ELDER G BEEBE - HISTORY OF PROTESTANT PRIEST-CRAFT IN AMERICA AND EUROPE part 3
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T Adams
Oct 11, 2025, 10:40:51 AM10/11/25
to PREDESTINARIANBAPTIST, Adams, Tom
Dear Brethren and friends,
Here is the third chapter in Beebe's book. I hope that you all have been enjoying it so far! I can only assume that no one has found any spelling errors, since no one has responded to any of the posts so far. That is good news, but I still plan on going back through and double checking it after I finish typing it.
I'm very surprised that there have no comments on it so far. A lot of what Beebe brings up is contrary to the history of the "Reformation" that I remember learning.
May the Lord guide us into ALL truth, scriptural and historical!
A Sinner in Hope,
Tom
When men have power to commit, and are resolved to commit, acts of injustice, they are never at a loss for pretenses. We shall presently see what were the pretenses under which this devastation of England begun; but, to do the work, there required a workman, as, to slaughter an ox, there requires a butcher. To turn the possessors so large a part of the estates, to destroy establishments venerated by the people from their childhood, to set all law, divine as well as human, at defiance, to violate every principle on which property rested, to rob the poor and helpless of the means of sustenance, to deface the beauty of the country, and make it literally a heap of ruins; to do these things, there required a suitable agent; and that agent the tyrant found in Thomas Cromwell; whose name, along with that of Cranmer, ought “to stand for aye, accursed in the calendar.” This Cromwell was the son of a blacksmith, of Putney, in Surrey. He had been an underling of some sort in the family of Cardinal Wolsey, and had recommended himself to the king by his sycophancy to him, and his treachery to his old master. The king now became head of the church, and having the supremacy to exercise, had very judiciously provided himself with Cranmer as a primate; and to match him, he provided himself with Cromwell, who was equal to Cranmer in impiousness and baseness, rather surpassed him in dastardness, and exceeded him decidedly in the quality of ruffian. All nature could not, perhaps have afforded another man so fit to be the “Royal Vicegerent and Vicar General” of the new head of the English church.
Accordingly, with this character, the brutal blacksmith was invested. He was to exercise “all the spiritual authority belonging to the king, for the administration of justice in all cases touching the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and the godly reformation and redress of errors, heresies, and abuses in the said church.” We shall very soon see proofs enough of the baseness of this man, for whom ruffian is too gentle a term. With chance, then, did the monasteries stand in his hands? He was created a peer. He sat before the primate in Parliament; he sat above all the bishops in assemblies of the clergy, he took precedence of all the nobles, whether in office, or out of office; and, as in character, so in place, he was second only to the chief tyrant himself.
In order to begin the “godly Reformation;” that is to say, the work of plunder, the “Vicegerent” blacksmith set on foot a visitation of the monasteries! Dreadful visitation! He, active as he was in wickedness, could not do all the work himself. He therefore appointed deputies to assist in making this visitation. The kingdom was divided into districts for this purpose and two deputies were appointed to visit each district. The object was to obtain grounds of accusation against the monks and nuns. When we consider what the object was, and what was the character of the man, to whom the work was committed, we may easily imagine what sort of men these deputies were. They were, in fact, fit to be the subalterns of such a chief. Some of the very worst men in all England; men of notoriously infamous characters; men who had been convicted of heinous crimes; some who had actually been branded; and, probably, not one man who had ot repeatedly deserved the halter. Think of a respectable, peaceful, harmless, and pious family, broken in upon all of a sudden by a brace of burglars, with murder written on their scowling brows, demanding an instant production of their title-deeds, money, and jewels; imagine such a scene as this, and you have then some idea of the visitations of these monsters, who came with the threat of the tyrant on their lips, who menaced their victims with charges of high treason, who wrote in their reports, not what was, but what their merciless employers wanted them to write.
The monks and nuns, who had never dreamed of the possibility of such proceedings, who had never had an idea that Magna Charta, and all the laws of the land could be set aside in a moment, and whose recluse and peaceful lives rendered them wholly unfit to cope with, at once, crafty and desperate villainy, fell before these ruffians, as chickens fall before the kite. The reports made by these villains, met with no contradiction; the accused parties had no means of making a defence; there was no court for them to appear in; they dared not, even if they had had the means, to offer a defence, or make complaint; for they had seen the horrible consequences, the burnings, the ripping up, of all those of their brethren who had ventured to whisper their dissent from any dogma or decree of the tyrant. The project was to despoil people of their property; and yet the parties, from whom the property was to be taken, were to have no court, in which to plead their cause, no means of obtaining a hearing, could make even no complaint but at the peril of their lives. They, and those who depended on them were to be, at once, stripped of this great mass of property, without any other ground than that of reports made by men sent, as the malignant Hume himself confesses, for the express purpose of finding a pretense for the dissolution of the monasteries, and for the king’s taking to himself property that had never belonged to him or his predecessors.
Hume does not, in the face of such a multitude of facts that are upon record to the contrary, pretend that these reports were true; but he does his best to put a gloss upon them. However, upon reports thus obtained, an act of Parliament was passed in March, 1836, the same year that saw the end of Anne Boleyn, for the suppression, that is to say, confiscation of three hundred and seventy-six monasteries, and for granting their estates, real and personal, to the king and his heirs! He took plate, jewels, gold and silver images and ornaments. This act of monstrous tyranny was, however, base as the Parliament was, and full as it was, of greedy plunderers, not passed without some opposition Hume says that “it does not appear that any opposition was made to this important law.” He frequently quotes Spelman as a historical authority; but it did not suit him to quote Spelman’s “History of Sacrilege,” in which this Protestant historian says, “the bill stuck long in the lower house, and could get no passage, when the king commanded the Commons to attend him in the forenoon in his gallery, where he let them wait till late in the afternoon, and then, coming out of his chamber; walking a turn or two amongst them, and looking angrily on them, first on one side, and then on the other, at last, “I hear,” said he, “that my bill will not pass, but I will have it pass, or I will have some of your heads;” and, without other rhetoric, returned to his chamber. Enough was said, the bill passed, and all was given him as he desired.
Thus, then, it was an act of sheer tyranny; it was a pure Algerine proceeding at last. The pretenses availed nothing; the reports of Cromwell’s myrmidons were not credited; every artifice had failed; resort was had to the halter and the axe to accomplish that “Reformation,” of which the Scotch historian Burnet has called this monster, “the first born son!” Some such man was necessary to bring about this “great and glorious” event. What! was ever good yet produced by wickedness so atrocious? Did any man but this Burnet, and this countryman Hume, ever effect to believe that such barefaced injustice and tyranny were justified on the ground of their tending to good consequences?
The Act was passed in the year 1536, and in the twenty-seventh year of the king’s reign. The preamble of the Act contains the reasons for its enactment; and, as this act really began the ruin and degradation of the main body of the people of England and Ireland; as it was the first step taken, in legal form, for robbing the people under the pretense of reforming their religion; as it was the precedent on which the future plunderers proceeded, until they had completely impoverished the country; as it was the first of that series of deeds of rapine by which this formerly well-fed, and well-clothed people have in the end been reduced to rags, and to a worse than jail allowance of food, I will insert its lying and villainous preamble at full length. Englishmen in general, suppose that there were always poor-laws and paupers in England. They ought to remember that for nine hundred years there were neither. They ought, when they hear the fat parson cry “no Popery,” to answer him by the cry of “no pauperism.” They ought above all things to endeavor to ascertain how it came to pass, that this land of roast beef was changed, all of a sudden, into a land of dry bread, or of oatmeal porridge. Let them attend, then, to the base and hypocritical pretenses that they will find in the following preamble1 to this atrocious act of pillage:
“Forasmuch as manifest synne, vicious, carnal, and abominable living is dayly used and committed commonly in such little and small Abbeys, Priories, and other Religious Houses of Monks, Canons and Nuns, where the Congregation of such Religious Persons is under the Number of twelve Persons, whereby the Governors of such Religious Houses and their Convent, spoyle, destroye, consume, and utterly waste, as well their Churches, Monasteries, Priories, principal Farms, Granges, Lands, Tenements and Heridtaments, as the Ornaments of their Churches, and their Goods and Chattels, to the high displeasure of Almighty God, Slander of good Religion, and to the great infamy of the King’s Highness and the Realm, if Redress should not be had thereof. And albeit that many continual Visitations hath been heretofore had, by the Space of two hundred of years and more, for an honest and charitable Reformation of such unthrifty, carnal, and abominable Living, yet neverthelesse, little or none Amendment is hitherto had, but their vicious Living shamelessly increaseth and augmenteth, and by a cursed Custom so rooted and infected, that a great multitude of the religious persons in such small houses do rather choose to rove abroad in Apostacy, than to conform themselves to the observation of good Religion; so that without such small Houses be utterly suppressed, and the Religious Persons therein committed to great and honourable Monasteries of Religion in this Realm, where they may be compelled to live religiously for Reformation of their Lives, the same else be no Redress nor Reformation in that Behalf. In Consideration whereof, the King’s most Royal Majesty, being Supreme Head on Earth, under God, of the Church of England, dayly studying and devysing the Increase, Advancement and Exaltation of true Doctrine and Virtue in the said Church, to the only Glory and Honour of God, and the total extirping and Destruction of Vice and Sin, having Knowledge that the premises be true, as well as the Accompts of his late Visitations, as by sundry credible informations, considering also that divers and great solemn Monasteries of this Realm, wherein (Thanks to God) Religion is right well kept and observed, be destitute of such full Number of Religious Persons, as they ought, and may keep, hath though good that a plain Declaration should be made, of the Premises, as well to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, as to other his loving Subjects, the Commons, in this present Parliament assembled: Whereupon, the said Lords and Commons, by a great Deliberation, finally be resolved, that it is, and shall be much more to the pleasure of Almighty God, and for the Honour of this his Realm, that the Possessions of such small Religious Houses, now being spent, spoyled and wasted for Increase and Maintenance of Sin, should be used and committed to better uses, and the unthrifty Religious Persons, so spending the same, to be compelled to reform their Lives.”
This preamble was followed by enactments, giving the whole of the property to the King, his heirs and assigns, “to do, and use therewith, according to their own wills, to the pleasure of Almighty God, and to the honour and profit to this realm.” Besides the lands, and houses, and stock, this tyrannical act gave him the household goods, and the gold, silver, jewels, and every other thing belonging to those monasteries. Here was a breach of Magna Charta in the first place; a robbery of the monks and nuns in the next place; and, in the third place, a robbery of the indigent, the orphan, and the stranger. The parties robbed, even the actual possessors of the property were never heard in their defence; there was no charge against any particular convent; the charges were loose and general, and leveled against all convents, whose revenues did not exceed a certain sum. This alone was sufficient to show that the charges were false; for who will believe that the alleged wickedness extended to all, whose revenues did not exceed a certain sum, and that when those revenues got above that point, the wickedness stopped? It is clear that the reason for stopping at that point was, that there was yet something to be done with the nobles and gentry, before a seizure of the great monasteries could be safely attempted. The weak were first attacked, but means were very soon found for attacking, and sacking the remainder.
The moment the tyrant got possession of this class of the church estates, he began to grant them away to his “assigns,” as the act calls them. Great promises had been held out, that the king, when in possession of these estates, would never more want taxes from the people; and it is possible, that he thought that he should be able to do without taxes; but he soon found that he was not destined to keep the plunder to himself; and that, in short he must make a sudden stop, if not actually undo all that he had done, unless he divided the spoil with others, who instantly poured in upon him for their share, and they so beset him that he had not a moment’s peace. They knew that he had good things; they had taken care to enable him to have “assigns;” and they, as they intended from the first, would give him no rest, until he, “to the pleasure of Almighty God, and to the honour and profit of the realm;” made them those “assigns.”
