A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland

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 "Reformation" came the destruction of the monasteries, the driving of countless thousands of tenant farmers from the lands they had formerly rented (virtually in perpetuity and at cheap rents) from the Catholic monasteries, the creation of a vast number of homeless poor, the subsequent poor laws, income tax, a diminished military capacity, and despotism on the part of the monarchs-all this, followed by the Puritan 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 increase of taxation, the rise of the national 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 6th century and adhered to faithfully by the great majority of Englishmen for a thousand years. Cobbett shows how the revolutionaries were not only successful in eradicating the True Faith from their land, but he spells out the woeful consequences 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 James I (1603-1625), the Protestant Charles I (1625-1649), the Puritan Oliver Cromwell (1653-1658), the tacit Catholic Charles 11 (1660-1685), the Catholic James 11(1685-1688), and the Protestants William and Mary (1689-1702), all the way to George III (1760-1820).