ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



some of the smaller and less active English houses. Wolsey had received a 

 bull (15 1 8) authorizing him to visit monasteries. The Bishop of Worcester, 

 who transmitted the bull, doubted v^^hether Yorkshire houses would take the 

 visitation kindly.*' 



The pressing task of reforming parochial clergy was expressly left to the 

 discretion of the bishops : the bull confined itself to more profitable objects 

 of investigation. While reform was necessary, and in some cases suppres- 

 sion may have been, the haste with which the royal commissioners, seventeen 

 years later, performed their visitation, makes any condemnation of Yorkshire 

 monasteries in general or detail impossible."" Legh and Layton came to York- 

 shire as suppressors ready to accept general evidence of an unfavourable char- 

 acter." Their work was done with cynical dispatch ; and their transactions 

 showed that personal profit was a powerful consideration with them.*** They 

 procured, by private agreement, the resignation of the Abbot of Fountains. 

 No monk of the house, they reported, was fit to succeed him ; but Marmaduke 

 Bradley, a prebendary of Ripon, was ready to give Cromwell 600 marks for 

 the office, and to pay the king >r 1,000 in firstfruits.*' On the day appointed 

 for Bradley's election, Layton stayed in York to induce the Prior and 

 convent of Marton to surrender their house 'of £1^0 good lands and 

 only forty marks of it in spiritual tithes.' ** The financial zeal of the com- 

 missioners would not be slow to detect shortcomings in the rehgious life ; and 

 the evidence on which those shortcomings incurred the charge of wholesale 

 criminality is open to suspicion of the gravest nature. The immediate bene- 

 fit to religion of the suppression was negative. The possessions of the abbeys 

 enriched lay proprietors ; appropriated churches simply changed hands ; the 

 parochial clergy were in no better case than before ; fortunes made out of 

 monastic spoils were devoted to ends mainly secular. One scheme was con- 

 templated, of great religious advantage to the unwieldy diocese of York. 

 This was the erection of the archdeaconry of Richmond into a see with 

 its cathedral at Fountains.*'' In 1541 the archdeaconry was separated from 

 the see of York, only to be included in the new see of Chester.*' The Bishop 

 of Chester was assured of a revenue, but north-west Yorkshire was practically 

 ' left without a bishop. 



The suppression of the monasteries brought no profit to the Yorkshire 

 commons ; and their orthodox and conservative minds were distressed at the 

 change. The details of the Pilgrimage of Grace belong rather to the 

 political than the religious history of the county ; but its object was primarily 



" L. and P. Hen. VIU, ii, 4399 (7 Aug. 1 5 1 8). 



*" Gasquet, op. cit. i, 286 seq. Froude, Hist. Engl, ii, 315, 316, admitted the haste of their journey, in 

 which he followed their movements incorrectly, without recognizing the incompatibility of such haste with the 

 minuteness of detail which he associated with their reports. 



" Gasquet, op. cit. i, 287, 288, quotes Layton's letter of 1 3 Jan. 1535-6, in which he says : ' This day 

 we begin with St. Mary's Abbey, whereat we suppose to find much evil disposition, both in the abbot and the 

 convent, whereof, God willing, I shall certify 50U in my next letter.' Even if Layton's suspicions were true, 

 this was hardly the frame of mind in which to conduct a minute and impartial inquiry. 



" Layton became Dean of York in 1539, and pawned the plate of the minster (ibid. 344). 



" Ibid. 336, 337 ; L. and P. Hen. VIII, x, 137. 



" Gasquet, op. cit. ii, 26, 27 ; L. and P. Hen. VIII, x, 271. 



*' Cott. MS. Cleopatra, E iv, fol. 305 (Gasquet, op. cit. ii, 445). 



" Whitaker, Richmondshire, i, 38. By this arrangement it was specially provided that the Bishop of 

 Chester was not to claim exemption from metropolitan jurisdiction, as representing the Archdeacon of 

 Richmond. 



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