parliament.[194] In fact, he
cared nothing for theology, though he called himself a member of the
church of England, and retained an intense dislike for Unitarians,
dissenters in general, 'saints' as he called the Evangelical party,
Scottish Presbyterians, and generally for all religious sects. He
looked at church questions solely from one point of view. He had
learned, it seems, from a passage in Ruggles's _History of the
Poor_,[195] that the tithes had been originally intended to support
the poor as well as the church. Gradually, as he looked back upon the
'good old times,' he developed the theory expounded in his _History of
the Reformation_. It is a singular performance, written at the period
of his most reckless exasperation (1824-27), but with his full vigour
of style. He declares[196] in 1825 that he has sold forty-five
thousand copies, and it has been often reprinted. The purpose is to
show that the Reformation was 'engendered in beastly lust, brought
forth in hypocrisy, and cherished and fed by plunder and devastation,
and by rivers of English and Irish blood.'[197] Briefly, it is the
cause of every evil that has happened since, including 'the debt, the
banks, the stockjobbers, and the American revolution.'[198] In proving
this, Cobbett writes in the spirit of some vehement Catholic bigot,
maddened by the penal laws. Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and William III.
are his monsters; the Marys of England and Scotland his ideal martyrs.
He almost apologises for the massacre of St. Bartholomew and the
Gunpowder Plot; and, in spite of his patriotism, attributes the defeat
of the Armada to a storm, for fear of praising Elizabeth. The
bitterest Ultramontane of to-day would shrink from some of this
Radical's audacious statements. Cobbett, in spite of his extravagance,
shows flashes of his usual shrewdness. He remarks elsewhere that the
true way of studying history is to examine acts of parliament and
lists of prices of labour and of food;[199] and he argues upon such
grounds for the prosperity of the agricultural labourer under Edward
III., 'when a dung-cart filler could get a fat goose and a half for
half a day's work.' He makes some telling hits, as when he contrasts
William of Wykeham with Brownlow North, the last bishop of Winchester.
Protestants condemned celibacy. Well, had William been married, we
should not have had Winchester school, or New College; had Brownlow
North been doomed to celibacy, he would not have had ten