Before four years had passed over his head, he found himself as poor as if he had never confiscated a single convent, so sharp-set were the pious reformers, and so eager to “please Almighty God.” When complaining to Cromwell of the rapacity of the applicants for grants, he exclaimed, “By our Lady, the cormorants, when they have got the garbage, will devour the dish.” Cromwell reminded him, that there was much more yet to come. “Tut, man,” said the king, “my whole realm would not stanch their maws.” However, he attempted this very soon after, by a seizure of the larger monasteries.
We have seen that the Parliament when they enabled him to confiscate the smaller monasteries, declared, that in the “great and solemn monasteries (thanks be to God) religion is right well kept and observed.” It seemed, therefore, to be a work of some difficulty to discover (in so short a time after this declaration was made) reasons for the confiscation of these large monasteries. But tyranny stands in need of no reasons; and, in this case, no reasons were alleged. Cromwell and his myrmidons, beset the heads of these great establishments; they threatened, they promised, they lied, and they bullied. By means the most base that can be conceived, they obtained from some few, what they called a “voluntary surrender.” However, where these unjust and sanguinary men met with sturdy opposition, they resorted to false accusations, and procured the murder of the parties, under pretense of their having committed high treason. It was under this infamous pretense, that the tyrant hanged and ripped up and quartered the Abbot of the famous Abbey of Glastonbury, whose body was mangled by the executioner, and whose head and limbs were hung up on what is called the torre which overlooks the abbey. So that the surrender, whatever it did take place, was precisely of the nature of those “voluntary surrenders” which men make of their purses, when the robber’s pistol is at their temple, or his blood-stained knife at their throat.
After all, however, even to obtain a pretense of voluntary surrender, was a work too troublesome for Comwell and his ruffian visitors, and much too slow the cormorants who waited for the plunder. Without more ceremony, therefore, an act was passed (31 Hen. VIII. chap. 13,) giving all these “surrendered” monasteries to the king, his heirs and assigns, and also all other monasteries; and all hospitals and colleges into the bargain! It is useless to waste our time in uttering exclamations, or in venting curses on the memory of the monsters who thus made a general sacking of this then fine, rich and beautiful country, which, until now, had been, for nine hundred years the happiest country, and the greatest country too, that Europe had ever seen.
The carcass being thus laid prostrate, the rapacious vultures, who had assisted the work, flew on it, and began to tear it in pieces. The people here and there rose in insurrection against the tyrant’s satellites; but, deprived of their natural leaders, who had, for the most part, placed themselves on the side of tyranny and plunder, what were the mere common people to do? Hume affects to pity the ignorance of the people (as our stock-jobbing writers now affect to pity the ignorance of the country people in Spain,) in showing their attachment to the monks. Gross ignorance, to be sure, to prefer easy land-lords, leases for life, hospitality, and plenty; “gross ignorance and superstition” to prefer these to grinding rack-rents, buying small beer at bishop’s palaces, and living on a parish pay. We shall see, shortly, how soon horrid misery followed these tyrannical proceedings; but, we must trace Cromwell and his ruffians in their work of confiscating, plundering, pillaging, and devastating.
Tyrants have often committed robberies on their people; but, in all cases but this, in England at least, there was always something of legal process observed. In this case there was no such thing. The base Parliament, who were to share, and who did most largely share, in the plunder, had given not oly the lands and houses to the tyrant, or, rather, had taken them to themselves; but had disposed, in the same short way, of all the movable goods, stock on farms, crops, and, which was of more consequence, of the gold, silver, and jewels. Let the reader judge of the ransackings that now took place. The poorest of the convents had some images, vases, and other things of gold or silver. Many of them possessed a great deal in this way. The altars of their churches were generally enriched with the precious metals, if not with costly jewels; and, which is not to be overlooked, the people in those days were honest enough to suffer all these things to remain in their places, without a standing army, and without police officers.
Never, in all probability, since the world began, was there so rich a harvest of plunder. The ruffians of Cromwell entered convents; they tore down the altars to get awy the gold and silver; ransacked the chests and drawers of the monks and nuns; tore off the covers of books that were ornamented with the precious metals. These books were all in manuscript. Single books had taken, in many cases, half a long life-time to compose and to copy out fair. Whole libraries, the getting of which together, had taken ages upon ages, and had cost immense sums of money, were scattered abroad by these hellish ruffians, when they had robbed the covers of the rich ornaments. The ready money, in the convents, down to the last shilling, was seized. In short, the most rapacious and unfeeling soldiery never, in towns delivered up to be sacked, proceeded with greediness, shamelessness and brutality, to be compared with those of these heroes of the Protestant Reformation; and this, observe, towards persons, women as well as men, who had committed no crime known to the laws, who had had no crime regularly laid to their charge, who had no hearing in their defence a large part of whom had, within a year, been declared, by this same Parliament, to lead most godly and useful lives, the whole of whose possessions were guaranteed to them by the Great Charter, as much as the king’s crown was to him, and whose estates were enjoyed for the benefit of the poor, as well as for that of these plundered possessors themselves.
The tyrant was of course, the great pocketer of this species of plunder. Cromwell carried or sent it to him in parcels, twenty ounces of gold at one time, fifty ounces at another. Now a parcel of precious stones of one sort, then a parcel of another. Hume, could not, he was too cunning to ascribe justice or humanity to a monster, whose very name signifies injustice and cruelty. He therefore speaks of hi high spirit, his magnificence and generosity. It was a high-spirited and magnificent king to be sure, who sat in his palace, in London, to receive with his own hands, the gold, silver, jewels, and pieces of money, of which his unoffending subjects had been robbed by ruffians sent by himself to commit the robbery. One of the items runs in these words: “Item. – Delivered unto the King’s royal majesty, the same day, of the same stuffe, foure chalices of golde, with foure pattens of golde, to the same; and a spoon of golde, weighing, altogether, one hundred and six ounces. Received: HENRY, REX.”
There are high spirit, magnificence, and generosity! Amongst the stock of this”generous prince’s” pawnbroker’s shop; or rather, his store-house of stolen goods, were images of all sorts, candlesticks, sockets, cruets, cups, pixes, goblets, basins, spoons, diamonds, sapphires, pearls, finger-rings, earrings, pieces of money of all values, even down to a shillings, bits of gold and silver torn from the covers of books, or cut and beaten out of the altars. In cases where the wood work, either of altars, crosses, or images, was inlaid with precious metal, the wood was frequently burnt to get at the metal. Even the thieves of the present day, are not more expert at their trade, than the myrmidons of Cromwell were.
The parcel of plunder mentioned in the last paragraph but one, brought into this royal Peachum, was equal in value to about eight thousand pounds of money of the present day; and that parcel was, perhaps, not a hundredth part of what he received in this way. Then who is to suppose that the plunderers did not keep a large share to themselves? Did subaltern plunderers ever give in just accounts? It is manifest, that, from this specimen, the whole amount of the goods of which the convents were plundered, must have been enormous. The Reforming gentry ransacked the Cathedral churches as well as the convents and their churches. Whatever pile contained the greatest quantity of the “same stuffe,” seemed to be the object of their most keen rapacity. Therefore, it is by no means surprising, that they directed, at a very early stage of their pious and honest progress, their hasty steps towards Canterbury, which, above all other places had been dipped in the “manifeste synne” of possessing rich altars, toms, gold and silver images, together with “manifestly synneful” diamonds and other precious stones. The whole of this city, was prize; and the “Reformation” people hastened to it with that alacrity, and that nose of anticipated enjoyment, which we observe in the crows and magpies, when flying to the spot were a horse or an ox has accidentally met with its death.
But there were, at Canterbury, two objects by which the “Reformation” birds of prey were particularly attracted; namely, the monastery of St. Austin, and the tomb of Thomas A. Becket. St. Austin’s shrine was in the monastery dedicated to him and as it was, in all respects, a work of great magnificence, it offered a plenteous booty to the plunderers, who, if they could have got at the tome of Jesus Christ himself, and had found it equally rich, would, beyond all question, have torn it to pieces. But, rich as was this prize a greater was in the shrine of Thomas A. Becket, in the Cathedral church. Becket, who was Archbishop of Canterbury, in the reign of Henry II., who resisted that king, when the latter was manifestly preparing to rob the church, and to enslave and pillage the people, had been held in the highest veneration all over christendom for more than three hundred years, when the Reformation plunderers assailed his tome; but especially was his name venerated in England, where the people looked upon him as a martyr to their liberties as well as their religion, he having been barbarously murdered by ruffians sent by the king, and for no other cause than that he persevered in resisting an attempt to violate the Great Charter. Pilgrimages were continually made to his tome; offerings incessantly poured into it; churches and hospitals and other establishments of piety and charity were dedicated to him, as, for instance, the church of St. Thomas in the city of London, the Monastery of Sende, in Surrey, the Hospital of St. Thomas, in the borough of Southwark, and things of this sort, in great numbers, all over the country. The offerings at his shrine had made it exceedingly rich and magnificent. A king of France had given to it a diamond, supposed to be the most valuable then in Europe. The bloody tyrant who had sent More and Fisher to the block, and who, of course, hated the name of Becket, caused his ashes to be dug up and scattered in the air, and forbade the future-insertion of his name in the Calendar. We do not, therefore, find it in the Calendar in the Common Prayer Book; but, and it is a most curious fact, we find it in More’s Almanack; and thus, in spite of the ruthless tyrant, and in spite of all the liars of the “Reformation,” the English nation has always continued to be just and grateful to the memory of this celebrated man.
But to return to the “Reformation” robbers; here was a prize! This tomb of Becket was of wood, most exquisitely wrought, inlaid abundantly with the precious metals, and thickly set with precious stones of all sorts. Here was an object for “Reformation” piety to fix it godly eyes upon! Were such a shrine to be found in one of our churches now, how the swadlers would cry out for another “Reformation!” The gold, silver and jewels filled two chests, each of which required six or eight men of that day (when the laborers used to have plenty of meat) to move them to the door of the Cathedral! How the eyes of Hume’s “high-minded, magnificent and generous prince” must have glistened when the chests were opened! They vied, I dare say, with the diamonds themselves. No robbers of which we have ever had an account, equaled these robbers in rapacity, in profligacy, and in insolence. But, where is the wonder? The tyrant’s proclamations had now the force of laws; he had bribed the people’s natural leaders to his side; his will was law; and that will constantly sought plunder and blood.
The monasteries were not plundered, sacked, gutted, for this last is the proper word whereby to describe the deed. As some comfort, and to encourage us to endure the horrid relation, we may here bear in mind, that we shall, by and by, see the base ruffian, Cromwell, after being the chief instrument in the plunder, laying his miscreant head on the block; but to seize the estates, and to pillage the churches and apartments of the monasteries was not all. The noble buildings, raised with the view of lasting for countless ages; the beautiful gardens; these ornaments of the country must not be suffered to stand, for they continually reminded the people of the rapacity and cruelty of their tyrant and his fellow-plunderers and partakes in the plunder. How the property in the estates was disposed of, we shall see further on; but the buildings must come down. To go to work the usual way would have been a labor without end; so that, in most instances, gunpowder was resorted to; and thus, in a few hours, the most magnificent structures, which it had required ages upon ages to bring to perfection, were made heaps of ruins, pretty much such as many of them remain even unto this day. In many cases, those who got the estates were bound to destroy the buildings, or to knock them partly down, so that the people should, at once, be deprived of all hope of seeing a revival of what they had lost, and in order to give them encouragement to take leases under the new owners.
