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te the acts that followed it;. and, though called home by
“= were the arts that he made use of, and great in amount
4
, | showed a banner, which had, he said, been used by
4
‘ ‘) GOBBSUT OLT VILE REFORMATION.
' must not be omitted : namely, the slaughtering of the
aed
on
OL...
_ History of the Protestant ““ Reformation,” in England and Ire-
. land ;' in a series of Letters, addressed to all sensible and just
Fnglishmen.. By Witttan Conger.
¢ : (Continued from our last.) ,
SS LETTER Iv,
a ; s
115. A detail of these butcheries could only dis-
gust and weary the reader, » One instance, however,
selations, and particularly the mother, of CarpinaL
; Poue,.'The: Cardinal, -who had, when very young,
and before the King’s first divorce had been agitated,
: been a great favourite with the King, and had pursu-
i ed his studies ‘and travels.on the Continent at the
King’s expense, disapproved of the divorce, and of all
the Kipg,. he refused to obey. He was a man of
great learning, talent, and virtue, and his opinions had
i great weight in England. His mother, the Countess
| or Sairspcrx, was descended from the PLawrace-
! xers, and was the last living descendant of that long
race’ of English Kings. * So that the’ Cardinal, who
had been by the Pope taised to that dignity, on ac-
count ‘of his great learning and eminent virtues, was,
> thus,'a relation of the’ King, .as his mother was of
course, and she was, too, the nearest of all his rela-
_ tions, “But, the Cardinal was opposed to the King’s
| proceedings ; and that was enough to excite and put
: ia motion the deadly vengeance of the latter. . Many
was the treasure of his people that he expended, in
order to bring the Cardinal’s person within‘his grasp ;
and, “these having “failed, he resolved to wreak his
' ruthless vengeance on his kindred and his aged moth-
reer: She was charged by the base Tuomas CromweL
i {of whom we shall soon see enough) with having per-
_ Suaded her tenants not to read the new translations of
‘ the Bible, and, also with having received bulls from
i Rome, which, the accuser said, were found at Cour-
{ PRAv Housg, her seat in Sussex. CromwEu- also
re pes in the North, and which he said he found
faced a : All this was, however, so yery bare-
.. 9 that it was impossible to think of a trial. The
indges were then asked, whether the parliament could
tinea her; that is to,say, condemn her, without
oes Aer a hearing 2 The judges said, that it was
wy gerous matier 5 that they could’ not, in. their
al eat in this manner, and that they thought the
ith ‘Ut never would. '. But, being asked, whether,
h ; an aa
sn 1, Parliament were ta do it, it would remain good
i.
'
i
€
y
io. the . :
2, they answered in the affirmative, ‘That was
ehoy . *
Come: A bill was brought in, and thus’ was the
i £88, together with the Marchioness of Exeter
| and two
demned ent relations of the Cardinal, con-
Marchioness ne + The two latter were executed, the
in prison as a * pardoned, and the Countess shut up
80n.” Ina few na of hostage for the conduct of her
«ing broke nonths, however, an insurrection hay-
5S Sroxen out on account of his tyrannical acts, the
NEW-YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 9, 1825. '
king chose to suspect, that the rebels had been insti-
gated by Cardinal Pole, and, forth he dragged his mo-
ther to the scaffold. She, who was upwards ofseventy
years of age, though worn down in body by her im-
prisonment, maintained to the last a true sense of her
character and noble descent. When bidden to lay
her head upon the block: “No,” answered she, “my
“head shall never bow to tyranny: it never commit-
“ted treason ; and, if you will have it, you must get
it as you can.” The cxecutioner struck at her neck
with his axe, and, as she ran about the scaffold with
her grey locks hanging down her shoulders and breast,
he pursued, giving her repeated clyops, till, at last, he
brought her down ! tye
116. Is it a scene in Turkey or in Tripoli that we
are contemplating? ‘ No3 but, in England, where
Maena ‘Cuarra had been so lately in foree, where
nothing could have been done contrary to law; but
where all power, ecclesiastical as well as lay, being
placed in the hands of one man, bloody butcheries like
this, which would have roused even a Turkish popu-
lace to resistance, could be perpetrated without the
smallest danger to the perpetrator, Huse, in his re-
marks upon the state of the people in this reign, pre-
tends, that the people ever hated the King, and
“that he seems even, in some degree, to have posses-
“sed to the last, their love and affection.” He adds,
that it may, be said with truth, that the “ English, in
“that age, were so thoroughly subdued, that, like
“Eastern slaves, they were inclined to admire even
“those acts of violence and tyranny, which were ex-
ercised over themselves, and at their own expense.”
