The abbeys of Reading and Colchester, although of the first rank, seeing that their abbots were peers of Parliament, and Reading certainly among the most distinguished houses of the country, had no such position as that of Glastonbury. They were both Norman creations; Reading being founded by King Henry II and chosen by him as his burial place. By favour of its royal founder the commonalty of Reading recognised the abbot as their lord; the mayor of the city “being the abbot’s mayor, etc.,” as the diocesan, Bishop Shaxton writes, to Crumwell.
The history of the fall of Reading Abbey and of the execution of Hugh Cook, or Faringdon, the abbot, would be in its main features but a repetition of the story of Glastonbury and Abbot Whiting. The chief source of information about the Abbot of Reading is a paper, already referred to, which is still to be found among the public records, although it has remained unnoticed till four or five years ago.^ It was so decayed with age as to be almost dropping to pieces, but now encased in tissue paper it is fortunately legible almost in its entirety. The document in question is a virulent and brutal invective, evidently a sermon, drawn up for the approval of Crumwell, to be delivered in justification of the kings action in putting to death the three Benedictine abbots and their companions. It is unlikely that this proposed sermon was ever delivered, for the deed was done, the abbots were dead, their property was now all in the king’s hands, and from the point of view of the authors the less said about the matter the better. The draft was accordingly thrown by Crumwell into the vast mass of. papers of all sorts accumulating on his hands, which on his attainder was seized by the king and transferred, as it stood, to the royal archives.
It seems not improbable that the author of the paper in question was Latimer. The harangue is brutal; it shows all his power of effective alliteration, and it is written quite in the spirit of the man who begged to be allowed to preach at the martyrdom of Blessed John Forrest, and to be placed near him that he might with better effect insult him in his death agonies. It is certainly written by a person fully acquainted with all the circumstances, and throws light on many matters which would be unintelligible without it. The paper is so far of the highest value; but in dealing with its statements it is to be remembered that the one object of the writer is to blacken the memory of the martyred abbots, to degrade them and to bring them by every means into contempt.
From the account of Abbot Cooks origin given by this writer, it would be gathered that he was born in humble circumstances. He thus apostrophises the abbot after his death: “Ah, Hugh Cook, Hugh Cook! nay, Hugh Scullion rather I may him call that would be so unthankful to so merciful a prince, so unkind to so loving a king, and so traitorous to so true an emperor. The king’s highness of his charity took Hugh Cook out his cankerous cloister and made him, being at that time the most vilest, the most untowardest and the most miserablest monk that was in the monastery of Reading, born to nought else but to an old pair of beggarly boots, and made him, I say, ruler and governor of three thousand marks by the year.” But the testimony of the writer on a point of fact such as this cannot be rated high.
It is probable that Abbot Cook belonged to that class from which the English monastic houses had been so largely recruited, “the devouter and younger children of our nobility and gentry who here had their education and livelihood.”^ There seems to be no doubt that he belonged to a Kentish family known to the heralds.^ His election to the office of abbot took place in 1520. Grafton and Hall in their chronicles, in accordance with the practice common at the time, to depreciate falsely by any and every means, those who had fallen into the disfavour of the reigning tyrant, give him the character of an illiterate person. “The contrary,” writes Browne Willis, “will appear to such as will consult his Epistles to the University of Oxford, remaining in the register of that university, or shall have an opportunity of perusing a book entitled The art or craft of Rhetorick, written by Leonard Cox, schoolmaster of Reading. ‘Twas printed in the year 1524, and is dedicated by the author to this abbot. He speaks very worthily and. honourably of Faringdon on account of his learning.”
