Page:Church and State under the Tudors.djvu/80

, and rejoiced in none of his possessions more than in his title of Defender of the Faith.

The antipapal statutes still remained upon the statute book, but they had lain dormant so long as to have been almost forgotten, and Rome obtained its Peter'spence and its annates just as before. But underneath all this external magnificence there were not wanting signs that all was not sound. The monasteries were hopelessly corrupt, the friars being probably rather worse than the monks; their estates were mismanaged, wasted, and alienated. The men of the new learning were beginning to spread abroad a contempt for shrines and relics, pilgrimages and modern miracles; and above all, the people hated the priests. Morton and Warham had each made an attempt to reform the monasteries and the ecclesiastical courts, but neither was strong enough to succeed; and Wolsey, who possibly might have been, was too fully occupied with the larger and weightier objects of foreign policy to find leisure, or perhaps inclination, to cleanse such an Augean stable. The general corruption of the clergy, and more especially of the monks and friars, is, in point of fact, undeniable. Most of the more recent and better informed historians of this period have been themselves clergymen, and have, either consciously or unconsciously, held a brief for their predecessors; but the ablest and most learned of them have practically had to give up the case. Dean Hook, who makes no secret of his advocacy, and never disguises his prejudices, is nevertheless transparently honest and diligent, and constantly supplies material for the refutation of his own views; but even Dean Hook has to make so many admissions that, for all intents and purposes, he gives up his own