were passed, the pope decided to defer their publication, hoping for a peaceful settlement.  But Henry knew, and the Catholic princes of Europe knew, that the blow might fall at any time.  He had to make up his mind to go further or to yield unconditionally to the pope.  The world soon discovered the temper of the enraged and stubborn monarch.  He might vacillate on speculative questions, but there were no tokens of feeble hesitancy in his dealings with Rome.  The hour of doom for the monasteries had struck.

Having thus glanced at the character of Henry VIII., the prime mover in the attack upon the monasteries, and having surveyed some of the events leading up to their fall, we are now prepared to consider the actual work of suppression, which will be described under the following heads:  First, The royal commissioners and their methods of investigation; Second, The commissioners’ report on the condition of affairs; Third, The action of Parliament; Fourth, The effect of the suppression upon the people; and Fifth, The use Henry made of the monastic possessions.  These matters having been set forth, it will then be in order to inquire into the justification, real or alleged, of the suppression.

The Royal Commissioners and Their Methods of Investigation

The fall of Sir Thomas More left Thomas Cromwell the chief power under the king, and for seven years he devoted his great administrative abilities to making his royal patron absolute ruler in church and state.

Cromwell, Earl of Essex, was of lowly origin, but his energy and shrewdness, together with the experience acquired by extensive travels, commanded the attention of Cardinal Wolsey, who took him into his service.  He was successively merchant, scrivener, money-lender, lawyer, member of parliament, master of jewels, chancellor, master of rolls, secretary of state, vicar-general in ecclesiastical affairs, lord privy seal, dean of Wells and high chamberlain.

Close intimacy with Wolsey enabled Cromwell to grasp the full significance of Henry’s ambition, and his desire to please his royal master, coupled with his own love of power, prompted him to throw himself with characteristic energy into the work of centralizing all authority in the hands of the king and of his prime minister.  In secular affairs, this had already been accomplished.  The task before him was to subdue the church to the throne, to execute which he became the protector of Protestantism and the foe of Rome.  Green says:  “He had an absolute faith in the end he was pursuing, and he simply hews his way to it, as a woodman hews his way through the forest, axe in hand.”  Froude says:  “To him ever belonged the rare privilege of genius to see what other men could not see, and therefore he was condemned to rule a generation which hated him, to do the will of God and to perish in his success.  He pursued an object, the excellence of which, as his mind saw it, transcended all other considerations, the freedom of England and the destruction of idolatry, and those who, from any motive, noble or base, pious or impious, crossed his path, he crushed and passed on over their bodies.”