A letter written by Cook to the university in Oxford in 1530 is evidence of the abbot’s intelligent zeal for the Catholic religion, which at that time was being attacked by the new heresies springing up on all sides. Among the monks of Reading abbey was one Dom John Holy man, “a most stout champion in his preachings and writings against the Lutherans,” who, “desirous of a stricter life had resigned his fellowship at New College, Oxford, and taken the cowl at Reading Abbey.” When Holy man was to receive the doctorate. Abbot Cook asked that he might be excused from lecturing before the university, as the custom was, so that he might preach in London, where there was greater need of such a man, seeing that the city was already infected with Lutheranism, and where the great popularity which Holyman already enjoyed brought crowds to hear him whenever he appeared in the pulpit at Saint Paul’s.
On the visitation of Reading Abbey by Doctor London in 1535, the report was favourable as to the state of discipline. “They have,” writes the Doctor, “a good lecture in Scripture daily read in their chapter-house both in English and Latin, to which is good resort, and the abbot is at it himself.” It is possible that at this time in the visitors’ injunctions as in their report Reading was lightly treated. It must have been known to them, as it evidently was to Crumwell, that the abbot was in high favour with the king.
At any rate this circumstance will explain the sharpness of a correspondence which took place at this time between Shaxton, Bishop of Salisbury, in which diocese Reading was situated, and Crumwell. The latter takes up the very unusual position as defender of an abbot, and administers a sharp reproof to the bishop for his meddlesome interference in matters in which, as Crumwell tells him plainly, he has no concern beyond a desire to obtain preferment for an unworthy dependent of his own.
It appears that the lecturer in scripture at the abbey was one Dom Roger London, a monk of the house. In the usual encouragement given to tale-bearing at this time, some discontented religious had delated their teacher to Bishop Shaxton as guilty of heresy. “The matters were no trifles,” says Shaxton, himself at that time a strong supporter of Lutheranism; and the four points of suggested heresy certainly run counter to the teaching of the German doctor. Shaxton examined him personally, “as favourably as I could do,” he writes, “and found him a man of very small knowledge and of worse judgment.” In the discussion which followed the bishop failed to bring the monk to his mind, and this determined him to procure the appointment of a man after his own heart, one Richard Cobbes, who had been a priest and canon, but who was then “a married man and degraded.” Shaxton applied to Crumwell for the appointment of Cobbes as lecturer to the monks in Dom Roger London’s place “with stipend and commons” at the expense of the monastery.
Crumwell, on receipt of the bishop’s letter, wrote to the abbot complaining that “the divinity lecture had not been read in the abbey as it ought to have been,” and recommending Cobbes for the post of lecturer. Abbot Cook replied that he had already a fully qualified teacher, “a bachelor of divinity and brother of the house, who, by the judgment of others” better able to judge than himself, was “very learned in both divinity and humanities, profitting the brethren both in the Latin tongue and in Holy Scripture.” He concludes by pointing out that this teacher read his lecture at far less charge than a stranger would do, and offers him to be examined by any whom Crumwell might appoint. As to the bishop’s nominee, the abbot points out the condition of the man, and naturally declares him to be “a most dangerous man” to hold such a position in the monastery. Under these circumstances Abbot Cook refused to admit Cobbes into his house, and continued his monk, Dom Roger London, in the lectureship.
Finding that he had not got his way, Shaxton at once proceeded to inhibit the monk from reading at Reading, and put a stop to the lectures altogether. The bishop had evidently expected that Crumwell would out of hand have appointed Cobbes to the post on his first representation; “the which thing, if it had come to pass, so should I not have needed to have inhibited the said monk his reading; but I bare with him,” he writes, “to say his creed, so long as there was hope to have another reader there. But when my expectation was frustrated in that behalf, then was I driven to do that which I was loathe to do and which, nevertheless, I was bound to do.”
No one could have been more in sympathy with Shaxton’s views on this matter than Crumwell. With the exception of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Worcester – that is, Cranmer, and Latimer – no one was more according to the ministers mind in religious matters than Bishop Shaxton; for all of them were true Lutherans at heart. Two of these prelates, indeed, continued honest in the year 1539 when brought face to face with the kings “Six Articles,” which extinguished the immediate hopes of the Lutherans in England. They resigned their sees, whilst Cranmer, in accordance with his guiding principle, sacrificed his convictions and held to his archiepiscopal office.
