RELIGIOUS HOUSES 
Sir William Sherborne, chaplain of Woburn, 
to whom allusion has already been made. 
The substance of the depositions has been 
already given ; they recounted the events of 
the last few years. The abbot practically 
confessed all that he was accused of ; he had 
failed to preach the king’s supremacy on 
divers occasions, and openly expressed his 
opinions on the subject to a great many 
people. The sub-prior had also failed to 
preach the king’s supremacy, and had prayed 
publicly for the pope when he went up to 
Oxford to take his degree of B.D. The 
depositions of Dan Robert Salford, who had 
sent the letter up to Cromwell, and of Sir 
William Sherborne, who had carried it, im- 
plicated others within and outside of the 
monastery. 
Salford testified how the abbot had sum- 
moned them all to chapter and exhorted them 
not to forsake their house or habit, and had 
advised him personally, in confession, not to 
complain to the royal visitors against those of 
his brethren who had railed on the council 
and spoken against their oath. He gave it as 
his own opinion that six of these, besides the 
sub-prior, were papists. But the name which 
most frequently occurs in all the depositions 
is that of Dan Laurence Blunham, the sexton, 
who had evidently made open boast that he 
had never taken the oath, and never would. 
It was natural that when the final selection of 
names was made he should appear beside the 
abbot and sub-prior as one of the chief 
offenders. These three were tried at Bedford 
at the summer sessions, and condemned to 
suffer the ordinary penalties of treason. 
They were probably executed at the end of 
June’; tradition says that an old oak tree 
outside the abbey gates served them for a 
gallows.? The whole course of proceeding, 
from the accusation to the execution, only 
occupied two or three months, instead of 
being spread over two or three years, as has 
been supposed. It was an ordinary case of 
verbal treason under the law of 1535, and is 
1 Controlment Roll (P.R.O.), 30 Henry VIII. 
Trinity term, m. 16 dors. contains the record of the 
attainder of Robert Hobbes, abbot of Woburn; 
Ralph Barnes alias Woburn, and Laurence Blun- 
ham alias Peck, monks of the same house. The 
margin of the roll had Bedford quite clearly beside 
this entry, so that the trial could not well have 
been at Lincoln, 
2 An estimate of the goods of the ‘ late attainted ’ 
monastery of Woburn was made on 29 June, de- 
ducting expenses of maintaining the house till 
28 June. 
3 Dom Gasquet, Henry VIII. and the English 
Monasteries, p. 202. 
I 369 
parallel to the case of Friar Forrest who was 
hanged and burned about a month earlier ; 
but it is an even better illustration of the ex- 
treme rigour of that law. The Carthusians 
and Forrest, who finally refused to take the 
oath, after having it several times tendered to 
them, might perhaps be looked upon as 
dangerous men, and enemies to the common- 
wealth ; but there was little enough to fear 
from the monks of Woburn. The abbot in 
his final deposition pleaded that he did all he 
had done ‘ out of a scrupulous conscience that 
he then had, considering the long continuance 
of the Bishop of Rome in that trade being, 
and the sudden mutation thereof’; he was 
ready to renounce some of his opinions‘ at 
once, and begged the king’s mercy, and 
Cromwell’s intercession.®5 On 27 May® 
Laurence Blunham sent in a similar plea for 
mercy, on the ground of his ‘foolish scru- 
pulous mind’ ; he had indeed escaped taking 
the oath formally, for he did not kiss the 
book, being passed over in the crowd ; but 
now he was put out of all doubt of the 
truth ‘by the instruction of my Lord Privy 
Seal.” In June’ the sub-prior sent in his 
petition for mercy, also announcing himself 
converted, by the reading of the Obedience of 
a Christian Man and the Glass of Truth. 
But verbal treason, once committed, could 
not be undone. 
It is a pitiful story from any point of view. 
Robert Hobbes and his monks were no heroes : 
they were clear enough in their convictions 
and could admire the steadfastness of More 
and Fisher; but when it came to the test 
they found it easier to admire than to imitate. 
Yet they were good religious; the character 
of the abbot in particular is a very attractive 
one,® and if he had fallen upon happier times 
4 e.g. the invalidity of holy orders conferred 
since the breach with Rome. 
5 This final deposition of the abbot is not with 
the others, but in Cott. MS. Cleop. E iv. f. 89; 
but it refers in detail to all the points of accusation 
contained in the other depositions, and is placed at 
the end of them in the L. and P. Hen. VIII. 
8 L. and P. Hen. VIII. xiii. pt. 1, No. 1086. 
7 Ibid. x. 1239. This petition is clearly out of 
its place in 1536. It is only dated Fune; but it 
alludes to a conversation with William Sherborne, 
chaplain of Woburn, who said in May 1538 that 
he only came to assist at the chapel ‘last mid- 
summer.’ 
8 We may note his constant exhortations of his 
brethren to unity and charity, those keynotes of 
the religious life ; his gentleness and reasonableness 
in dealing with such a man as William Sherborne 
( Sir William, I hear that you are a great railer. I 
pray you teach my cure the Scripture of God, 
47 
