Note (return) — THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

The progress of the Reformation was attended (as all great national convulsions are) with many and sad excesses. The work of destruction, when long continued, is in itself a thing which hardens the heart; and the Reformation was full of it. Monk and nun turned out of house and home, pensioned indeed, but (except in the case of superiors, who were treated with more lenity) pensioned with a miserable equivalent; their dwelling-places, beautiful as many of them were, laid low, that all hope of return might be cut off; their cells surrendered to the bats and owls; their chapels made a portion for foxes, the mosaic pavements torn up, the painted windows dashed in pieces, the bells gambled for, or sold into Russia and other countries,4 though often before they reached their destination buried in the ocean—all and utterly dismantled, save where, happening to be parish churches also, as was the case at St. Alban's, Tewkesbury, Malvern, and elsewhere, they were rescued in whole, or in part, from Henry's harpies, by the petitions or the pecuniary contributions of the pious inhabitants;5 libraries, of which most monasteries contained one, treated by their new possessors with barbaric contempt; "some books reserved for their jakes, some to scour their candlesticks, some to rub their boots, some sold to the grocers and soap-boilers, and some sent over sea to book-binders, not in small numbers, but at times whole shipsful, to the wondering of foreign nations; a single merchant purchasing at forty shillings a piece two noble libraries to be used as grey-paper, and such as having already sufficed for ten years were abundantly enough (says the eye-witness whose words are here quoted) for many years more;"6 these were some of the coarser features of those times; howbeit there were many besides these. For the churches were now treated with gross irreverence; horses and mules were led through them; they were profaned by dogs and hawks, by doves and owls, by stares and choughs;7 they were plundered of their plate by churchwardens, or other powerful parishioners,8 who might argue, that if they spared, others would spoil; or who might wish ill to the cause of the Reformation, and take such means to scandalize it. London, says Latimer, was never so full of ill; charity was waxen cold in it. "Oh, London, London," cries this earnest old man, "repent! repent! for I think God more displeased with London, than he ever was with the city of Nebo."9 Such was the profligacy of its youth, that he marvels the earth gaped not to swallow it up. There were many that denied the immortality of the soul, and the existence of a heaven or a hell.10 Manly sports and pastimes had been exchanged for the gaming-table. Divorces, even amongst the inferior classes of society, were become common; for marriage being declared no sacrament, probably many chose to interpret the declaration to mean that it was no bond.11 The elementary bread of the eucharist was expressed by base and indecent nicknames.12 The alehouses were filled with profane disputants upon the mysteries of our faith, and the dissolute scoffers made songs upon them:13 "Green Sleeves," "Maggy Lauder," and "John Anderson my Jo," with numbers more, were all of this class of compositions; and psalms (in this instance, perhaps, without any intentional levity) were set to hornpipes. To crown all, a multitude of disaffected persons were at large in the country, speaking evil of dignities, and exciting the idle, the hungry, and the aggrieved, to riot and rebellion; bearding the government with audacious demands of changes, both civil and ecclesiastical, to be made at their pleasure, couched in language the most imperative and insolent; "such," Cranmer observes in his answer to them, "as was not at any time used of subjects to their prince since the beginning of the world."14