In the matter of the Reading lectureship Shaxton had counted that his ground was safe; and so indeed it was, up to the one point of that personal caprice which, throughout his reign, Henry maintained as the most cherished point of his royal prerogative. Whatever be the cause or explanation of the bishop’s failure in this matter, one thing is clear: Henry had a real affection for the Abbot of Reading, so far as his affection could go, and used, as the contemporary libeller reports, to call him familiarly “his own abbot.”
Shaxton was intent on doing his duty as a good pastor of sound Lutheran principles. But Crumwell had that all-determining and all-varying factor to consider, the kings fancy. He accordingly wrote to the abbot to tell him that he need not pay any attention to the Bishop of Salisbury’s inhibition. “I,” writes Shaxton on hearing of this, “could not obtain so much of you by word or writing to have your pleasure, and the Abbot of Reading could out of hand get and obtain your letters to hinder me in my right proceeding towards his just correction.” Beyond this, not merely was the bishop’s action set aside, but he had to submit to such a lecture from the king’s vicar-general as may have decided him to resign his office when a few months later the “Six Articles” came to be imposed by the king and it was seen that the day for Lutheranism in England had not yet dawned.
It will be sufficient here to quote the conclusion of Crumwell’s letter, which dealt expressly with the matter in hand. “As for the Abbot of Reading and his monk,” he writes, “if I find them as ye say they are, I will order them as I think good. Ye shall do well to do your duty; if you do so ye shall have no cause to mistrust my friendship. If ye do not, I can tell that (to) you, and that somewhat after the plainest sort. To take a controversy out of your hands into mine I do but mine office. You meddle further than your office will bear you, thus roughly to handle me for using of mine. If ye do so no more I let pass all that is past.”
Whatever advantage the Abbot of Reading derived temporarily, at different conjunctures, from the king’s partiality for him, it was by this time clear that such favour could be continued to a man of Abbot Cooks character only by the sacrifice of principles and convictions. According to the writer of the sermon already quoted, the abbot “could not abide” the preachers of the new-fangled doctrines then in vogue, and “called them heretics and knaves of the new learning.” He was also “ever a great student and setter forth of Saint Benet’s, Saint Francis’, Saint Dominic’s and Saint Augustine’s rules, and said they were rules right holy and of great perfectness.” It was, moreover, recognised that discipline was well maintained at Reading and Colchester no less than at Glastonbury; “these doughty deacons,” as the writer calls the abbots and their monks, “thought it both heresy and treason to God to leave matins unsaid, to speak loud in the cloisters, and to eat eggs on the Friday.” It would appear probable that Abbot Cook did not refuse to take the oath of royal supremacy, although there can be little doubt that in so doing he did not intend to separate himself from the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church on the question of papal authority. “He thought to shoot at the king’s supremacy,” as the contemporary witness has put it, and he was apparently charged with saying “that he would pray for the pope’s holiness as long as he lived and would once a week say mass for him, trusting that by such good prayers the pope should rise again and have the king’s highness with all the whole realm in subjection as he hath had in time past. And upon a bon voyage would call him pope as long as he lived.”
After a page of abuse, the writer continues: “I cannot tell how this prayer will be allowed among Saint Benet’s rules, but this I am certain and sure of, that it standeth flatly against our Master Christ’s rule. . . . What other thing should the abbat pray for here (as me-thinketh) but even first and foremost for the high dishonouring of Almighty God, for the confusion of our most dread sovereign lord, king Henry VIII., with his royal successors, and also for the utter destruction of this most noble realm of England. Well, I say no more, but I pray God heartily that the mass be not abused in the like sort of a great many more in England which bear as fair faces under their black cowls and bald crowns as ever did the abbat of Reading, or any of the other traitors. I wiss neither the abbat of Reading, the abbat of Glassenbury, nor the prior [sic] of Colchester, Dr. Holyman, nor Roger London, John Rugg, nor Bachelor Giles, blind Moore, nor Master Manchester, the warden of the friars; no, nor yet John Oynyon, the abbat’s chief councillor, was able to prove with all their sophistical arguments that the mass was ordained for any such intent or purpose as the abbat of Reading used it.”
