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great objection to these Articles was not the doctrine they set forth,
but the fact that they were issued by the king's authority. That the
King of England could revise the beliefs and ceremonies of the
Catholic Church was in itself a revolution, and should have opened the
eyes of the Catholic-minded bishops to the full meaning of royal
supremacy. Furthermore, Convocation declared that the Bishop of Rome
could not convene a General Council without the permission and
co-operation of the Christian princes. A few weeks later Cromwell
issued a set of /Injunctions/ to be observed by the clergy charged
with the care of souls. They were to set forth the Articles drawn up
by the king, to discourage pilgrimages and the observation of holidays
that had not been abrogated, not to lay too much stress upon images
and relics, and to warn the people to teach their children in English
the Our Father, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments; they were to give
one-fortieth of their incomes to the poor, one-fifth to the repair of
the churches, and those who held the richer benefices were commanded
to spend their surplus revenue in maintaining a student or students at
Oxford and Cambridge.

In the autumn of 1536 three sets of royal commissioners were at work,
one superintending the suppression of the lesser monasteries, a second
charged with communicating Cromwell's instructions to the clergy, and
removing those priests who were unwilling to accept them, and a third
entrusted with the collection of royal taxation on ecclesiastical
benefices. By these commissions the entire face of the country was
changed. The monastic institutions were suppressed and the servants
and labourers in their employment were turned adrift, the relief to
the poor and the wayfarer was discontinued, and the tenants awaited
with nervousness the arrival of the new grandees. The possessions of
the religious houses, instead of being spent on the development of
education and the relief of the taxes, found their way for the most
part into the royal treasury, or into the pockets of the officials
charged with the work of suppression. Oxford and Cambridge were
reduced to sullen submission, and obliged to accept a new set of
statutes, to abolish the study of canon law in favour of civil law, to
confine the divinity courses to lectures on the Scriptures, and to
place in the hands of the students the classical authors together with
the Humanist commentaries thereon, instead of the tomes of Duns Scotus
or St. Thomas. Such changes, as has been shown, led to rebellion in
different parts of the country, but especially in the north, where
loyalty to Rome was still regarded as compatible with loyalty to the
king.

After the suppression of the rebellions in the north and the failure
of Cardinal Pole to bring about an European coalition against Henry,
the war against the greater monasteries was begun (1537). Those
situated in the northern counties were charged with having been
implicated in the rebellion. Many of the abbots were put to death or
imprisoned, and the goods of the communities were confiscated. Several
others in order to escape punishment were induced to surrender their
property to the king's commissioners. In some cases the abbots were
bribed by promises of special favours for themselves, in others they
were forced to yield up their titles to avoid charges of treason on
account of documents supposed to have been discovered in their houses
or evidence that had been extracted from some of their monks or
retainers. During the years 1538 and 1539 the monasteries fell one by
one, while during the same period war was carried on against shrines
and pilgrimages. The images of Our Lady of Ipswich and of Our Lady of
Walsingham were destroyed; the tomb of St. Thomas à Becket was rifled
of its precious treasures, and the bones and relics of the saint were
treated with the greatest dishonour. Everywhere throughout the country
preachers inspired by Cromwell and Cranmer, the latter of whom aimed
at nothing less than a Lutheran revolution in England, were at work
denouncing images, pilgrimages, invocation of saints, and Purgatory.
So long as money poured into the royal treasury from the sale of
surrendered monastical property and of the ecclesiastical goods, or so
long as a blow could be struck at the Papacy by desecrating the tomb
of a saint who had died as a martyr in defence of the Holy See, Henry
looked on with indifference if not with pleasure.

But the news of such outrages could not fail to horrify the Catholic
world, and to prove to Paul III. that there was little hope of any
favourable change in Henry's religious policy. It was determined to
give effect to the Bull of excommunication that had been prepared for