THE REFORMATION
Long ago an eminent Professor of International Law, at the University of Cambridge, lecturing his class, spoke somewhat disparagingly of the Reformation as compared with the Renaissance, and regretted there was no adequate history of the glorious events called by the latter name. So keenly indeed did the Professor feel this gap in his library, that he proceeded to say that inconvenient as it had been to him to lecture at Cambridge that afternoon, still if what he had said should induce any member of the class to write a history of the Renaissance worthy to be mentioned with the masterpiece of Gibbon, he (the Professor) would never again think it right to refer to the inconvenience he had personally been put to in the matter.
It must be twenty years since these words were uttered. The class to whom they were addressed is scattered far and wide, even as the household referred to in the touching poem of Mrs. Hemans. No one of them has written a history of the Renaissance. It is now well-nigh certain no one of them ever will. Looking back over those twenty years it seems a pity it was never attempted. As Owen Meredith sweetly sings—
‘And it all seems now in the waste of life
Such a very little thing.’
But it has remained undone. Regrets are vain.
For my part, I will make bold to say that the Professor was all wrong. Professors do not stand where they did. They have been blown upon. The ugliest gap in an Englishman's library is in the shelf which ought to contain, but does not, a history of the Reformation of Religion in his own country. It is a subject made for an Englishman's hand. At present it is but (to employ some old-fashioned words) a hotch-potch, a gallimaufry, a confused mingle-mangle of divers things jumbled or put together. Puritan and Papist, Anglican and Erastian, pull out what they choose, and drop whatever they do not like with a grimace of humorous disgust. What faces the early Tractarians used to pull over Bishop Jewel! How Dr. Maitland delighted in exhibiting the boundless vulgarity of the Puritan party! Lord Macaulay had only a paragraph or two to spare for the Reformation; but as we note amongst the contents of his first chapter the following heads: 'The Reformation and its Effects,' 'Origin of the Church of England,' 'Her Peculiar Character,' we do not need to be further reminded of the views of that arch-Erastian.
It is time someone put a stop to this 'help yourself' procedure. What is needed to do this is a long, luminous, leisurely history, written by somebody who, though wholly engrossed by his subject, is yet absolutely indifferent to it.
The great want at present is of common knowledge; common, that is, to all parties. The Catholic tells his story, which is much the most interesting one, sure of his audience. The Protestant falls back upon his Fox, and relights the fires of Smithfield with entire self-satisfaction. The Erastian flourishes his Acts of Parliament in the face of the Anglican, who burrows like a cony in the rolls of Convocation. Each is familiar with one set of facts, and shrinks nervously from the honour of an introduction to a totally new set. We are not going to change our old 'mumpsimus' for anybody's new 'sumpsimus.' But we must some day, and we shall when this new history gets itself written.
The subject cannot be said to lack charm. Border lands, marshes, passes are always romantic. No bagman can cross the Tweed without emotion. The wanderer on the Malvern Hills soon learns to turn his eyes from the dull eastward plain to where they can be feasted on the dim outlines of wild Wales. Border periods of history have something of the same charm. How the old thing ceased to be? How the new thing became what it is? How the old colours faded, and the old learning disappeared, and the Church of Edward the Confessor, and St. Thomas of Canterbury, and William of Wykeham, became the Church of George the Third, Archbishop Tait, and Dean Stanley? There is surely a tale to be told. Something must have happened at the Reformation. Somebody was dispossessed. The common people no longer heard 'the blessed mutter of the mass,' nor saw 'God made and eaten all day long.' Ancient services ceased, old customs were disregarded, familiar words began to go out of fashion. The Reformation meant something. On these points the Catholics entertain no kind of doubt. That they suffered ejectment they tearfully admit. Nor, to do them justice, have they ever acquiesced in the wrong they allege was then done them, or exhibited the faintest admiration for the intruder.
‘Have ye beheld the young God of the Seas,
My dispossessor? Have ye seen his face?
Have ye beheld his chariot foam'd along
By noble wing'd creatures he hath made?
I saw him on the calmed waters scud,
With such a glow of beauty in his eyes
That it enforced me to bid sad farewell
To all my empire.’