Henry sent Cromwell to Oxford. He first threw all the doctors into prison, and then had them brought before him, and on the refusal of one, Father Thomas Marsilius, a Trinitarian, and a native of Oxford, to take the oath of supremacy, ordered him then and there to be hanged and quartered, which was done. A lay brother having gone to Cromwell's lodgings and upbraided him, was by him ordered to be slain in his presence, which was done, and he then sent 200 men to the convent, who cut to pieces all the religious. Now let us see what is the true history of this convent. Lopez's account of its foundation is correct, and the copy he gives of a charter of Edmund Duke of Cornwall accurate; so that he had access to some true account, from which he took his start; but from that date not a word is true. We have already shown the falsehood of the tale about Bishop Hatfield. Far from the house having become constantly more flourishing, and its inmates more numerous, the following are the facts. The house was founded in 1240; in 1321 all the monks were carried off by an epidemic, and the lands escheated to the king. After several years the father minister of Hounslow sent a single friar there to perform divine service. Later their house merged into an inn, called Trinity Hall. Wood adds, "As to the dissolution I know nothing certain concerning it, as not finding it among the monasteries destroyed by Henry VIII., and I am led to believe that the name of an hall, by which it was known, occasioned its being slipped by. However, that was when the other brotherhoods were overturned. John Amery, of the order of the Holy Trinity, was principal there, and at the same time, according to ancient custom, the stipend drawn from the colleges of Oxford, maintained certain poor scholars there, where a certain old priest or anchorite dwelt. Lastly, about the latter end of the reign of Henry VIII., Robert Perrot, Batchelor of Musick, was principal there, and at that time, if I mistake not, he having the house and chapel let to him by the citizens, demolished them, and built there a barn, a stable, and a hogstie."* A few more instances of the falsehood of Lopez's account of the suppression of English monasteries may be given. p. 114 Lopez gives a long tale how Cromwell himself came to Canterbury and caused all the Trinitarians to be hanged. We have, however, the original letter of Richard Devereux, who shows the writer must have been a person wholly ignorant of the facts of English history of the period; for Henry's partisans constantly boasted of the decisions of the two English universities in their favour. * See Stevens's "History of Monasteries," and Wood's "Antiquities of Oxford." was the visitor sent to suppress the monasteries at Canterbury. He wrote, "I came to Canterbury, where I find four houses more in debt than they shall be able to pay, and especially the Austin Friars; the Black and Gray friars be able to pay their debts and little more." He says nothing of the imaginary convent of Trinitarians, and mentions as the only one who opposed him an Augustinian friar, who disputed with him, and upheld the Pope's supremacy, and whom he sent in charge of a man to Cromwell to deal with him: "and so I will make an end of Canterbury."* Lopez gives the visitation of Cambridge by "Henry, a relation of Cromwell," and the martyrdom of the Trinitarians and many others there (p. 105). The real visitors were Doctor Thomas Legh and John ap Rees, and in a letter to Cromwell they give a full account of their visitation and of all the convents there, but not a word of the Trinitarians. (Ellis, p. 117.) At Hounslow the Trinitarians were all put to death with barbarous tortures, according to Lopez (p. 119). But the visitor, Dr. Layton, wrote to the Lord Privy Seal, "The minister of the Trinitarians of Hounslow has, on the 25th September, made a lease to a gentleman of all the house and lands for 100 years." (Ellis, p. 224.) The tale Lopez tells of Tellisford is harrowing; how many even seculars took refuge from the persecutors in the Trinitarian church, and all the monks were either garotted or hanged throughout the town. The real history is given by John London in a letter to Lord Cromwell, narrating his "rasing of the friars' houses in various countries." "At Tellisford Crosse Friars I have only received the surrender, and left the house with all the stuff in safe custody with the late minister and one of the king's servants dwelling therein." (Ellis, p. 130.) Lopez puts the "martyrdom of the friars of Berwick " (which he places in Scotland) at the 19th June, 1559. But we learn that all the monasteries in Berwick surrendered freely to Richard Devereux, visitor for King Henry of England, some twenty years before. (Ellis, p. 186.) The same Richard Devereux was visitor of Huntingdon, Boston, Lincoln, Carlisle, and Lancaster, and his emphatic silence negatives Lopez's account of Trinitarian convents in these places. (Ellis, p. 179.) Thus it is clear that in the case of the suppression of the English monasteries, where the accounts given by Lopez can be fairly tested, they are found to be utterly devoid of foundation. The conclusion, then, which it seems we may fairly arrive at is, *Ellis's "Original Letters," Third Series, p. 179. that the greater part of the statements in Lopez which can be tested are absolutely untrue; and that, conséquently, none of his accounts can be relied on, unless supported by other and better evidence. Another and more interesting, but far more difficult question, remains. To whom are we to attribute the forgeries ? This is a question which, with our present means of information, we are unable to answer, but which deserves careful examination. Lopez's work was published in 1714, Father Baron's about 1690; and, as we have seen, Lopez refers to him. Father Baron's annals, however, only came down to 1267; therefore, if even he gives the tales relating to the early foundations, he cannot be accountable