NEW LIGHTS IN HISTORY.*

[Colburn's "New Monthly Magazine," June, 1857.]

MR. FROUDE'S volumes embrace a most important and interesting period of English history, for in those already published he treats of the grave momentous occurrences between the accession of the House of Tudor and the time when Henry VIII. assumed the title of Supreme Head on Earth of the English Church. The work is remarkable no less than the period it embraces, for it seems designed to justify many of those atrocities of his ensanguined reign which have excited the horror and detestation of posterity; and to persuade us that the Nero of the Tudor race has been unjustly calumniated, that he was not so bad as historians have represented him, and that some of the worst acts of his selfish, capricious, and cruel tyranny were dictated by patriotism and a sense of duty. The book professes to found this justification upon unpublished documents found amongst the Public Records, and thus to throw their authority over the representations of the historian.

Some people, whose views are darkened by the haze of Exeter Hall, and who seem to think the Reformation and the Protestant cause identified with the character of Henry VIII., and strengthened by its vindication, received Mr. Froude's book so exultingly that we took it up with the expectation of finding that some documents hitherto unknown had been discovered among the

History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. By James Anthony Froude, M.A. London: J. W. Parker and Son. 1856. Two vols.

Public Records, by which a new light was thrown upon Henry's character and the acts of his reign. Mr. Froude mentions in his preface the discovery by Sir Francis Palgrave, among the Public Records preserved in the Rolls House, of a large number of documents relating to the opening years of the English Reformation, which had not been published, many of which are highly illustrative and curious, and contain matters hitherto unknown, and are intended to be published by Mr. Froude, who meantime only refers to them as "MSS. in the Rolls House." Mr. Froude elsewhere propounds, that to the statutes of Henry's reign and to these original state papers we must look, if we would form a just estimate of his character and policy; and he lays down as a principle that" facts which are stated in an act of parliament may be uniformly trusted." (!) Now, although Mr. Froude is not by any means the first historic inquirer who has recognised the authenticity and importance of the Public Records as materials for history, he seems entitled to the distinction of originality in being the first writer who has been so perverse as to draw from them any conclusions in favour of Henry VIII., or who has ventured to question the verdict of posterity on that sacrilegious and bloodthirsty tyrant. That many of the manuscripts referred to in Mr. Froude's work contain matters not hitherto published, matters highly curious, and illustrative of the cruel, dark, rough years to which they relate, is unquestionable; and their discovery and selection is another benefit conferred upon the public by the judicious vigilance of the learned deputy keeper.

But confining our present remarks to that part of Mr. Froude's work in which he narrates the history of the suppression of monasteries, we can only say that, as far as we have observed, Mr. Froude does not adduce any newly-discovered documents, nor bring forward any new evidence with regard to the monastic delinquencies which were made the pretext for that memorable act of sacrilege and spoliation. His "authorities," as he calls them, for the darker scandals affecting the monasteries, are the letters of those veracious and impartial functionaries the visitors appointed by Thomas Cromwell-at once accusers, witnesses, and judges-a selection from which was published from the MS. volume of Cromwell papers in the Cotton Library, by the

Camden Society in its book of "Letters relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries," but "some of the statements of the visitors," Mr. Froude candidly says, "I cannot easily believe." For his other authorities, this new elucidator of history takes the mild and impartial Burnet, to whose Collectanea he frequently refers, as if the libels raked together by that sour calumniator were of any authority as a matter of evidence; and Mr. Froude also follows the gentle Fox, besides Strype, and Latimer's Sermons, and the recitals in the statute-book of the reign, in which humiliating record, we must take leave to say, we can only discover how ready parliament was to do the will of the king, and blow hot and cold at his bidding.

The journals of the session of the fatal parliament of 1532 are lost; the "Black Book," or Return of the Visitation Commissioners, is lost; not one original information or sworn deposition. is cited; but Mr. Froude wishes us to believe that in the Cromwell letters in the Cotton Library and the Rolls House, and in some Tudor statutes, we may read true accusations against the monks, and a justification for rooting out the whole monastic system; and he tells us that, if we are anxious to understand the English Reformation, we should place implicit confidence in the statute-book.