“I fear me, Hugh Cook was master cook to a great many of that black guard (I mean black monks), and taught them to dress such gross dishes as he was always wont to dress, that he is to say, treason; but let them all take heed.”
At the time of the great northern rising, the Abbey of Reading, together with those of Glastonbury and Colchester, is found on the list of contributors to the king’s expenses in defeating the rebel forces. Reading itself appears to have had some communication with Robert Aske, for copies of a letter written by him, and apparently also his proclamation, were circulated in the town. Amongst others who were supposed to be privy to the intentions of the insurgent chief was John Eynon, a priest of the Church of Saint Giles, Reading, and a special friend of Abbot Cook, Three years later this priest was executed with the abbot; but it is clear that at the time there was not even a suggestion of any complicity in the insurrection on the part of the abbot, as he presided at the examinations held in December, 1536, as to this matter.
The first sign of any serious trouble appears about the close of 1537. The kings proceedings, which were distasteful to the nation at large, naturally gave rise to much criticism and murmuring. Every overt expression of disapprobation was eagerly watched for and diligently inquired into by the royal officials. The numerous records of examinations as to words spoken in conversation or in sermons, evidence the extreme care taken by the government to crush out the first sparks of popular discontent. Rumours as to the king’s bad health, or, still more, reports as to his death, were construed into indications of a treasonable disposition. In December, 1537, a rumour of this kind that Henry was dead reached Reading, and Abbot Cook wrote to some of his neighbours to tell them what was reported. This act was laid to his charge, and Henry acquired a cheap reputation for magnanimity and clemency by pardoning “his own abbot” for what was, at the very worst, but a trifling act of indiscretion.
The libeller thus treats the incident: “For think ye that the Abbat of Reading deserved any less than to be hanged, what time as he wrote letters of the king’s death unto divers gentlemen in Berkshire, considering in. what a queasy case the realm stood in at that same season? For the insurrection that was in the north country was scarcely yet thoroughly quieted; thus began he to stir the coals a novo and to make a fresh roasting fire, and did enough, if God had not stretched forth His helping hand, to set the realm in as great an uproar as ever it was, and yet the king’s majesty, of his royal clemency, forgave him. This had been enough to have made this traitor a true man if there had been any grace in him.”
Circumstances had brought Abbot Cook into communication with both the other abbots, whose fate was subsequently linked with his own. In the triennial general chapters of the Benedictines, in parliament, in convocation they had frequently met; and when the more active measures of persecution devised by Crumwell made personal intercourse impossible, a trusty agent was found in the person of a blind harper named Moore, whose affliction and musical skill had brought him under the kindly notice of the king. This staunch friend of the papal party, whose blindness rendered his mission unsuspected, travelled about from one abbey to another, encouraging the imprisoned monks, bearing letters from house to house, and, doubtless, finding a safe way of sending off to Rome the letters which they had written to the pope and cardinals.
