Such is the testimony of a liberal-minded clergyman of the Church of England, who spent a great portion of his leisure in investigating the history of monastic institutions, particularly that of St. Albans. “These religious foundations,” he adds, “fell with such undeserved calumny and slander, that it is but common justice to restore their character, and give them their due praise, wherever that can be done; and if all others were as free from corruption and ill government as the Abbey of St. Albans, it would be seen how unjustly they were accused, and that their overthrow was effected for other reasons than pretended misrule and corruption. But as they had been ever the main pillar and support of the Papal dominion, it was natural and consistent to abolish the members after the Head was rejected. They were bodies so nearly allied to the Papal power, that they must of necessity fall with it; and although a gradual reformation might have been effected in them, yet, in the new plan of church government, they were deemed unnecessary; for the new Head of the [Illustration] Church and his counsellors wished to have as few subjects in the Church to be governed as might be. Accordingly, by dissolving the regular clergy, and limiting the Church, to the episcopal order of seculars, they rejected above one hundred thousand of the former, and retained about eight thousand of the latter. Whatever was the pretext, the real truth appears to have been this--that their temporal power and wealth tempted their downfall; and in spite of all the good and real merit that was to be found in them, they fell a prey and spoil to an extravagant monarch, and his ‘needy and profligate’ courtiers. In the legislature of those times, there were many great and able men; but whatever cause there may be to charge them with want of _piety_, there is no room to accuse them of any want of worldly wisdom, or of their embracing that self-denial and contempt of the world, which they were so ready to condemn in the monks. They made laws and ordinances to support a new religion, when they could enrich themselves by suppressing the _old_.” “But,” continues this able writer, “the bright examples of the bishops and clergy who submitted to the flames at that time, will appear more illustrious when it is seen how just and rational was their opposition to the worship then in use, as well as to the doctrine; the first having in it as little of true piety and devotion, as the latter had of reason and revealed truth. It was the blood of those men who could die for the truth, that gave the new Establishment a firm and solid foundation, when neither the will of the Prince nor the laws of his Parliaments could have been able, without that cement, to effect a new construction and edifice.”[79]