Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/242

222 The State endeavoured to maintain its authority against the immunities of the Church by increasing the the truth. The entire number of victims destroyed by Alva in the same provinces by the stake, by the gallows, and by wholesale massacre, amount, when counted carefully in detail, to twenty thousand only. The persecutions under Charles, in a serious form, were confined to the closing years of his reign. Can we believe that wholesale butcheries were passed by comparatively unnoticed by any one at the time of their perpetration, more than doubling the atrocities which startled subsequently the whole world? Laxity of assertion in matters of number is so habitual as to have lost the character of falsehood. Men not remarkably inaccurate will speak of thousands, and, when cross-questioned, will rapidly reduce them to hundreds, while a single cipher inserted by a printer's mistake becomes at once a tenfold exaggeration. Popular impressions on the character of the reign of Henry VIII. have, however, prevented inquiry into any statement which reflects discredit upon this; the enormity of an accusation has passed for an evidence of its truth. Notwithstanding that until the few last years of the King's life no felon who could read was within the grasp of the law, notwithstanding that sanctuaries ceased finally to protect murderers six years only before his death, and that felons of a lighter cast might use their shelter to the last,—even these considerable facts have created no misgiving, and learned and ignorant historians alike have repeated the story of the 72,000 with equal confidence.I must be permitted to mention the evidence, the single evidence, on which it rests.The first English witness is Harrison, the author of the Description of Britain prefixed to Chronicle. Harrison, speaking of the manner in which thieves had multiplied in England from laxity of discipline, looks back with a sigh to the golden days of King Hal, and adds, 'It appeareth by Cardan, who writeth it upon report of the Bishop of Lisieux, in the geniture of King Edward the Sixth, that his father, executing his laws very severely against great thieves, petty thieves, and rogues, did hang up three-score and twelve thousand of them.'Referring to the Commentaries of Jerome Cardan, p. 412, I find a calculation of the horoscope of Edward VI., containing, of course, the marvellous legend of his birth, and after it this passage—'Having spoken of the son, we will add also the scheme of his father, wherein we chiefly observe three points. He married six wives; he divorced two; he put two to death. Venus being in conjunction