The whole country was thus disfigured; it had the appearance of a land recently invaded by the most brutal barbarians; and this appearance, if we look well into it, it has, even to this day. Nothing has ever yet come to supply the place of what was then destroyed. This is the view for us to take of the matter. It is not a mere matter of religion; but a matter of rights, liberties, real wealth, happiness, and national greatness.
Thus, then, was the country devastated, sacked and defaced; and I should now proceed to give an account of the commencement of that poverty and degradation which were, as I have pledged myself to show, the consequences, of the devastation; and which I shall show, not by bare assertion, not from what are called “histories of England;” but from Acts of Parliament, and from other sources, which every one can refer to, and the correctness of which, is beyond all dispute. But, before we come to this important matter, we must see the end of the ruffian “Vicegerent,” and also the end of the tyrant himself, who was, during the events that we have been speaking of, going on marrying, and divorcing, or killing his wives; but, whose career was, after all, not very long.
After the deaths of Jane Seymour, who was the mother of Edward VI., and who was the only one of all the tyrant’s wives who had the good luck to die a queen, and to die in her bed; after her death, which took place in 1537, he was nearly two years hunting up another wife. None, certainly, but some very gross and unfeeling women could be expected to have, voluntarily, anything to do with a man whose hands were continually steeped in blood. In 1539 he found, however a mate in Anne, the sister of the Duke of Cleves. When she arrived in England, he expressed his dislike for her person; but he found it prudent to marry her. In 1580, about six or seven months after the marriage, he was divorced from her, not daring, in this case, to set his myrmidons at work to bring her to the block. There was no lawful pretense for the divorce. The husband did not like his wife; that was all: and this was alleged too, as the ground of the divorce. Cranmer, who had divorced him from two wives before, put his irons in to the fire again for this occasion; and produced, in a little time, as neat a piece of work as ever had come from the shop of “Reformation.” Thus, the king and queen were single people again; but the former had another young and handsome wife in his eye. This lady’s name was Catherine Howard, a niece of of the Duke of Norfolk. This Duke, as well as most of the old nobility, hated Cromwell; and now was an opportunity of inflicting vengeance on him. Cromwell had been the chief cause of the king’s marriage with Anne, of Cleves; but, the fact is, his plundering talent was no longer wanted, and it was convenient to the tyrant to get rid of him.
Cromwell had obtained enormous wealth, from his several offices, as well as from the plunder of the church, and the poor. He had got about thirty of the estates belonging to the monasteries; his house, or rather his palace, was gorged with the fruits of the sacking; he had been Earl of Essex; he had precedence of every one but the king; and he, in fact, represented the king in the Parliament, where he introduced and defended all his confiscating and murdering laws. He had been barbarous beyond all description towards the unfortunate and unoffending monks and nuns; without such an instrument, the plunder never could have been effected: but he was no longer wanted; the ruffian had already leaved too long; the very walls of the devastated convents seemed to call for public vengeance on his head. On the morning of the 10th of June, 1560, he was all powerful: in the evening of the same day, he was in prison, as a traitor. He lay in prison only a few days before he had to experience the benefit of his own way of administering justice. He had, as we have seen in the last chapter, invented a way of bringing people to the block, or the gallows, without giving them any form of trial; without giving them even a hearing; but merely by passing a law to put them to death. This was what this abominable wretch had brought about in the case of the Countess of Salisbury; and this was what was not to fall on his own head. He lived only about forty-eight days after his own arrest; not half long enough to enable him to enumerate, barely to enumerate, the robberies and murders committed under his orders. His time seems, however, to have been spent, not in praying God to forgive him for these robberies and murders, but in praying to the tyrant to spare his life. Perhaps, of all the mean and dastardly wretches that ever died, this was the most mean and dastardly. He who had been the most insolent and cruel of ruffians, when he had the power; was not the most disgustingly slavish and base. He had, in fact, committed no crime against the king, though charged with heresy and treason, he was no more heretic than the king was; and, as to the charge of treason, there was not a shadow of foundation for it. But, he was just as guilty of treason as the abbots of Reading, Colchester, and Glasonbury, all of whom, and many more, he had been the chief instrument in putting to death. He put them to death in order to get possession of their property; and, I dare say, to get at his property, to get the plunder back from him, was one of the motives for bringing him to the block. This very ruffian had superintended the digging up of the ashes of Thomas A. Becket and scattering them in the air; and now, the people who had witnessed that, had to witness the letting of the blood out of his dirty body, to run upon the pavements to be licked up by hogs or dogs. The cowardly creature seems to have had, from the moment of his arrest, no thought about anything but saving his life. He wrote repeatedly to the king, in the ope of getting pardoned; but all to no purpose: he had done what was wanted of him; the work of plunder was nearly over, he had, too, got a large share of the plunder, which it was not convenient to leave in his hands; and, therefore, upon true “Reformation” principle, it was time to take away his life. He, in his letters to the king, most vehemently protested his innocence. Aye, no doubt of that: but he was not more innocent than were the butchered Abbots and monks; he was not more innocent than any one out of those thousands upon thousands whom he had quartered, hanged, burned or plundered; and amongst all those thousands upon thousands, there never was seen one female or male, so complete a dastard as himself. In these letters to the tyrant, he fawned on him in the most disgusting manner; compared his smiles and frowns to those of God: besought him to suffer him to “kiss his balmy hand one more, that the fragrance thereof might make him fit for heaven!” The base creature deserved his death, if it had only been for writing these letters. Fox, the “Martyr” man calls this Cromwell the “Valiant solder of the Reformation.” Yes, there haver been few soldiers to understand sacking better; he was full of valor on foraging parties; and when he had to rifle monks and nuns, and to rob altars: a brave fellow when he had to stretch monks and nuns on the rack, to make them confess treasonable words or thoughts; but when death began to stare him in the face, he was, assuredly, the most cowardly caitiff that ever died. It is hardly necessary to say, that this man is a great favorite of Hume, who deeply laments Cromwell’s fate, though he has not a word of compassion to bestow upon al lthe thousands that had been murdered or ruined by him. He, as well as other historians, quotes, from the conclusion of one of Cromwell’s letters to the king, these abject expressions, “I, a most woeful prisoner, am ready to submit to death, when it shall please God and your majesty; and yet the frail flesh incites me to call to your grace fo mercy and pardon for mine offences. Written at the Tower, with the heavy heart and trembling hand of your highness’s most miserable prisoner, and poor slave, Thomas Cromwell. Most gracious prince, I cry for mercy! mercy! mercy!” Fox meant valiant, not in the field, or on the scaffold, but in the convent, pulling the rings from women’s fingers, and tearing the gold clasps from books: that was the Protestant valor of the “Reformation.” Hume says, that Cromwell “deserved a better fate.” Never was fate more just or more appropriate. He had been the willing, the officious, the zealous, the eager agent in the execution of all the tyrannical, sacrilegious, and bloody deeds of his master; and had, amongst other things, been the every man who first suggested the condemning of people to death without trial. What could be more just than that he should die in the same way? Not a tear was shed at his death, which produced on the spectators an effect such as is produced, when the foulest of murderers expiate their crimes on the gallows.
During the seven years that the tyrant himself survived this his cruel Vicegerent, he was beset with disappointments, vexations, and torments, of all sorts. He discovered, at the end of a few months, that his new queen had been, and still was, much such another as Anne Boleyn. He, with very little ceremony, sent her to the block, together with a whole posse of her relations, lovers and cronies. He raged and foamed like a wild beast, passed laws most bloody to protect himself against lewdness and infidelity in his future wives, and got, for his pains, the ridicule of the nation, and of all Europe. He, for the last time, took another wife; but this time, none would face his laws, but a widows: and she very narrowly escaped the fate of the rest. He, for some years before he died, became, from his gluttony and debaucheries, an unwieldy and disgusting mass of flesh, moved about by means of mechanical inventions. But, still he retained all the ferocity and bloody-mindedness of his former days. The principal business of his life was the ordering of accusations, executions, and confiscations. When on his death bed, every one was afraid to intimate his danger to him, lest death to the intimator should be the consequence; and he died before he was well aware of his critical condition, leaving more than one death warrant unsigned for the want of time!
Thus expired, in the year, 1547, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and in the thirty-eighth of his reign, the most unjust, hard-hearted, meanest, and most sanguinary tyrant that the world had ever beheld, whether christian or heathen. That England, which he found in peace, unity, plenty, and happiness, he left, torn by factions and schisms, her people wandering about in beggary and misery. He laid the foundation of immorality, dishonesty, and pauperism, all which produced an abundant harvest in the reigns of his unhappy, barren, mischievous, and miserable children, with whom, at the end of a few years, his house and his name were extinguished forever. How he disposed of the plunder of the church and the poor; how his successors completed that work of confiscation which he had carried on so long; how the nation sunk in point of character and of wealth; how pauperism first arose in England; and how were sown the seeds of that system, of which we now behold the effects in impoverishment and degradation of the main body of the people of England and Ireland; all these will be shown hereafter: and shown, we trust, in a manner which will leave, in the mind of every man of sense, no doubt, that, of all the scourges that every afflicted any country, none is to be put in comparison with the Protestant “Reformation.”
In the preceding paragraph we had the satisfaction to see the savage tyrant expire at a premature old age, with body swelled and bursting from luxury, and with a mind torn by contending passions. One of his last acts was a will, by which he made his infant son his immediate successor, with remainder, in case he died without issue, to his daughter Mary first, and then, in default of issue again, to his daughter Elizabeth; though, observe, both the daughters still stood bastardized, by act of Parliament, and though the latter was born of Anne Boleyn while the king’s first wife, the mother of Mary was alive.
To carry this will into execution, and to govern the kingdom until Edward, who as then ten years of age, should be eighteen years of age, there were sixteen executors appointed, amongst whom was Seymour, Earl of Hertford, and “honest Cranmer.” These sixteen worthies began by taking, in the most solemn manner, an oath to stand to, and maintain, the last will of their master. Their second act was to break that oath by making Hertford, who was a brother of Jane Seymour, the king’s mother, “protector,” though the will gave equal powers to all the executors. Their next step was to give ner peerages to some of themselves. The fourth, to award to the new peers, grants of public money. The fifth was to lay aside at the coronation, the ancient English custom of asking the people if they were willing to have and obey the king. The sixth was to “attend at a solemn high mass.” And the seventh was to begin a series of acts for the total subversion of all that remained of the Catholic religion in England, and for the effecting of all that Old Harry had left unaffected ion the way of plunder.
The monasteries were gone; the cream had been taken off; but there remained the skimmed milk of church-altars, chantries and guilds. Old Harry would doubtless, if he had lived much longer, have plundered these; but he had not done it, and he could not do it without openly becoming Protestant, which, for the reasons already stated, he would not do. But Hertford, and his fifteen brother worthies, had in their way no such obstacles as the ruffian kind had had. The church altars, the chantries and the guilds contained something valuable; and they longed to be at it. The power of the Pope was gotten rid of; the country had been sacked; the poor had been despoiled; but, still there were some pickings left. Every church, however small, contained some gold and silver appertaining to the altar. The altars, in the parish churches, and, generally, in the Cathedrals, had been left, as yet, untouched; for, though the wife killer had abjured the Pope, whose power he had taken to himself, he still professed to be of the Catholic faith, and he maintained the mass and the sacraments, and creeds with fire and faggot. Therefore, he had left the church altars unplundered. But, they contained gold, silver, and other valuables, and the worthies saw these with longing eyes and itching fingers.
