At Woburn, as in many other religious houses, there were representatives of both the factions which divided the country; perhaps we should say of three—­the sincere Catholics, the Indifferentists, and the Protestants.  These last, so long as Wolsey was in power, had been frightened into silence, and with difficulty had been able to save themselves from extreme penalties.  No sooner, however, had Wolsey fallen, and the battle commenced with the Papacy, than the tables turned, the persecuted became persecutors—­or at least threw off their disguise, and were strengthened with the support of the large class who cared only to keep on the winning side.  The mysteries of the faith came to be disputed at the public tables; the refectories rang with polemics; the sacred silence of the dormitories was broken for the first time by lawless speculation.  The orthodox might have appealed to the Government:  heresy was still forbidden by law, and if detected, was still punished by the stake.  But the orthodox among the regular clergy adhered to the Pope as well as to the faith, and abhorred the sacrilege of the Parliament as deeply as the new opinions of the Reformers.  Instead of calling in the help of the law, they muttered treason in secret; and the Reformers, confident in the necessities of the times, sent reports to London of their arguments and conversations.  The authorities in the abbey were accused of disaffection; and a commission of inquiry was sent down towards the end of the spring of 1536, to investigate.  The depositions taken on this occasion are still preserved; and with the help of them, we can leap over three centuries of time, and hear the last echoes of the old monastic life in Woburn Abbey dying away in discord.

Where party feeling was running so high, there were of course passionate arguments.  The Act of Supremacy, the spread of Protestantism, the power of the Pope, the state of England—­all were discussed; and the possibilities of the future, as each party painted it in the colours of his hopes.  The brethren, we find, spoke their minds in plain language, sometimes condescending to a joke.

Brother Sherborne deposes that the sub-prior “on Candlemas-day last past (February 2, 1536), asked him whether he longed not to be at Rome where all his bulls were?” Brother Sherborne answered that “his bulls had made so many calves, that he had burned them.  Whereunto the sub-prior said he thought there were more calves now than there were then.”

Then there were long and furious quarrels about “my Lord Privy Seal” (Cromwell), to one party the incarnation of Satan, to the other the delivering angel.  Nor did matters mend when from the minister they passed to the master.