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PREFACE.

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WILLIAM COBBETT, the author of The History of the Protestant Reformation, a new edition of which is here published, needs no introduction. His name, writes Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, is that “of a man, who, whatever his faults, must be considered, by every Englishman who loves our literature or studies our history, as one of the most remarkable illustrations of his very remarkable time.” Born on the 9th of March, 1766, of poor parents, near Farnham in Hampshire, William Cobbett quickly aspired to something higher than that for which the circumstances of his country life promised to afford him scope. From the task of frightening birds from the turnip fields, and weeding the walks and flower-beds in the garden of the Bishop of Winchester at Farnham Castle, in which his boyhood was spent, he made his way to London at the age of seventeen. Here for a brief time he was engaged as a lawyer's clerk, but finding the occupation not to his taste, he enlisted in a regiment intended for Nova Scotia. During the period of nearly eight years in which he served in the ranks, he acquired what he always regarded as his most valuable possession, a thorough knowledge of the English language. “I learned grammar,” he says himself, “when I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence a day. The edge of my berth or that of the guard-bed was my seat to study on, my knapsack was my bookcase, a bit of board lying on my lap was my writing-table, and the task did not demand anything like a year of my life.”

We are not here concerned with following the varied career of our author, and only refer to the early portion of it to show that he was intimately acquainted with the condition of the lower classes in England at the time when he wrote his History of the Protestant Reformation. When the letters, in which form the history first appeared, were written, it required great courage and determination to undertake so unpopular a task as that of attacking the establishment of Protestantism, and even of pointing out that much could be said, and ought in all fairness to be said, for the Catholic side of the question. Proposals for Catholic emancipation were then much discussed, and it was in “the heat of the contest and cry against the Catholics” that Cobbett boldly stepped forth and called the Reformation “a devastation,” and proclaimed “the Protestant religion to have been established by gibbets, racks, and ripping knives.”

The merit of the work as a history has been much discussed and frequently denied, even by those who might be tempted to take Cobbett's conclusions as in the main correct. The words of Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer on the subject may be quoted: “The History of the Protestant Reformation,” he writes, “turned out a more important production than was ever contemplated by the author, whose chief aim seems to have been a contemptuous defiance to all the religious and popular feelings in England. The work, however, was taken up by the Catholics, translated into various languages and widely circulated throughout Europe. The author's great satisfaction seems to consist in calling Queen Elizabeth 'Bloody Queen Bess,' and Mary, 'Good Queen Mary,' and he doubtless brought forward much that could be said against the one and to favour the other, which Protestant writers had kept back; but his two volumes still are not to be regarded as a serious history, but rather as a party pamphlet, and no more racy and eloquent party pamphlet was ever written.”

How far the verdict of Sir H. Lytton Bulwer that the work in question is “not to be regarded as a serious history” is correct, must be left to the judgment of those who will take the trouble to examine into the authority of Cobbett's statements of fact. For the purpose of this edition I have been at some pains to enquire into the truth of the assertions made, and to set down the result in the shape of notes, either giving authorities which may be taken to bear out the writer's statements, or pointing out wherein in my opinion he was mistaken, or has somewhat misstated or exaggerated the bearing of some fact. I confess that I was surprised to find how few were the instances in which some satisfactory authority could not be found to bear out the picture presented in Cobbett's pages. In great measure the author evidently drew his materials from the History of England by Dr. John Lingard, a work that had been published not long before this History of the Protestant Reformation was undertaken. It is impossible to compare the two books without seeing that Cobbett must have had before him, and must have closely followed, Lingard's presentment of the facts with which he was immediately concerned. Not only is there a general accord between them, which cannot have been the result of mere chance, but in many places there is almost a verbal agreement.