To seize them, however, there required a pretext; and what pretext could there be, short of declaring, at once, that the Catholic religion was false and wicked, and, of course, that there ought to be no altars, and of course, no gold and silver things appertaining to them! The sixteen worthies, with Hertford at their head, and with Cranmer amongst them, had had the king crowned as a Catholic; he, as well as they, had taken the oaths as Catholics; they had sworn to uphold that religion; they had taken him to a high mass, after his coronation; but, the altars had good things about them; there was plunder remaining; and to get at this remaining plunder, the Catholic religion must be wholly put down. It is impossible for any man of common sense, of unperverted mind, to look at the history of this transaction, at this open avowal of Protestantism, without being convinced that the principal authors of it had plunder, and plunder only in view.
The old tyrant died in 1547; and, by the end of 1549, Cranmer, who had tied so many Protestants to the stake for not being Catholics, had pretty nearly completed a system of Protestant worship. He first prepared a book of homilies and a catechism, in order the pave his way. Next came a law to allow the clergy to have wives; and then, when all things had been prepared, came the “Book of Common Prayer,” and Administration of the Sacraments. Gardiner, who was Bishop of Winchester, reproached Cranmer with his duplicity; reminded him of the zeal with which he had upheld the Catholic worship under the late king, and would have made him hang himself, or cut his throat, if he had had the slightest remains of shame in him.
This new system did not, however, go far enough for the fanatics; and there instantly appeared arrayed against it, whole tribes of new lights on the continent. So that Cranmer, cunning as he was, soon found that he had undertaken no easy matter. The proclamations put forth, upon this occasion, were disgustingly ridiculous; coming, as they did, in the name of a king only ten years of age, and expressed in words so solemnly pompous and so full of arrogance. However, the chief object was the plunder; and to get at this, nothing was spared. There were other things to attract the grasp; but it will be unnecessary to dwell very particularly on anything but the altars and the churches. This was the real “Reformation reign;” for, it was a reign of robbery and hypocrisy without anything to be compared to them; anything in any country, or in any age. Religion, conscience, was always the pretext: but, in one way or another, robbery, plunder, was always the end. The people became divided into innumerable sects, no one knowing what it was lawful for him to say; for it soon became impossible for the common people to know what was heresy, and what was not heresy.
That prince of hypocrites, Cranmer, who, during the reign of Henry, had condemned people to the flames for not believing in “transubstantiation,” was now ready to condemn them for believing it. We have seen, that Luther, was the beginner of the work of “Reformation;” but he was soon followed by further reformers on the continent. These had made many attempts to propagate their doctrines in England; but old Henry had kept them down. Now, however, when the churches were to be robbed of what remained in the, and when, to have a pretext for that robbery, it was necessary to make a complete change in the form of worship, these sectarians all flocked to England, which became one great scene of religious disputation. Some were for the Common Prayer Book, others proposed alterations in it; others were abolishing it altogether; and there now began that division, that multiplicity of hostile opinions, which has continued to the present day. Cranmer employed a part of the resources of the country to feed and fatten those of these religious, or rather, impious, adventurers, who sided with him, and who chose the best market for their doctrines. England was over-run by these foreign traders in religion; and this nation, so jealous of foreign influence, was now compelled to bend its haughty neck, not only to foreigners, but to foreigners of the most base and infamous character and description. Cranmer could not find Englishmen sufficiently supple to be his tools in executing the work that hd had in hand. The Protector, Hertford, whom we must now call Somerset, (the child king having made him Duke of Somerset,) was the greatest of all reformers that had yet appeared in the world, and, as we shall soon see, the greatest, and most audacious of all the plunderers that this famous ‘Reformation’ had produced, save and except old Henry himself. The total abolition of the Catholic worship was necessary to his projects of plunder; and, therefore, he was a great encourager of these greedy and villainous foreigners. Perhaps the world has never, in any age, seen a nest of such atrocious miscreants as Luther, Zuinglius, Calvin, Beza, and the rest of the distinguished reformers of the Catholic religion. Every one of them was notorious for the most scandalous vices, even according to the full confession of his own followers.
The consequences to the morals of the people were such as were naturally to be expected. All historians agree, that vice of all sorts, and crimes of every kind, were never so great and so numerous before. This was confessed by the teachers themselves – and yet Protestants have extolled this reign as the reign of the conscience and religion! The “Reformation” was not the work of virtue, of fanaticism, of error, of ambition, but of a love of plunder. This was its great animating principle: in this it began, and in this it proceeded till there was nothing left for it to work on.
The old tyrant had, in certain cases, enabled his minions to rob the bishoprics; but now, there was a grand sweep at them. The Protector took the lead, and his example was followed by others. They took so much from one, so much from another, and some they wholly suppressed, as that of Westminster, and took their estates to themselves. There were many chantries (private property to all intents and purposes,) free chapels, also private property, alms-houses, hospitals, guilds, or fraternities, the property of which was as much private property as the funds of any Society now are. All these became lawful plunder. And yet there are men who pretend that what is now possessed by the Established Church is of so sacred a nature as not to be touched by Act of Parliament! This was the reign in which this, the English Established Church was founded, for though the fabric was overset by Mary, it was raised again by Elizabeth. Now it was, that it was made. It was made, and the new worship along with it, by Acts of Parliament. The property it possesses was taken, nominally, from the Catholic church; but in reality from that church, and also from the widow, the orphan, the indigent, and the stranger. The pretext for making it was, that it would cause an union of sentiment amongst the people; that it would compose all dissensions.
The plunder which remained after the seizure of the monasteries, was comparatively small; but, still, the very leavings of the old tyranny, the mere gleanings of the harvest of plunder were something; and these were not suffered to remain. The plunder of the churches, parochial as well as collegiate, was preceded by all sorts of antics played in those churches. Calvin had got an influence opposed to that of Cranmer; so that there was almost open war amongst these Protestants, which party should have the teaching of the people. After due preparation in this way, the robbery was set about in due form. Every church altar had, as I have before observed, more or less of gold and silver. A part consisted of images, a part of censers, candlesticks, and other things, used in the celebration of the mass. The mass was, therefore abolished, and there was no longer to be an altar but a table in its stead. The fanatical part of the reformers amused themselves with quarreling about the part of the church where the table was to stand; about the shape of it, and whether the head of it was to be placed to the north, the east, the west, or the south; and whether the people were to stand, kneel, or sit at it! The plunderers, however, thought about other things; they thought about the value of the images, censers, and the like.
Every preparation being made, the robbery began, and a general plunder of churches took place by royal and Parliamentary authority! The robbers took away every thing valuable, even down to the vestments of the priests. Such mean rapacity never was heard of before, and, for the honor of human nature, let us hope that it will never be heard of again. It seems that England was really become a den of thieves, too, of the lowest, and most despicable character.
The Protector, Somerset, did not forget himself. Having plundered four or five of the bishoprics, he needed a palace in London. For the purpose of building this palace, which was erected in the Strand, Landon, and which was called “Somerset House,” as the place is called to this day, he took from three bishops their own houses; he pulled these down, together with a parish church, in order to get a suitable spot for the erection. The materials of these demolished buildings being insufficient for his purpose, he pulled down a part of the buildings appertaining to the then Cathedral of St. John the church of the Saint John near Smithfield; Barking Chapel near the Tower; the college church of Saint Martin-le-Grand; St. Ewen’s church, Newgate, and the parish church of St. Nicholas. He, besides these, ordered the pulling down of the parish church o St. Margaret, Westminster; but, says Dr. Heyleyn, “The workmen had no sooner advanced their scaffolds, when the parishioners gathered together in great multitudes, with bows and arrows, and staves and clubs: which so terrified the workmen that they ran away in great amazement, and never could be brought again upon that employment.”
The Book of Common Prayer was to put an end to all dissensions; but, its promulgation, and the consequent robbery of the churches were followed by open insurrection, in many of the countries, by battles and executions by martial law. The whole kingdom was in commotion; but, particularly, in Devonshire and Norfolk. In the former county the insurgents were superior in force to the hired troops, and had besieged Exeter. Lord Russel was sent against them, and, at last, reinforced by German troops, he defeated them, executed many by martial law, and most gallantly hanged a priest on the top of a tower of his church! In Norfolk, the insurrection was still more formidable; but was finally suppressed by the aid of foreign troops, and was also followed by the most barbarous executions. The people of Devonshire complained of the alterations in religion; that, as Dr. Heyleyn (a Protestant divine) expresses it, “That the free-born commonality was oppressed by a small number of gentry, who glutted themselves with pleasures, while the poor commons, wasted by daily labor, like pack horses, live in extreme slavery; and that holy rites, established by their fathers, were abolished, and a new form of religion obtruded.” But Cranmer’s Prayer Book, and the church “by law established,” backed by foreign bayonets, finally triumphed, at least for the present, and during the remainder of this hypocritical, base, corrupt, and tyrannical reign.
Thus arose the Protestant church, as by law established. Here we see its origin. Thus it was that it commenced its career.
Somerset, who had brought his own brother to the block in 1549, chiefly because he had opposed himself to his usurpations (though both were plunderers,) was, not long after the commission of those cruelties, on the people, destined to come to that block himself. Dudley, Earl of Warwick, who was his rival in baseness and injustice, and his superior in talent, had out-intrigued him in the council; and, at last, he brought him to that end which he so well merited. On what grounds this was done, is wholly uninteresting. It was a set of most wicked men, circumventing, and if necessary, destroying each other; but it is worthy of remark, that amongst the crimes alleged against this great culprit, was, his having brought foreign troops into the kingdom! This was, to be sure, rather ungrateful in the pious reformers; for, it was those troops that established for them their new religion. But, it was good to see them putting their leader to death, actually cutting off his head, for having caused their projects to succeed. It was, in plain words, a dispute about the plunder. Somerset had got more than his brother-plunderers deemed his share. He was building a palace for himself; and if each plunderer could have had a palace, it would have been peace amongst them; but, as this could not be, the rest called him a traitor, and as the king, the Protestant St. Edward had signed the death-warrant of one uncle at the instigation of another uncle, he now signed the death-warrant of that other, the “Saint” himself, being, even now, only fifteen years of age!
Warwick, who was now become Protector, was made Duke of Northumberland, and got granted to him, the immense estates of that ancient house, which had fallen into the hands of the crown. This was, if possible, a more zealous Protestant than the last Protector; that is to say, still more profligate, rapacious, and cruel. The work of plundering the Catholic clergy went on, until there remained scarcely anything the name of its clergy. Many parishes were, in all parts of the kingdom, united in one, and having but one priest amongst them. But indeed, there were hardly any Catholics left.
All the good and all the learned had either been killed, starved to death, banished, or had gone out of the country; and those who remained were, during this reign of mean plunder, so stripped of their incomes, so pared down, that the parochial clergy worked as carpenters, smiths, masons, and were not unfrequently menial servants in gentleman’s houses. So that this Church of England, “as by law (and German troops) established,” became the scorn, not only of the people of England, but of all the nations of Europe.
