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William Cobbett M.P. (1763-1835)
"Now, my friends, a fair and honest inquiry will teach us that this (“Reformation”) was an alteration greatly for the worse; that the “Reformation,” as it is called was engendered in lust, brought forth in hypocrisy and perfidy, and cherished and fed by plunder, devastation, and by rivers of innocent English and Irish blood; and that as to its more remote consequences, they are, some of them, now before us, in that misery, that beggary, that nakedness, that hunger, that everlasting wrangling and spite, which now stare us in the face, and stun our ears at every turn, and which the “Reformation” has given us in exchange for the ease, and happiness, and harmony, and Christian charity, enjoyed so abundantly and for so many ages by our Catholic fore-fathers.”
William Cobbett (1824-7)
I strongly recommend an absorbing and highly informative book, ‘A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland’ written during the years 1824-7 by William Cobbett, and covering the period from the reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547) to George III(1760-1820). I expect that some readers are familiar with this book, which has been re- published by TAN publishers, but for those who aren’t and for those who wish to learn of the truth of these tragic and terrible events, I urge you to read it.
This account is quite different from the standard popular history books dealing with the causes and effects of the Reformation in England, for it is written, as it were, from the heart, and it is also written with objective truth in mind, rather than repeating the customary Protestant and Establishment version of events, which so often presents falsehoods as facts; monarchs, nobles, and churchmen supporting the ‘new’ religion, as righteous and honourable; and anybody or anything Catholic, as worthless, traitorous and contemptible. This book was written from a self-confessed, deep sense of outrage and injustice at the lies and deceits levelled at and perpetrated against the Catholic Church and its followers; the same Church that for hundreds of years prior to the Reformation, had been the one Christian Church of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, uniting all people, from royalty to peasantry, in the Catholic faith, with the King as temporal and the Pope as spiritual Head, with laws and tradition guiding and ordering daily life in a spirit of Christian charity, for the common good. What is particularly special about this book is that the author was a Protestant, well travelled and knowledgeable of the ways of the world, and fully acquainted with hardship, poverty, and the demands of duty in his capacity as a regimental soldier of some 8 years service.
About the monasteries, the author states - “The piety, the austerities, and particularly the works of kindness and of charity performed by those living there, made them objects of great veneration; and the rich made them in time, the channels of their benevolence to the poor. Kings, queens, princes, princesses, nobles, and gentlemen founded monasteries; that is to say, erected the buildings and endowed them with estates for their maintenance. In time the monasteries became the owners of great landed estates, and they had a tenantry of prodigious extent especially in England where the monastic orders were always held in great esteem, in consequence of Christianity having been introduced into the kingdom by a community of monks.”
The author examines the circumstances leading up to the severance of the English church from Rome, with Henry VIII, angry at the Pope’s refusal to grant him a divorce, setting himself up as both spiritual and temporal head of the Church in England, thus incurring his excommunication.
When considering the events occurring immediately after Henry VIII broke with Rome, with regard to the monasteries, the author states that - “In England there was on average, more than twenty such monastic establishments in every county. Here was a prize for an unjust and cruel, tyrant gentry to share amongst them! Here was enough indeed, to make robbers on a grand scale, cry out against ‘monkish ignorance and superstition’! No wonder that the bowels of Cranmer, Knox, and all the rest, yearned so piteously as they did, when they cast their pious eyes on all the farms and manors, and on all the silver and gold ornaments, belonging to these communities! We shall see with what alacrity they ousted, plundered, and pulled down: we shall see them robbing, under the basest pretenses, even the altars of the country parish churches, down to the very smallest of those churches, and down to the value of five shillings.”
“Consider just briefly, the fate of the monasteries, of which there were at that time a total of 645, besides 90 colleges, 110 hospitals, and 2374 chantries and free chapels. All without exception, were seized by the King, who then granted them to those ‘loyal’ servants who aided and abetted him in his work of plunder. It must be remembered that these institutions comprised a great mass of landed property, which property was not by any means used for the sole benefit of monks, friars, and nuns, for the far greater part of its rents flowed immediately back amongst the people at large, benefiting the whole community”.
With the dissolution of the monasteries came real poverty for the ordinary people, with unemployment, hunger, disease, homelessness, lack of education, and the prohibition of their faith ; inevitably leading to the widespread destruction of social and family ties, and increased crime. For to whom could these people now turn in their distress.? The King’s friends had a vested interest in maintaining their royal ‘friendship’, for it was through this that they could attain wealth and position hitherto undreamed of. Unlike the monastic institutions, they had little or no duty of concern for those previously dependent on the monasteries, and for whom the dissolution of the monasteries had meant the loss of so much that was good and secure in their lives.
To those who falsely accused the monasteries of being havens for vice, greed, and idle living, Cobbett has this to say, “The monastic institutions flourished in England for 900 years; they were beloved by the people; they were destroyed by violence, by the plunderer’s grasp, and the murderer’s knife. Was there ever anything vicious in itself, or evil in its effects, held in veneration by a whole people for so long a time?”
This is quite a long book, some 400 or so pages, and it is quite impossible to recount here anything more than a few facts. To me it represents a reliable and trustworthy account of a spiritual and temporal disaster of huge and truly everlasting magnitude, with much scholarly reference to primary source material. It recognizes the Reformation as a base cause of the French Revolution, when the powers of this world united with the powers of darkness to destroy the Catholic Church and all that it represents. We know with absolute certainty, that the Catholic Church will never be vanquished, for Christ Himself promised that He would always be with His Church, even to the end of the world.
Pope Benedict XVI, when addressing representatives of the world of culture at ‘College des Bernadins, Paris', talked at considerable length of the huge cultural debt that Western civilization owes to the mediaeval monastic institutions, particularly in the fields of education, economics, the sciences and the arts; originally intended, and designed and orientated towards greater knowledge and closer union with God.
A book I strongly recommend.
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"I have now performed my task. I have made good the position with which I began. Born and bred a Protestant of the Church of England, having a wife and numerous family professing the same faith, having the remains of most dearly beloved parents lying in a Protestant churchyard, and trusting to conjugal or filial piety to place mine by their side, I have in this undertaking no motive, but a sincere and disinterested love of truth and justice. It is not for the rich and powerful of my countrymen that I have spoken; but for the poor, the persecuted, the proscribed. I have not been unmindful of the unpopularity and the prejudice that would attend the enterprise; but when I considered the long, long triumph of calumny over the religion of those to whom we owe all that we possess that is great and renowned; when I was convinced that I could do much towards the counteracting of that calumny; when duty so sacred bade me speak, it would have been baseness to hold my tongue, and baseness superlative would it have been, if, having the will as well as the power, I had been restrained by fear of the shafts of falsehood and of folly. To be clear of self-reproach is amongst the greatest of human consolations; and now, amidst all the dreadful perils which the event that I have treated of, has at last surrounded my country, I can, while I pray God to save her from still further devastation and misery, safely say that neither expressly or tacitly am I guilty of any part of the cause of her ruin" (William Cobbett - History of the Protestant Reformation)
" G.K.Chesterton says that the accuracy of William Cobbett's 'History of the Reformation' has never been challenged: only his challenge has been challenged! He turned popular history on its head, simply by looking at the facts, and called the players by their proper names, such as 'Bloody Bess' and 'Good Queen Mary'."
(Dale Ahlquist, President, American Chesterton Society.)
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