178 SOME REMARKS ON THE 



he, u a merchant which shall at this time he nameless, that bought 

 the contents of two noble libraries for forty shillings price, a shame 

 it is to be spoken. This stuff he hath occupied instead of grey pa- 

 per by the space of more than these ten years, and yet he hath store 

 enough for as many years to come. Our posterity may well curse 

 this wicked fact of our age, this unreasonable spoil of England's 

 most noble antiquities."* 



In descanting upon this momentous change in the frame of our 

 ecclesiastical polity, Burnett does, however, allow that " some of 

 the abbots understood affairs well." From this vague and obscure 

 expression, I suppose we are to infer that, at home, these mitred 

 chiefs, as legislative counsellors of the realm, played a prominent 

 part in the civil transactions of the state ; and that abroad, from 

 their being frequently employed in embassies throughout the conti- 

 nent of Europe, they had acquired a knowledge of the world, and 

 of various improvements in social life. A less sworn enemy to the 

 monastic foundations would not have failed to notice that, while 

 skilfulness in " the noble art of the chace" constituted the sole 

 pride and glory of the ruling caste, many of the abbots became, to 

 their real credit and honour, the encouragers of " book learning," 

 and their abbatial houses the seminaries of learning and piety. 



Under the roof of Thomas Bromele, abbot of the mitred monas- 

 tery of Hyde, near Winchester, eight youths of gentle birth and 

 blood, received literary instruction and religious education, and were 

 constantly admitted to his tablet The Abbot of Glastonbury 

 adopted a similar practice. " His apartment," says the learned his- 

 torian of that monastery, " was a kind of well-disciplined court 

 where the sons of noblemen and young gentlemen were wont to be 

 sent for virtuous education, who returned thence home excellently 

 accomplished."^ Richard Whiting, the last Abbot of Glastonbury, 

 whose execution appears to have been an act of flagrant injustice,§ 



* Eccles. Hist, voL ii., p. 166. 



f See Warton's Hist, of English Poetry, vol. iii., p. 269. 



$ Hist, and Anliq. of Glastonbury, Oxon, 1722, p. 98. 



§ According to the notorious Sanders, he was hung up near his abbey, and 

 quartered on the same day, without even the form of a trial. — De Schism' 

 AnglicB. Lond., 1634, p. 138. But, from the most authentic evidence, it is 

 clear that the commissioners appointed to examine into the state of this mo. 

 mastery did not, through a consciousness of their monstrous illegality, ven- 

 ture upon such extreme proceedings. " My Lorde, thies shal be to asser- 

 teyne that, on Thursday e, the xiiijth daye of this present moneth, the Abbott 

 of Glastonburye was arrayned, and the next daye putt to execucyon with ij. 

 other of his monkes." — See John Lord liusscll's letter to Lord Cromwell, 



