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7. Commissioner Layton's Investigation of the Bristol Monasteries 1535 Another enquiry instituted during 1535 by Thomas Cromwell sent commissioners to the monasteries looking for scandal and evidence which could be used against the monks and nuns. The commissioner who came to the Bristol region was a young priest, Richard Layton, who was anxious to rise in Cromwell's service and keen to find scandal, preferably sexual scandal, wherever he could. Much of the evidence' which he sent to Cromwell was fabricated or grossly exaggerated, though his letters must have provided fascinating reading for his master. For most of the monasteries in Bristol and district, however, Layton could find nothing amiss and was reduced to speculation or to reporting on the numerous so-called relics' which he found and confiscated. Letter from Richard Layton to Thomas Cromwell 24 August 1535
Layton's mention of the Charter House refers to the Carthusian Priory at Hinton Charterhouse, south of Bath. Evidently Layton could find nothing wrong there, nor at Bruton and Glastonbury. Likewise at Bristol, Layton could apparently find nothing wrong. This is a tribute to the religious life in the Bristol houses, for if he could have found anything amiss Layton would assuredly have reported on it. In fact we are dependent upon a quite different source for the only piece of gossip which survives about the religious in Bristol during the 1530s. This comes from the evidence presented in a case before the Bishop's Court at Worcester in 1540 after the monasteries had been suppressed and concerns John Rastle or Rastall who had been a canon at St Augustine's. Rastle had been nominated to be a chantry priest at Winterbourne in Gloucestershire, but various objections were made against him before the bishop. Previously he had been sent by St Augustine's as a student to Oxford where he may have acquired bad habits, for it was alleged that when he returned to Bristol he had become an obsessive card-player, dicer and gambler. Nicholas Corbett, who had been a fellow canon at St Augustine's, told the court that Rastle was a well-known gambler and that Rastle had got at dice and cards of divers men in his chamber in the late monastery, £10, £5 and 5 marks (£3 6s 8d), especially in the year before the dissolution of the said Monastery'. Another witness, John Wyggen of Bristol, stated that he had known one to lose £10 to the said Rastle, and afterwards to sell the coate off his back, and lost the price thereof, playing at cards with the said Rastle'. Notwithstanding this evidence, Rastle was instituted to the chantry by the bishop. Later he became vicar of St Nicholas, Bristol. This is the only evidence which has come to light about any irregularity or scandal in the Bristol religious houses and it either escaped the notice of Layton, or probably did not occur until after his visitation in 1535. (Gloucester Public Library, Hockaday Abstracts, Winterbourne file). Armed with the reports of alleged scandal, failure to maintain the religious life and waste of resources in many monasteries, Thomas Cromwell proceeded with his attack on the smaller houses. In 1536 he presented a Bill to Parliament suppressing all the houses with an annual income of less than £200. If it was to become law, Cromwell's Bill would have to gain the assent of the bishops and abbots who sat in the House of Lords. Cromwell, therefore, composed the Preface with great care. Extract from Cromwell's Preface
[It was enacted that all the smaller monasteries should be closed down and the monks and nuns sent to the great and solemn monasteries of this realm'. All the lands, property, wealth and buildings of the smaller monasteries were confiscated by the Crown.] This far-reaching measure was passed by Parliament, and even the bishops and abbots in the House of Lords were persuaded to vote for it.
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