oyhood he worked
on his father's farm and helped his mother to milk the thirty kine; he
practised archery on the village green, studied in the village school,
went to Cambridge, and became the foremost preacher of Christendom. Now
the most thorough and radical work of the English Reformation was done
by this class of men of which Latimer was the type. It was work that was
national in its scope, arousing to fervent heat the strong religious
and moral sentiment of the people, and hence it soon quite outran the
cautious and conservative policy of the government, and tended to
introduce changes extremely distasteful to those who wished to keep
England as nearly Catholic as was consistent with independence of the
pope. Hence before the end of Elizabeth's reign, we find the crown set
almost as strongly against Puritanism as against Romanism. Hence, too,
when under Elizabeth's successors the great decisive struggle between
despotism and liberty was inaugurated, we find all the tremendous force
of this newly awakened religious enthusiasm cooperating with the English
love of self-government and carrying it under Cromwell to victory. From
this fortunate alliance of religious and political forces has come all
the noble and fruitful work of the last two centuries in which men of
English speech have been labouring for the political regeneration of
mankind. But for this alliance of forces, it is quite possible that the
fateful seventeenth century might have seen despotism triumphant in
England as on the continent of Europe, and the progress of civilization
indefinitely arrested. [Sidenote: The moment of Cromwell's triumph was
the most critical moment in history]

In illustration of this possibility, observe what happened in France
at the very time when the victorious English tendencies were shaping
themselves in the reign of Elizabeth. In France there was a strong
Protestant movement, but it had no such independent middle-class to
support it as that which existed in England; nor had it been able to
profit by such indispensable preliminary work as that which Wyclif had
done; the horrible slaughter of the Albigenses had deprived France of
the very people who might have played a part in some way analogous to
that of the Lollards. Consequently the Protestant movement in France
failed to become a national movement. Against the wretched Henry III who
would have temporized with it, and the gallant Henry IV who honestly
espoused it, the oppr