teenth. The Inquisition
was never established in England. Edward II. attempted to introduce
it in 1311 for the purpose of suppressing the Templars, but his utter
failure showed that the instinct of self-government was too strong in
the English people to tolerate the entrusting of so much power over
men's lives to agents of the papacy. Mediaeval England was ignorant and
bigoted enough, but under a representative government which so strongly
permeated society, it was impossible to set the machinery of repression
to work with such deadly thoroughness as it worked under the guidance of
Roman methods. When we read the history of persecution in England, the
story in itself is dreadful enough; but when we compare it with the
horrors enacted in other countries, we arrive at some startling results.
During the two centuries of English persecution, from Henry IV. to James
I., some 400 persons were burned at the stake, and three-fourths of
these cases occurred in 1555-57, the last three years of Mary Tudor.
Now in a single province of Spain, in the single year 1482, about 2000
persons were burned. The lowest estimates of the number slain for heresy
in the Netherlands in the course of the sixteenth century place it at
75,000. Very likely such figures are in many cases grossly exaggerated.
But after making due allowance for this, the contrast is sufficiently
impressive. In England the persecution of heretics was feeble and
spasmodic, and only at one moment rose to anything like the appalling
vigour which ordinarily characterized it in countries where the
Inquisition was firmly established. Now among the victims of religious
persecution must necessarily be found an unusual proportion of men and
women more independent than the average in their thinking, and more
bold than the average in uttering their thoughts. The Inquisition was a
diabolical winnowing machine for removing from society the most flexible
minds and the stoutest hearts; and among every people in which it was
established for a length of time it wrought serious damage to the
national character. It ruined the fair promise of Spain, and inflicted
incalculable detriment upon the fortunes of France. No nation could
afford to deprive itself of such a valuable element in its political
life as was furnished in the thirteenth century by the intelligent and
sturdy Cathari of southern Gaul. [Sidenote: The Cathari, or Puritans of
the Eastern Empire] [Sidenote: The Albigenses] [Sidenote