The fact that Cobbett has relied in the main upon so careful and, as is very generally allowed, so exact, calm and judicial a writer of history as Dr. Lingard, will probably be sufficient to clear him in the opinion of most people from the reputation of being “a reckless perverter of facts,” and his general history from the charge of being “a mere tissue of lies.” The chief value of The History of the Protestant Reformation would seem, however, to lie, not in the actual accuracy of this or that fact, but in the general impression made upon the mind of the reader. The author's vigorous and graphic style presents a real picture of the results, so far as the people of England as a whole are concerned, of the revolution social as well as religious which is known as the Protestant Reformation. The genius of Cobbett instinctively realised that the religious changes in England in the sixteenth century, if not actually promoted by those in power for their own purposes, had certainly resulted in benefiting the rich to the detriment of their poorer brethren. In fact, wholly apart from the religious side of the question, or from any advantages which may be thought to have been secured by the triumph of Protestantism, the price paid for the change by the lower classes must in fairness be estimated as very considerable. Viewed merely in its social aspect, the English Reformation was in reality the rising of the rich against the poor. In the general upheaval which accompanied the labours of the Reformers to root up Catholicism from the soil of England, most of those in place and power were enabled to grow greater in wealth and position, whilst those who had before but a small share in the good things of this world came in the process to have less. Their condition under the new order was visibly harder, till as a natural result of their misery there came forth many of the social sores which afflict society to the present day. What Cobbett's History of the Protestant Reformation chiefly displays, then, is this aspect of the religious changes in the sixteenth century. His pages help us to realise the fact that the Reformation effected, besides a change in religious beliefs and practices, a wide and permanent division in the great body politic. The supposed purification of doctrine and practice was brought about only at the cost of, as it were, driving a wedge well into the heart of the nation, which at once and for all divided the rich from the poor, and established the distinction which still exists between the classes and the masses.

Speaking of the condition of the poor in the middle ages, Bishop Stubbs declares that “there is very little evidence to show that our forefathers, in the middle ranks of life, desired to set any impassable boundary between class and class. The great barons would probably at any period have shown disinclination to admit new men on terms of equality to their own order; but this disinclination was overborne by the royal policy of promoting useful servants, and the country knight was always regarded as a members of the noble class, and his position was continually strengthened by intermarriage with the baronage. The city magnate again formed a link between the country squire, and the tradesman and the yeoman were in position and in blood close akin. Even the villein might by learning a craft set his foot on the ladder of promotion; but the most certain way to rise was furnished by education, and by the law of the land 'every man or woman, of what state or condition that he be, shall be free to set their son or daughter to take learning at any school that pleaseth them within the realm.”¹

It is obvious that the various measures which formed integral portions of the great scheme of the Reformation, although not ostensibly aimed at breaking up the essential unity of a Christian kingdom governed on Catholic principles, in reality had that effect. The dissolution of the monastic houses, the confiscation of the property of the guilds, hospitals and alms-houses, and even the introduction of a married clergy, were all calculated to injure the poor and deprive them of their inheritance, or what by immemorial custom they had come to regard as such. In particular the possessions of the monastic houses are popularly understood to be, as an old writer expresses it, “oblations to the Lord” and “the patrimony of the poor, to be bestowed accordingly.” In them the monks “made such provision daily for the people that stood in need thereof, as sick, sore, lame, or otherwise impotent, that none or very few lacked relief in one place or another.” And although it may be questioned whether the time-honoured methods of dealing with poverty would have stood the test of greatly increased demands, still it is a matter of history that the dissolution of the monastic houses did in fact immediately produce overwhelming poverty and distress, which at once necessitated legislation as novel as it was harsh, and further, that the condition of pauperism as distinguished from that of poverty may certainly be traced for its origin to that event. That it could not fail to impoverish a large portion of the people must be obvious to anyone acquainted with the circumstances of the case; and whatever view may be taken as to the utility of monastic observances or of the advisability of the extensive charities distributed by the religious houses, it is obvious that no benefit to the poorer part of the population of the country could possibly result from stopping the flow of charity altogether, by confiscating the revenues of the monasteries and dividing them among the favourite of the crown, or lightening the burdens of the rich by applying them to the relief of general taxation. The old writer before quoted, speaking at the close of the sixteenth century, when the results of the policy of destruction were manifest, points out how by means of the property filched from the poor, the rich had mounted to place and power, whilst the former, deprived of their protectors and inheritance, had sunk deeper into the hopeless slough of pauperism. The suppressions “made of yeomen and artificers gentlemen, and of gentlemen knights, and so forth upward, and of the poorest sort stark beggars.”

