Volume 2 — Chapter XVII. The Royal Reform. (continued 2)

Notwithstanding so many crimes, oppressions and errors, England had grown under the reign of Henry VIII.; the king had overwhelmed his people with taxes, but he had maintained public order, and favoured the development of commerce; he had persecuted Catholics and Protestants, but by separating violently from the court of Rome, he had implanted in English soil the germ of that religious liberty which was destined never to perish: he had laboured to construct a strange structure, mingled with strange contradictions and he had called it the Church of England in order to place himself at its head as the supreme chief, but he had imprinted upon English reform its peculiar character, at once governmental and liberal, aristocratic and popular. He infamously plundered the monasteries, but he thereby involved in the party of reform the great noblemen enriched by the spoils; he shed upon the scaffold the noblest blood of England, but he followed the policy of his father, in elevating to the summit obscure men drawn from that growing middle class which was one day to constitute the greatness and strength of his country. Without brilliant military genius, without great political talents, he had contrived to maintain himself abroad as the respected arbiter of the greatest sovereigns of Europe, causing the scale to incline to the side to which his capricious vanity impelled him. The royal coffers were full at the death of Henry VII.; they were empty at the death of his son, notwithstanding the enormous exactions which had filled them so many times; but sixty years of comparative peace had enriched the nation, so long crushed under the weight of civil and foreign wars; it had regained its breath. In vain had Henry VIII. oppressed it; in vain had he reduced Parliament to servile dependence; the new spirit inspired by the reformation had done its work; in spite of the stake, religious sects were already multiplying; the day of the Puritans was about to dawn; the obstinate resistance of weakness under a powerful oppression was already preparing. Protestant England had sprung into existence.