“But now amongst them all let us talk a word or two of William Moor, the blind harper. Who would have thought that he would have consented or concealed any treason against the king’s majesty? or who could have thought that he had had any power thereto? Who can muse or marvel enough to see a blind man for lack of sight to grope after treason? Oh! Moor, Moor, hast thou so great a delight and desire to play the traitor? Is this the mark that blind men trust to hit perchance? Hast thou not heard how the blind eateth many a fly? Couldst not thou beware and have kept thy mouth close together for fear of gnats? Hath God endued thee with the excellency of harping and with other good qualities, to put unto such a vile use? Couldst thou have passed the time with none other song but with the harping upon the string of treason? Couldst thou not have considered that the kings grace called thee from the wallet and the staff to the state of a gentleman? Wast thou also learned, and couldst thou not consider that the end of treason is eternal damnation? Couldst thou not be contented truly to serve thy sovereign lord king Henry VIII, whom thou before a great many oughtest and wast most bound truly to serve? Couldst not thou at least for all the benefits received at his grace’s hand, bear towards him thy good will? Hadst thou nought else to do but to become a traitorous messenger between abbat and abbat? Had not the traitorous abbats picked out a pretty mad messenger of such a blind buzzard as thou art? Could I blazon thine arms sufficiently although I would say more than I have said? Could a man paint thee out in thy colours any otherwise than traitors ought to be painted? Shall I call thee William Moor, the blind harper? Nay, verily, thou shalt be called William Moor, the blind traitor. Now, surely, in my judgment, God did a gracious deed what time He put out both thine eyes, for what a traitor by all likelihood wouldst thou have been if God had lent thee thy sight, seeing thou wast so willing to grope blindfolded after treason! When thou becamest a traitorous messenger between the traitorous abbats, and when thou tookest in hand to lead traitors in the trade of treason, then was verified the sentence of our Master Christ, which sayeth. When the blind lead the blind both shall fall into the ditch. Thou wast blind in thine eyes, and they were blind in their consciences. Wherefore ye be all fallen into the ditch, that is to say, into the high displeasure of God and the king. I wiss, Moor, thou wrestest thine harpstrings clean out of tune, and settest thine harp a note too high when thou thoughtest to set the bawdy bishop of Rome above the king’s majesty.”
It is evident that in the Benedictine monasteries of the district as years went on there were many who, as they came to realise the true meaning of this new royal supremacy, made no attempt to dissemble their real opinions on the matter. The writer so frequently referred to thus expresses his conviction as to the attitude of the monks: “But like as of late by Gods purveyance a great part of their religious hoods be already meetly well ripped from their crafty coats, even so I hope the residue of the like religion shall in like sort not long remain unripped; for truly so long as they be let run at riot thus still in religion, they think verily that they may play the traitors by authority. But now his grace seeth well enough that all was not gold that glittered, neither all his true subjects that called him lord and master, namely, of Balaam’s asses with the bald crowns. But I would now heartily wish,” he adds, writing after the execution of the Abbots of Glastonbury, Colchester and Reading, “that as many as be of that traitorous religion [i.e., order] that those abbots were of, at the next’ [assizes] may have their bald crowns as well shaven as theirs were.”
On such suspicions as these the Abbot of Abingdon was called up to London and examined by Crumwell himself, whilst one of his monks was removed from the abbey to Bishop Shaxtons prison, evidently for his opinions on religious questions of the day, since he is designated by the Bishop as “the popish monk.” Again one of Crumwell’s spies reported his grave doubts as to Sir Thomas Eliot. It appears that Eliot had given out that he had himself told Crumwell that “the Imperator of Almayn never spoke of the Bishop of Rome but he raised his bonnet,” and that he consorted in the country with ” the vain-glorious Abbot of Eynesham,” and with Dr. Holy man, evidently a relative of Dom John Holy man, the monk of Reading, and incumbent of “Hanborough, a mile of Eynesham,” who is noted as “a base priest and privy fautor of the Bishop of Rome.” Moreover, “he was marvellous familiar,” so said the spy, “with the Abbot of Reading and Doctor London, Warden of New College, Oxon,” a man, it is to be observed, in every way of different mind from his namesake. Dr. London, the royal visitor.