It seems quite clear that not only were the results of the suppression of the religious houses at once manifest in the wide increase of poverty, but it was, even at the time, ascribed to this cause. An old argument, certainly written before the close of the reign of Henry VIII. by one favourable to the religious changes, makes it clear that this was the popular opinion. “The priests,” he writes, “mark such universal extremity and increase of misery, poverty, dearth, beggars, thieves and vagabonds, that it is hardly now possible to longer bear it,” and when asked the cause for all this they reply, “What marvel is it, though we have no money, how many thousand pounds a year go to London for the rents of abbey lands, for first fruits, for tenths, &c., besides the innumerable treasure that hath come to the King's Highness by the purchase of the plate and implements of the same houses, all of which heretofore was wont to be spent here in the country for victuals amongst us. Surely, surely, good neighbours, we have never had a merry nor wealthy world since abbeys were put down and this new learning brought in place.”²

It is necessary only to point to the case of the great alienation of tithes from all religious purposes at the time of the suppression of the religious houses to call attention to one obvious way in which the poor were deprived of their natural rights. A very large portion of the parochial tithes had been in the course of ages appropriated, as it is called, to some one or other religious house. Without defending the practice, which is obviously open to great abuses, the religious houses receiving such tithes were of course bound, and did in fact fulfil the obligation, to provide for the spiritual necessities of the parishes so appropriated to them, and to act as almoners for that portion of the tithes which custom and law had assigned for the assistance of the needy. From the earliest days of English Christianity the care of the helpless poor was regarded as a religious obligation. “S. Gregory, in his instructions to S. Augustine,” writes Bishop Stubbs, “had reminded him of the duty of a bishop to set apart for the poor a fourth part of the income of his church; and in 1342 Archbishop Stratford ordered that in all cases of appropriation a portion of the tithe should be set apart for the relief of the poor. The legislation of the witenagemotes of Ethelred, bore the same mark, – a third portion of the tithe that belonged to the Church was to go to God's poor; it was enjoined on all God's servants that they should comfort and feed the poor. Even in the reign of Henry I. the king was declared to be the kinsman and advocate of the poor.”³

By the suppression of the religious houses and by the subsequent religious changes, the poor came to have a less acknowledged right to a share in the Church revenues. The tithes which had been appropriated to the monastic establishments were treated like the rest of the ordinary lands and revenues, and being granted away by the king passed altogether into lay hands, without regard to the obligation of contributing out of them the portion intended for the support of the poor. The result was that the new possessors of tithes “which belonged to vicarages,” did not “think they were more bound to contribute on this account more to the poor than others,” and thus these poor were, and in fact still are, deprived of their share in the tithes which had been appropriated to the monastic houses and were confiscated by Henry VIII. At a somewhat later period the introduction of marriage for the parochial clergy obviously still further diminished the portion of tithe coming to the poor, since the clergyman, having to support a family out of his dues, had less to spare for those of his parishioners whose wants had been supplied previously, in some measure at least, out of these.

A still more glaring and, if possible, more unjustifiable instance of the way in which during the period of religious changes in England no respect was paid to the rights of the poor may be seen in the confiscation of the property of the guilds, contemplated under Henry VIII. and carried into effect in the first days of Edward VI. Whatever may have been the special objects to promote which these voluntary societies were founded, whether for trade, social or religious purpose they all made the performance of the Christian duty of charity to the poor a necessary part of their regular work. “In the frith-guild of London,” writes Bishop Stubbs, “the remains of the feasts were dealt to the needy for the love of God; the maintenance of the poorer members of the craft was, as in the friendly societies of our own time, one main object in the institution of the craft guilds; and even those later religious guilds, in which the chief object seems at first sight, as in much of the charitable machinery of the present day, to have been the acting of mysteries and the exhibition of pageants, were organised for the relief of distress as well as for conjoint and mutual prayer. It was with this idea that men gave large estates in land to the guilds, which down to the Reformation formed an organised administration of relief.” The same weighty writer then goes on to declare that “the confiscation of the guild property, together with that of the hospitals, was one of the great wrongs which were perpetrated under Edward VI., and, whatever may have been the results of the stoppage of monastic charity, was one unquestionable cause of the growth of town pauperism.”⁴

