says, "provoke the laity of our time to attempt such unbridled enormities against the church."* He adds, that there were scarcely ten clergymen in any diocese who did not yearly suffer in their persons or their purses; so great was the general contempt and hatred of the clergy, towards the close of the fifteenth century, occasioned by their idle and vicious lives, oppressions of the people, and cruel persecutions of the Lollards. There is no evidence of any improvement in the hierarchal clergy during the brief reigns of Edward V. and Richard III., or of any increase of popular favor towards that body. But the clergy had very little opportunity to persecute those who hated and despised them. When, however, Henry VII. had become firmly seated on his throne, the hierarchy, under his fostering care, began again to raise its head, and thrust out its venomous fangs against the poor Lollards, to the prevalence of whose doctrines was attributed all the hatred and contempt of popery which was then cherished by the common people of England. The principal ministers of the crown during this reign, as during the preceding, were ecclesiastics. Men like Cardinal Morton and Archbishop Warham had now their full swing. And though they improved their power unsparingly, as we have seen in preceding pages, to persecute "heretics," yet * Quoted from a manuscript discourse prepared to be delivered before the convocation of the prelates and clergy about the time of the death of Edward IV., 1483. — Turner's Eng., 111. 365–69. suffered they the immoralities and abuses of their own hierarchy to fester on to utter corruption. The moral condition of the national clergy at the beginning of Henry VII.'s reign may be estimated by an act which was passed by his first parliament, in 1485, giving authority to "archbishops, bishops, and other ordinaries having episcopal jurisdiction, to punish and chastise such religious men, being within the bounds of their jurisdiction, as shall be convicted before them, by examination and lawful proof requisite by the law of the church, of adultery, fornication, incest, or other fleshly incontinency, by committing them to ward and prison, there to abide for such time as shall be thought, to their discretion, convenient for the quality and quantity of their trespasses." Previous to the passage of this act, bishops who had power to arrest laymen on suspicion of heresy, and detain them in prison untried, had no power to imprison priests, though convicted of adultery or incest. * That there was a loud call for the reformation of the clergy at this time is further evident from the charges made against them in their own synod, assembled at St. Paul's, London, by Archbishop Morton, in the second year of Henry VII., and the first of this archbishop's reign, 1487. In this synod complaints were made against the preachers of the order of St. John of Jerusalem, that, in their ser * Statutes of the Realm, vol. II. pp. 500, 501. mons at St. Paul's Cross, they inveighed against the vices of the clergy, in the hearing of the laity, who all hated the clergy and delighted to hear their vices exposed. The prior of St. John was called before the synod, and promised to correct the evil. "The invectives of their preachers, however, do not seem to have been without foundation; for many of the London clergy were accused in this convocation of spending their whole time in taverns and alehouses, of concealing their tonsure and allowing their hair to grow long, and of imitating the laity in their dress. They were severely reprimanded for their enormities." * Immediately on the adjournment of this synod, the archbishop published a pastoral letter, for the reformation of the lives and habits of his clergy, in which, instead of reproving them for their vices, he charges them "not to wear short liripoops of silk [tippets or tails attached to their hoods, passing round the neck and hanging down before]; nor gowns open before; nor swords; nor daggers; nor embroidered girdles; and to be careful of their tonsures, and to keep their hair always so short that all the world may see their ears; and he threatens them with very severe censures if they do not observe these injunctions"!! † But neither the exposure of their vices before * Henry's Hist. G. Britain, vol. xII. bk. vI. ch. 2, sect. 1, pp. 2, 3, Lond. 1824; Wilkins' Concilia, vol. 111. p. 618. † Henry, vol. x11. bk. v1. pp. 2, 3; Wilkins, 111. 620. the synod, nor the archbishop's pastoral, seems to have produced much effect on the morals of the clergy; for in 1490 Pope Innocent VIII. addressed a letter to Archbishop Morton, in which his holiness tells the archbishop that he had heard, from sources entitled to confidence, that the monks of all the different orders in England, "giving themselves up to a reprobate sense, led lewd and dissolute lives," etc.; and the archbishop was directed to adopt measures immediately for their reformation. Accordingly he addressed letters to the superiors of all the convents and religious houses in England. To the abbot of St. Albans the archbishop says: "You are infamous for simony, usury, and squandering away the possessions of your monastery, besides other enormous crimes mentioned below." One of these crimes was, that he had made brothels of two nunneries over which he claimed jurisdiction. Another was, that he had stolen the church plate and jewels, and even picked the precious stones out of their patron saint, Alban.* That this corruption of morals and manners was not confined to the monks, appears from the whole tenor of history. A very significant item in illustration of this is the petition of the gentlemen and farmers of Caernarvonshire, which was presented to the king, Henry VII., complaining of the systematic efforts of the clergy to seduce and corrupt the wives and daughters of the diocese.† * Henry, vol. VII. bk. vi. pp. 3-5; Wilkins, 111. 630–32. The public documents which have now been mentioned prove undeniably the generally vicious and even debased condition of the ecclesiastics who constituted the church of England, down to about the end of the fifteenth century. And was there any improvement after this date? Did the act of parliament which gave the bishops power to punish their vicious clergy, the reprimand of the synod, the pastoral letters of the archbishop, or the bull of Innocent VIII.,-did any or all of these secure the reformation of the English church? No, nor even an honest and vigorous attempt at reform, during the entire reign of Henry VII. During the first twenty years of the reign of Henry VIII., there was no improvement in the church. The manners and morals of the hierarchy were as corrupt and hateful as they had ever been. So manifest was this corruption, that even Cardinal Wolsey at one time seems to have seriously contemplated a reformation of the church. But its utter debasement probably appalled even him; certainly he was slow to begin a work which he acknowledged to be of the first importance. "Wolsey talked of reformation, but delayed its coming; and in the mean time the persons to be reformed showed no fear. The monasteries grew worse and worse. The people learned only what they could acquire themselves. The consistory courts became more oppressive; pluralities multiplied, and nonresidence and profligacy. Favored parish clergy |