The Eve of the Reformation

“But to this, some one once answered me and said; ‘that it was no thanks to them, for it (came from) lands that good princes have given them.’ But, as I then told him, it was then much less thanks to them that would now give good princes evil counsel to take it from them. And also if we are to call it not giving of alms by them, because other good men have given them the lands from which they give it, from what will you have them give alms? They have no other…”

Further replying to the insinuation of Saint-German that the religious keep retainers and servants out of pride and for “proud worldly countenance,” Sir Thomas More says: “If men were as ready in regard to a deed of their own, by nature indifferent, to construe the mind and intent of the doer to the better part, as they are, of their own inward goodness, to construe and report it to the worst, then might I say, that the very thing which they call ‘the proud worldly countenance’ they might and should call charitable alms. That is to say, (when they furnish) the right honest keep and good bringing up of so many temporal men in their service, who though not beggars yet perhaps the greater part of them might have to beg if they did not support them but sent them out to look for some service for themselves,” (they are giving charitable alms).

“And just as if you would give a poor man some money because he was in need and yet would make him go and work for it in your garden, lest by your alms he should live idle and become a loiterer, the labour he does, does not take away the nature nor merit of alms: so neither is the keeping of servants no alms, though they may wait on the finder and serve him in his house. And of all alms the chief is, to see people well brought up and well and honestly guided. In which point, though neither part do fully their duty, yet I believe in good faith that in this matter, which is no small alms, the spirituality is rather somewhat before us than in any way drags behind.”138

With regard to the charge brought against the clergy of great laxity in fasting and mortification, More thinks this is really a point on which he justly can make merry. Fasting, he says, must be regulated according to custom and the circumstances of time and place. If there were to be a cast-iron rule for fasting, then, when compared with primitive times, people in his day, since they dined at noon, could not be held to fast at all. And yet “the Church to condescend to our infirmity” has allowed men “to say their evensong in Lent before noon,” in order that they might not break their fast before the vesper hour. The fact is that, in More’s opinion, a great deal of the outcry about the unmortified lives of the religious and clergy had “been made in Germany” by those who desired to throw off all such regulations for themselves. As a Teuton had said to him in “Almaine” colloquial English – “when I blamed him,” More says, “for not fasting on a certain day: ‘Fare to sould te laye men fasten? let te prester fasten.’ So we, God knows, begin to fast very little ourselves, but bid the ‘prester to fasten.’”139

“And as to such mortifications as the wearing of hair shirts, it would indeed be hard to bind men, even priests, to do this, … though among them many do so already, and some whole religious bodies too.” If he says, as he does, that this “does not appear,” what would he have? Would he wish them to publish to the world these penances? If they take his, Saint-German’s, advice, “they will come out of their cloisters every man into the market-place, and there kneel down in the gutters, and make their prayers in the open streets, and wear their hair shirts over their cowls, and then it shall appear and men shall see it. And truly in this way there will be no hypocrisy for their shirts of hair, and yet moreover it will be a good policy, for then they will not prick them.”140

In the same way More points out that people in talking against the wealth of the clergy are not less unreasonable than they are when criticising what they call their idle, easy lives. “Not indeed that we might not be able always to find plenty content to enter into their possessions, though we could not always find men enough content to enter their religions;” but when the matter is probed to the bottom, and it is a question how their wealth “would be better bestowed,” then “such ways as at the first face seemed very good and very charitable for the comfort and help of poor folk, appeared after reasoning more likely in a short while to make many more beggars than to relieve those that are so already. And some other ways that at first appeared for the greater advantage of the realm, and likely to increase the king’s honour and be a great strength for the country, and a great security for the prince as well as a great relief of the people’s charges, appeared clearly after further discussion to be ‘clean contrary, and of all other ways the worst.’”

“And to say the truth,” he continues, “I much marvel to see some folk now speak so much and boldly about taking away any possessions of the clergy.” For though once in the reign of Henry IV., “about the time of a great rumble that the heretics made, when they would have destroyed not only the clergy but the king and his nobility also, there was a foolish and false bill or two put into Parliament and dismissed as they deserved; yet in all my time, when I was conversant with the court, I had never found of all the nobility of this land more than seven (of which seven there are now three dead) who thought that it was either right or reasonable, or could be any way profitable to the realm, without lawful cause to take away from the clergy any of the possessions which good and holy princes, and other devout, virtuous people, of whom many now are blessed saints in heaven, have of devotion towards God given to the clergy to serve God and pray for all Christian souls.”141

