Protestant powers have not been free from tyranny and bloodshed. That
noble spirit of self-sacrifice which has glorified many a character in
history is not to be despised in one who dies for what we may pronounce
to be false.
It must also be granted that the action of the king was not dictated by
a pure passion for religious reform. Indeed it is a fair question
whether Henry may be claimed by the Protestants at all. Aside from his
rejection of the pope's authority, he was thoroughly Catholic in
conviction and in practice. His impatience with the pope's position
respecting his divorce, his need of money, his love of power, and many
other personal considerations determined his attitude toward
the papacy.
It should also be freely conceded that the royal commissioners were far
from exemplary characters, and that they were often insolent and cruel
in the prosecution of their work.
"Our posterity," says John Bale, "may well curse this wicked fact of our
age; this unreasonable spoil of England's most noble antiquities." "On
the whole," says Blunt, "it may be said that we must ever look back on
that destruction as a series of transactions in which the sorrow, the
waste, the impiety that were wrought, were enough to make the angels
weep. It may be true that the monastic system had worn itself out for
practical good; or at least, that it was unfitted for those coming ages
which were to be so different from the ages that were past.
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