Page:History of england froude.djvu/10

ii speak with extreme severity of the persecution of the Catholics by Elizabeth. Even writers on the whole favourable to the Reformation described the English branch of it as a good thing badly done.

My own impression about it was, that the Reformation was both a good thing itself and that in England it had been accomplished with peculiar skill and success. The passions called out by religious controversy, which in France and Germany were the occasions of long and bloody wars, were controlled in England by the Government. I considered that on the whole the control had worked beneficially, and that those who condemned the repressive measures adopted towards the Romanists by Elizabeth's ministers had made imperfect allowance for the temper of the times and for the impossibility of tolerating opinions which led immediately to rebellion. My original purpose was to confine myself to the reign of the great Queen for whom, looking to the spirit in which her Government had been conducted, I felt great admiration. The attacks of Lingard and others upon her personal purity I believed to be gratuitous and unjust. I intended as briefly as I could to undertake her vindication. With Cranmer and his companions, unwilling as I was to accept Lord Macaulay's judgment upon them, I had not proposed to meddle. I shared the prevailing views of the character of Henry VIII.; and though I considered that if all the circumstances