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DESTRUCTION OF THE MONASTERIES.

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ready to listen to the advice of his courtiers, and make a pretended zeal for religion a cloak under which to seize the property of the church. He destroyed most of the monasteries, or houses where people lived together for the purposes of study, prayer, and meditation. In the early ages of Christianity (as I mentioned in the history of our Saxon forefathers) these buildings had been of very great use in times of persecution, as sanctuaries, or places of asylum for the poor hunted Christians, and thus helped to preserve alive the true faith in its infancy. And not religion only, but learning of all kinds was indebted to them for nurture and shelter. The poor had always found assistance there, and as the knowledge of medicine and surgery was also cultivated in them, "suffering humanity" had often found relief to soul and body from these religious houses. But you know, dear children, everything, however good in itself, is in this world apt to become tainted by sin, and much of corruption, deceit, and wickedness, had crept into most of these societies, although the charges brought against them were probably greatly exaggerated, in order to give some colour of justice to the king's violence. He ordered the monasteries to be pulled down, their property seized, and their inhabitants to be driven

out into the wide world, without home or shelter, and great misery must necessarily have resulted from such cruelty; but "surely the wrath of man shall praise God, the remainder of wrath shall He restrain." The tyranny and injustice of this savage man have been turned by a merciful God to the lasting benefit of our country, while the sorrow and calamity endured by individuals have passed away like a dream. The money and estates thus procured, Henry either kept himself, or gave to his dependents and favourites, and you will find many abbey lands to this day in possession of some of our nobility and gentry.

*

Towards the end of his life, the king's temper became absolutely terrific. Scarcely any one but the good Cranmer, and Katherine, the queen, dared to approach him. His bodily infirmities tended to aggravate his fury, and the land became defiled with the innocent blood that he shed. Several thousands of people suffered death for their religion in this reign, and when we think of the names of sir Thomas

* One of his attendants was rewarded with some abbey lands for having wheeled his chair further from the fire, and a lady had a monastery given her for making him some puddings which he liked. Mrs. Markham's "History."

DEATH OF HENRY.

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More, Dr. Fisher, Cromwell, the venerable countess of Salisbury, and the young and noble earl of Surrey, all executed without a shadow of justice, we cannot wonder that so guilty a conscience, since it brought him not true repentance, should have lashed him into the headlong fury of a wild beast. Let us stop here, dear children, it is too dreadful to think of such a death-bed as Henry's must have been. He died January 28, 1547, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and the thirty-eighth of his reign, and was succeeded by his only son Edward the sixth.

I will now mention a few events of interest relating to this reign, which I was unable to introduce in their proper place. In 1542 was fought the celebrated battle of Solway Moss, in which James the fifth of Scotland was totally defeated by the English, and died broken-hearted in consequence, leaving a little daughter only a week old, who afterwards became the beautiful, but unhappy, Mary queen of Scots.

The philosopher Erasmus, lived in the reign of Henry the eighth, and taught Greek in the University of Oxford, till he was driven thence by the papists, who did not approve of people learning Greek, for fear, I suppose, of their reading the New Testament in the original language. Holbein the artist, many

of whose paintings are to be seen in this country, also lived at this time; and Lilly, the grammarian, whose grammar was so much admired, that Cardinal Wolsey wrote a preface to it. The college of Christ Church, Oxford, was founded and endowed by Wolsey; and he built, and furnished the palace at Hampton Court, and presented it to the king. Trinity College, Cambridge, was also founded, and learning of all kinds rapidly increased.

In the reign of Henry the eighth began the inhuman traffic of negroes for slaves, which continued for nearly three centuries, to the disgrace of the English name, but which the growing influence of the Gospel on the hearts of our rulers, has at length caused to be abolished for ever from our land, and may it, ere long, be driven by God's great mercy, everywhere from the face of the earth!

CHAPTER XXIV.

EDWARD THE SIXTH-FROM 1547 To 1553.

EDWARD THE SIXTH was only nine years old when he came to the throne. His uncle, the duke of Somerset, brother to Jane Seymour, was appointed protector; an earnest encourager of the Reformation, and a prudent, sensible man. I told you that Edward, though so soon deprived of his mother's care, was not left without early training. God put it into the heart of his step-mother, Katherine Parr, to bring him up in the fear of the Lord; and in this important task she was guided by the advice of his godfather, the good Cranmer. His sister Elizabeth, who was about two years older than himself, used to learn her lessons with him, and they were taught Latin, Greek, Italian, and French. The princess Mary, who was brought up by her mother at first, and afterwards by her mother's friends, was a strict Romanist, and much avoided by Edward during his whole reign, because she not only persisted in having mass celebrated in her own

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