Secure in the supposed completeness with which Queen Mary’s agents destroyed the Records of the visitation under her father, Roman-catholic writers have taken refuge in a disdainful denial; and the Anglicans, who for the most part (while contented to enjoy the fruits of the Reformation) detest the means by which it was brought about, have taken the same view.  Bishop Latimer tells us that, when the Report of the visitors of the abbeys was read in the Commons House, there rose from all sides one long cry of “Down with them.”  But Bishop Latimer, in the opinion of High Churchmen, is not to be believed.  Do we produce letters of the visitors themselves, we are told that they are the slanders prepared to justify a preconceived purpose of spoliation.  No witness, it seems, will be admitted unless it be the witness of a friend.  Unless some enemy of the Reformation can be found to confess the crimes which made the Reformation necessary, the crimes themselves are to be regarded as unproved.  This is a hard condition.  We appeal to Wolsey.

Wolsey commenced the suppression.  Wolsey first made public the infamies which disgraced the Church; while, notwithstanding, he died the devoted servant of the Church.  This evidence is surely admissible?  But no:  Wolsey, too, must be put out of court.  Wolsey was a courtier and a timeserver.  Wolsey was a tyrant’s minion.  Wolsey was—­in short, we know not what Wolsey was—­or what he was not.  Who can put confidence in a charlatan?  Behind the bulwarks of such objections, the champion of the abbeys may well believe himself secure.

And yet, unreasonable though these demands may be, it happens, after all, that we are able partially to gratify them.  It is strange that of all extant accusations against any one of the abbeys, the heaviest is from a quarter which even Lingard himself would scarcely call suspicious.  No picture left us by Henry’s visitors surpasses, even if it equals, a description of the condition of the Abbey of St. Albans, in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, drawn by Morton, Henry vii.’s Minister, Cardinal Archbishop, Legate of the Apostolic See, in a letter addressed by him to the Abbot of St. Albans himself.

We must request our reader’s special attention for the next two pages.

In the year 1489, Pope Innocent VIII.—­moved with the enormous stories which reached his ear of the corruption of the houses of religion in England—­granted a commission to the Archbishop of Canterbury to make inquiries whether these stories were true, and to proceed to correct and reform as might seem good to him.  The regular clergy were exempt from episcopal visitation, except under especial directions from Rome.  The occasion had appeared so serious as to make extraordinary interference necessary.

On the receipt of the Papal commission, Cardinal Morton, among other letters, wrote the following:—­

“John, by Divine permission.  Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, Legate of the Apostolic See, to William, Abbot of the Monastery of St. Albans, greeting.