Here is the third chapter in Beebe's book. I hope that you all have been enjoying it so far! I can only assume that no one has found any spelling errors, since no one has responded to any of the posts so far. That is good news, but I still plan on going back through and double checking it after I finish typing it.
I'm very surprised that there have no comments on it so far. A lot of what Beebe brings up is contrary to the history of the "Reformation" that I remember learning.
May the Lord guide us into ALL truth, scriptural and historical!
A Sinner in Hope,
Tom
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THE HISTORY OF PROTESTANT
PRIEST-CRAFT IN AMERICA AND EUROPE
Elder Gilbert Beebe
BANNER OF LIBERTY
1865
Elder Gilbert Beebe
BANNER OF LIBERTY
1865
CHAPTER III.
Progress and Fruits of the Reformation.
When men have power to commit, and are resolved to commit, acts of injustice, they are never at a loss for pretenses. We shall presently see what were the pretenses under which this devastation of England begun; but, to do the work, there required a workman, as, to slaughter an ox, there requires a butcher. To turn the possessors so large a part of the estates, to destroy establishments venerated by the people from their childhood, to set all law, divine as well as human, at defiance, to violate every principle on which property rested, to rob the poor and helpless of the means of sustenance, to deface the beauty of the country, and make it literally a heap of ruins; to do these things, there required a suitable agent; and that agent the tyrant found in Thomas Cromwell; whose name, along with that of Cranmer, ought “to stand for aye, accursed in the calendar.” This Cromwell was the son of a blacksmith, of Putney, in Surrey. He had been an underling of some sort in the family of Cardinal Wolsey, and had recommended himself to the king by his sycophancy to him, and his treachery to his old master. The king now became head of the church, and having the supremacy to exercise, had very judiciously provided himself with Cranmer as a primate; and to match him, he provided himself with Cromwell, who was equal to Cranmer in impiousness and baseness, rather surpassed him in dastardness, and exceeded him decidedly in the quality of ruffian. All nature could not, perhaps have afforded another man so fit to be the “Royal Vicegerent and Vicar General” of the new head of the English church.
Accordingly, with this character, the brutal blacksmith was invested. He was to exercise “all the spiritual authority belonging to the king, for the administration of justice in all cases touching the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and the godly reformation and redress of errors, heresies, and abuses in the said church.” We shall very soon see proofs enough of the baseness of this man, for whom ruffian is too gentle a term. With chance, then, did the monasteries stand in his hands? He was created a peer. He sat before the primate in Parliament; he sat above all the bishops in assemblies of the clergy, he took precedence of all the nobles, whether in office, or out of office; and, as in character, so in place, he was second only to the chief tyrant himself.
In order to begin the “godly Reformation;” that is to say, the work of plunder, the “Vicegerent” blacksmith set on foot a visitation of the monasteries! Dreadful visitation! He, active as he was in wickedness, could not do all the work himself. He therefore appointed deputies to assist in making this visitation. The kingdom was divided into districts for this purpose and two deputies were appointed to visit each district. The object was to obtain grounds of accusation against the monks and nuns. When we consider what the object was, and what was the character of the man, to whom the work was committed, we may easily imagine what sort of men these deputies were. They were, in fact, fit to be the subalterns of such a chief. Some of the very worst men in all England; men of notoriously infamous characters; men who had been convicted of heinous crimes; some who had actually been branded; and, probably, not one man who had ot repeatedly deserved the halter. Think of a respectable, peaceful, harmless, and pious family, broken in upon all of a sudden by a brace of burglars, with murder written on their scowling brows, demanding an instant production of their title-deeds, money, and jewels; imagine such a scene as this, and you have then some idea of the visitations of these monsters, who came with the threat of the tyrant on their lips, who menaced their victims with charges of high treason, who wrote in their reports, not what was, but what their merciless employers wanted them to write.
The monks and nuns, who had never dreamed of the possibility of such proceedings, who had never had an idea that Magna Charta, and all the laws of the land could be set aside in a moment, and whose recluse and peaceful lives rendered them wholly unfit to cope with, at once, crafty and desperate villainy, fell before these ruffians, as chickens fall before the kite. The reports made by these villains, met with no contradiction; the accused parties had no means of making a defence; there was no court for them to appear in; they dared not, even if they had had the means, to offer a defence, or make complaint; for they had seen the horrible consequences, the burnings, the ripping up, of all those of their brethren who had ventured to whisper their dissent from any dogma or decree of the tyrant. The project was to despoil people of their property; and yet the parties, from whom the property was to be taken, were to have no court, in which to plead their cause, no means of obtaining a hearing, could make even no complaint but at the peril of their lives. They, and those who depended on them were to be, at once, stripped of this great mass of property, without any other ground than that of reports made by men sent, as the malignant Hume himself confesses, for the express purpose of finding a pretense for the dissolution of the monasteries, and for the king’s taking to himself property that had never belonged to him or his predecessors.
Hume does not, in the face of such a multitude of facts that are upon record to the contrary, pretend that these reports were true; but he does his best to put a gloss upon them. However, upon reports thus obtained, an act of Parliament was passed in March, 1836, the same year that saw the end of Anne Boleyn, for the suppression, that is to say, confiscation of three hundred and seventy-six monasteries, and for granting their estates, real and personal, to the king and his heirs! He took plate, jewels, gold and silver images and ornaments. This act of monstrous tyranny was, however, base as the Parliament was, and full as it was, of greedy plunderers, not passed without some opposition Hume says that “it does not appear that any opposition was made to this important law.” He frequently quotes Spelman as a historical authority; but it did not suit him to quote Spelman’s “History of Sacrilege,” in which this Protestant historian says, “the bill stuck long in the lower house, and could get no passage, when the king commanded the Commons to attend him in the forenoon in his gallery, where he let them wait till late in the afternoon, and then, coming out of his chamber; walking a turn or two amongst them, and looking angrily on them, first on one side, and then on the other, at last, “I hear,” said he, “that my bill will not pass, but I will have it pass, or I will have some of your heads;” and, without other rhetoric, returned to his chamber. Enough was said, the bill passed, and all was given him as he desired.
Thus, then, it was an act of sheer tyranny; it was a pure Algerine proceeding at last. The pretenses availed nothing; the reports of Cromwell’s myrmidons were not credited; every artifice had failed; resort was had to the halter and the axe to accomplish that “Reformation,” of which the Scotch historian Burnet has called this monster, “the first born son!” Some such man was necessary to bring about this “great and glorious” event. What! was ever good yet produced by wickedness so atrocious? Did any man but this Burnet, and this countryman Hume, ever effect to believe that such barefaced injustice and tyranny were justified on the ground of their tending to good consequences?
The Act was passed in the year 1536, and in the twenty-seventh year of the king’s reign. The preamble of the Act contains the reasons for its enactment; and, as this act really began the ruin and degradation of the main body of the people of England and Ireland; as it was the first step taken, in legal form, for robbing the people under the pretense of reforming their religion; as it was the precedent on which the future plunderers proceeded, until they had completely impoverished the country; as it was the first of that series of deeds of rapine by which this formerly well-fed, and well-clothed people have in the end been reduced to rags, and to a worse than jail allowance of food, I will insert its lying and villainous preamble at full length. Englishmen in general, suppose that there were always poor-laws and paupers in England. They ought to remember that for nine hundred years there were neither. They ought, when they hear the fat parson cry “no Popery,” to answer him by the cry of “no pauperism.” They ought above all things to endeavor to ascertain how it came to pass, that this land of roast beef was changed, all of a sudden, into a land of dry bread, or of oatmeal porridge. Let them attend, then, to the base and hypocritical pretenses that they will find in the following preamble1 to this atrocious act of pillage:
“Forasmuch as manifest synne, vicious, carnal, and abominable living is dayly used and committed commonly in such little and small Abbeys, Priories, and other Religious Houses of Monks, Canons and Nuns, where the Congregation of such Religious Persons is under the Number of twelve Persons, whereby the Governors of such Religious Houses and their Convent, spoyle, destroye, consume, and utterly waste, as well their Churches, Monasteries, Priories, principal Farms, Granges, Lands, Tenements and Heridtaments, as the Ornaments of their Churches, and their Goods and Chattels, to the high displeasure of Almighty God, Slander of good Religion, and to the great infamy of the King’s Highness and the Realm, if Redress should not be had thereof. And albeit that many continual Visitations hath been heretofore had, by the Space of two hundred of years and more, for an honest and charitable Reformation of such unthrifty, carnal, and abominable Living, yet neverthelesse, little or none Amendment is hitherto had, but their vicious Living shamelessly increaseth and augmenteth, and by a cursed Custom so rooted and infected, that a great multitude of the religious persons in such small houses do rather choose to rove abroad in Apostacy, than to conform themselves to the observation of good Religion; so that without such small Houses be utterly suppressed, and the Religious Persons therein committed to great and honourable Monasteries of Religion in this Realm, where they may be compelled to live religiously for Reformation of their Lives, the same else be no Redress nor Reformation in that Behalf. In Consideration whereof, the King’s most Royal Majesty, being Supreme Head on Earth, under God, of the Church of England, dayly studying and devysing the Increase, Advancement and Exaltation of true Doctrine and Virtue in the said Church, to the only Glory and Honour of God, and the total extirping and Destruction of Vice and Sin, having Knowledge that the premises be true, as well as the Accompts of his late Visitations, as by sundry credible informations, considering also that divers and great solemn Monasteries of this Realm, wherein (Thanks to God) Religion is right well kept and observed, be destitute of such full Number of Religious Persons, as they ought, and may keep, hath though good that a plain Declaration should be made, of the Premises, as well to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, as to other his loving Subjects, the Commons, in this present Parliament assembled: Whereupon, the said Lords and Commons, by a great Deliberation, finally be resolved, that it is, and shall be much more to the pleasure of Almighty God, and for the Honour of this his Realm, that the Possessions of such small Religious Houses, now being spent, spoyled and wasted for Increase and Maintenance of Sin, should be used and committed to better uses, and the unthrifty Religious Persons, so spending the same, to be compelled to reform their Lives.”
This preamble was followed by enactments, giving the whole of the property to the King, his heirs and assigns, “to do, and use therewith, according to their own wills, to the pleasure of Almighty God, and to the honour and profit to this realm.” Besides the lands, and houses, and stock, this tyrannical act gave him the household goods, and the gold, silver, jewels, and every other thing belonging to those monasteries. Here was a breach of Magna Charta in the first place; a robbery of the monks and nuns in the next place; and, in the third place, a robbery of the indigent, the orphan, and the stranger. The parties robbed, even the actual possessors of the property were never heard in their defence; there was no charge against any particular convent; the charges were loose and general, and leveled against all convents, whose revenues did not exceed a certain sum. This alone was sufficient to show that the charges were false; for who will believe that the alleged wickedness extended to all, whose revenues did not exceed a certain sum, and that when those revenues got above that point, the wickedness stopped? It is clear that the reason for stopping at that point was, that there was yet something to be done with the nobles and gentry, before a seizure of the great monasteries could be safely attempted. The weak were first attacked, but means were very soon found for attacking, and sacking the remainder.
The moment the tyrant got possession of this class of the church estates, he began to grant them away to his “assigns,” as the act calls them. Great promises had been held out, that the king, when in possession of these estates, would never more want taxes from the people; and it is possible, that he thought that he should be able to do without taxes; but he soon found that he was not destined to keep the plunder to himself; and that, in short he must make a sudden stop, if not actually undo all that he had done, unless he divided the spoil with others, who instantly poured in upon him for their share, and they so beset him that he had not a moment’s peace. They knew that he had good things; they had taken care to enable him to have “assigns;” and they, as they intended from the first, would give him no rest, until he, “to the pleasure of Almighty God, and to the honour and profit of the realm;” made them those “assigns.”
