It is quite common to restrict this inquiry to a consideration of the report made by the commissioners against the monks, and to the methods employed by them in their investigations. The implication is that if the accusations against the monasteries can be discredited, or if it can be shown that the motives of the destroyers were selfish and their methods cruel, then it follows that the overthrow of the monasteries was a most iniquitous and unwarrantable proceeding. Reflection will show that the question cannot be so restricted. It may be found that the monastic institution should have been destroyed, even though the charges against the monks were grossly exaggerated, the motives of the king unworthy, and the means he employed despicable. At the outset a few facts deserve mention. It is usual for Protestants to recall with pride the glorious heroism of Protestant martyrs, but it should be remembered that Roman Catholicism also has had its martyrs. Protestant powers have not been free from tyranny and bloodshed. That noble spirit of self-sacrifice which has glorified many a character in history is not to be despised in one who dies for what we may pronounce to be false. It must also be granted that the action of the king was not dictated by a pure passion for religious reform. Indeed it is a fair question whether Henry may be claimed by the Protestants at all. Aside from his rejection of the pope's authority, he was thoroughly Catholic in conviction and in practice. His impatience with the pope's position respecting his divorce, his need of money, his love of power, and many other personal considerations determined his attitude toward the papacy. It should also be freely conceded that the royal commissioners were far from exemplary characters, and that they were often insolent and cruel in the prosecution of their work. "Our posterity," says John Bale, "may well curse this wicked fact of our age; this unreasonable spoil of England's most noble antiquities." "On the whole," says Blunt, "it may be said that we must ever look back on that destruction as a series of transactions in which the sorrow, the waste, the impiety that were wrought, were enough to make the angels weep. It may be true that the monastic system had worn itself out for practical good; or at least, that it was unfitted for those coming ages which were to be so different from the ages that were past. But slaughter, desecration and wanton destruction, were no remedies for its sins, or its failings; nor was covetous rapacity the spirit of reformation."