Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/120

100 higher virtues of self-sacrifice, but the commonest duties of probity and morality, were disappearing. Private life was infected with impurity to which the licentiousness of the Catholic clergy appeared like innocence. The Government was corrupt, the courts of law were venal. The trading classes cared only to grow rich. The multitude were mutinous from oppression. Among the good who remained unpolluted, the best were still to be found on the Reforming side. Lever, Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer, held on unflinching to their convictions, although with hearts aching and intellects perplexed; but their influence was slight and their numbers small; and Protestants who were worthy of the name which they bore were fewer far, in these their days of prosperity, than when the bishops were hunting them out for the stake. The better order of commonplace men, who had a conscience, but no especial depth of insight—who had small sense of spiritual things, but a strong perception of human rascality—looked on in a stern and growing indignation, and, judging the tree by its fruits, waited their opportunity for reaction.

'Alas, poor child,' said a Hampshire gentleman, of Edward, 'unknown it is to him what Acts are made now-a-days; when he comes of age he will see another rule and hang up an hundred heretic knaves.' John Bale replied to 'the frantic Papist' with interested indignation; he wrote a pamphlet with a dedication to Northumberland, whom he compared to Moses, and