In his Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, made in 1532, when Sir Thomas More was still Lord Chancellor of England, he protests against imputations made by his adversary and his follower Barnes, that the clergy were as a body corrupt. “Friar Barnes lasheth out against them, against their pride and pomp, and all their lives spent in” vicious living, “as if there were not a good priest in all the Catholic Church… He jesteth on them because they wear crowns and long gowns, and the bishops wear rochets. And he hath likened them to bulls, asses, and apes, and the rochets to smocks.” “But he forgets how many good virtuous priests and religious people be put out of their places (in Germany) and spoiled of their living, and beaten, and sent out a-begging, while heretics and apostates, with their women, keep their shameless lives with the living that holy folks have dedicated unto God for the support of such as would serve God in spiritual cleanness and vowed chastity. He knows well enough, I warrant you, that the clergy can never lack persecution where heretics may grow; nor soon after the temporality either, as it has hitherto been proved in every such country yet.”142

He will not repeat all his “ribald railing upon all the clergy of Christendom who will not be heretics” when he calls “them bulls, apes, asses and abominable harlots and devils.” … “No good man doubts, although among the clergy there are many full bad (as, indeed, it were hard to have it otherwise among so great a multitude, whilst Christ’s own twelve were not without a traitor), that there are again among them many right virtuous folk, and such that the whole world beside fares the better for their holy living and their devout prayer.”143

Beyond the above supposed causes for the growth of the dislike of the clergy which Sir Thomas More weighs and considers in the above extracts, Saint-German gives others which are instructive as to the actual status of the clergy; but with which, as they do not reflect upon their moral character, Sir Thomas More was not immediately concerned in his reply. One occasion of the present difficulties and division, writes Saint-German, “has partly arisen by temporal men who have desired much the familiarity of priests in their games and sports, and who were wont to make much more of those who were companionable than of those that were not so, and have called them good fellows and good companions. And many also would have chaplains which they would not only suffer, but also command, to go hunting, hawking, and such other vain disports; and some would let them lie among other lay servants, where they could neither use prayer nor contemplation.”

Some even go so far as to insist on their chaplains wearing “liveries,” which “are not convenient in colour for a priest to wear.” Others give them worldly businesses to attend to in the way of stewardships, &c., “so that in this way their inward devotion of heart has become as cold and as weak, in a manner, as it is in lay men.” Nevertheless, in spite of the evil effect to be feared from this training, they do not hesitate to put them into the first benefice they have to dispose of; “and when they have done so, they will anon speak evil of priests, and report great lightness in them, and lightly compare the faults of one priest with another.” This they do “even when they themselves have been partly the occasion of their offences.”

Moreover, “where by the law all priests ought to be at the (parish) church on Sundays and holidays, and help the service of God in the choir, and also, when there, to be under the orders of the curate (or parish priest of the place), yet nevertheless many men who have chaplains will not allow them to come to the parish church; and when they are there, will not suffer them to receive their orders from the curate, but only from themselves; nor will they tolerate seeing them in the choir;” and what is the case with “chaplains and serving priests is also (true) of chantry priests and brotherhood priests in many places.”

To remedy these evils, Saint-German thinks, as indeed every one would be disposed to agree with him, that priests should be prohibited from hunting and all such games as are unsuitable to the priestly character, “though perchance he may, as for recreation, use honest disportes for a time.” Moreover, he should not “frequent the ale house or tavern,” and, if in his recreations the people are offended, he should be warned by “an abbot and a justice of the peace of the shire.” If, after this, he does not change, he ought to be suspended. Further than this, no one should be permitted to have a chaplain who has not “a standing house,” where the priest is able to have his private chamber with a lock and key, so that “he may use himself therein conveniently in reading, prayer, or contemplation, or such other labours and business as it is convenient for a priest to use.”144

Both in his work on the Division and in his previous tract, A Dyalogue between a Student of Law and a Doctor of Divinity, Saint-German lays great stress upon the question of mortuaries, as one that gave great offence to lay people at the period when he wrote. As he explained in the Dyalogue, the State had already interfered to regulate the exactions made by custom at funerals, but nevertheless “in some places the Church claims to have the taper that stands in the middle of the hearse over the heart of the corpse, and some claim to have all the tapers. Some also claim to have one of the torches that is about the hearse, and others to have all the torches. And if the body be brought in a charette or with coat armour or such other (ornaments), then they claim all the horses and charette and the apparel or part thereof.”145 Now, in his other book, Saint-German thinks that though these things “are annulled already by statute,” there is rising up “a thing concerning mortuaries,” that “if it be allowed to continue” will cause great difficulties in the near future. It is this: “Many curates not regarding the king’s statute in that behalf, persuade their parishioners when they are sick to believe that they cannot be saved unless they restore them as much as the old mortuary would have amounted to.” All those who act in such a way are, he thinks, “bound in conscience to restitution, since they have obtained money under false information.”146

