epraved hearts. Or again, inverting the argument, they say with
sufficient plausibility that the sins and crimes of the King are
acknowledged facts of history; that from so bad a man no good thing could
ever rise; that Henry was a visible servant of the devil, and therefore
the Reformation, of which he was the instrument, was the devil's work. If
the picture drawn of him by his Catholic contemporaries is correct, the
inference is irresistible. That picture, however, was drawn by those whose
faith he wounded and whose interests he touched, and therefore might be
regarded with suspicion. Religious animosity is fertile in calumny,
because it assumes beforehand that every charge is likely to be true in
proportion to its enormity, and Catholic writers were credulous of evil
when laid to the charge of so dangerous an adversary. But the Catholics
have not been Henry's only accusers; all sorts and sects have combined in
the general condemnation. The Anglican High Churchman is as bitter against
him as Reginald Pole himself. He admits and maintains the separation from
Rome which Henry accomplished for him; but he abhors as heartily as Pole
or Lingard the internal principles of the Reformation. He resents the
control of the clergy by the civil power. He demands the restoration of
the spiritual privileges which Henry and his parliaments took away from
them. He aspires to the recovery of ecclesiastical independence. He
therefore with equal triumph points to the blots in Henry's character, and
deepens their shade with every accusation, proved or unproved, which he
can find in contemporary records. With him, too, that a charge was alleged
at the time is evidence sufficient to entitle him to accept it as a fact.

Again, Protestant writers have been no less unsparing from an imprudent
eagerness to detach their cause from a disreputable ally. In Elizabeth's
time it was a point of honour and loyalty to believe in the innocence of
her mother. If Anne Boleyn was condemned on forged or false evidence to
make way for Jane Seymour, what appears so clearly to us must have been
far clearer to Henry and his Council; of all abominable crimes committed
by tyrannical princes there was never one more base or cowardly than
Anne's execution; and in insisting on Anne's guiltlessness they have
condemned the King, his ministers, and his parliaments. Having discovered
him to have murdered his wife, they have found him also to have been a
persecutor of the tr