view of these fine beauties and to offer our service to them The Cardinal replied they were welcome whereupon having saluted all the Ladies a great Cup of Gold filled with Crown Pieces was opened and they thrown on the Table to play withal After they had play'd some time the Gentlemen came and threw down their winnings before the Cardinal being about two hundred Crowns Have at all quoth he and throwing a Die he won it whereat the company seemed much pleased Then said the Cardinal My Lord Chamberlain Pray go and tell these Gentlemen that I am of opinoin there is a Nobleman among them who better deserves to sit in this place than I and to whom I would gladly surrender it according to my duty if I knew him The Lord Chamberlain spoke to them in French and they replied That they must confess there was such a Noble Personage among them whom if his Grace could distinguish from the rest he would then discover himself and accept of his Place The Cardinal taking a strict review of them said I believe the Gentleman with the black Beard is he and thereupon he role up and offered him his Chair with the Cup in his hand But it was Sir Edward Nevil who was very like King Henry and the King seeing the Cardinal's mistake could not forbear laughing and pulling off his Vizor and Sir Edward's likewise discovered himself to all his Guests and then withdrawing clothed himself in his Royal Robes In which short space the former Banquet was clear taken away and the Tables new covered again with perfumed Linnen and the King and his Masquers returning again in their rich Cloths a Royal Banquet of two hundred Dishes was brought in where they continued Feasting and Dancing till the next Morning As these Entertainments discover the extream Magnificence wherein the Cardinal lived so they also shew the familiar temper of King Henry whom one Historian says was so free from Pride that he was rather too humble at least he conversed with his Subjects in a more familiar manner than is usual with Princes VVhich is confirmed by a Passage in the eleventh year of his Reign when the Privy Council complaining that certain young Gentlemen in his Court â—…ith whom he was over-familiar were so Frenchified that forgetting the respect due to his Royalty they used many unfeemly actions and discourses with him they were thereupon with his consent banished the Court and several other antient grave Knights and Gentlemen placed in their Rooms about the King's Person Neither did the Cardinals grandeur consist only in the aforementioned instances but likewise in erecting costly and magnificent Houses and Palaces as York Place at Westminster so named by him from his Archbishoprick now Whitehall Hampton Court his stately buildings at Christ Church and Windsor He likewise designed to have built two new Colleges in Oxford and Ipswich the Town of his Birth and obtained a License of Pope Clement to suppress forty Monasteries and seize the Revenues thereof to perform the same And for the farther support of his Dignity he enjoyed at one time no less than seven rich Bishopricks that is York Winchester Lincoln Tournay Bath VVorcester and Hereford so that he seemed a Monster with seven Heads each of them honoured with a Miter He being thus imperiously Great more like a Prince than a Priest was continually inventing new ways for getting of Money For he required an account of the Captains Treasurers and other Officers that had been imployed in paying the Souldiers in the VVars some of whom he obliged to refund great sums of their ill gotten Estates who made themselves poor to inrich him Others compounded with him for half they were worth But those that had deceived the King and then prodigally spent what they had wrongfully gained were exposed to publick shame and punishment So that none suffered though deeply Criminal but only for the Mortal Sin of Poverty He likewise erected several Courts of Equity as he called them but the People named them Courts of Iniquity in which upon pretence of relieving the poor from the rigour of the Law he brought such a multitude of Causes into them that the other Courts of Justice were abandoned and he thereby gained vast Treasures to himself Till at length the People perceiving that he only grew Rich and themselves poor and that the Verdicts in these Courts would not stand in Common Law they utterly left them and returned to the former course of Proceeding He likewise erected another new Court which he called the Legantine Court whereby he visited all Bishopricks and Monasteries punishing such Clergymen as were unable to bribe him but inriching himself by those who were full of Money and full of Faults By the same Authority he supprest several Abbies and Priories seizing all their Goods and Lands leaving only a small Pension to the Abbots and Priors whereby he purchased great riches and and great hatred from the Clergy who in many places opposed his Visitor Dr. Allen who rid in a Velvet Gown with a great Train following him and for which they were openly cursed by Dr. Forrest at Paul's Cross so that the Cardinal prevailed against them all and caused the generality to murmur and complain that by his Visitations Probate of Wills granting of Faculties Licenses and other Tricks he made his constant revenue equal to the King 's besides great sums which he yearly conveyed out of the Realm to the Court of Rome In 1517. The Citizens of London were so highly provoked by the multitude of French and Walloons who setling here undersold their goods and thereby impoverisht them that they resolved to endeavour to rid themselves of this annoyance all at once Whereupon John Lincoln a Broker persuaded one Dr. Bell to represent this great grievance to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen in a Sermon at the Spittle on Easter Tuesday The Doctor undertook the business and took these words for his Text The Heaven is the Lord's but the Earth he hath given to the Sons of men From hence he infer'd that this Land was given to Englishmen who were obliged to defend the same as Birds do their Nests and to fight for their Country by the Law of God against all Strangers and Foreigners who to the great trouble vexation and ruin of the People had now over-run the Land and for which there was no redress to be had but by the Commons uniting themselves together and extirpating them out of the City and Kingdom and thereby avenge themselves of the many affronts and abuses which they had lately publickly offered them This Sermon inflamed the Minds of the Citizens who were sufficiently inraged before so that they took all occasions to qâ—arrel with the Foreigners and a rumor was spread that the next May day would be very remarkable The Cardinal and Council hearing of it ordered the Lord Mayor to keep strong Watches throughout the City However on May Eve several hundreds of young Fellows got together and