After arguing that Parliament has a right to legislate in all matters concerning goods and property, our author says: “It is certain that all such mortuaries were temporal goods, though they were claimed by spiritual men; and the cause why they were taken away was, because there were few things within this realm which caused more variance among the people than they did, when they were allowed. They were taken so far against the king’s laws and against justice and right, as shall hereafter appear. First they were taken not only after the husband’s death, but also after the death of the wife, who by the law of the realm had no goods, but what were the husband’s. They were taken also from servants and children, as well infants as others; and if a man died on a journey and had a household, he should pay mortuaries in both places.” Whilst in some places both the parson and the vicar claimed the mortuary; “and sometime even the curate (i. e. parish priest) would prohibit poor men to sell their goods, as were likely to come to them as mortuaries, for they would say it was done in order to defraud the Church.” And the mortuaries had to be handed over at once, or they would not bury the body. All these things led to the great growth of mortuaries “by the prescription of the spiritual law, and had they not been put an end to by Parliament they would have grown more and more.

“And in many places they were taken in such a way that it made the people think that their curates loved their mortuaries better than their lives. For this reason there rose in many places great division and grudge between them, which caused a breach of the peace, love, and charity that ought to be between the curate and his parishioners, to the great unquietness of many of the king’s subjects, as well spiritual as temporal, and to the great danger and peril of their souls. For these causes the said mortuaries be annulled by Parliament, as well in conscience as in law, and yet it is said that some curates use great extremities concerning the said mortuaries another way; and that is this: If at the first request the executor pay not the money that is appointed by the statute, they will anon have a citation against him, and in this he shall be so handled that, as it is said, it would have been generally much better for him to have paid the old mortuary, than the costs and expenses he will then have to pay.”147

Another fertile cause of complaint against the clergy at this time was, in Saint-German’s opinion, the way in which tithes were exacted; in many cases without much consideration for justice and reason. “In some places, the curates all exact their tenth of everything within the parish that is subject to tithe, although their predecessors from time immemorial have been contented to do without it: and this even though there is sufficient besides for the curates to live upon, and though perchance in old time something else has been assigned in place of it. In some places there has been asked, it is said, tithe of both chickens and eggs; in some places of milk and cheese; and in some others tithe of the ground and also of all that falleth to the ground. In other places tithes of servants’ wages is claimed without any deduction; and indeed it is in but few places that any servant shall go quite without some payment of tithe, though he may have spent all in sickness, or upon his father and mother, or such necessary expenses.”

Our author, from whom we get so much information as to the relations which existed in pre-Reformation times between the clergy and people, goes on to give additional instances of the possible hardships incidental to the collection of the ecclesiastical dues. These, where they exist, he, no doubt rightly, thinks do not tend to a good understanding between those who have the cure of souls, and who ought to be regarded rather in the light of spiritual fathers, than of worldly tax collectors. He admits, however, that these are the abuses of the few, and must not be considered as universally true of all the clergy. “And though,” he concludes, “these abusions are not used universally (God forbid that they should), for there are many good curates and other spiritual men that would not use them to win any earthly thing, yet when people of divers countries meet together, and one tells another of some such extremity used by some curates in his country, and the other in like manner to him, soon they come to think that such covetousness and harsh dealing is common to all curates. And although they do not well in so doing, for the offence of one priest is no offence of any other, if they will so take it: yet spiritual men themselves do nothing to bring the people out of this judgment; but allow these abuses to be used by some without correcting them.”148

To these objections, and more of the same kind, Sir Thomas More did not make, and apparently did not think it at all necessary to make, any formal reply. Indeed, he probably considered that where such things could be proved it would be both just and politic to correct them. His failing to reply on this score, however, seems to have been interpreted by Saint-German as meaning his rejection of all blame attaching to the clerical profession in these matters. In the Deballacion of Salem and Byzance, More protests that this is not his meaning at all. “He says,” writes he, “that I, in my mind, prove it to be an intolerable fault in the people to misjudge the clergy, since I think they have no cause so to do, and that there I leave them, as if all the whole cause and principal fault was in the temporality.” This, More declares he never dreamed of, for “if he seek these seven years in all my Apology, he shall find you no such words” to justify this view. On the contrary, he will find that “I say in those places, ‘that the people are too reasonable to take this or that thing’ amiss for ‘any reasonable cause of division.’”149 The fact is, “I have never either laid the principal fault to the one or to the other.” To much that Saint-German said, More assented; and his general attitude to the general accusations he states in these words: “Many of them I will pass over untouched, both because most of them are such as every wise man will, I suppose, answer them himself in the reading, and satisfy his own mind without any need of my help therein, and because some things are there also very well said.”

