all their furniture, to the Crown, and were the present
occupants ruthlessly ejected, and hung, drawn, and quartered in case of
resistance, active or passive, the injustice would not be greater, the
outrage on the rights of property more flagrant, than in the case of
the monasteries.

The late Rev. W. Gresley, in his tale, “The Forest of Arden,” was (so
far as the writer remembers) the first writer of historical fiction,
amongst modern Churchmen, who attempted to render justice to our
forefathers, who, born and bred under the papal supremacy, could not
disguise their convictions, or transfer their allegiance to a lustful
tyrant.

But even he spake with “bated breath” when compared with Dean Hook,
who, later on, thus writes in his lives of the Archbishops of
Canterbury:--

    “To an Englishman, taught to regard his house as his castle,
    these acts of invasion on property appear to be monstrous; our
    blood boils within us when we learn that by blending the Acts
    of Supremacy with the Treason Acts the Protestant enthusiasts
    under Cromwell condemned to death not fewer than 59 persons,
    who, however mistaken they were in their opinions, were as
    honest as Latimer, and more firm than Cranmer.

    “Of the murders of Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas Moore, the
    former the greatest patron of learning, the latter ranking with
    the most learned men the age produced, both of them men of
    undoubted piety, the reader must not expect in these pages a
    justification or even an attempt at palliation; we should be as
    ready to accord the crown of martyrdom to the Abbots of Reading
    and _Glastonbury_ and to the Prior of S. John’s, Colchester,
    when rather than betray their trust they died, as we are to
    place it on the heads of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer. Although
    the latter had the better cause, yet we must all admit that
    atrocious as were the proceedings under Mary and Bonner, the
    persecutions under Henry and Cromwell fill the mind with
    greater horror.”

But it may be asked, were not the atrocious crimes laid to the
charge of the monks in the celebrated “Black Book,” the “Compendium
compertorum,” a sufficient justification? Did not the very parliament
at the recital cry “Down with them.”

The opinion of such parliaments as those which passed the absurd and
bloody treason acts dictated by Henry, or which condemned so many
innocent victims by Acts of Attainder, or passed those most atrocious
acts, “the Vagrant Acts,” by which a cruel form of slavery was
established in England, only England would not put it in practice,--the
professed opinion of such parliaments will weigh little with modern
Englishmen.

But it appears that the very accusers themselves, or at least
the Government who employed them, could not have believed in the
accusations; for no less than eleven of the Abbots were made Bishops
to save the Government their pensions, and some of them men against
whom the worst charges had been made; others became deans, and others
were put into positions of trust, as parochial priests, under Cranmer
himself.

And who were the witnesses? Their leader, Dr. London, was put to
penance for the most grievous incontinency, and afterwards thrown into
prison _for perjury_, where he died miserably. Another, Layton, who
figures in the tale, becoming dean of York, pawned the cathedral plate.
Upon the testimony of such witnesses one would not hang a dog.

But this is not the place for an investigation of the subject, nor is
it one to be commended to the pure-minded reader, such garbage did
these venal and foul-mouthed spies invent to justify the rapacity of
their employers. Not that we would maintain the absolute purity of the
monasteries, or that there was no foundation whatsoever upon which
such a superstructure was reared: many of the brotherhoods had fallen
far below the high ideal of their profession, or even the spiritual
attainments of their brethren in earlier and better days; but there
is absolute proof that in many instances the reports of the visitors
were pure inventions. No just Lots were they, “vexed with the filthy
conversation of the wicked,” but men of evil imaginations, who were
paid to invent scandal if they could not find it.[1]

I have not, therefore, hesitated to make the sufferings of the last
Abbot of Glastonbury the theme of a story, but while I have adhered to
the main facts of the tragedy, I have availed myself somewhat of the
usual license accorded to all writers of historical fiction, justified
by the example of the great and revered founder of the school, Sir
Walter Scott.

In particular, the words put into the mouth of the Abbot, both in his
last sermon at Glastonbury and in the trial at Wells, were actually
used by his fellow-sufferer, the Prior of the Charterhouse, John
Houghton, under precisely similar circumstances: the reader will find
the whole of the touching story in the second volume of Froude’s
“History of England;” it is well worth perusal.

