it. We consider ourselves, at the present day,
persuaded honestly of many things; yet which of them
should we refuse to relinquish if the scaffold were the
alternative, or at least seem to relinquish, under silent
protest?

And yet, in the details of the struggle at the
Charterhouse, we see the forms of mental trial which must have
repeated themselves among all bodies of the clergy
wherever there was seriousness of conviction. If the
majority of the monks were vicious and sensual, there
was still a large minority labouring to be true to their
vows; and when one entire convent was capable of
sustained resistance, there must have been many where
there was only just too little virtue for the emergency,
where the conflict between interest and conscience was
equally genuine, though it ended the other way. Scenes
of bitter misery there must have been--of passionate
emotion wrestling ineffectually with the iron resolution
of the Government: and the faults of the Catholic party
weigh so heavily against them in the course and progress
of the Reformation, that we cannot willingly lose the
few countervailing tints which soften the darkness of the
case against them.

Nevertheless, for any authentic account of the abbeys
at this crisis, we have hitherto been left to our
imagination. A stern and busy Administration had little leisure
to preserve records of sentimental struggles which led to
nothing. The Catholics did not care to keep alive the
recollection of a conflict in which, even though with
difficulty, the Church was defeated. A rare accident
only could have brought down to us any fragment of a
transaction which no one had an interest in remembering.
That such an accident has really occurred, we
may consider as unusually fortunate. The story in
question concerns the abbey of Woburn, and is as
follows:-

At Woburn, as in many other religious houses, there
were representatives of both the factions which divided
the country; perhaps we should say of three--the
sincere Catholics, the Indifferentists, and the Protestants.
These last, so long as Wolsey was in power, had been
frightened into silence, and with difficulty had been able
to save themselves from extreme penalties. No sooner,
however, had Wolsey fallen, and the battle commenced
with the Papacy, than the tables turned, the persecuted
became persecutors--or at least threw off their disguise,
and were strengthened with the support of the large
class who cared onl