This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1878 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VII. RESTORATION OF THE ORDER. The death of Henry and the youth of his successor, Edward, gave the leading English nobility and gentry a fine opportunity for freeing themselves and their country from the guilt and misery of schism. But the curse of the abbey lands and the Church's treasures lay heavy upon them, smothering conscience and manly spirit, and crushing them down into base servility to any upstart who had a spark of adventurous daring. Hitherto the guilt of the schism had rested in great part on Henry alone, but now they deliberately confirmed his acts, and thus took the sin upon themselves. Then, in the natural course of things heresy was added to schism, and scandalous immorality, crying oppression of the poor, and lawless tyranny followed in their train. But the nation remained Catholic. So strong was the link that bound it to the Church that violent measures had to be resorted to to wrench it away from her. Bishops Gardiner, Heath, Bonner, Tonstall, and Day, who upheld the Catholic faith, were committed to the Tower. Zealous priests were hanged on their own church-steeples. Catholic preaching was silenced. Foreign Protestant teachers were brought over to rob the poor and simple people of their faith. And when whole counties rose in arms, each man with his rosary in-his hand, and demanded the Latin Mass as of old, foreign Protestant troops were called in to trample down the national movement, and by wholesale massacres, from which even Protestants recoil with horror, to force the new religion on the helpless nation.1 A generation had well-nigh passed away since the 1 Hallam, Constit. Hist. chap. ii. p. 92. Grey Friars' schools in Oxford and Cambridge had been closed; but their spirit still lingered in the old...