Before four years had passed over his head, he found himself as poor as if he had never confiscated a single convent, so sharp-set were the pious reformers, and so eager to “please Almighty God.” When complaining to Cromwell of the rapacity of the applicants for grants, he exclaimed, “By our Lady, the cormorants, when they have got the garbage, will devour the dish.” Cromwell reminded him, that there was much more yet to come. “Tut, man,” said the king, “my whole realm would not stanch their maws.” However, he attempted this very soon after, by a seizure of the larger monasteries.
We have seen that the Parliament when they enabled him to confiscate the smaller monasteries, declared, that in the “great and solemn monasteries (thanks be to God) religion is right well kept and observed.” It seemed, therefore, to be a work of some difficulty to discover (in so short a time after this declaration was made) reasons for the confiscation of these large monasteries. But tyranny stands in need of no reasons; and, in this case, no reasons were alleged. Cromwell and his myrmidons, beset the heads of these great establishments; they threatened, they promised, they lied, and they bullied. By means the most base that can be conceived, they obtained from some few, what they called a “voluntary surrender.” However, where these unjust and sanguinary men met with sturdy opposition, they resorted to false accusations, and procured the murder of the parties, under pretense of their having committed high treason. It was under this infamous pretense, that the tyrant hanged and ripped up and quartered the Abbot of the famous Abbey of Glastonbury, whose body was mangled by the executioner, and whose head and limbs were hung up on what is called the torre which overlooks the abbey. So that the surrender, whatever it did take place, was precisely of the nature of those “voluntary surrenders” which men make of their purses, when the robber’s pistol is at their temple, or his blood-stained knife at their throat.
After all, however, even to obtain a pretense of voluntary surrender, was a work too troublesome for Comwell and his ruffian visitors, and much too slow the cormorants who waited for the plunder. Without more ceremony, therefore, an act was passed (31 Hen. VIII. chap. 13,) giving all these “surrendered” monasteries to the king, his heirs and assigns, and also all other monasteries; and all hospitals and colleges into the bargain! It is useless to waste our time in uttering exclamations, or in venting curses on the memory of the monsters who thus made a general sacking of this then fine, rich and beautiful country, which, until now, had been, for nine hundred years the happiest country, and the greatest country too, that Europe had ever seen.
The carcass being thus laid prostrate, the rapacious vultures, who had assisted the work, flew on it, and began to tear it in pieces. The people here and there rose in insurrection against the tyrant’s satellites; but, deprived of their natural leaders, who had, for the most part, placed themselves on the side of tyranny and plunder, what were the mere common people to do? Hume affects to pity the ignorance of the people (as our stock-jobbing writers now affect to pity the ignorance of the country people in Spain,) in showing their attachment to the monks. Gross ignorance, to be sure, to prefer easy land-lords, leases for life, hospitality, and plenty; “gross ignorance and superstition” to prefer these to grinding rack-rents, buying small beer at bishop’s palaces, and living on a parish pay. We shall see, shortly, how soon horrid misery followed these tyrannical proceedings; but, we must trace Cromwell and his ruffians in their work of confiscating, plundering, pillaging, and devastating.
Tyrants have often committed robberies on their people; but, in all cases but this, in England at least, there was always something of legal process observed. In this case there was no such thing. The base Parliament, who were to share, and who did most largely share, in the plunder, had given not oly the lands and houses to the tyrant, or, rather, had taken them to themselves; but had disposed, in the same short way, of all the movable goods, stock on farms, crops, and, which was of more consequence, of the gold, silver, and jewels. Let the reader judge of the ransackings that now took place. The poorest of the convents had some images, vases, and other things of gold or silver. Many of them possessed a great deal in this way. The altars of their churches were generally enriched with the precious metals, if not with costly jewels; and, which is not to be overlooked, the people in those days were honest enough to suffer all these things to remain in their places, without a standing army, and without police officers.
Never, in all probability, since the world began, was there so rich a harvest of plunder. The ruffians of Cromwell entered convents; they tore down the altars to get awy the gold and silver; ransacked the chests and drawers of the monks and nuns; tore off the covers of books that were ornamented with the precious metals. These books were all in manuscript. Single books had taken, in many cases, half a long life-time to compose and to copy out fair. Whole libraries, the getting of which together, had taken ages upon ages, and had cost immense sums of money, were scattered abroad by these hellish ruffians, when they had robbed the covers of the rich ornaments. The ready money, in the convents, down to the last shilling, was seized. In short, the most rapacious and unfeeling soldiery never, in towns delivered up to be sacked, proceeded with greediness, shamelessness and brutality, to be compared with those of these heroes of the Protestant Reformation; and this, observe, towards persons, women as well as men, who had committed no crime known to the laws, who had had no crime regularly laid to their charge, who had no hearing in their defence a large part of whom had, within a year, been declared, by this same Parliament, to lead most godly and useful lives, the whole of whose possessions were guaranteed to them by the Great Charter, as much as the king’s crown was to him, and whose estates were enjoyed for the benefit of the poor, as well as for that of these plundered possessors themselves.
The tyrant was of course, the great pocketer of this species of plunder. Cromwell carried or sent it to him in parcels, twenty ounces of gold at one time, fifty ounces at another. Now a parcel of precious stones of one sort, then a parcel of another. Hume, could not, he was too cunning to ascribe justice or humanity to a monster, whose very name signifies injustice and cruelty. He therefore speaks of hi high spirit, his magnificence and generosity. It was a high-spirited and magnificent king to be sure, who sat in his palace, in London, to receive with his own hands, the gold, silver, jewels, and pieces of money, of which his unoffending subjects had been robbed by ruffians sent by himself to commit the robbery. One of the items runs in these words: “Item. – Delivered unto the King’s royal majesty, the same day, of the same stuffe, foure chalices of golde, with foure pattens of golde, to the same; and a spoon of golde, weighing, altogether, one hundred and six ounces. Received: HENRY, REX.”
There are high spirit, magnificence, and generosity! Amongst the stock of this”generous prince’s” pawnbroker’s shop; or rather, his store-house of stolen goods, were images of all sorts, candlesticks, sockets, cruets, cups, pixes, goblets, basins, spoons, diamonds, sapphires, pearls, finger-rings, earrings, pieces of money of all values, even down to a shillings, bits of gold and silver torn from the covers of books, or cut and beaten out of the altars. In cases where the wood work, either of altars, crosses, or images, was inlaid with precious metal, the wood was frequently burnt to get at the metal. Even the thieves of the present day, are not more expert at their trade, than the myrmidons of Cromwell were.
The parcel of plunder mentioned in the last paragraph but one, brought into this royal Peachum, was equal in value to about eight thousand pounds of money of the present day; and that parcel was, perhaps, not a hundredth part of what he received in this way. Then who is to suppose that the plunderers did not keep a large share to themselves? Did subaltern plunderers ever give in just accounts? It is manifest, that, from this specimen, the whole amount of the goods of which the convents were plundered, must have been enormous. The Reforming gentry ransacked the Cathedral churches as well as the convents and their churches. Whatever pile contained the greatest quantity of the “same stuffe,” seemed to be the object of their most keen rapacity. Therefore, it is by no means surprising, that they directed, at a very early stage of their pious and honest progress, their hasty steps towards Canterbury, which, above all other places had been dipped in the “manifeste synne” of possessing rich altars, toms, gold and silver images, together with “manifestly synneful” diamonds and other precious stones. The whole of this city, was prize; and the “Reformation” people hastened to it with that alacrity, and that nose of anticipated enjoyment, which we observe in the crows and magpies, when flying to the spot were a horse or an ox has accidentally met with its death.
But there were, at Canterbury, two objects by which the “Reformation” birds of prey were particularly attracted; namely, the monastery of St. Austin, and the tomb of Thomas A. Becket. St. Austin’s shrine was in the monastery dedicated to him and as it was, in all respects, a work of great magnificence, it offered a plenteous booty to the plunderers, who, if they could have got at the tome of Jesus Christ himself, and had found it equally rich, would, beyond all question, have torn it to pieces. But, rich as was this prize a greater was in the shrine of Thomas A. Becket, in the Cathedral church. Becket, who was Archbishop of Canterbury, in the reign of Henry II., who resisted that king, when the latter was manifestly preparing to rob the church, and to enslave and pillage the people, had been held in the highest veneration all over christendom for more than three hundred years, when the Reformation plunderers assailed his tome; but especially was his name venerated in England, where the people looked upon him as a martyr to their liberties as well as their religion, he having been barbarously murdered by ruffians sent by the king, and for no other cause than that he persevered in resisting an attempt to violate the Great Charter. Pilgrimages were continually made to his tome; offerings incessantly poured into it; churches and hospitals and other establishments of piety and charity were dedicated to him, as, for instance, the church of St. Thomas in the city of London, the Monastery of Sende, in Surrey, the Hospital of St. Thomas, in the borough of Southwark, and things of this sort, in great numbers, all over the country. The offerings at his shrine had made it exceedingly rich and magnificent. A king of France had given to it a diamond, supposed to be the most valuable then in Europe. The bloody tyrant who had sent More and Fisher to the block, and who, of course, hated the name of Becket, caused his ashes to be dug up and scattered in the air, and forbade the future-insertion of his name in the Calendar. We do not, therefore, find it in the Calendar in the Common Prayer Book; but, and it is a most curious fact, we find it in More’s Almanack; and thus, in spite of the ruthless tyrant, and in spite of all the liars of the “Reformation,” the English nation has always continued to be just and grateful to the memory of this celebrated man.
But to return to the “Reformation” robbers; here was a prize! This tomb of Becket was of wood, most exquisitely wrought, inlaid abundantly with the precious metals, and thickly set with precious stones of all sorts. Here was an object for “Reformation” piety to fix it godly eyes upon! Were such a shrine to be found in one of our churches now, how the swadlers would cry out for another “Reformation!” The gold, silver and jewels filled two chests, each of which required six or eight men of that day (when the laborers used to have plenty of meat) to move them to the door of the Cathedral! How the eyes of Hume’s “high-minded, magnificent and generous prince” must have glistened when the chests were opened! They vied, I dare say, with the diamonds themselves. No robbers of which we have ever had an account, equaled these robbers in rapacity, in profligacy, and in insolence. But, where is the wonder? The tyrant’s proclamations had now the force of laws; he had bribed the people’s natural leaders to his side; his will was law; and that will constantly sought plunder and blood.
The monasteries were not plundered, sacked, gutted, for this last is the proper word whereby to describe the deed. As some comfort, and to encourage us to endure the horrid relation, we may here bear in mind, that we shall, by and by, see the base ruffian, Cromwell, after being the chief instrument in the plunder, laying his miscreant head on the block; but to seize the estates, and to pillage the churches and apartments of the monasteries was not all. The noble buildings, raised with the view of lasting for countless ages; the beautiful gardens; these ornaments of the country must not be suffered to stand, for they continually reminded the people of the rapacity and cruelty of their tyrant and his fellow-plunderers and partakes in the plunder. How the property in the estates was disposed of, we shall see further on; but the buildings must come down. To go to work the usual way would have been a labor without end; so that, in most instances, gunpowder was resorted to; and thus, in a few hours, the most magnificent structures, which it had required ages upon ages to bring to perfection, were made heaps of ruins, pretty much such as many of them remain even unto this day. In many cases, those who got the estates were bound to destroy the buildings, or to knock them partly down, so that the people should, at once, be deprived of all hope of seeing a revival of what they had lost, and in order to give them encouragement to take leases under the new owners.