It is, of course, only as an historical question that in this busy onward age people revert to the suppression of the monasteries, and discuss the justice of Henry's exterminating acts; and to review the troubles and oppressions of that dark and cruel time, is, indeed, of no more use, save for the elucidation of historical truth, than the inquest of the Lydford jury, who were said to

hang and draw,

And sit in judgment after.

In whatever way the question may be viewed, the holders of abbey lands will not be required to relinquish them to their former owners, and the interests of the living need not now prevent them from doing justice to the dead. Yet the question relating to the suppression of the monasteries is one which is seldom discussed without prejudice, and upon which the case has been too commonly taken pro confesso against the monks, and

without anything like trustworthy evidence. We have less reliable information as to the state of the English monasteries in the opening years of the Reformation than we have as to the grounds on which those renowned military monks, the Templars, were suppressed in the reign of Edward II.; and though the stately edifices they raised, and the literary monuments of industry they accumulated, in the palmy days of monastic institutions, might well plead for the piety and industry of the monks of old, Englishmen have generally no more sympathy for them than for the rule under which their unobtrusive lives were passed.

In his chapter on "the Social State of England in the Sixteenth Century," Mr. Froude eloquently says:

"The paths trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken up; old things were passing away, and the faith and the life of ten centuries were dissolving like a dream. Chivalry was dying; the abbey and the castle were soon together to crumble into ruins . and all the forms, desires, beliefs, convictions of the

old world were passing away never to return. Only among the aisles of the cathedrals, only as we gaze upon their silent figures on their tombs, does some faint conception float before us of what these men were and their church

bells that sounded in the medieval age now fall upon the car like the echoes of a vanished world."

The old monastic life is, indeed, hidden from us. To many people, the name of monk-once reverenced by prince and prelate, soldier and saint-seems only synonymous with all that is sensual, slothful, and superstitious; and the turf and ruins that cover the cemeteries in which the monks of England were laid for their final rest are to many of us only as "the grass that waves over the ruins of Babylon." But in these days of historic inquiry we should endeavour to see what the monasteries were; and this has been very well described recently by a reviewer in a decidedly Protestant periodical, who says:

"The abbeys which towered in the midst of the English towns were images of the civil supremacy which the Church of the Middle Ages had asserted for itself; but they were images also of an inner, spiritual sublimity, which had won the homage

of grateful and admiring nations. The heavenly graces had once descended upon the monastic orders, making them ministers of mercy, patterns of celestial life, witnesses of the power of the Spirit to renew and sanctify the heart. And then it was that art, and wealth, and genius poured out their treasures to raise fitting tabernacles for the dwelling of so divine a soul. Alike in the village and the city, amongst the unadorned walls and lowly roofs which closed in the dwellings of the laity, the majestic houses of the Father of mankind and of his especial servants rose up in sovereign beauty. And ever at the sacred gates sat Mercy, pouring out relief from a never-failing store to the poor and the suffering; ever within the sacred aisles the voices of holy men were rising in intercession for the sins of mankind; and such blessed influences were thought to exhale round those mysterious precincts, that even the poor outcasts of society gathered round the walls as the sick man sought the shadow of the apostle, and lay there sheltered from the avenging hand. The abbeys of the Middle Ages withstood the waves of war, and, like the ark amidst the flood, floated inviolate and reverenced "—while over secular institutions the fierce, swift tide of change swept by, and dynasties decayed.

But Mr. Froude says we ought to go to the statute-book for trustworthy testimony; take, then, the declaration which a parliament of the mighty Edward made five centuries and a-half ago on behalf of the religious houses, then impoverished by the extortions of the alien priories their monastic superiors abroad (it is in the "Statute of Carlisle," A.D. 1307):

"Whereas monasteries, priories, and other religious houses were founded to the honour and glory of God and the advancement of Holy Church, by the king and his progenitors, and by the noblemen of the realm; and a great portion of lands and tenements have been given by them to the monasteries, priories, and religious houses, and the religious men serving God in them, to the intent that clerks and laymen might be admitted in such houses, that sick and feeble folk might be maintained, that hospitality, almsgiving, and other charitable deeds might be done, and prayers be said for the souls of the founders and their heirs."

But we should never complete this article within reasonable