A letter from Eliot to Crumwell, in which he expresses his willingness to give up his popish books and strives to remove from the mind of the all-powerful vicar-general of the king the suspicion that he was “an advancer of the pompous authority of the Bishop of Rome,” gives some insight into the nature of his communications with the suspected abbots. There “hath happened,” he says, “no little contention betwixt me and such persons as ye have thought that I especially favoured, even as ye also did, for some laudable qualities which we supposed to be in them; but neither they could persuade me to approve that which both my faith and reason condemned, nor I could not dissuade them from the excusing of that which all the world abhorred. This obstinacy of both parts relented the great affection betwixt us and withdrew our familiarity.”
In view of the prize to be won, that is, the broad acres and other possessions of the great monastic houses, any very definite enquiry as to the opinions of the inmates was not at once pressed home. Crumwell played a waiting game. The situation at Reading Abbey is well described by Dr. London, the visitor and royal agent in dissolving the religious houses, in a letter written to Crumwell whilst occupied in suppressing the Grey Friars’ house in the town. “My lord,” he writes of the abbot, “doubteth my being here very sore, yet I have not seen him since I came, nor been at his house, except yesterday to hear mass. The last time I was here he said, as they all do, that he was at the king’s command, but loathe be they to come to any free surrender.”
Still Crumwell evidently hesitated to try conclusions, and so matters remained for another year until he had obtained his Act of Parliament which provided for the case of a house “happening to come to the king’s highness by attainder or attainders of treason.” By the autumn of the year 1539 he was prepared for the final issue in the case of Reading. We have no records giving the details of Abbot Cook’s arrest and his conveyance to the Tower. There is only the ominous entry in Crumwell’s Remembrances early in September: “For proceeding against the abbots of Glaston, Reading and other in their countries.” The Abbot of Reading seems to have been the first to be arrested, and there can be no doubt that they all remained for near two months in the Tower and were all subjected to the same enquiries. There is evidence to show that at Reading many arrests were made when the abbot was taken. A list of the prisoners in Tower on November 20th, 1539, includes the following, all connected with the abbey and town: Roger London, monk of Reading, Peter Lawrence, Warden of the Grey Friars at Reading, Giles Coventry, who was a friar of the same house, George Constantine, Richard Manchester and William Moor, “the blind harper;” and in one of Crumwells Remembrances at this time there is noted: “Item to proceed against the Abbots of Reading, Glaston, Rugg, Bachyler, London, the Grey Friars and Heron.”
Abbot Cook, like the Abbot of Glastonbury, underwent examination and practical condemnation in the Tower before being sent down to his “country to be tried and executed.” What was the head and chief of his offence we may take from the testimony of the hostile witness so freely used.
“It will make many beware to put their fingers in the fire any more,” he says, “either for the honour of Peter and Paul or for the right of the Roman Church. No, not for the pardon of the pope himself, though he would grant more pardon than all the popes that ever were have granted. I think, verily, our mother holy Church of Rome hath not so great a jewel of her own darling Reynold Poole as she should have had of these abbats if they could have conveyed all things cleanly. Could not our English abbats be contented with English forked caps but must look after Romish cardinal hats also? Could they not be contented with the plain fashion of England but must counterfeit the crafty cardinality of Reynold Poole? Surely they should have worn their cardinal hats with as much shame as that papistical traitor, Reynold Poole. . . Could not our popish abbats beware of Reynold Poole, of that bottomless whirlpool, I say, which is never satiate of treason?”
Carried down to Reading for the mockery of justice, called a trial, the abbot and his companions could not swerve from their belief and their faith, but they maintained that this was not treason against the king. “When these traitors” says the libeller, “were arraigned at the bar, although they had confessed before and written it with their own hands that they had committed high treason against the king’s majesty, yet they found all the means they could to go about to try themselves true men, which was impossible to bring to pass.”
The writer’s object was not to state the facts, but to cover the memory of the dead men with obliquy. Taking the document, however, as a whole, and bearing in mind the interpretation placed on the word treason at that time, there is no difficulty in penetrating into his meaning.