were obliged by Act of Parliament to pay the King one hundred eighteen thousand eight hundred and forty Pounds Cromwel after this came into great Favour with the King who made him a Knight Master of his Jewel House and a Privy Councellour and soon after Knight of the Garter Earl of Essex Lord Privy Seal and Lord Great Chamberlain of England and lastly he was constituted Vicegerent in all Ecclesiastical Affairs by Virtue whereof both in Parliament and elsewhere he had the precedence of the Archbishop of Canterbury This Authority he used upon all occasions for the extirpating Romish Superstition and Idolatry to which he always was an utter Enemy and for which there was a fair occasion offered For the King being inraged against the Pope for refusing to annul his Marriage with Queen Katherine though he had the Judgement of nineteen Universities on his side he resolved to have the matter determined by the Clergy of his own Kingdom and having summoned a Convocation they after mature debate declared the Marriage null and void from the beginning and confirmed the Kings second Marriage with Queen Ann of Bullen which he had consummated some time before And a Parliament being called several Acts were passed against the Popes Supremacy whereby all Clergymen that should make any appeal to Rome were declared guilty of a Praemunire and that the King should have power to visit examine and reform all the Monasteries and Nunneries of the Kingdom and should give Licenses for electing Bishops to all Vacancies without the Popes consent or approbation and declaring the King Supream Head on earth of the Church of England after which a stop was put to the Persecutions which the Protestant Ministers had suffered many of whom were cruelly burnt by the Popish Clergy for want of stronger Arguments to convince them The Nobility and Gentry were generally well satisfied with this change but the Body of the People who were more under the Power of the Priests were by them possest with great fears of a change of Religion being told that the King had now joined himself with Hereticks and that Queen Ann Cranmer now Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Cromwel favoured them For the Monks and Friers saw themselves left at the King's Mercy the Trads of new Saints was now at an end they had also some Intimations that Cromwel was forming a Project for suppressing Monasteries so that in Confessions and Discourses they infused into the People a dislike of the Kings Proceedings which prevail'd so far upon them as they afterward broke out into formidable Insurrections and Rebellions in divers Parts of the Kingdom Cromwel by his Vicegerency had precedence of all next the Royal Family and as the King came in the Popes Room so the Vicegerents Authority was in all Points the same that the Legates had in the time of Popery the first Act of Cromwel's after his being Vicar General was with a Delegation of the Kings Supremacy to him to visit all the Monasteries and Churches in England of which the Bishops and Abbots were so jealous that of their own accord before any Law was made about it they swore to maintain the Kings Supremacy however the Visitation went on throughout England and in many places monstrous disorders were found as the Sin of Sodomy in some barbarous Murthers and Cruelties in others Tools for false Coining in others and great Factions and Divisions in many The Report that was made contained many other abominable Crimes not fit to be named hereupon Cromwel procured the Parliament to pass an Act that thirty Persons Spiritual and Temporal such as his Majesty should impower under his Great Seal should have Authority to make and establish Laws and Ordinances Ecclesiastical which should be obligatory upon all the Subjects of this Realm and likewise that all Religious Houses either Monasteries Priories or Nunneries whose revenues did not exceed two hundred pounds a Year should be supprest and dissolved and all their Possessions and Lands setled on the Crown for ever And the Reasons alledged for doing this were because these Houses were erected upon gross abuses and subsisted by them the Foundation of all their Wealth being founded upon the belief of Purgatory and of the Virtue that was in Masses to redeem Souls out of it and that these eased the Torments of departed Souls and at last delivered them out of them so it past among all for a piece of Piety to Parents and of care for their own Souls and Families to endow those Houses with some Lands upon Condition they should have Masses said for them the number of which were usually according to the value of the Gift this was like to have drawn the whole Wealth of the Nation into those Houses had not some restraint been put to that Superstition they also perswaded the People that the Saints interceded for them and would kindly accept offerings made at their Shrines and the greater they were the more earnestly would they use their Interest for them The credulous Vulgar measuring the Court of Heaven by those on Earth believed that Presents might be very prevalent there so that every new Saint must have new Gifts presented him Likewise some Images were believed to have an extraordinary Virtue in them and Pilgrimages to them were much extolled and there was great Contention among the Monasteries every one magnifying their one Saints Images and Reliques above others the Wealth that these Follies brought in occasioned great Corruptions so that the Monks and Friers were very debaucht and very Ignorant And the begging Friers under the appearance of Poverty course Diet and Cloathing gained much esteem and became almost the only Preachers and Confessort in the World but not being able to conceal their Vices they were now fallen under much Scandal and a general Disesteem and the King designing to create new Bishopricks thought it necessary in Order thereto to make use of some of their Revenues and that the best way to bring them into his hands would be to expose their vices that so they might quite lose the esteem they yet had with some and it would be the less dangerous to suppress them Cromwel was imploy'd in this Reforming Work and for removing all Images and Superstitious Pictures out of the Churches many of the Abbots surrendred their Monasteries and in most Houses the Visitors made the Monks sign a Confession of their former Vices and Disorders in which they acknowledged their Idleness Gluttony and Sensuality for which the Pit of Hell was ready to swallow them up others acknowledged that they were sensible that the manner of their former pretended Religion consisting only in some Dumb Ceremonies whereby they were blindly led without any Knowledge of God's Laws and being exempted from the Authority of their own Bishops and wholly subjecting themselves to a Forreign Power who took no care to reform their abuses it had occasioned great disorders among them but the most perfect way of Life revealed by Christ and
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