The domestic peace of England seemed to be exposed to more hazard by the violent innovations in religion; and it may be affirmed that, in this dangerous conjuncture, nothing insured public tranquillity so much as the decisive authority acquired by the king, and his great ascendant over all his subjects. Not only the devotion paid to the crown was profound during that age: the personal respect inspired by Henry was considerable; and even the terrors with which he overawed every one, were not attended with any considerable degree of hatred. His frankness, his sincerity, his magnificence, his generosity, were virtues which counterbalanced his violence, cruelty, and impetuosity. And the important rank which his vigor, more than his address, acquired him in all foreign negotiations, flattered the vanity of Englishmen, and made them the more willingly endure those domestic hardships to which they were exposed. The king, conscious of his advantages, was now proceeding to the most dangerous exercise of his authority; and after paving the way for that measure by several preparatory expedients, he was at last determined to suppress the monasteries, and to put himself in possession of their ample revenues. The great increase of monasteries, if matters be considered merely in a political light, will appear the radical inconvenience of the Catholic religion; and every other disadvantage attending that communion seems to have an inseparable connection with these religious institutions. Papal usurpations, the tyranny of the inquisition, the multiplicity of holidays; all these fetters on liberty and industry were ultimately derived from the authority and insinuation of monks, whose habitations, being established every where, proved so many seminaries of superstition and of folly. This order of men was extremely enraged against Henry, and regarded the abolition of the papal authority in England as the removal of the sole protection which they enjoyed against the rapacity of the crown and of the courtiers. They were now subjected to the king’s visitation; the supposed sacredness of their bulls from Rome was rejected; the progress of the reformation abroad, which had every where been attended with the abolition of the monastic orders, gave them reason to apprehend like consequences in England; and though the king still maintained the doctrine of purgatory, to which most of the convents owed their origin and support, it was foreseen, that, in the progress of the contest, he would every day be led to depart wider from ancient institutions, and be drawn nearer the tenets of the reformers, with whom his political interests naturally induced him to unite. Moved by these considerations, the friars employed all their influence to inflame the people against the king’s government; and Henry, finding their safety irreconcilable with his own, was determined to seize the present opportunity, and utterly destroy his declared enemies.