The Burning Time Page 5
Part of the sentence passed on Tewkesbury at his first trial, when there was still hope on the part of his judges that he would not prove obstinate but would return to the paths of orthodoxy, was that he was to go to the monastery of St Bartholomew’s on the eve of Whitsunday and stay there, in the care of the canons, until the bishop told him he could leave. This would have been at the time when the invalid Prior Bolton was nominally in charge; maybe it is even an indication of ineffective leadership in the priory at that time that staying there had little apparent effect on Tewkesbury. Among the clerics assisting the Bishop of London at the trials of both Bayfield and Tewkesbury was Robert Fuller, the Abbot of Waltham Holy Cross, the great Augustinian abbey in Essex, and he had been angling to become the Prior of St Bartholomew’s for some time before the long-expected death of William Bolton, which finally occurred on 5 April 1532 (he was buried before the high altar of the Priory Church). A month and a half later, on 22 May, Abbot Fuller wrote to Thomas Cromwell, then the Master of the King’s Jewel House, in what appears to have been one in a series of communications concerning his desire to become Bolton’s successor: ‘Please continue your goodness towards finding this matter for the house of St Bartholomew’s, as liberal motions have been set forward. Such matters shall be largely recompensed on my part, not only in reward for your labours, but also for such yearly remembrance as you shall have no cause to be sorry for.’ Abbot Fuller referred to himself as ‘your assured daily bedesman’ (that is, he was telling Cromwell he prayed for him daily) and called Cromwell his ‘loving friend’.
Fuller’s efforts were not in vain and he was duly elected as the new Prior of St Bartholomew’s on 28 June. The election was carried out per viam compromissi – that is, by delegates acting in the name of the whole community, and this was done with the expressed intention of ‘gratifying his Royal Highness and the bishop’. This meant that, rather than voting directly for Fuller, the canons of St Bartholomew’s relinquished their votes, handing over power to choose the prior to the bishop and to Rowland Lee and John Olyver, chaplains of the King. Lee had a reputation as a rough and ruthless man and, by his own admission, was unaccustomed to preaching or the other duties one might expect of a chaplain. But he was good at enforcing the King’s desires and was also a friend of Fuller’s. Bishop Stokesley, standing in the vestibule of St Paul’s Cathedral and in the presence of witnesses, directed that Abbot Fuller should be duly elected, and the nomination was declared later the same day in the priory. Messengers were despatched the following day to Waltham where Fuller, unsurprisingly, accepted, though refusing to do so immediately, insisting that he needed some time to consider as the matter was ‘so difficult to agree upon’. In his written assent he declared: ‘not wishing further to resist the divine will to the honour of our Lord Jesus Christ and the glorious Virgin Mary His Mother and of Saint Bartholomew, patron of the said priory, and of all saints [I] give my consent and assent expressed in these writings’. As E. A. Webb drily observes: ‘It seems to have been the usual custom not to give assent at the first request, even though, as in this case, the appointment had been eagerly sought.’
Soon after his election, on 22 September, the new prior fulfilled the promise he had made to Cromwell by granting him, probably for the King, a lease of the manors of Canonbury and Cutlers in the parish of Islington, part of the possessions of St Bartholomew’s, properties for which the King had previously expressed a desire. The King was also desirous of obtaining estates belonging to Waltham Abbey, including Copt Hall park and house; one proposal, which did not ultimately take effect, seems to have been that the Priory of St Bartholomew should be appropriated to Waltham, at the King’s cost, in return for the abbot making over the manor of Epping to the King and his heirs. Before becoming Prior of St Bartholomew’s, Abbot Fuller had already made a grant to the King (on 1 November 1531) of some of the possessions of Waltham Abbey – namely, the manor of Stansted Abbott, with the lands called Joyses and Isney Parke, Board House, and other lands and tenements in Stansted, Hertfordshire, and Roydon, Essex. All these transactions, or proposed transactions, illustrate the extent to which questions of land and property – and the associated income – were at the heart of decisions surrounding the fate of monastic institutions over the next few years in England.