Whilst fully allowing that by the seizure of the property of the guilds a grave injustice was perpetrated on those for whom the charities disbursed by them were intended, few writers have yet realised how deliberate that act of injustice really was. It is often stated that the charitable funds were not to be distinguished from the revenues appropriated for religious rites for masses for the dead, &c., which were, on the assured ascendancy of the Protestant principles of the Reformation, declared to be superstitious practices; and unfortunately, whilst confiscating the property intended for the support of ceremonies now declared to be illegal, the state unwittingly swept into the public coffers that intended for the poor. However gladly one would believe this to have been the actual state of the case, original documents in the Record Office prove that the plunder of the poor by those in power was a deliberate and premeditated act. In many instances the report of the commissioners sent to inquire into the possessions of the guilds show that they fully noted and proposed to exempt from confiscation all portions of the corporate property of any guild charged with payment in behalf of the poor. In every instance where such a proposal was made, the crown official through whose hands the report has passed has drawn his pen through this humane recommendation, and intimated that the crown, not recognising any such right on the part of the poor, would take possession of the entire property.

A no less real, though perhaps less obvious, injustice was done to the poorer portion of the population at the time of the religious changes in England by the destruction of schools and colleges, and the gradual alienation of funds intended for the purpose of supplying education to those who could not otherwise obtain it, to assist in educating the children of those whose circumstances would fully enable them to support that burden. For a time most of the schools were closed, without any provision being made for carrying on the education hitherto given in the monastic houses. In the universities the results were immediately felt. At Cambridge it was feared that the destruction of the religious houses, which had hitherto prepared students for their college course and supported poor scholars during their training, would annihilate learning altogether. At Oxford, although the beneficed clergy were enjoined to find “an exhibition to maintain one scholar or more,” the result was as obvious as in the sister university, for from the first the injunction had no more effect than that laid on the new owners of monastic property to maintain the united hospitality of the dispossessed monks. Deprived of the assistance necessary to enable them to obtain the first beginnings of an education, and thus to set their feet upon the first rung of the ladder which in the middle ages had raised so many from a state of poverty to place and power, the poor were unable to claim even their share in the emoluments with which the piety of our English forefathers had endowed the colleges and halls of the universities, and which were chiefly intended for the poorer portions population.

Latimer loudly lamented the changed circumstances so far as this was concerned. “In those days,” he says, looking back to the time before the suppression of the monastic-houses, “what did they when they helped the scholars? Marry! they maintained, and gave them livings that were very papists and professed the Pope's doctrine; and now that the knowledge of God's Word is brought to light, and many earnestly study and labour to set it forth, now almost no man helpeth to maintain them.” And again, “truly it is a pitiful thing to see schools so neglected; every Christian ought to lament the same. . . . Schools are not maintained, scholars have no exhibitions. Very few there be that help poor scholars.” Here again, in the matter of education, it was the poor who were called upon to pay the price for the religious changes of the sixteenth century.

To turn to another and even larger question. The dissolution of the monasteries and the confiscation of the property of the chantries and guilds resulted in the transfer of a large amount of land into the hands of new proprietors. Possibly the extent of territory which thus changed hands was above rather than under 2,000,000 acres. The mere change of ownership was little compared with the result to the poorer tenants of the estates, for the royal policy in parcelling the confiscated lands among his needy courtiers was to create a monopoly in land. As the new possessors had frequently paid large sums for their grants their own interest prompted them to make the most of their purchases, which they did by raising the rents paid by the farmers and encroaching upon what had hitherto been regarded as common rights. It is very generally allowed that the old monastic and religious corporations were easy landlords. Not being subject to demise, such bodies, continuing to dwell in the midst of their tenants, dealt with them according to immemorial custom. It is custom, as Mill points out, especially in regard to rent, which “is the most powerful protector of the weak against the strong, their sole protector where there are no laws or government adequate to the purpose.” In the change of ownership effected during the religious revolution of the sixteenth century no respect whatever was paid to custom. That barrier “which even in the most oppressed condition of mankind,” in the opinion of the philosopher, “tyranny is forced in some degree to respect” was thrown down, and the weak were left in the power of the strong.

