d
as unproved. This is a hard condition. We appeal to Wolsey. Wolsey
commenced the suppression. Wolsey first made public the infamies which
disgraced the Church; while, notwithstanding, he died the devoted
servant of the Church. This evidence is surely admissible? But no:
Wolsey, too, must be put out of court. Wolsey was a courtier and a
time-server. Wolsey was a tyrant's minion. Wolsey was--in short, we know
not what Wolsey was, or what he was not. Who can put confidence in a
charlatan? Behind the bulwarks of such objections, the champion of the
abbeys may well believe himself secure.

And yet, unreasonable though these demands may be, it happens, after
all, that we are able partially to gratify them. It is strange that, of
all extant accusations against any one of the abbeys, the heaviest is
from a quarter which even Lingard himself would scarcely call
suspicious. No picture left us by Henry's visitors surpasses, even if it
equals, a description of the condition of the Abbey of St. Albans, in
the last quarter of the fifteenth century, drawn by Morton, Henry the
Seventh's minister, Cardinal Archbishop, Legate of the Apostolic See, in
a letter addressed by him to the Abbot of St. Albans himself. We must
request our reader's special attention for the next two pages.

In the year 1489, Pope Innocent the Eighth--moved with the enormous
stories which reached his ear of the corruption of the houses of
religion in England--granted a commission to the Archbishop of
Canterbury to make enquiries whether these stories were true, and to
proceed to correct and reform as might seem good to him. The regular
clergy were exempt from episcopal visitation, except under especial
directions from Rome. The occasion had appeared so serious as to make
extraordinary interference necessary.

On the receipt of the Papal commission, Cardinal Morton, among other
letters, wrote the following letter:--

John, by Divine permission, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all
England, Legate of the Apostolic See, to William, Abbot of the
Monastery of St. Albans, greeting.

We have received certain letters under lead, the copies whereof we
herewith send you, from our most holy Lord and Father in Christ,
Innocent, by Divine Providence Pope, the eighth of that name. We
therefore, John, the Archbishop, the visitor, reformer, inquisitor,
and judge therein mentioned, in reverence for the Apostolic See,
have taken upon