Right at the centre of that fate, as the first Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations, set up in 1536 to deal with the revenues generated by the dissolution initially of the smaller, and subsequently of the greater, monasteries, we find Richard Rich who, since acquiring an influential patron in Thomas Audley, had been steadily building a successful and lucrative career. A pivotal year for him, as for Abbot Fuller and for several others, including Thomas More, had been 1532, when he secured several significant appointments. On 22 March he was appointed Clerk of Recognizances – a job which entailed recording obligations undertaken by a person before a court or magistrate, whereby the person acknowledges (recognizes) that they owe a personal debt to the state. The obligation would be avoided if the person bound by it performed some specified act, such as appearing in court on a particular day, or keeping the peace; the business of ‘recognizances’ was therefore not dissimilar from our contemporary practice of ‘binding over’ to keep the peace. Rich was to be paid 3s 4d for the ‘making, writing and enrolment of every such recognizance’ and a further 20d when each one was certified.
On 13 May of the same year Rich was also made Attorney General in Wales and the counties palatine of Chester and Flint, a post he held for the next twenty-six years. (Some strong earldoms along the Welsh border had been granted the privileged status of ‘county palatine’ shortly after the Norman Conquest, but only this one based on Chester survived for a long period.) His other two highlights of 1532 were becoming Deputy Chief Steward of the south parts of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Recorder (or senior judge) of Colchester.
1532 was also a good year for Rich’s patron Thomas Audley, who was knighted on 20 May. Four days previously, Sir Thomas More had resigned as Lord Chancellor in the wake of his disagreements with the King, and Audley succeeded him (an appointment overseen by Thomas Cromwell). Rich had chosen his patron well and, as Audley rose, so did he. On 10 October 1533 Rich was appointed Solicitor-General, a post which involved advising the King on the law, and for which he received an annuity of £10; and in recognition of his new appointment, he was also made a knight.
As Solicitor-General, Sir Richard assisted Audley in the House of Lords in the drafting of legislation, and took a leading part with Thomas Cromwell in enforcing compliance with the Act of Succession of 1534, which declared Anne Boleyn’s daughter Princess Elizabeth to be heir to the throne and Katherine of Aragon’s marriage to Henry unlawful. Rich was especially active in prosecuting those who refused to subscribe to the Act of Supremacy passed in the same year, and he played significant – and infamous – roles in the trials of Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More, at both of which Sir Thomas Audley presided. Fisher and More were both executed in the summer of 1535. Central to More’s condemnation was the testimony of Rich, who used the accused man’s own words, obtained in private and through a series of mock questions, against him. More’s response to Rich at his trial has coloured assessments of the latter’s character ever since: ‘For we long dwelled both in one parish together,’ More recalled, ‘where, as your self can tell (I am sorry you compel me so to say) you were esteemed very light of your tongue, a great dicer, and of no commendable fame.’
On 27 July 1535, three weeks after More’s execution, Rich was appointed chirographer at the Court of Common Pleas, an office which has been described as a ‘wealthy sinecure’ and which he held for just under two years. Also known as the Common Bench, this court dealt with actions between subject and subject, not involving the King (in contradistinction to the King’s Bench which dealt with any cases concerning the monarch). The court sat in Westminster Hall, in a space marked off by a wooden bar (behind which counsel stood). The court officials sat at a large oak table cover
ed in green cloth, while the Justices sat on a raised platform (or ‘bench’) at the rear of the court. Many of the cases heard there concerned the recovery of debts or property. The Common Pleas were staffed by a number of Justices (three in the sixteenth century), under one Chief Justice. They were assisted by a staff of over fifty officials, most of whom sat in Westminster Hall but also kept offices at the various Inns of Court. The court chirographer was one of the high-ranking officials, appointed by the Crown, and responsible for noting final concords and filing records of fines. The post does not sound overly arduous, but it does sound fairly lucrative, and the fact that it was a Crown appointment (and the timing of its receipt by Rich) suggest it may have constituted a reward for the part he had played in the conviction of More.