for the stories about the martyrs of the reigns of Henry and Elizabeth. So, also, Figueras, who published at the end of the seventeenth century, and is referred to with respect by Alban Butler, probably only copied them from others. The tales of the alleged Irish martyrs of the reign of Henry VIII. are, as we have seen, traced back through O'Sullivan to Father Goold, who appears to have written them in Spain about 1620. Whether he deceived or was deceived by "the aged monk" will probably never be ascertained, any more than who was the real author of the other various MSS. referred to by Lopez. A careful examination of the writers referred to by Lopez, whose works, although not to be found in this country, may still exist in the Spanish and Italian libraries, would do much to clear up this strange tale. We will conclude by remarking that although it is painful to think that such a mass of false history should be traceable to Catholic writers like Lopez and his authorities, a tolerably extensive acquaintance with the Catholic historians of Ireland of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries enables the writer of this article to state that, with the exception of some wild chapters in the "Patriciana Decas" referring to early history, these Trinitarian histories are the only ones to which the charges of falsification and invention appear justly applicable. ART. III.-THE AMERICAN CHURCH. The Catholic Church in America. By THADDEUS J. BUTLER, D.D. Chicago. 1869. A Brief Sketch of the History of the Catholic Church in the Island of New The Puritan Commonwealth. By PETER OLIVER. Boston. 1866. THER HERE is a critical moment in the life of all political and religious corporations, during which they are commonly said to be "on their trial." Such moments, as various records concur in attesting, are apt to prove fatal to institutions of human origin. The earth is strewed with the wreck of things which once were, but now are not. And their number increases continually. No contrivance of human ingenuity can rise higher than its source, nor prove stronger than its constitutive principle. And therefore states, governments, and churches decay or disappear, one after another. The apparent exceptions only prove the rule. Islamism and the Oriental sects still survive, but they survive only as petrifactions. They have antiquity, but not life. There are fossils of reptiles which are much older, and quite as useful. Other products of like origin prolong their existence for a time by changing their form. The English Constitution, which some fondly deemed the most enduring of human inventions, exists in our day only by being subjected to incessant modification. The English National Church ceased long ago to be national, if it ever was so, in anything but the name. It tends visibly to dissolution, and is doomed, if we may believe its own prophets, to prompt extinction. And so inevitable is this collapse of all human structures, that when such unstable fabrics finally break in pieces their downfall excites no surprise. The very people who had found a temporary and precarious shelter within their walls marvel only that they should have lasted so long. Their materials were so slight, and their foundations so rotten. That the crash would come, sooner or later, was the one thing which, at any moment of their existence, might have been confidently predicted of them. VOL. XV.—NO. xxx. [New Series.] Y Like the meaner creations of purely human origin, the Church of God is always on her trial; but, unlike them, nothing harms her. The trial passes away, and she is found to be exactly what she was before. No "burning fiery furnace " is fierce enough to consume so much as the skirt of her garments, nor will "the smell of fire pass on" her. She has lasted so long, in spite of all that a thousand Nabuchodonosors, ancient or modern, could do against her, that even her enemies now feel sure that she will last to the end. Nor does she bear the least resemblance, as they perceive, to a fossilized body. In her radiant old age she retains the vigour and pliancy of her immortal youth. Whatever she did in bygone times, she is able to do now, and is doing it before our eyes. She is still equal to every emergency. Even now, as an adversary whom we shall have to notice presently, observes, she is "able to revive the magic of the apostolic age." She is never weary, and never faint. She is so assured of her indefectible security, that no provocation, however brutal and senseless, can make her angry. Her serenity is like the serenity of God. When the mighty of this world threaten her, she smiles; when they revile, she blesses; when they persecute, she prays for them. Their madness does not alarm her, for she knows that, in the long run, it will be fatal only to themselves. She has buried all their predecessors, during many succeeding generations, and will bury them in their turn. The earth is covered with the ruins of meaner things, but where are the ruins of the Church? S. Augustine once observed, that the faithful of his age had fuller evidence of the divinity of the Church than the contemporaries of the Apostles, because the latter could only look forward to the promises, while the former could already look back upon their fulfilment. The proofs have accumulated since his day. In every age and nation they have multiplied, until we have reason to ask with surprise, how any professing Christian can remain yet unconvinced? If they were outcasts and reproved who failed to recognize their Creator in the Carpenter's Son, though the disguise was so impenetrable that no mortal could detect or confess His Divinity "but by the Holy Ghost," what shall we think of those who cannot distinguish between the true Church, with her history of nearly two thousand years, and the palpable counterfeits which simulate her voice and mimic her gait? Will any one seriously affirm that it is harder to recognize her than it was to recognize Him? |