This lying historian every where endeavours to gloss
over the deeds of those who destroyed. the Catholic
Church; both in England and Séotland.* ‘Too cunning,
however, to applaud the bloody Henry ‘himself, he
would have us belicve, that, after all, there was some-
thing amiable in him, and this belief he would have us
found on the fact of his having been to the last, seem-
ingly beloved by his people. ety
117. Nothing can be more false than this assertion,
if repeated insurrections against him, accompanied
with the most bitter complaints and reproaches, be
not to be taken as marks of popular affection, And,
as to the remark, that the English, “ in’ that age were
so thoroughly subdued,” while it seems to refute the
assertion as to their affection for the tyrant, it is aslan-
der, which the envious Scotch writers all delight to put
forth and repeat, One object, always uppermost with
Humx, is to malign the Catholic religion 3’ it, there-
fore, did not occur to him, that this sanguinary tyrant
was not effectually resisted, as King Jou and other
bad Kings had been, because this tyrant had the means
of bribing the natural leaders of the’ people to take
part against them; or, at the least, to neutralize those
leaders. . It did not occur to him to tell us, that Henry
VI. found the English as gallant and just a people
as his ancestors had found them ; but that, having di-
vided them, having by holding out to the great an
enormous mass of plunder as a reward for abandoning
the rights of the people, the people became, as every
‘VAND WILL PREVAIL. |
NO. 15
herd, to be dealt with at pleasure. The malignity *
and envy of this Scotchman blinded him to this view
of the matter, and induced him to ascribe to the peo-
ple’s admiration of tyranny that submission, whick:
after repeated struggles, they yielded merely from the
want of those leaders, of whom they were now, for
the first time, wholly. deprived. , What? have we.
never known any country, consisting of several mil-
lions of people, oppressed and insulted, even for ages, -
by amere handful of men? ‘And, are we to conclude,
that such a country submits from admiration of the
tyranny undér which they groan? Did the English .
submit to Cromwent from admiration ; and, was it
from admiration that the French submitted to Roses-
prerne? The latter was. punished, but Crowes.
was not:: he, like Henry, died in his bed; but, to what
mind, except ‘to that of the most malignant and per-
verse, would it occur, that CromweE.w’s impunity
arose from the willing submission and the admiration
of the people ?
_118.. Of the means by which the natural leaders of
the people were seduced from them ; of the kind and
the amount of the price of plunder, we are now. going
to take a view. In paragraph 4 Ihave said, that the
“Reformation” was cherished and fed by plunder and *
devastation... In paragraph 37 [have said that -it ~
was not a Reformation, but a Devastation of England, ,
and that this devastation impoverished and degraded
the main body of the people, These statements I am
now about to prove to be true,
119. Tn paragraphs from 55 to 60 inclusive, we —
have seen how monasteries arose, and what sort of in-
stitutions they were, “There were, in England, atthe
time we are speaking of, 6.45 of thesc institutions; be-
sides 90 colleges, 110 Hospitals, and 2374 Chanteries
and Free-Chapels.. . The whole were seized on, first’
granted to those who aided and abetted. him iat the
work of plunder. .
120, 1 pray, you my friends, sensible and just En- :
glishmen, to observe here, that this was_a great mass |
of landed property ; that this property. was not: by .
any means uscd forthe sole benefit of monks, friars, ©
and nuns; that, for the far greater part, its rents
flowed immediately back amongst the people at large;
and, that if it:had ever been the object of plunder, ,
England never would, and never could, have heard «
the hideous sound of the words paxiper and poor-rate.
You have seen, in pardgraph 52, in what manner the
were distributed, moe : . ~
121, You have, without doubt, fresh in your recol-
lection, all the censures, sarcasms, and ridicule, which
we have, from our. very infancy, eard against the
monastic life, ‘What drones the monks.and friars and
nuns were; how useless/y they lived; how much they °
consumed to no good purpose whatever; and particu- |
larly how ridiculous and even how wicked, it was to.
compel men and women to live unmarried, to lead a:
life of celibacy, and thus, either to deprive them of a.
great natural pleasure, or, to expose them to the dou-°
t
people without leaders must become, a mere flock, or.
o t an)
ble sin of breach of chastity and breach of ‘oat. ~~ °”
and last, taken into the hands ofthe King, and by him + :
tithes arose, and how they were disposed of; and you . .
are, by-and-by to see how the rents of the monasteries me
wee a! a
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