lture he favored the new learning, and yet he viewed the gathering
momentum of reformatory principles with alarm, and cast in his lot with
the ultra-conservatives. Four years of his young manhood were spent in a
monastery. He devoted his splendid talents to a criticism of English
society, and recommended freedom of conscience, yet he became an ardent
foe of reform and even a persecutor of heretics, of whom he said: "I do
so detest that class of men that, unless they repent, I am the worst
enemy they have." When a man, whom even Protestant historians hasten to
pronounce "the glory of his age," so magnificent were his talents and so
blameless his character, was tainted with superstition, and sanctioned
the persecution of liberal thinkers, is it remarkable that inferior
intellects should have been swayed by the brutality and tyranny of
the times?

The unparalleled claims of Henry and his attitude toward the pope made
the breach between England and Rome complete, but many years of painful
internal strife and bloodshed were to elapse before the whole nation
submitted to the new order of things, and before that subjective freedom
from fear and superstition without which formal freedom has little
value, was secured.

The breach with Rome was essential to the attainment of that religious
and political freedom that England now enjoys. But the first step toward
making that separation an accomplished fact, acquiesced in by the people
as a whole, was to break the power of the monastic orders. It may
possibly be true that the same ends would have been eventually attained
by trusting to the slower processes of social evolution, but the history
of the Latin nations of Europe would seem to prove the contrary. As the
facts stand it would appear that peace and progress were impossible with
thousands of monks sowing seeds of discord, and employing every measure,
fair or foul, to win the country back to Rome. Gairdner and others
argue that Henry was far too powerful a king to have been successfully
resisted by the pope, unless the pope was backed by a union of the
Christian princes, which was then impracticable. That fact may make the
execution of More, Fisher and the Charterhouse monks inexcusable, but it
by no means proves that Henry would have been strong enough to maintain
his position if the monasteries had been permitted to exist as centers
of organized opposition to his will. Many of the monks, when pressed by
the king's agents, to