ich monkish lawlessness must
have made upon the minds of such men as Wyclif, Pike says: "They saw
with their own eyes those wild and lawless scenes, the faint reflection
of which in contemporaneous documents may excite the wonder of modern
lawyers and modern moralists." The legislation of church and state for a
century before Henry VIII. shows that the monks were guilty of brawling,
frequenting taverns, indulging in licentious pleasures and upholding
unlawful games.

Bonaventura, the General of the Franciscan Order in its earliest days,
and its palmiest, for the first years of a monastic order were always
its best years--this mendicant, their pride and their glory, tells us
that within fifty years of the death of its founder there were many
mendicants roaming around in disorderly fashion, brazen and shameless
beggars of scandalous fame. This unenviable record was kept up down to
the days of Wyclif, who charged the begging friars with representing
themselves as holy and needy, while they were robust of body, rich in
possessions, and dwelt in splendid houses, where they gave sumptuous
banquets. What shall one say of the hysterical ravings against Henry of
the "Holy Maid of Kent," whose fits and predictions were palmed off by
five ecclesiastics, high in authority, as supernatural manifestations?
What must have been the state of monasteries in which such meretricious
schemes were hatched, to deceive silly people, thwart the king and stop
the movements for reform?

Moreover, the various attempts to reform or to suppress the monasteries
prior to Henry's time show he was simply carrying out what, in a small
way, had been attempted before. King John, Edward I. and Edward III.,
had confiscated "alien priories." Richard II. and Henry IV. had made
similar raids. In 1410, the House of Commons proposed the confiscation
of all the temporalities held by bishops, abbots and priors, that the
money might be used for a standing army, and to increase the income of
the nobles and secular clergy. It was not done, but the attempt shows
the trend of public opinion on the question of abolishing the
monasteries. In 1416, Parliament dissolved the alien priories and vested
their estates in the crown. There is extant a letter of Cardinal Morton,
Legate of the Apostolic See, and Archbishop of Canterbury, to the abbot
of St. Albans, one of the mightiest abbeys in all England. It was
written as the result of an investigation started by Innocent VIII.