oceeding
to the most dangerous exercise of his authority; and after paving the
way for that measure by several preparatory expedients, he was at last
determined to suppress the monasteries, and to put himself in possession
of their ample revenues.

The great increase of monasteries, if matters be considered merely in
a political light, will appear the radical inconvenience of the
Catholic religion; and every other disadvantage attending that
communion seems to have an inseparable connection with these religious
institutions. Papal usurpations, the tyranny of the inquisition, the
multiplicity of holidays; all these fetters on liberty and industry were
ultimately derived from the authority and insinuation of monks, whose
habitations, being established every where, proved so many seminaries
of superstition and of folly. This order of men was extremely enraged
against Henry, and regarded the abolition of the papal authority in
England as the removal of the sole protection which they enjoyed against
the rapacity of the crown and of the courtiers. They were now subjected
to the king's visitation; the supposed sacredness of their bulls from
Rome was rejected; the progress of the reformation abroad, which had
every where been attended with the abolition of the monastic orders,
gave them reason to apprehend like consequences in England; and though
the king still maintained the doctrine of purgatory, to which most of
the convents owed their origin and support, it was foreseen, that, in
the progress of the contest, he would every day be led to depart
wider from ancient institutions, and be drawn nearer the tenets of the
reformers, with whom his political interests naturally induced him to
unite. Moved by these considerations, the friars employed all their
influence to inflame the people against the king's government; and
Henry, finding their safety irreconcilable with his own, was determined
to seize the present opportunity, and utterly destroy his declared
enemies.

Cromwell, secretary of state, had been appointed vicar-general, or
vicegerent, a new office, by which the king's supremacy, or the absolute
uncontrollable power assumed over the church, was delegated to him. He
employed Layton, London, Price, Gage, Petre, Bellasis, and others, as
commissioners who carried on every where a rigorous inquiry with
regard to the conduct and deportment of all the friars. During times of
faction, especially of the religious kind, no equity