In his capacity of Solicitor-General, Rich travelled to Kimbolton Castle in January 1536 to take the inventory of the goods of Katherine of Aragon (who had died at the beginning of that month), and from there he wrote to the King, concerning how the latter might properly obtain his former wife’s possessions. Rich reminded Henry that the Lady Dowager was a ‘woman sole’ (by virtue of the argument that she had never been legally married to the King, but was merely the widow of his deceased elder brother), and that therefore she had full authority by law to dispose of her goods, although she had herself affirmed while she was still alive that everything she possessed belonged to the King and that she would give nothing away without his permission. He then prevaricated, in typical lawyerly fashion (and demonstrating the uncertainty that existed among lawyers, since Henry had asserted his control over the Church, as to precisely what his powers should or could now be), advising on the one hand that ‘the King cannot therefore seize her goods unless there be some other cause, for the bishop of the diocese is bound to give administration to her next of kin’, but wondering, on the other, ‘whether the King, as Supreme Head of the Church, may grant administration of her goods, dying intestate’. But ultimately he, Rich, ‘dare not say’, though he does suggest a way round the problem, with the idea that ‘Henry might seize her goods by another means, viz., by writing a letter to the bishop of Lincoln to grant administration to such as he shall name, who shall hold the goods to his Grace’s [i.e. the King’s] use’. Having made this suggestion, the Solicitor-General expressed his willingness to ‘execute the King’s orders as he thinks fit’.
On 20 April 1536 Rich was appointed Surveyor of Liveries (which post he held only until autumn of that year), and in the same month received his appointment as Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations. His experience to date had made him eminently prepared for this task, the scale of which was immense:
The houses [i.e. monasteries, convents and priories] had to be suppressed or their surrenders accepted; surveys and valuations of their property taken; and the monks disposed of. The lands accruing to the Crown had to be administered, and their rents collected, expended and accounted for. Disposal by grant, sale or lease had to be arranged and supervised, and the litigation which inevitably accompanied the possession of land had to be coped with. The departing monks had also left obligations behind them that the government was determined to honour, in the form of leases to be carried over and debts to be paid. The monks themselves had to be pensioned, or sent to Chancery to collect their ‘capacities’ or licences to act as secular priests.
The Court of Augmentations which, like various other courts, met at Westminster, was governed by a council comprising a chancellor, treasurer, attorney and solicitor, supported by ten auditors and seventeen receivers, each of whom was allocated to a specific region of the country. All the ‘Augmentations men’ primarily owed their positions to the Lord Privy Seal, Thomas Cromwell. Though there may be some truth in the assertion that Sir Richard’s ‘first care was to augment his own fortune’, that he was nevertheless meticulous in his work is evident from the records. One gets the impression from Rich’s early career that he was a skilled administrator, demonstrating more ‘patient industry’ than he has previously been given credit for, with particular talents for the collection and management of revenues and fines, someone who could be relied upon to keep accurate records and chase up payments – as well as being good at making the best of his connections and seizing opportunities as they arose.
The work at Augmentations provided plenty of opportunities for personal enrichment. Cromwell’s initial intention was that the former monastic lands, and the income generated by them, should all be retained for the Crown, but as more and more monasteries were dissolved, grants of land and property began to be made to those willing and able to pay, and with an eye for a bargain. The land and property that came Rich’s way with the dissolution of the monasteries began to accumulate very soon after his appointment as Chancellor of Augmentations, with a grant dated 25 May 1536 by which he received, in exchange for a rent of 52s 9d, the site of Leighs (or Leez) Priory in Essex, along with various possessions of the priory, including the manors of Little and Great Leighs, Felsted, Fyfield, Leighs Camset, Bernes and Herons – all the possessions, in fact, which had previously been ‘enjoyed by Thomas Ellys prior of the said priory’. (The house Sir Richard built on the site, also known as Leez Priory, is now an award-winning wedding venue.)
