I think
the priests were the worst of the whole party, although they had a good
reputation at the time, but they were wicked, deceitful men. I am sorry
to speak thus of my own order, but I speak God's truth." "It is a
dreadful undertaking," said Lord Clinton. "Ah! but I have great faith in
the tact and judgment of the men I am about to select,"
retorted Cromwell.
Dr. John London was a base tool of Cromwell, and a miserable exponent of
the reform movement. He joined Gardiner in burning heretics, was
convicted of adultery at Oxford, was pilloried for perjury and died in
jail. The other royal agents were also questionable characters. Dean
Layton wrote the most disgusting letters to Cromwell. Once he informed
his patron that he prayed regularly for him, prefacing this information
with the remark, "I will now tell you something to make you laugh."
Father Gasquet sums up his view of the commissioners in the words of
Edmund Burke: "It is not with much credulity that I listen to any when
they speak ill of those whom they are going to plunder. I rather suspect
that vices are feigned, or exaggerated, when profit is looked for in the
punishment--an enemy is a bad witness; a robber worse." Burke
indignantly declares: "The inquiry into the moral character of the
religious houses was a mere pretext, a complete delusion, an insidious
and predetermined foray of wholesale and heartless plunder."
Such are the protests from the defenders of the monasteries even before
a hearing is granted.
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