DE OF PLATE OF GOLD!"
_Life of Cranmer_, _Appendix_, pp. 24-28.]

[Footnote 309: The amiable and candid Strype has polluted
the pages of his valuable _Ecclesiastical Memorials_ with an
account of such horrid practices, supposed to have been
carried on in monasteries, as must startle the most
credulous Anti-Papist; and which almost leads us to conclude
that _a legion of fiends_ must have been let loose upon
these "Friar Rushes!" The author tells us that he takes his
account from authentic documents--but these documents turn
out to be the letters of the visitors; and of the character
of one of these the reader has just had a sufficient proof.
Those who have the work here referred to, vol. i., p. 256-7,
may think, with the author of it, that "this specimen is
enough and too much." What is a little to be marvelled at,
Strype suffers his prejudices against the conduct of the
monks to be heightened by a letter from one of the name of
Beerly, at Pershore; who, in order that he might escape the
general wreck, turned tail upon his brethren, and vilified
them as liberally as their professed enemies had done. Now,
to say the least, this was not obtaining what Chief Baron
Gilbert, in his famous Law of Evidence, has laid it down as
necessary to be obtained--"the best possible evidence that
the nature of the case will admit of." It is worth remarking
that Fuller has incorporated a particular account of the
names of the abbots and of the carnal enormities of which
they are supposed to have been guilty; but he adds that he
took it from the 3d edition of Speed's _Hist. of Great
Britain_, and (what is worth special notice) that it was not
to be found in the prior ones: "being a posthume addition
after the author's death, attested in the margine with the
authority of Henry Steven his _Apologie for Herodotus_, who
took the same out of an English book, containing the
_Vileness discovered at the Visitation of Monasteries_."
_Church History_, b. vi., pp. 316, 317.]

A pause perhaps of one moment might have ensued. A consideration of
what had been done, in these monasteries, for the preservation of the
literature of past ages, and for the cultivation of elegant and
peaceful pursuits, might, like "the still small voice" of conscience,
have suspended, for a second, the final