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The lesser Monasteries bestowed on the King.
NOW because some moneths were imployed in that service before a per∣fect account was returned to the Lord Cromwell: The suppressing of the smaller Monasteries may here seasonably be inserted: For in the twenty seventh of the King's Reign Anno 1539, a motion was made in Parliament,* 1.1 That to support the King's States, and supply His wants, all Religious Houses might be con∣ferred on the Crown, which were not able clearly to expend above Two hundred pounds a year.
2. Some may report,* 1.2 that John Fisher Bishop of Rochester earnestly (though pleasently) opposed the motion, by alledging an Apologue out of Aesope, That the Helve of the Axe craved a Handle of the wood of Oaks onely to cut off the Sere∣bowes of the Tree, but when it was a complete Instramentall Axe, it felled down all the wood. Applying it, That the grant of these smaller Houses would in fine prove destructive to all the rest. But Fisher, being now in his grave, this could not be spoken in this Parliament; which, with more probability was formerly urged by him against Cardinal Wolsey in dissolving the forty Houses, whereof before.
3. This Proposition found little opposition in either Houses.* 1.3 Henry the eighth was a King, and His necessities were Tyrants, and both suing together for the same thing, must not be denied: besides the larger thongs they cut out of other mens leather, the more intire they preserved their own hide, which made the Parlia∣ment to ease their own purses by laying the load on those lesser Houses, which they accordingly passed to the Crown.
4. The Lord Herbert in hisa 1.4 Historie complaineth, and that justly, That this Statute for dissolution of the lesser Monasteries doth begin very bluntly,* 1.5 without any formall Preamble in the Printed Books they are Published. It seemeth that herein he never searched the Record it self (otherwise industrious in that kinde) to which a solemn Preface is prefixed, shewing some Reasons of the dissolution, and pious u∣ses, to which they were attained: In form as followeth: