do; and in the night following the giving of this savage order the king had a terrible dream. He seemed to be summoned before a stern judge, while the abbots stood around and accused him. Then the judge commanded that punishment should be inflicted on the king, and the shrinking culprit seemed to himself to be fearfully scourged. On awaking in the morning, he declared that he could still feel the smarting of the blows. The terror of the dream led the king at once to seek pardon from the insulted abbots, and further induced him to propitiate the order by the foundation of Faringdon and Beaulieu monasteries. This story, which appears in the MSS. relating to Kirkstall Abbey, was evidently the invention of a time later than the composition of the Annals of Margan. The writer of these had never heard of it, for he tells us that 'The Abbots of the Cistercian Order, by the advice of the Lord of Canterbury, went to Lincoln to meet the king, and there, to the great astonishment of all, experienced the favour of the king. On bended knees he demanded pardon of them for the injuries which he had done them, promising that he would found an abbey of the Cistercian Order, and that he himself would be buried there.'2 Probably the capricious character of this tyrannical prince is sufficient to account for his sudden change. But if the Cistercians, encouraged by this sudden mildness and favour, flattered themselves that they were to have in John a munificent patron of their order, they were bitterly deceived in their expectations. The Jews and the Cistercians were the special objects of his ruthless persecutions, and were the numberless chronicles of the period somewhat more full in detail we should be able doubtless to point to numerous instances of individual cruelty and suffering which Cistercian abbots and monks had to endure. As it is, we are almost limited to general accounts of the great Cistercian persecution. Meantime the, profits of the farming in England, on which the Cistercians mainly depended, had been terribly curtailed by the wet season of 1202, by which almost all the corn in the country was destroyed. So great was the scarcity that a horse load of corn was sold in England for more than twelve shillings.' The scarcity was followed by a pestilence, and the monks of Waverley, unable to obtain sufficient supplies to support them, were dispersed and taken in by different monasteries which were not so hardly pressed.5 This was not a very good 1 4 Dugdale. Monasticon, vol. v. 682. 2 Annales de Margan, p. 25. 3 The Waverley Chronicler speaks of the foundations of Faringdon having een made by John inspiratione divinâ præventus.'-P. 254. 4 Annales de Waverleiâ, p. 254. The Annals of Margan mention that there as an especial mortality among sheep. Annales de Waverleiâ, p. 255. preparation for the storm which fell upon the order after the promulgation of the pope's Interdict. The answer made by the furious king to the papal curse was the declaration of the confiscation of all ecclesiastical property in the realm; but as this from its very magnitude soon proved an empty menace,' the rage of the king and his chief exactions were concentrated on some more especially obnoxious sections of his ecclesiastical subjects. One of the chief of these was the Cistercian order. There were both general and special reasons to make John, under the exasperation of an Interdict, rage against the Cistercians. Of the first sort were those profuse favours from the pope, which made this order, before the institution of the friars, the peculiar object of the regard and care of Rome. Of the second was that special privilege to which we have before alluded, which allowed the Cistercians, even during the prevalence of an Interdict, to celebrate with closed doors, and, thus exempted them from the infliction which the paternal charity of Rome scrupled not to send upon the whole land for the sins of its rulers. We are indeed inclined to think that the horrors of an Interdict have been somewhat overrated. In monasteries a celebration was permitted once a week, and though mass could not be said in parish churches, yet sermons were preached in the churchyards instead of the church. The baptism of children could be legally celebrated, and the sacred elements could be carried to any who were in danger of death. The chief difficulty was as to marriage and burial; but doubtless marriage was privately solemnized, to be repeated perhaps when the curse was taken off; and as to burial, the difficulty was got over by burying in ground near to the churchyard, which, when the Interdict was removed, was solemnly blessed and consecrated. No doubt the consciences of some would be vexed by the thought that they lay under the pope's displeasure; but the chief sufferers were the clergy, whose incomes must have been seriously diminished by the cessation of offerings. However, the Interdict was certainly a very disagreeable thing, and sufficiently exasperating it must have been to the king and his nobles to know that while no chaplain ventured to say mass for them, the white monks could go on as usual in their services, and exempt themselves from the annoyances of the country. Under these circumstances John's ancient prejudice against the Cistercian order revived, and he determined to make them pay heavily for the favour of Rome. It would seem that from the tax of a thirteenth levied by John from Church property the year before the Interdict, the Cistercian Order, as usual, was exempt,* 'See Roger of Wendover, III 223. Annales de Waverleiâ, p. 258. 6 6 neither immediately, on the sentence of the pope being spoken, did the storm burst upon them. It was not till after his return from Ireland in 1210, that he seriously attacked them. The account given in the two chronicles of Waverley and Margan is word for word the same, (which appears to have escaped the notice of the editor) only in the sum said to be extorted from the Cistercians; there occurs an important discrepancy, and the Margan annals add the curious fact, that the Abbeys of Margan and Beaulieu were exempt from the tax-Beaulieu, as being the king's foundation, and Margan, because it had hospitably entertained John in his expedition against Wales. The king,' says the chronicler, had 'assembled the men of the Cistercian order before he went across the sea, as he had the rest, concerning the matter of providing aid to him against his enemies, and because the Cister'cians were unwilling to give him money as he desired, against 'the liberty of their order, he mightily troubled them, and 'from each of their houses, with a very short time given for 'providing it, he violently extorted a large sum, so that that collection exceeded the sum of 33,300 marks.'1 The Margan annals say, equalled, or exceeded 27,000 marks.' Roger of Wendover puts the sum at 40,000 pounds of silver,2 an estimate which is adopted by the annalist, Bartholomew de Cotton. The unfortunate Jews had just before been made to pay 66,000 marks. The sum thus exacted from the Cistercians may serve to give us some notion of their growth in wealth during the eighty years which had elapsed since their first settlement in England. We do not now hear of their being obliged to pay in wool, because they had none of the precious metals at command. But the exaction was doubtless very heavy and crushing. Waverley, we are told, had all its means pillaged and taken away,' 5 and every where throughout England the monks and lay brethren were scattered abroad, having no power to stand against the fierce exactions of the king. But John was not satisfied with this spoliation. He had taken from the Cistercians all that they could get together of money or plate; he now aimed at providing against the future, and preventing the order from recovering these sums, when, hereafter, he should perhaps be reconciled with the pope, and the order should again be powerful. Accordingly, by letters prepared for the purpose, 3 'Bartholomew de Cotton, p. 99 (Ed. Luard.) Mr. Luard prints this as though it were an independent statement of his author, but it is adopted from Roger de Wendover, simply writing Cisterciences for albi monachi. 2 Annales de Waverleiâ, p. 265. Roger de Wendover, III. 234. 3 Annales de Magan, p. 30. Annales de Waverleiâ, p. 265. 12 to which the monks were obliged to subscribe, he makes them say that they had given all these things willingly and freely to 'their beloved and venerable lord, John, King of England,' and that no one was to presume to call them exactions or extortions.1 We do not gather from the chronicle that the Cistercians ever obtained restitution of what had been taken from them. John's reparation to the Church was slow and evasive; only the chief prelates succeeded in getting any considerable portion of their losses. The bitter expressions which the chronicler uses of Richard de Marisco, John's chief agent for ecclesiastical exactions, of whose appointment to the bishopric of Durham he says, that' an ape in the court was made a priest in the church,' seem to show that the Cistercians had not much to thank him for. Having suffered so much at the hands of John, the Cistercian order would naturally be anxious to stand well with his successor. Accordingly we find, that on the confirmation by Henry III. of the charters extracted from his predecessor, when a fifteenth was granted to the king, the Cistercians, as well on account of the liberties as to secure the favour and kindness of the king,' gave voluntarily 2,000 marks of silver. This was a politic contribution. Henry III. was soon afterwards a guest at Waverley Abbey, was present at the chapter of the monks, and was made an honorary member of their society. We may be sure that the Cistercians were not exempt from the tax of a tenth levied in England by their great patron the pope (Gregory IX.), for his crusade against the Emperor Frederic. transaction, so scandalous to all concerned in it, was the natural consequence of the permitted intrusion of a foreign prince on English ground. The weak king, with no proper sense of the dignity of his office, did not venture to oppose it. He coveted similar powers for himself; and the pope, not ungrateful, allowed the exempt orders to bear the burden of the subsidy demanded by Henry in the year 1232. Whether this allowance was very well received by the order may be doubtful. Certainly there are traces in the chronicle that Otho, the Cardinal Legate, was not in high favour with the Cistercians. When he held his council in London, very few indeed' of the abbots of the order attended him; and in a matter touching the privileges of Waverley, the writer says, 'he used dissimulation, and acted remissly." 3 This The fact of their having contributed, with the rest of the land, to the royal Exchequer, was one which the Cistercians were by no means desirous of having drawn into a prece 'Annales de Waverleiâ, p. 268. 4 Ib. p 310. 2 Ib. p. 288. 3 lb. p. 301. dent. Accordingly, when in 1256, the king, hardly pressed for money, had, by the pope's permission, exacted a tenth from all the ecclesiastics in England who were not specially exempt, and was eagerly desirous to add the Cistercians to the number of the contributors, the order boldly resisted. Another pope was now in office, and he had, in his permission to the king to tax the spiritualty, formally excepted the Cistercian order. If, however, these privileged ones could be induced voluntarily to renounce this exemption, and to contribute, as they had done before, the same end might be gained. But the Cistercians now stood in a different position from that which they occupied at the beginning of the reign. They had contributed then voluntarily, but since then they had been taxed with the rest. If they should now give, they would seem to confirm the king's right to amerce them. Accordingly they resisted stoutly. The king being ' vehemently indignant that the Cistercians contributed to him 'nothing of their goods, tried to bring them to do this, first by blandishments, and then by threats, that at least they should 'collect some money among themselves, and thus make, as it 'were, a spontaneous gift, although, at the same time, he 'swore that he would not take less than 25,000 pounds from 'them. But they feared lest by satisfying so heavy an exaction, as it were of their own accord, the custom should arise of their 'being compelled to do this even against their own will, as often as the king pleased, and that thus they should lose the ancient 'liberties of their order, and offend the chief pontiff, who, in his 'special affection, had exempted them from the tax. They, 'therefore, all confederated together, and like a firm army, resisted the attempts of the king by this answer, saying, that 'without the leave of their chapter-general and all their abbots, 'they could not dare to do such a thing. The king seeing their firmness, and that he could not advance in his purpose, was 'seized with fury, and with threats and abuse bade them depart from his court. Therefore the unity and the firmness of the 'Cistercian order was everywhere spoken of, praised, and admired, and in the opinion of many, there was not an order ' under heaven to be compared to it, in form, unity, and in zeal 'for religion. This, indeed, was a signal triumph for the Cistercians, but whether it was due more to the weakness of the king, or to the admirable organization of the order, may be doubted. From the next grant of a tenth, in the year 1266, the order was again specially exempted. It was otherwise, however, when the son of King Henry, a prince of a different stamp, succeeded to the throne. In the year 1276, by the grant 6 1 1 Annales de Waverleiâ, p. 348. 2 Ib. p 373. |