It may be objected that one so young as the hero of the latter portion
of the story, “Cuthbert the foundling,” could scarcely have been
exposed to the operation of the Treason Acts, or required to take the
oath of supremacy, in his twenty-first year; but there are examples
of sufferers under this _régime_ at a more tender age: a month or two,
more or less, made small difference in the Tudor period, especially
when the interests of the Crown were concerned, or the will of the
despot expressed. The concealment of the Abbey treasure, and the
sympathy of the Abbot with the Pilgrimage of Grace (how could he be
otherwise disposed) are matters of history.

An attempt has been made, within our memory, by a modern historian,
to whitewash the memory of the royal “Blue Beard,” under whom such
fearful atrocities were committed; we are asked to believe that the
Carthusians, dying dismembered and mutilated in so horrible a manner,
or in the filth of the fetid dungeons in which they were thrown, that
the aged Countess of Salisbury flying about the scaffold with her
gray hairs dabbled in blood, that the Protestants who were burnt, and
Catholics who were drawn and quartered, sometimes on the same day and
at the same place, that such victims as Fisher, More, and Surrey, were
all unwilling sacrifices to a high sense of duty on the part of the
king who slew them, who also was a right honourable husband, plagued by
unworthy wives, and hence deserving of the pity of married men.

But to the writer, the following paragraph from a deservedly popular
history, appears more nearly to represent the truth:--

    “The temper of such a legislator as Henry the Eighth, and the
    thorough subservience, the otherwise _incredible_ cowardice and
    baseness of his parliaments, can only be fully exhibited by an
    enumeration of their penal laws, which for number, variety,
    severity, and inconsistency are perhaps unequalled in the
    annals of jurisprudence.

    “Instead of the calmness, the foresight, and the wisdom which
    are looked for in a legislator, we find the wild fantasies and
    ever-changing, though ever selfish caprices of a spoiled child,
    joined to the blind fierce malignant passions of a brutal and
    cruel savage. It would seem as if the disembodied demon of a
    Caligula or a Nero, the evil spirit that once bore their human
    form, had again become incarnate upon earth, let loose for some
    wise (though to dull mortal eyes, dimly discerned) end, to
    repeat in a distant age, and another clime that same strange,
    wild, extravagant medley of buffoonery and horror, which is
    fitted to move at once the laughter and execration of mankind.”
    (_Knight’s Pictorial History_).

This is strong language, but when one rises from a perusal of the deeds
committed during this reign of terror, it seems justified.

The destruction also of the monastic libraries, and the decay of
solid learning (Latimer being witness), must ever be regretted by
the scholar. Fuller tells us that “the English monks were bookish of
themselves, and much inclined to hoard up monuments of learning.” But
all these treasures were ruthlessly destroyed or scattered, including
books and valuable MS., which would now be worth their weight in gold.
John Ball, by no means a _laudator temporis acti_, wrote to Edward
VI.:--

    “A number of them which purchased these superstitious mansions
    (the monasteries) reserved of their library books, some to
    serve their jakes, some to scour their candlesticks, and some
    to rub their boots, some they sold to the grocers and soap
    sellers; and some they sent over sea to the bookbinders--not
    in small number, but at times whole ships full.... I know a
    merchant man, which shall at this time be nameless, that bought
    the contents of two noble libraries for forty shillings a
    piece. A shame it is to be spoken. This stuff hath he occupied
    instead of grey paper by the space of more than these ten
    years, and yet he hath store enough for as many years to come.”

It is true the monks were accused of leading idle lives; but to the
unlearned, especially those who get their bread by physical labour, the
student poring over his books is always “a drone.”

It may be most true that the monastic system, so serviceable in
the middle ages, the only shelter for peaceful men in the midst of
bloodshed and strife, the only refuge for learning amongst the densely
ignorant, had had its day; that the hospitals, the almshouses, the
workhouses, the schools and colleges, do all the work they once did,
and do it better, that in the ages, then to come, they could have
filled no useful purpose had they survived.

