as in the happy days gone by. "Being deprived of a Prior exterior to themselves, each man's conscience was his own Prior, directing and instructing him in all things." 1 Cromwell, the king's Vicar-General, took to heart the continued resistance of the Carthusians. It was difficult to "get him in a good mood" for any other business. Accustomed as he was to being hated but obeyed, he found the respectful disobedience of these resolute monks very hard to bear. 1 Historia (ed. 1888), p. 11. 2 Letters and Papers, ix. 950. ( 209 ) CHAPTER VII. AN UNWORTHY PRIOR-VISITS FROM RELATIVES-FOUR MONKS IN the spring of 1536, the persecutors, being fairly tired out by the monks' continued resistance, resolved to try new means of bringing them to acknowledge the royal supremacy. It was hoped, moreover, that they would be persuaded to surrender their house and property into the king's hands. Cromwell thought that the appointment of a Prior would be a step towards gaining their end. A good and conscientious Prior would doubtless have strengthened the opposition of the community. But it was not a good and conscientious Prior that Cromwell thought of placing at the head of the London Charterhouse. He was to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, leading the monks into heresy, and the monastery to profanation and destruction. New laws, new rules, new cruelties, had become Р the daily portion of the poor monks; and they can hardly have been surprised to learn that their new Superior was not to be elected according to the customs of the Order, but according to the will of Thomas Cromwell, the king's Vicar. This kind of election had become the order of the day. Even Bishop Burnet says that "all the Abbots were now placed by the king, and were generally picked out to serve his turn.' Dom William Trafford, who thus became the unworthy successor to Blessed John Houghton in the priorate of the London Charterhouse, had been Procurator at Beauvale, where he had made himself conspicuous by his bold refusal to acknowledge Henry's new title. Sir John Markham and other royal Commissioners were at Beauvale to "take the value," and they proposed the royal supremacy to the monks. "We showed them," they say to Cromwell, "that the king was of right supreme head of the Church, delating the story true of Lucius and Eleutherius, and of Ethelbertus and Bertha his wife, and Gregory and Austin. Hereon, one William Trafford, Procurator of the said house, said, 'I believe firmly that the Pope of Rome is supreme head of the Church Catholic.' On our asking, he said he would abide by his words usque ad mortem. He wrote them down, and they rest with Sir John Markham, sheriff, in whose ward he 1 History, vol. i. p. 226. WILLIAM TRAFFORD'S CHANGE. 211 is. Send word how he is to be treated in exemplum aliorum." This happened on the 16th of April, 1535. One year later a great change had taken place in Dom Trafford's ideas; and he was deemed a fit person to become Prior of the London Charterhouse, with the express purpose of bringing about its ruin. "What happened to change the heart of this religious," Father Gasquet says, "does not appear, but the fact of his appointment and that Bedyll praises him would be sufficient to prove the surrender of his conscience to the king, to whom he subsequently resigned the monastery.” 2 There is, however, another letter which seems to throw some light upon the question of this unhappy change, and it also proves that a whole year intervened between Trafford's bold confession of the Catholic faith and his appointment to the priorate of London. Some time during that year Trafford was sent, probably by order of Cromwell, to the Charterhouse at Sheen, where he fell under the influence of Henry Man, the unworthy Prior of that monastery. 3 Anthony à Wood gives, in his Athena Oxoniensis, an account of this Henry Man. He was a native of Lancashire, and a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He left the university without taking a degree, and became a Carthusian. In 1534 he was 2 Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries, vol. i. p. 231. " Ed. Bliss, 1815, vol. ii. col. 772. Prior of Witham, and in the following year he succeeded to Father Jonbourne in the priorate at Sheen. Very probably he was not elected according to the rules of the Order, but "picked out to serve the king's turn." The office of Provincial Visitor being made vacant by the imprisonment and martyrdom of Blessed John Houghton, Henry Man became the Visitor by royal appointment. His business was to persuade his brethren to renounce their religion, and surrender their monasteries to the king; and so well did he perform his task that he was subsequently counted worthy, first to receive a handsome pension, then to become Dean of Chester, and finally to be elected Protestant Bishop of Man. Trafford's change was most likely due to the words and example of this unhappy monk. It is certain that one year after his confession of the faith at Beauvale he was sent from Sheen to London, ripe for his destructive mission. Prior Man gave him a letter of introduction to Cromwell, which is preserved in the Public Record Office.1 It runs thus: "Right honourable Master, in our Saviour Jesus be your salvation, with many humble thanks for all your singular goodness showed to me. This is to beseech your mastership to accept the bearer beMentioned in Letters and Papers, viii. 585. 1 |