A HISTORY OF THE

PROTESTANT REFORMATION IN ENGLAND AND IRELAND

W RITTEN between 1824 and 1827 by an English Protestant. A History of the Protestant Reforma tion in England and Ireland has been re-printed many times by Catholic publishers because it gives the true and usually untold story of the Protestant Revolt in England during the 16th century, revealing its disastrous consequences in the lives of the people.

William Cobbett, the author of this book, is unabashedly pro-Catholic in this writing, showing that England was far better off before the Protestant "Reformation" of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I than she was afterwards. For example, during Catholic times there was greater prosperity, no penury, no poor laws, almost no crime, no income tax, and a greater national military strength. Whereas, with the "Reforma-tion" came the destruction of the monasteries, the driving of countless thousands of tenant farmers from the lands they had formerly rented (virtu-ally in perpetuity and at cheap rents) from the Catholic monas-teries, the creation of a vast number of homeless poor, the subsequent poor laws,

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Income tax, a diminished military.c pacity, and despotism on the part of the monarchs-all this, followed by the Pu ritan Revolt, the dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell, the "Glorious Revolution in 1688 (that brought William and Mary to power and overthrew the legitimate king because he was Catholic), an in crease of taxation, the rise of the na tional debt, and finally the American Revolution

The author shows how all these dire results flowed directly from England's casting off the ancient Catholic Faith, brought to the Island by St. Augustine of Canterbury in the fith century and adhered to faithfully by the great majority of Englishmen for a thousand years. Cobbett shows how the revolu tionaries were not only successful in eradicating the True Faith from their land, but he spells out the woeful con-sequences that befell the country as a result.

Picking up, as he does, the history of England with the reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547), he carries through the reigns of the Protestant Edward VI (1547-1553), the Catholic

Mary Tudor (1553-1558) the Protestant Elizabeth I (1558-1603), the Protestant (Continued on inside back comer)