During the
terrible Wars of the Roses, contemporary chroniclers had little or
nothing to say about the labours of these humble men, which seemed
of less importance than now, when we read them in the light of their
world-wide results. From this silence some modern historians have
carelessly inferred that the nascent Protestantism of the Lollards had
been extinguished by persecution under the Lancastrian kings, and was in
nowise continuous with modern English Protestantism. Nothing could be
more erroneous. The extent to which the Lollard leaven had permeated all
classes of English society was first clearly revealed when Henry VIII.
made his domestic affairs the occasion for a revolt against the Papacy.
Despot and brute as he was in many ways, Henry had some characteristics
which enabled him to get on well with his people. He not only
represented the sentiment of national independence, but he had a truly
English reverence for the forms of law. In his worst acts he relied upon
the support of his Parliament, which he might in various ways cajole or
pack, but could not really enslave. In his quarrel with Rome he could
have achieved but little, had he not happened to strike a chord of
feeling to which the English people, trained by this slow and subtle
work of the Lollards, responded quickly and with a vehemence upon which
he had not reckoned.
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