The whole country was thus disfigured; it had the appearance of a land recently invaded by the most brutal barbarians; and this appearance, if we look well into it, it has, even to this day. Nothing has ever yet come to supply the place of what was then destroyed. This is the view for us to take of the matter. It is not a mere matter of religion; but a matter of rights, liberties, real wealth, happiness, and national greatness.
Thus, then, was the country devastated, sacked and defaced; and I should now proceed to give an account of the commencement of that poverty and degradation which were, as I have pledged myself to show, the consequences, of the devastation; and which I shall show, not by bare assertion, not from what are called “histories of England;” but from Acts of Parliament, and from other sources, which every one can refer to, and the correctness of which, is beyond all dispute. But, before we come to this important matter, we must see the end of the ruffian “Vicegerent,” and also the end of the tyrant himself, who was, during the events that we have been speaking of, going on marrying, and divorcing, or killing his wives; but, whose career was, after all, not very long.
After the deaths of Jane Seymour, who was the mother of Edward VI., and who was the only one of all the tyrant’s wives who had the good luck to die a queen, and to die in her bed; after her death, which took place in 1537, he was nearly two years hunting up another wife. None, certainly, but some very gross and unfeeling women could be expected to have, voluntarily, anything to do with a man whose hands were continually steeped in blood. In 1539 he found, however a mate in Anne, the sister of the Duke of Cleves. When she arrived in England, he expressed his dislike for her person; but he found it prudent to marry her. In 1580, about six or seven months after the marriage, he was divorced from her, not daring, in this case, to set his myrmidons at work to bring her to the block. There was no lawful pretense for the divorce. The husband did not like his wife; that was all: and this was alleged too, as the ground of the divorce. Cranmer, who had divorced him from two wives before, put his irons in to the fire again for this occasion; and produced, in a little time, as neat a piece of work as ever had come from the shop of “Reformation.” Thus, the king and queen were single people again; but the former had another young and handsome wife in his eye. This lady’s name was Catherine Howard, a niece of of the Duke of Norfolk. This Duke, as well as most of the old nobility, hated Cromwell; and now was an opportunity of inflicting vengeance on him. Cromwell had been the chief cause of the king’s marriage with Anne, of Cleves; but, the fact is, his plundering talent was no longer wanted, and it was convenient to the tyrant to get rid of him.
Cromwell had obtained enormous wealth, from his several offices, as well as from the plunder of the church, and the poor. He had got about thirty of the estates belonging to the monasteries; his house, or rather his palace, was gorged with the fruits of the sacking; he had been Earl of Essex; he had precedence of every one but the king; and he, in fact, represented the king in the Parliament, where he introduced and defended all his confiscating and murdering laws. He had been barbarous beyond all description towards the unfortunate and unoffending monks and nuns; without such an instrument, the plunder never could have been effected: but he was no longer wanted; the ruffian had already leaved too long; the very walls of the devastated convents seemed to call for public vengeance on his head. On the morning of the 10th of June, 1560, he was all powerful: in the evening of the same day, he was in prison, as a traitor. He lay in prison only a few days before he had to experience the benefit of his own way of administering justice. He had, as we have seen in the last chapter, invented a way of bringing people to the block, or the gallows, without giving them any form of trial; without giving them even a hearing; but merely by passing a law to put them to death. This was what this abominable wretch had brought about in the case of the Countess of Salisbury; and this was what was not to fall on his own head. He lived only about forty-eight days after his own arrest; not half long enough to enable him to enumerate, barely to enumerate, the robberies and murders committed under his orders. His time seems, however, to have been spent, not in praying God to forgive him for these robberies and murders, but in praying to the tyrant to spare his life. Perhaps, of all the mean and dastardly wretches that ever died, this was the most mean and dastardly. He who had been the most insolent and cruel of ruffians, when he had the power; was not the most disgustingly slavish and base. He had, in fact, committed no crime against the king, though charged with heresy and treason, he was no more heretic than the king was; and, as to the charge of treason, there was not a shadow of foundation for it. But, he was just as guilty of treason as the abbots of Reading, Colchester, and Glasonbury, all of whom, and many more, he had been the chief instrument in putting to death. He put them to death in order to get possession of their property; and, I dare say, to get at his property, to get the plunder back from him, was one of the motives for bringing him to the block. This very ruffian had superintended the digging up of the ashes of Thomas A. Becket and scattering them in the air; and now, the people who had witnessed that, had to witness the letting of the blood out of his dirty body, to run upon the pavements to be licked up by hogs or dogs. The cowardly creature seems to have had, from the moment of his arrest, no thought about anything but saving his life. He wrote repeatedly to the king, in the ope of getting pardoned; but all to no purpose: he had done what was wanted of him; the work of plunder was nearly over, he had, too, got a large share of the plunder, which it was not convenient to leave in his hands; and, therefore, upon true “Reformation” principle, it was time to take away his life. He, in his letters to the king, most vehemently protested his innocence. Aye, no doubt of that: but he was not more innocent than were the butchered Abbots and monks; he was not more innocent than any one out of those thousands upon thousands whom he had quartered, hanged, burned or plundered; and amongst all those thousands upon thousands, there never was seen one female or male, so complete a dastard as himself. In these letters to the tyrant, he fawned on him in the most disgusting manner; compared his smiles and frowns to those of God: besought him to suffer him to “kiss his balmy hand one more, that the fragrance thereof might make him fit for heaven!” The base creature deserved his death, if it had only been for writing these letters. Fox, the “Martyr” man calls this Cromwell the “Valiant solder of the Reformation.” Yes, there haver been few soldiers to understand sacking better; he was full of valor on foraging parties; and when he had to rifle monks and nuns, and to rob altars: a brave fellow when he had to stretch monks and nuns on the rack, to make them confess treasonable words or thoughts; but when death began to stare him in the face, he was, assuredly, the most cowardly caitiff that ever died. It is hardly necessary to say, that this man is a great favorite of Hume, who deeply laments Cromwell’s fate, though he has not a word of compassion to bestow upon al lthe thousands that had been murdered or ruined by him. He, as well as other historians, quotes, from the conclusion of one of Cromwell’s letters to the king, these abject expressions, “I, a most woeful prisoner, am ready to submit to death, when it shall please God and your majesty; and yet the frail flesh incites me to call to your grace fo mercy and pardon for mine offences. Written at the Tower, with the heavy heart and trembling hand of your highness’s most miserable prisoner, and poor slave, Thomas Cromwell. Most gracious prince, I cry for mercy! mercy! mercy!” Fox meant valiant, not in the field, or on the scaffold, but in the convent, pulling the rings from women’s fingers, and tearing the gold clasps from books: that was the Protestant valor of the “Reformation.” Hume says, that Cromwell “deserved a better fate.” Never was fate more just or more appropriate. He had been the willing, the officious, the zealous, the eager agent in the execution of all the tyrannical, sacrilegious, and bloody deeds of his master; and had, amongst other things, been the every man who first suggested the condemning of people to death without trial. What could be more just than that he should die in the same way? Not a tear was shed at his death, which produced on the spectators an effect such as is produced, when the foulest of murderers expiate their crimes on the gallows.
During the seven years that the tyrant himself survived this his cruel Vicegerent, he was beset with disappointments, vexations, and torments, of all sorts. He discovered, at the end of a few months, that his new queen had been, and still was, much such another as Anne Boleyn. He, with very little ceremony, sent her to the block, together with a whole posse of her relations, lovers and cronies. He raged and foamed like a wild beast, passed laws most bloody to protect himself against lewdness and infidelity in his future wives, and got, for his pains, the ridicule of the nation, and of all Europe. He, for the last time, took another wife; but this time, none would face his laws, but a widows: and she very narrowly escaped the fate of the rest. He, for some years before he died, became, from his gluttony and debaucheries, an unwieldy and disgusting mass of flesh, moved about by means of mechanical inventions. But, still he retained all the ferocity and bloody-mindedness of his former days. The principal business of his life was the ordering of accusations, executions, and confiscations. When on his death bed, every one was afraid to intimate his danger to him, lest death to the intimator should be the consequence; and he died before he was well aware of his critical condition, leaving more than one death warrant unsigned for the want of time!
Thus expired, in the year, 1547, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and in the thirty-eighth of his reign, the most unjust, hard-hearted, meanest, and most sanguinary tyrant that the world had ever beheld, whether christian or heathen. That England, which he found in peace, unity, plenty, and happiness, he left, torn by factions and schisms, her people wandering about in beggary and misery. He laid the foundation of immorality, dishonesty, and pauperism, all which produced an abundant harvest in the reigns of his unhappy, barren, mischievous, and miserable children, with whom, at the end of a few years, his house and his name were extinguished forever. How he disposed of the plunder of the church and the poor; how his successors completed that work of confiscation which he had carried on so long; how the nation sunk in point of character and of wealth; how pauperism first arose in England; and how were sown the seeds of that system, of which we now behold the effects in impoverishment and degradation of the main body of the people of England and Ireland; all these will be shown hereafter: and shown, we trust, in a manner which will leave, in the mind of every man of sense, no doubt, that, of all the scourges that every afflicted any country, none is to be put in comparison with the Protestant “Reformation.”
In the preceding paragraph we had the satisfaction to see the savage tyrant expire at a premature old age, with body swelled and bursting from luxury, and with a mind torn by contending passions. One of his last acts was a will, by which he made his infant son his immediate successor, with remainder, in case he died without issue, to his daughter Mary first, and then, in default of issue again, to his daughter Elizabeth; though, observe, both the daughters still stood bastardized, by act of Parliament, and though the latter was born of Anne Boleyn while the king’s first wife, the mother of Mary was alive.
To carry this will into execution, and to govern the kingdom until Edward, who as then ten years of age, should be eighteen years of age, there were sixteen executors appointed, amongst whom was Seymour, Earl of Hertford, and “honest Cranmer.” These sixteen worthies began by taking, in the most solemn manner, an oath to stand to, and maintain, the last will of their master. Their second act was to break that oath by making Hertford, who was a brother of Jane Seymour, the king’s mother, “protector,” though the will gave equal powers to all the executors. Their next step was to give ner peerages to some of themselves. The fourth, to award to the new peers, grants of public money. The fifth was to lay aside at the coronation, the ancient English custom of asking the people if they were willing to have and obey the king. The sixth was to “attend at a solemn high mass.” And the seventh was to begin a series of acts for the total subversion of all that remained of the Catholic religion in England, and for the effecting of all that Old Harry had left unaffected ion the way of plunder.
The monasteries were gone; the cream had been taken off; but there remained the skimmed milk of church-altars, chantries and guilds. Old Harry would doubtless, if he had lived much longer, have plundered these; but he had not done it, and he could not do it without openly becoming Protestant, which, for the reasons already stated, he would not do. But Hertford, and his fifteen brother worthies, had in their way no such obstacles as the ruffian kind had had. The church altars, the chantries and the guilds contained something valuable; and they longed to be at it. The power of the Pope was gotten rid of; the country had been sacked; the poor had been despoiled; but, still there were some pickings left. Every church, however small, contained some gold and silver appertaining to the altar. The altars, in the parish churches, and, generally, in the Cathedrals, had been left, as yet, untouched; for, though the wife killer had abjured the Pope, whose power he had taken to himself, he still professed to be of the Catholic faith, and he maintained the mass and the sacraments, and creeds with fire and faggot. Therefore, he had left the church altars unplundered. But, they contained gold, silver, and other valuables, and the worthies saw these with longing eyes and itching fingers.