The enclosure of the common lands, and the consequent injustice done to those who from time immemorial had been possessed of common rights, is well recognised as an immediate result of the change in ownership at this period. So, too, is the rack-renting to which the new possessors had recourse in order to make the most of their grants or purchases. The absolute change of tenure, which appears in certain instances, may be illustrated from the Durham Halmote Rolls published by the Surtees Society. “It is hardly a figure of speech,” writes Mr. Booth in the preface to this volume, “to say we have in (these rolls) village life photographed. The dry record of tenures is peopled by men and women who occupied them, whose acquaintance we make in these records under the various phases of village life. We see them in their tofts surrounded by their crofts, with their gardens of pot-herbs. We see how they ordered the affairs of the village, when summoned by the bailiff to the vill to consider matters which affected the common weal of the community. We hear of their trespasses and wrong doings, and how they were remedied or punished; of their strifes and contentions, and how they were repressed; of their attempts, not always ineffective, to grasp the principle of co-operation, as shown by their by-laws; of their relations with the Prior, who represented the convent and alone stood in relation of lord. He appears always to have dealt with his tenants, either in person or through his officers, with much consideration; and in the imposition of fines we find them invariably tempering justice with mercy.”

In fact, as the picture of mediaeval village life among the tenants of the Durham monastery is displayed in the pages of this interesting volume, it would seem almost as if one was reading of some Utopia of dreamland. Many of the things that in these days advanced politicians would desire to see introduced into the village communities of modern England, to relieve the deadly dullness of country life, were seen in Durham and Cumberland in full working order in pre-Reformation days. Local provisions for public health and general convenience are evidenced by the watchful vigilance of the village officials over the water supplies, the care taken to prevent the fouling of useful streams, and stringent by-laws as to the common place for clothes washing and the times for emptying and cleansing ponds and mill dams. Labour was lightened and the burdens of life eased by co-operation on an extensive scale. A common mill ground the corn, and the flour was baked into bread at a common oven. A common smith worked at a common forge, and common shepherds and herdsmen watched the sheep and cattle of various tenants when pastured on the fields common to the whole village community. The pages of the volume contain numerous instances of the kindly consideration for their tenants which characterized the monastic proprietors, and the relation between them was rather that of rent-charges than of absolute ownership. In fact, as the editor of the volume says, “Notwithstanding the rents, duties, and services, and the fine paid on entering, the inferior tenants of the Prior had a beneficial interest in their holdings, which gave rise to a recognised system of tenant right, which we may see growing into a customary right, the only limitation of the tenant's right being inability, from poverty or other cause, to pay rent or perform the accustomed services.”

When the monastery of Durham was suppressed and its place taken by a Dean and Chapter, it was, by the middle of Elizabeth's reign, found that the change was gravely detrimental to the interests of the tenants, and that the new body soon made it plain that they had no intention of respecting prescriptive rights. This is made clear by a document printed in the same volume, about which the editor says: “A review of the Halmote Rolls leaves no room for doubt that the tenants, other than those of the demesne lands, during the period covered by the text, had a recognised tenant-right in their holdings, which was ripening into a customary freehold estate; and we might have expected to find, in the vills or townships in which the Dean and Chapter possessed manorial rights, the natural outcome of this tenant-right in the existence of copyhold or customary freehold estates at the present time, as we find in the manors of the see of Durham. It is a well-known fact, however, that there are none. The reason is, that soon after the foundation of the Cathedral body, the Dean and Chapter refused to recognise a customary estate in their tenants.”

What happened at Durham may safely be taken as an example of the vast confiscation of prescriptive rights which at the time of the religious changes went on all over England. It was this side of the question which chiefly appealed to William Cobbett, and which he seeks to illustrate in his History of the Reformation. He was not directly concerned with the change of religion as a religious question, but the object for which he used all the vigour of his powerful pen was to get Englishmen to realise the price the nation had been called upon to pay to secure those changes in faith and practice.

In the present edition of Cobbett's History of the Protestant Reformation, the second part, which catalogued the names of the various religious houses suppressed in the reign of Henry VIII., is omitted altogether. The rest is printed as it appeared in previous editions, with one or two slight modifications. The letter form is altered to chapter headings, the author's nicknames have been freely cut out, and an occasional strong or coarse expression is replaced by another less objectionable word or phrase*. These, and the omission of some few allusions to people and events telling, perhaps, at the time when Cobbett wrote, but altogether useless now and unimportant in themselves, are the chief changes which seemed called for in revising the text for this edition.

[CSOU: * In this online edition, derogatory racial generalisations have also been freely cut out.]

F A. GASQUET.