Thomas Ellys, the last Prior of Leighs, was himself an interesting character. While still prior, he appears to have become interested in alchemy and to have started reading books on the subject. Through a goldsmith of Lombard Street in the City of London, he became acquainted with a priest called ‘Sir George’ who knew something of alchemy, and this George put him touch with one Thomas Peter, a London clothworker, who asserted that he was as expert in the science of alchemy as any man in England. In order to learn the science himself, Prior Ellys paid 20 nobles (a noble being a coin worth 8s 4d) to Thomas Peter, as well as giving him a bill for 20 marks (a mark being equal to 13s 4d), no inconsiderable sum in those days. With the assistance of a twelve-year-old boy called Edward Freke, who was already a canon of Leighs, the prior set to work, using metals supplied by Thomas Peter, and spent either ten weeks (according to his own account) or eight months (according to that of his assistant) making ‘a continual fire night and day, under a furnace, on which he set his silver and quicksilver to boil’. After a time, he reached the conclusion that his occupation was, as he phrased it, ‘but a false craft’, and, having melted the silver, he sold it, telling Peter that he would pay him no more money.
Several years later Thomas Peter began to take legal steps to get the money owed him by Prior Ellys who, in some distress, confessed the debt he had contracted to the chapter of the priory but then proceeded to get himself further entangled by an involvement with a Richard Lyndsey, who promised to pay off the debt to Thomas Peter in return for a lease of the vicarage of Matching, at that time in the gift of Leighs Priory. It appears that Lyndsey did very well out of this deal, as the lease was worth considerably more than the 20 marks he paid for it, and the prior still found himself in trouble with the law, having to answer for his actions in the Court of Star Chamber (which could deal with actions deemed to be morally reprehensible and not necessarily technically illegal). The outcome is not known, as the decrees and orders of this court are no longer extant, but, as Sir Thomas Ellys (‘Sir’ was a courtesy title for priests in the sixteenth century, similar to ‘the Reverend’ now) was presented by Abbot Fuller of Waltham to the vicarage of Blackmore in 1538, it is possible that the matter had been cleared up by then.
The attainments of Sir Richard Rich by the middle of 1536 reflect base metal being turned into gold quite as effectively as any alchemical process. Not only was he Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations and the leaseholder of considerable lands in Essex, he was also married. His wife Elizabeth was two or three years younger than himself and the daughter of William Gynkes or Jenks, a wealthy London spice merchant; in a sketch made of her by Hans Holbein the Younger, she looks plump and matronly, both placid and resilient. And in the parliament of 1536 Rich was selected as a knight of the shire for Essex.
Asked to choose a Speaker by the second day of this parliament, the Commons begged for more time before deciding on the third day on Rich himself. John Lord Campbell characterized Rich’s election as Speaker as ‘an insult … put upon the House of Commons, which shows most strikingly the degraded state to which parliament was reduced in the reign of Henry VIII’, further describing Rich as ‘hardly free from any vice except hypocrisy’. Sir Richard’s opening oration, when he was presented as Speaker of the House on 12 June 1536 (among those present to listen to him being the Abbot of Waltham, Robert Fuller), was a model of sycophancy, comparing King Henry to Solomon for prudence and justice, to Samson for strength and bravery, and to Absalom for beauty. Equally extravagant was his concluding address, likening the King’s care for his subjects to the sun’s influence upon the world.
Chapter Two
FUEL FOR THE FIRE
Let us be thankful for ourselves that we live in a changed world.
James Anthony Froude
THE KING, so extolled by Sir Richard Rich on his appointment as Speaker of the House of Commons, was in fact creating upheaval for his subjects on a grand scale. It is now time to look more closely at what constituted Henry’s ‘great matter’, at what it was over which Thomas More and others disagreed so strongly, and at the horrible fate of Friar John Forest. The events related in this chapter span the years 1532 to 1538, and during the course of those six years much would change in England – particularly in matters of faith, authority and allegiance. Some of what constituted heresy in Henry’s realm in 1538 was not considered heretical in 1532, and vice versa. During these years and later, people would react in different ways to the taking of oaths, make different decisions as to whether it was legitimate to say one thing with one’s lips while believing another in one’s heart, and reach the point at which equivocation was no longer possible at different moments in their lives, if ever. Most people, somehow, accommodated themselves to what was required of them, the instinct for survival proving the strongest of all human instincts. The main protagonists of this chapter were among the exceptions.