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He shews it was the current local opinion at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Dr. Tanner, who wrote the account of Ely in Browne Willis's "Mitred Abbies," takes this view, and speaks of the south arm of the transept as the "old Galilee" and the north arm as the "new Galilee."
Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, a man of much honour, more capacity, and yet more spirit, was the instrument with which Henry the Eighth destroyed the abbies; but Henry, like a true politician of the house of Tudor, wisely threw the blame upon the instrument, held it forth to the public in an odious light, and then sacrificed it to appease an angry people.
At the dissolution of abbies, in 1537, Thomas Arden, the head of the family, purchased it of Henry the Eighth, for 272l. 10s. uniting it again to his estate, after a separation of three hundred and fifty years, in whose posterity it continued till their fall. Thus, the father first purchased what the son gave away, and his offspring re-purchased again.
Had the world gone wild? Was this an emanation from Cousin Abbie's brain, or were there many more Cousin Abbies in what she had supposed was a wicked city, or oh painful question, which came back hourly nowadays, and seemed fairly to chill her blood was this religion, and had she none of it? Was her profession a mockery, her life a miserably acted lie? "Is that thing hot?"
We came to other peoples, richer and mightier than these, and I saw castles, and abbies, and churches, and walled towns, and wondered at them exceedingly.
At the dissolution of the abbies, in 1536, the King's visitors valued the annual income at the trifling sum of 8l. 8s. 9d. The patronage continued chiefly in the head of the Birmingham family. Dugdale gives us a list of some of the Priors, who held dominion in this little common wealth, from 1326, 'till the total annihilation, being 210 years.
The people therefore so thoroughly favoured the lay abbies in preference to those of the church, that the former became daily richer, while the, latter did little more than maintain their ground.
The people still favoured the lay abbies, paying their tithes there, till Pope Innocent the third, in the year 1200, ordained, and he enforced it by ecclesiastical censures, that every one should pay his tithes to those who administered to him spiritual things in his own parish.
Their lands, houses and possessions generally were to be vested in the king, and a pension was to be secured to the abbots and priors. Together with these, eight abbies mentioned in a special commission under the great seal were suppressed.
Its ancient constitution was described as, "Confusio divinitùs conservata," and a confusion it certainly was, for the circle of Suabia alone, contained four ecclesiastical, and thirteen secular principalities: nineteen independent abbies and prelacies, and thirty-one free cities.
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