On November 15th, the same day upon which Abbot Whiting suffered at Glastonbury, the Abbot of Reading and two priests, John Eynon and John Rugg, were brought out to suffer the death of traitors. Here the same ghastly scene was enacted as at Glastonbury; the stretching on the hurdle, the dragging through the streets of the town. Abbot Cook, standing in the space before the gateway of his abbey, spoke to the people who in great numbers had gathered to witness the strange spectacle of the execution of a lord abbot of the great and powerful monastery of Reading. He told them of the cause for which he and his companions were to die, not fearing openly to profess that which Henry’s laws made it treason to hold – fidelity to the see of Rome, which he went on to point out was but the common faith of those who had the best right to declare the true teaching of the English Church. “The Abbot of Reading, at the day of his death lamenting the miserable end that he was come unto,” says our authority, perverting words and deeds to the greater glory of the king, “confessed before a great sight of people, and said that he might thank these four privy traitors before named of his sore fall, as who should say that those three bishops and the vicar of Croydon had committed no less treason than he had done. Now, good Lord for his Passion, who would have thought that these four holy men would have wrought in their lifetime such detestable treason?” And later on, speaking of the three abbots: “God caused, I say, not only their treason to be disclosed and come abroad in such a wonderful sort as never was heard of, which were too long to recite at this time, but also dead men’s treason that long lay hidden under the ground; that is to say, the treason of the old bishop of Canterbury [Warham], the treason of the old bishop of Saint Asaph [Standish], the treason of the old vicar of Croydon, and the treason of the old bishop of London [Stokesley], which four traitors had concealed as much treason by their lives’ time as any of these traitors that were put to death. There was never a barrel better herring to choose [among] them all, as it right well appeared by the Abbat of Reading’s confession made at the day of [execution], who I daresay accused none of them for malice nor hatred. For the abbat as heartily loved those holy fathers as ever he loved any men in his life.”
Thus, from the scaffold with the rope round his neck, and on the verge of eternity, the venerable abbot gave a witness to the veneration traditional in these islands from the earliest ages for the see of Rome, “in which the Apostles daily sit, and their blood shows forth without intermission the glory of God.”
When the abbot had finished, John Eynon, the abbot’s “chief counsellor,” also spoke, evidently in the same sense, and begged the prayers of the bystanders for his soul, and the kings forgiveness if in aught he had offended.
This over, the sentence of hanging with its barbarous accessories was carried out upon Abbot Cook and the two priests, John Eynon and John Rugg.
The attainder of the abbot, according to the royal interpretation of the law, placed the Abbey of Reading and its lands and possessions at Henrys disposal. In fact, as in the case of Glastonbury, on the removal of the abbot to the Tower in September, 1539, before either trial or condemnation, the pillage of the abbey had been commenced. As early as September 8th Thomas Moyle wrote from Reading that he, “master Vachell and Mr. Dean of York” (Layton) had “been through the inventory of the plate, etc., at the residence” there. “In the house,” he said, “there is a chamber hanged with three pieces of metely good tapestry. It will serve well for hanging a mean little chamber in the kings majesty’s house.” This is all they think worth keeping for the royal use. “There is also,” the writer adds, “a chamber hung with six pieces of verdure with fountains, but it is old and at the ends of some of them very foul and greasy.” He notes several beds with silk hangings, and in the church eight pieces of tapestry, “very goodly” but small, and concludes by saying that he and his fellows think that the sum of £200 a year “will serve for pensions for the monks.”
On September 15th another commissioner, Richard Pollard, wrote from Reading that he had dispatched certain goods according to Crumwell’s direction “and part of the stuff reserved for the king’s majesty’s use.” “The whole house and church are,” he says, “still undefaced,” and “as for the plate, vestments, copes and hangings, which we have reserved” to the king’s use, they are left in good custody and are to be at once conveyed to London. “Thanks be to God,” he adds, “everything is well finished, and every man well contented, and giveth humble thanks to the kings grace.”