Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/280

 There was nothing in the circumstances of Europe during the whole life of Henry VIII, such as there was under Queen Elizabeth, which might persuade people then living of the need of such an extraordinary officer. We, looking back on the time, may see how dangerous a time it was, how full of pitfalls and snares, and how, in the result, a great advantage was gained by England having had such a hand as even the blood-stained hand of Henry to guide her through: but the critical character of the time was not apparent to the time, or to the leading men of England during it; and the later reading of it cannot be made to account for the condition of feeling and action that we are now contemplating.

The opposite view, that Henry and his advisers concocted the parliamentary acts and manifestos in such a way as to make them embody a national adhesion, sympathy, and even enthusiasm, by the simple process of falsification, is, on the other hand, too arbitrary, too shameful, for us to contemplate with equanimity: history may be, and ought to be, tested at every turn; acts of parliament, when they are tested, may, and often do, turn out very unsound and unsatisfactory in their statements of fact, and disputable and inconsistent in their statements of law; but, if we could believe in such a wholesale perversion of evidences as this theory involves, we must resign all theories of history at once, and relegate the inquiring world to a combination of natural laws with historical novels. The fact of the matter, I take it, we may accept: that the nation and the Church accepted, acquiesced in, and petitioned for, in parliament and in convocation, the things which the acts of parliament and convocation declare that they accepted, acquiesced in, and petitioned for; but the question remains how we are to interpret that cooperation, and by what means the conceivable measure of co-operation was obtained. With so much preface, more than I intended, let us approach this branch of the subject, the history, modifications, and alterations of the government by parliament and convocation, as it appears to be modified and altered or maintained during the great changes of the reign.