To seize them, however, there required a pretext; and what pretext could there be, short of declaring, at once, that the Catholic religion was false and wicked, and, of course, that there ought to be no altars, and of course, no gold and silver things appertaining to them! The sixteen worthies, with Hertford at their head, and with Cranmer amongst them, had had the king crowned as a Catholic; he, as well as they, had taken the oaths as Catholics; they had sworn to uphold that religion; they had taken him to a high mass, after his coronation; but, the altars had good things about them; there was plunder remaining; and to get at this remaining plunder, the Catholic religion must be wholly put down. It is impossible for any man of common sense, of unperverted mind, to look at the history of this transaction, at this open avowal of Protestantism, without being convinced that the principal authors of it had plunder, and plunder only in view.
The old tyrant died in 1547; and, by the end of 1549, Cranmer, who had tied so many Protestants to the stake for not being Catholics, had pretty nearly completed a system of Protestant worship. He first prepared a book of homilies and a catechism, in order the pave his way. Next came a law to allow the clergy to have wives; and then, when all things had been prepared, came the “Book of Common Prayer,” and Administration of the Sacraments. Gardiner, who was Bishop of Winchester, reproached Cranmer with his duplicity; reminded him of the zeal with which he had upheld the Catholic worship under the late king, and would have made him hang himself, or cut his throat, if he had had the slightest remains of shame in him.
This new system did not, however, go far enough for the fanatics; and there instantly appeared arrayed against it, whole tribes of new lights on the continent. So that Cranmer, cunning as he was, soon found that he had undertaken no easy matter. The proclamations put forth, upon this occasion, were disgustingly ridiculous; coming, as they did, in the name of a king only ten years of age, and expressed in words so solemnly pompous and so full of arrogance. However, the chief object was the plunder; and to get at this, nothing was spared. There were other things to attract the grasp; but it will be unnecessary to dwell very particularly on anything but the altars and the churches. This was the real “Reformation reign;” for, it was a reign of robbery and hypocrisy without anything to be compared to them; anything in any country, or in any age. Religion, conscience, was always the pretext: but, in one way or another, robbery, plunder, was always the end. The people became divided into innumerable sects, no one knowing what it was lawful for him to say; for it soon became impossible for the common people to know what was heresy, and what was not heresy.
That prince of hypocrites, Cranmer, who, during the reign of Henry, had condemned people to the flames for not believing in “transubstantiation,” was now ready to condemn them for believing it. We have seen, that Luther, was the beginner of the work of “Reformation;” but he was soon followed by further reformers on the continent. These had made many attempts to propagate their doctrines in England; but old Henry had kept them down. Now, however, when the churches were to be robbed of what remained in the, and when, to have a pretext for that robbery, it was necessary to make a complete change in the form of worship, these sectarians all flocked to England, which became one great scene of religious disputation. Some were for the Common Prayer Book, others proposed alterations in it; others were abolishing it altogether; and there now began that division, that multiplicity of hostile opinions, which has continued to the present day. Cranmer employed a part of the resources of the country to feed and fatten those of these religious, or rather, impious, adventurers, who sided with him, and who chose the best market for their doctrines. England was over-run by these foreign traders in religion; and this nation, so jealous of foreign influence, was now compelled to bend its haughty neck, not only to foreigners, but to foreigners of the most base and infamous character and description. Cranmer could not find Englishmen sufficiently supple to be his tools in executing the work that hd had in hand. The Protector, Hertford, whom we must now call Somerset, (the child king having made him Duke of Somerset,) was the greatest of all reformers that had yet appeared in the world, and, as we shall soon see, the greatest, and most audacious of all the plunderers that this famous ‘Reformation’ had produced, save and except old Henry himself. The total abolition of the Catholic worship was necessary to his projects of plunder; and, therefore, he was a great encourager of these greedy and villainous foreigners. Perhaps the world has never, in any age, seen a nest of such atrocious miscreants as Luther, Zuinglius, Calvin, Beza, and the rest of the distinguished reformers of the Catholic religion. Every one of them was notorious for the most scandalous vices, even according to the full confession of his own followers.
The consequences to the morals of the people were such as were naturally to be expected. All historians agree, that vice of all sorts, and crimes of every kind, were never so great and so numerous before. This was confessed by the teachers themselves – and yet Protestants have extolled this reign as the reign of the conscience and religion! The “Reformation” was not the work of virtue, of fanaticism, of error, of ambition, but of a love of plunder. This was its great animating principle: in this it began, and in this it proceeded till there was nothing left for it to work on.
The old tyrant had, in certain cases, enabled his minions to rob the bishoprics; but now, there was a grand sweep at them. The Protector took the lead, and his example was followed by others. They took so much from one, so much from another, and some they wholly suppressed, as that of Westminster, and took their estates to themselves. There were many chantries (private property to all intents and purposes,) free chapels, also private property, alms-houses, hospitals, guilds, or fraternities, the property of which was as much private property as the funds of any Society now are. All these became lawful plunder. And yet there are men who pretend that what is now possessed by the Established Church is of so sacred a nature as not to be touched by Act of Parliament! This was the reign in which this, the English Established Church was founded, for though the fabric was overset by Mary, it was raised again by Elizabeth. Now it was, that it was made. It was made, and the new worship along with it, by Acts of Parliament. The property it possesses was taken, nominally, from the Catholic church; but in reality from that church, and also from the widow, the orphan, the indigent, and the stranger. The pretext for making it was, that it would cause an union of sentiment amongst the people; that it would compose all dissensions.
The plunder which remained after the seizure of the monasteries, was comparatively small; but, still, the very leavings of the old tyranny, the mere gleanings of the harvest of plunder were something; and these were not suffered to remain. The plunder of the churches, parochial as well as collegiate, was preceded by all sorts of antics played in those churches. Calvin had got an influence opposed to that of Cranmer; so that there was almost open war amongst these Protestants, which party should have the teaching of the people. After due preparation in this way, the robbery was set about in due form. Every church altar had, as I have before observed, more or less of gold and silver. A part consisted of images, a part of censers, candlesticks, and other things, used in the celebration of the mass. The mass was, therefore abolished, and there was no longer to be an altar but a table in its stead. The fanatical part of the reformers amused themselves with quarreling about the part of the church where the table was to stand; about the shape of it, and whether the head of it was to be placed to the north, the east, the west, or the south; and whether the people were to stand, kneel, or sit at it! The plunderers, however, thought about other things; they thought about the value of the images, censers, and the like.
Every preparation being made, the robbery began, and a general plunder of churches took place by royal and Parliamentary authority! The robbers took away every thing valuable, even down to the vestments of the priests. Such mean rapacity never was heard of before, and, for the honor of human nature, let us hope that it will never be heard of again. It seems that England was really become a den of thieves, too, of the lowest, and most despicable character.
The Protector, Somerset, did not forget himself. Having plundered four or five of the bishoprics, he needed a palace in London. For the purpose of building this palace, which was erected in the Strand, Landon, and which was called “Somerset House,” as the place is called to this day, he took from three bishops their own houses; he pulled these down, together with a parish church, in order to get a suitable spot for the erection. The materials of these demolished buildings being insufficient for his purpose, he pulled down a part of the buildings appertaining to the then Cathedral of St. John the church of the Saint John near Smithfield; Barking Chapel near the Tower; the college church of Saint Martin-le-Grand; St. Ewen’s church, Newgate, and the parish church of St. Nicholas. He, besides these, ordered the pulling down of the parish church o St. Margaret, Westminster; but, says Dr. Heyleyn, “The workmen had no sooner advanced their scaffolds, when the parishioners gathered together in great multitudes, with bows and arrows, and staves and clubs: which so terrified the workmen that they ran away in great amazement, and never could be brought again upon that employment.”
The Book of Common Prayer was to put an end to all dissensions; but, its promulgation, and the consequent robbery of the churches were followed by open insurrection, in many of the countries, by battles and executions by martial law. The whole kingdom was in commotion; but, particularly, in Devonshire and Norfolk. In the former county the insurgents were superior in force to the hired troops, and had besieged Exeter. Lord Russel was sent against them, and, at last, reinforced by German troops, he defeated them, executed many by martial law, and most gallantly hanged a priest on the top of a tower of his church! In Norfolk, the insurrection was still more formidable; but was finally suppressed by the aid of foreign troops, and was also followed by the most barbarous executions. The people of Devonshire complained of the alterations in religion; that, as Dr. Heyleyn (a Protestant divine) expresses it, “That the free-born commonality was oppressed by a small number of gentry, who glutted themselves with pleasures, while the poor commons, wasted by daily labor, like pack horses, live in extreme slavery; and that holy rites, established by their fathers, were abolished, and a new form of religion obtruded.” But Cranmer’s Prayer Book, and the church “by law established,” backed by foreign bayonets, finally triumphed, at least for the present, and during the remainder of this hypocritical, base, corrupt, and tyrannical reign.
Thus arose the Protestant church, as by law established. Here we see its origin. Thus it was that it commenced its career.
Somerset, who had brought his own brother to the block in 1549, chiefly because he had opposed himself to his usurpations (though both were plunderers,) was, not long after the commission of those cruelties, on the people, destined to come to that block himself. Dudley, Earl of Warwick, who was his rival in baseness and injustice, and his superior in talent, had out-intrigued him in the council; and, at last, he brought him to that end which he so well merited. On what grounds this was done, is wholly uninteresting. It was a set of most wicked men, circumventing, and if necessary, destroying each other; but it is worthy of remark, that amongst the crimes alleged against this great culprit, was, his having brought foreign troops into the kingdom! This was, to be sure, rather ungrateful in the pious reformers; for, it was those troops that established for them their new religion. But, it was good to see them putting their leader to death, actually cutting off his head, for having caused their projects to succeed. It was, in plain words, a dispute about the plunder. Somerset had got more than his brother-plunderers deemed his share. He was building a palace for himself; and if each plunderer could have had a palace, it would have been peace amongst them; but, as this could not be, the rest called him a traitor, and as the king, the Protestant St. Edward had signed the death-warrant of one uncle at the instigation of another uncle, he now signed the death-warrant of that other, the “Saint” himself, being, even now, only fifteen years of age!
Warwick, who was now become Protector, was made Duke of Northumberland, and got granted to him, the immense estates of that ancient house, which had fallen into the hands of the crown. This was, if possible, a more zealous Protestant than the last Protector; that is to say, still more profligate, rapacious, and cruel. The work of plundering the Catholic clergy went on, until there remained scarcely anything the name of its clergy. Many parishes were, in all parts of the kingdom, united in one, and having but one priest amongst them. But indeed, there were hardly any Catholics left.
All the good and all the learned had either been killed, starved to death, banished, or had gone out of the country; and those who remained were, during this reign of mean plunder, so stripped of their incomes, so pared down, that the parochial clergy worked as carpenters, smiths, masons, and were not unfrequently menial servants in gentleman’s houses. So that this Church of England, “as by law (and German troops) established,” became the scorn, not only of the people of England, but of all the nations of Europe.
1The spelling in this Preamble is as it was published. None of the spelling errors are because of this editor but are how they spelled words back then. - TRA
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