doubtful, or the licentious lives of the regulars disputable, when their debaucheries had already attracted the Papal indignation, and their crimes incurred the censures and menaces of Morton, the primate. If, at the commencement of this period, the monks of St. Albans had begun, in different convents, to displace the nuns, and substitute prostitutes, it is not probable that their morals were afterward improved, or their discipline re-established.

Hospitality of the Monks, &c.

The monks, however, had a merit in their liberal hospitality and charity. Their tables were open to strangers, and, as the cheer was excellent, much frequented by the neighbouring gentlemen.

In

At St. Albans, and probably at other abbeys, every traveller found an hospitable reception for three days; and was then permitted, if his conduct was satisfactory, or his business important, to protract his stay. The fragments of their luxury furnished an extensive charity; and their indulgence to their tenants, whose rents were always moderate, endeared them to the peasants. Scotland, where the regulars were not so dissolute, similar hospitalities were supported in monasteries; and in the Abbey of Aberbrothwick, about one thousand bushels of malt seem to have been expended in ale. But these communities were prejudicial, even by their charities, to the increase of industry; and their dissolution assure

us that the most venerable institutions, however sanctioned by time, or supported by prejudice, may be suppressed when useless, without detriment or danger to society. It is probable that forty thousand were discharged from different religious houses; and it is certain, that a number, superior to that of the clergy at present, was absorbed with facility into the mass of the people.

From the morals of the clergy, the transition to those of the laity, is natural; and Henry, after dislodging vice from the cloisters, proceeded, in the same strain of reformation, to cleanse the stews. These were a range of buildings in Southwark, on the banks of the Thames, privileged by patent as brothels, regulated by statute, and tolerated as a necessary drain for corruption, from the reign of Henry II, to the last year of Henry VIII. The wretched prostitutes were then expelled, the stews were put down by sound of trumpet, and their suppression was, perhaps, attended with more solemnity than that of the convents. Their suppression failed, however, to extirpate lewdness; and Latimer, whose sermons are replete with a barbarous eloquence, inveighs bitterly at its subsequent prevalence.

You have put down the stews,' says this rude declaimer, but what is the matter amended? what availeth that? ye have but changed the place, and not taken the whoredom away. I advertise -you, in God's name, to look to it. I hear say there

is now more whoredom in London than ever there was in the Bank. There is more open whoredom, more stewed whoredom.' The vices obnoxious to clerical censures are not always pernicious to society, nor is their magnitude certain, when transmitted through the medium of intemperate zeal. But Latimer's proposal, in a court sermon, for restraining adultery by a capital punishment, attests its prevalence; nor is any inferior infliction too severe for a crime that embitters life, and corrodes the dearest connexions of nature; a crime, in its ultimate consequences, subversive either of social intercourse, or productive of an utter relaxation of morals.

State of Morals and Public Justice.

The vices and follies peculiar to the age are necessarily the chief topics of pulpit eloquence; and, if credit were due to this severe reformer, the statesmen and judges were corrupted by bribery, the people profligate, destitute of charity, immersed in vice, and devoted to perdition. Whenever government is arbitrary, the administration of justice is perverted and partial; and judges, subservient to regal influence, are certainly not inaccessible to secret corruption. The unmeaning oaths to which the English have, in every age, been addicted, are peculiarlyoffensive to pious ears, and in some minds generate a persuasion, that a people, habituated to profane swearing, are disaffected to the Deity, whose name they dishonour, impervious to religion,

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and insensible of virtue. It may be observed, however, with more propriety, that habitual swearing diminishes our sense of the obligation attatched to judicial oaths. Perjury was still the predominant vice that tainted the morals of every rank, and infected even the breast of the sovereign. Juries were perjured; their verdicts were generally procured by bribery; their corruption was notorious, and encouraged openly by Henry VIII., in the iniquitous prosecution of his own subjects; princes claim and obtain an exemption from vulgar honesty; and that which is fraud and perfidy in private life, is dignified, in their transactions, by the appellation of policy: yet the reader must observe, with some surprise, the repeated examples contained in this history, of princes corroborating, by mutual oaths, and the rites of religion, those treaties which they had previously determined to frustrate or violate. Their treaties are at present neither more permanent nor more secure; but the intervention of oaths is wisely omitted, as a superfluous adjection, not obligatory on the lax morals peculiar to princes.

To these crimes may be added theft and robbery, which were still so prevalent, that twenty-two thousand crimes are said to have been executed by the rigid justice of Henry VIII. Robbery was seldom attended with murder, and was probably still regarded as an occupation, of which the guilt might be extenuated by courage and success.

Murders and assassinations are frequent, however, in Scottish history, for the people were cruel, fierce, and ungovernable; and to judge from the desperate crimes of the nobility, their manners were neither more softened, nor their passions better controulled and regulated. But whatever be the crimes of a people, there is in human nature a reforming principle, that ultimately corrects and amends its degeneracy; and history furnishes repeated examples of nations passing from even a vicious effeminacy, to an enthusiasm that regenerates every yirtue. Such a change was effected, in a partial degree, by the reformation; which, recalling its proselytes from the errors and abuses of the Romish superstition, taught them to renounce the dissipation and vices of the age, to assume the badge of superior sanctity, and more rigid virtue, to suffer in adversity with patience, and to encounter persecution and death with fortitude. Sectaries, from the constant circumspection requisite in their conduct, contract an habitual and gloomy severity; and foreigners, evermore observant than natives, discovered, in the present period, symptoms of that puritanical spirit, which at the distance of a century was destined to give liberty to England, and law to kings.

Superstitious credulity, &c.

The Reformation might reflect discredit on recent miracles; but the period is still distinguished by excessive credulity. The astrologers, in 1523,