Well! supposing this granted, does it in any way justify the cruelty
of the suppression? The judicious Hallam well observes, that “it is
impossible to feel too much indignation at the spirit in which these
proceedings were conducted.” Had vested and life interests been
respected, had the admission of further novices been prohibited, and
the buildings themselves, when no longer needed, utilized as hospitals
and colleges, and the like; whatever men might think of the change,
they would at least admit the moderation of the government; but what
consideration can justify the intolerable barbarity of the persecutions.

Two questions may be asked, first, what became of the monks, nearly
a hundred thousand, in a population of some three millions, who were
thus, with the most meagre of pensions, cruelly turned out of house and
home.

It must be replied that a large number, in fact all who could by any
contrivance be brought under the scope of either of the numerous laws
involving capital punishment, perished by the hand of the executioner.
For example, begging in the first instance was punished by whipping,
in the second by mutilation, and in the third the beggar was doomed
“to suffer pains and execution of death as a felon, and enemy of
the commonwealth.”[2] This cruel law, which was probably drawn up
by Henry himself, was doubtless aimed especially at the unfortunate
monks, who unfitted for labour by their sedentary lives, and unable
to obtain work, would often be forced to the dreadful alternative of
starvation or hanging. How many starving monks must have fallen into
this dreadful trap, for their pensions even if regularly paid were
miserably insufficient, and preferred to hang than to starve; doubtless
they formed a large proportion of the eighty thousand criminals, who
are said to have perished, by the hands of the executioner, in this
dreadful reign.

Secondly: what became of the monastic property amounting, it has been
said, to a sum equivalent to fifty millions sterling of our present
money, which was to have almost superseded taxation, and accomplished
other wonderful ends? It disappeared under Henry’s incomprehensible
extravagance, and at the hands of his greedy courtiers; and not only
was he forced in his latter days to debase the currency, but moreover
in the last November of his life, his venal parliament conferred upon
him the absolute disposal of all colleges, charities, and hospitals in
the kingdom, with all their manors, lands, and hereditaments, receiving
only in return his gracious promise that they should all be applied for
the public good. Had God not summoned the tyrant to give an account
of his stewardship, within two months of the act, we might not have
had a college, school, almshouse, or hospital left in England, any
more than a monastery; “had he survived a little while longer,” says
the impartial writer I have before quoted, “he would not have left an
hospital for the care of the sick, or a school for the instruction of
youth.”

But I have already taxed the patience of my readers; I have promised
them a tale and instead I am writing an essay.

A. D. C.

_December, 1883._


FOOTNOTES

[1] The reader will find this subject fully and fairly treated in the
sixth chapter of the Rev. J. H. Blunt’s “History of the Reformation”
and the first introductory chapter of the first volume of the new
series of Dean Hook’s “Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury,” from
which I have already quoted.

[2] 22 Henry VIII. Cap. 12, and 27 Henry VIII. Cap. 25.




INDEX.


    CHAP.                                                          PAGE.

                       PART I.--The Last Abbot.

        PROLOGUE                                                       1

     1.--ALL HALLOW EVEN                                               7

     2.--RETROSPECT                                                   16

     3.--THE SECRET CHAMBER                                           27

     4.--THE ARREST                                                   33

     5.--THE ROAD-SIDE INN                                            44

     6.--THE TRIAL                                                    55

     7.--GLASTONBURY TOR                                              65

     8.--ON THE TRACK                                                 74

     9.--IN THE RUINS OF THE ABBEY                                    91

                   PART II.--Cuthbert the Foundling.

     1.--THE OLD MANOR HOUSE                                         101

     2.--AN EVENTFUL RAMBLE                                          111

     3.--AN ACT OF GRATITUDE                                         122

     4.--EXETER GAOL                                                 135

     5.--PUT TO THE QUESTION                                         145

     6.--AN UNEXPECTED DISCLOSURE                                    154

     7.--CASTLE REDFYRNE                                             164

     8.--LED FORTH TO DIE                                            177

     9.--BREATHING TIME                                              187

    10.--THE SHADOWS DARKEN