Reading the four books referred to above together, one is forced to the conviction that the description of Sir Thomas More really represents the state of the clergy as it then was. That there were bad as well as good may be taken for granted, even without the admissions of More, but that as a body the clergy, secular or religious, were as hopelessly bad as subsequent writers have so often asked their readers to believe, or even that they were as bad as the reports, started chiefly by Lutheran emissaries, who were striving to plough up the soil in order to implant the new German teachings in the place of the old religious faith of England, would make out, is disproved by the tracts of both Saint-German and Sir Thomas More. In such a discussion it may be taken for granted that the worst would have appeared. Had the former any evidence of general and hopeless corruption he would, when pressed by his adversary, have brought it forward. Had the latter – whose honesty and full knowledge must be admitted by all – any suspicion of what later generations have been asked to believe as the true picture of ecclesiastical life in pre-Reformation England, he would not have dared, even if his irreproachable integrity would have permitted him, to reject as a caricature and a libel even Christopher Saint-German’s moderate picture.

In one particular More categorically denies a charge made by Tyndale against the clergy in general, and against the Popes for permitting so deplorable a state of things in regard to clerical morals. As the charge first suggested by Tyndale has been repeated very frequently down to our own time, it is useful to give the evidence of so unexceptional authority as that of the Lord Chancellor of England. Tyndale declared that although marriage was prohibited by ecclesiastical law to the clergy of the Western Church, the Pope granted leave “unto as many as bring money” to keep concubines. And after asserting that this was the case in Germany, Wales, Ireland, &c., he adds, “And in England thereto they be not few who have (this) licence – some of the Pope, and some of their ordinaries.” To this More says: “We have had many pardons come hither, and many dispensations and many licences too, but yet I thank our Lord I never knew none such, nor I trust never shall, nor Tyndale, I trow either; but that he listeth loud to lie. And as for his licences customably given by the ordinaries, I trust he lies in regard to other countries, for as for England I am sure he lies.”150

It would of course be untrue to suggest that there were no grounds whatever for objection to the clerical life of the period. At all times the ministers of the Church of God are but human instruments, manifesting now more now less the human infirmities of their nature. A passage in a sermon preached by Bishop Longland of Lincoln in 1538 suggests that the most crying abuse among the clergy of that time was simony. “Yet there is one thing, or ill which the prophet saw not in this city (of Sodom). What is that? That which specially above other things should have been seen. What is it? That which most is abused in this world. I pray thee, what is it? Make no more ado: tell it. That which almost destroyed the Church of Christ. Then, I pray thee, shew it: shew what it is: let it be known, that remedy may be had and the thing holpen. What is it? Forsooth it is simony, simony: chapping and changing, buying and selling of benefices and of spiritual gifts and promotions. And no better merchandise is nowadays than to procure advowsons of patrons for benefices, for prebends, for other spiritual livelihood, whether it be by suit, request, by letters, by money bargain or otherwise: yea, whether it be to buy them or to sell them, thou shalt have merchants plenty, merchants enough for it.

“These advowsons are abroad here in this city. In which city? In most part of all the great cities of this realm. In the shops, in the streets, a common merchandise. And they that do come by their benefices or promotions under such a manner shall never have grace of God to profit the Church.”151

It is interesting to recall the fact that the late Mr. Brewer, whose intimate knowledge of this period of our national history is admitted on all hands, arrived, after the fullest investigation, at a similar conclusion as to the real state of the Church in pre-Reformation England. Taking first the religious houses, this high authority considers that no doubt many circumstances had contributed at this time to lower the tone of religious discipline; but taking a broad survey, the following is the historian’s verdict: “That in so large a body of men, so widely dispersed, seated for so many centuries in the richest and fairest estates of England, for which they were mainly indebted to their own skill, perseverance, and industry, discreditable members were to be found (and what literary chiffonnier, raking in the scandalous annals of any profession, cannot find filth and corruption?) is likely enough, but that the corruption was either so black or so general as party spirit would have us believe, is contrary to all analogy, and is unsupported by impartial and contemporary evidence.”152

“It is impossible,” he says in another place, “that the clergy can have been universally immoral and the laity have remained sound, temperate, and loyal.” This, by the way, is exactly what More, who lived in the period, insisted upon.

“But,” continues Brewer, “if these general arguments are not sufficient, I refer my readers to a very curious document, dated the 8th of July 1519, when a search was instituted by different commissioners on a Sunday night, in London and its suburbs, for all suspected and disorderly persons. I fear no parish in London, nor any town in the United Kingdom, of the same amount of population, would at this day pass a similar ordeal with equal credit.”153 And in another place he sums up the question in these words: “Considering the temper of the English people, it is not probable that immorality could have existed among the ancient clergy to the degree which the exaggeration of poets, preachers, and satirists might lead us to suppose. The existence of such corruption is not justified by authentic documents or by any impartial and broad estimate of the character and conduct of the nation before the Reformation. If these complaints of preachers and moralists are to be accepted as authoritative on this head, there would be no difficulty in producing abundant evidence from the Reformers themselves that the abuses and enormities of their own age, under Edward VI. and Elizabeth, were far greater than in the ages preceding.”154