German Reformers expressed their indignation at the readiness with which the Archbishop adopted his Royal master's views in the divorce of his wives.

I have now traced Dr. Cranmer's career down to the last days of Henry VIII.-no pleasing or grateful task-and leave the English reader to judge of the Archbishop's deserts by the State Papers, and the well-certified records of his contradictory actions as a prelate and as an adviser of King Henry VIII. Of course, his sad historic name appears again and again upon the scene in succeeding chapters, till the period of his final fall in Queen Mary's reign.

CHAPTER III.

WHO WERE THE ACCUSERS OF THE MONASTIC HOUSES?

MR. BISSETT, in his valuable work, entitled "Omitted Chapters of the History of England," states "that there is no part of history where truth has been more systematically kept out of sight than in the history of Scotland." Mr. Bissett refers to the history of Scotland subsequent to the Reformation. I have no hesitation in stating as my conviction, after the research of many years, that the above observations are, if possible, more applicable to the history of the Reformation in England, and, above all, as to the character of the commissioners and the motives of the monastic inquisition.

The inquiry into the moral character of the religious houses was a mere pretext, a complete delusion, an insidious and predetermined foray of wholesale and heartless plunder. Reckless and unprincipled as Henry Tudor was, he sometimes paused before action; but his councillors hesitated never. In fact, the dominant laity of all periods were but too ready to oppress the Church. The Venerable Bede makes special mention of this sacrilegious feeling pervading the possessors of influence in his time. The first Parliamentary proposal to confiscate Church lands was made by the House of Commons in 1412, when they presented an

address to Henry the Fourth on the subject.*

The King

was displeased at the proposition, and would not hear of such a scheme. The Peers endorsed the Monarch's opinion. In a few years later, the Commons returned to the question, and besought the King and the Peers to consider the propriety of taking a "goodly proportion" of the lands then in the hands of Churchmen. They made the following extraordinary proposal to the Crown:

"A sum of 20,000l. a year to the King, for his own private purse; to create fifteen new earls, and to confer on each of them a certain portion of the said lands; fifteen hundred knights were to spring into existence, and to be each allowed some certain lands to uphold his position; six thousand esquires were also to receive an increase to their domains. The surplus,' after satisfying all these demands, was to be devoted to building and endowing one hundred hospitals, and to give the sum of seven marks each for the support of fifteen thousand secular priests."+

In one point of view, these would-be escheators were possessed of more humanity than Henry VIII. and his Reforming suggestors," for whilst the communistic scheme of Henry of Lancaster's Commons proposed the endowment of one hundred hospitals, Henry Tudor and his Parliament confiscated the substance which the benevolence of former generations bequeathed for the support of one hundred and ten hospitals. Whatever were the evil deeds of Henry the

According to a Parliamentary return of 1412, the yearly value of Church lands in England was 485,100 marks.

It might have been difficult to ascertain from whence "the surplus" was to be derived, for the sale of all the domains and revenues of the Church at that time would not yield anything like a sufficient sum to carry out the scheme proposed. The statistics upon this subject are still extant.

VOL. II.

Rymer, vol. viii. p. 627; Otterbourne, p. 267.
G

Fourth, he certainly wished to maintain the religious institutions of the country. He severely reprimanded the Commons for "coveting their neighbours' goods," and hinted that revolution and Lollardism-the latter one of the earlier names for Communism-formed the basis of the entire movement. Time proved that the astute Monarch was right.

It is strange that nearly all the old chronicles are silent as to the efforts to confiscate Church property in the reign of Henry the Fourth. Walsingham, the historian above quoted, was a contemporary, and himself a priest. In the reign of Henry the Fifth the Lollard Communist party in the House of Commons again petitioned the King to confiscate the property of the Church; but the young King, having lately suppressed the outbreak of the lunatic rebel, Lord Cobham, and his Lollards, rejected the proposition with contempt. * A close investigation of the history of the Lollard movement proves that their designs were "political and levelling." Hume considers that "the Lollards were dangerous to the Church, and very formidable to the State" a sentence thoroughly understood by all conservative readers. Several Puritan writers contend that the Lollards were the "original Protestants." Historians of a later date write more common sense- -Dean Hook, for instance. The research of the Dean upon this question led him to the conclusion that the Lollards were powerful in the Parliament of Henry the Fourth, and he adds: "The proposition made by the Commons to the King was a Lollard measure to transfer the property of the monks and clergy

* See Walsingham, Hall, Polydore Vergil, and Hollingshed.

to the lay Lords.”* In another passage Dean Hook deals with the delusion under which certain sections of posterity labour as to what the Lollards really represented. "When," he says, "we speak of the Lollards as martyrs, we ought to regard them as a kind of political martyrs rather than religious; they made religion their plea, in order to swell the numbers of the discontented; but their actions all tended to a revolution in the State as well as in the Church. The Lollards directed their first attacks upon the Church because the Church was the most vulnerable part of the Constitution. But the civilians-the citizens and people—were quite as much alarmed at their proceedings as the ecclesiastics. Both the Church and the State regarded the principles of the Lollards as subversive of all order in things temporal as well as in things spiritual."+

It is paying a poor compliment to Protestantism to claim Lollardism for its precursor. Dean Hook protests against such an odious connection for the Church of England; whilst Mr. Froude holds a different opinion. He considers the Lollards somewhat in the light of the "Hot-Gospel" Puritans of Germany-those "original saints," of whom Leopold Rancke relates so many unedifying details.

But let it be remembered that the Lollards proposed no new religion; having no particular faith on hand, they demanded an "administrative reform in the Church;" they were men of bad morals, who scoffed at all religious control; they denounced marriage as the "badge of Popish slavery;" they had some confused ideas as to a divorce