Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

‘because the scale is not one which would require or justify a display of research. [The
author] believes, however, that there is not a single statement in these Volumes which his
collections would not enable him readily to authenticate.’ 33 Southey’s was a view of
England and its independent church that lay close to the national self-consciousness. His
book quickly went through three editions and was reprinted as late as 1885. It paid no lipservice
to objectivity, preferring instead that ‘philosophy of romance’ which Lingard so
disliked.
Manifold as are the blessings for which Englishmen are beholden to the institutions of their country, there
is no part of those institutions from which they derive more important advantages than from its Church
Establishment… I offer, therefore, to those who regard with love and reverence the religion which they
have received from their fathers, a brief but comprehensive record, diligently, faithfully, and
conscientiously composed, which they may put to children. Herein it will be seen…in what manner the
best interests of the country were advanced by the clergy even during the darkest ages of papal domination;
the errors and crimes of the Romish church, and how when its corruptions were at the worst, the day-break
of the Reformation appeared among us: the progress of that Reformation through evil and through good;
the establishment of a Church pure in its doctrines, irreproachable in its order, beautiful in its forms. 34
It was easy enough for Milner, writing as ‘Merlin’, to strike back at the Laureate
on the grounds that ‘A degree of enthusiasm is requisite to constitute the character of a
Poet’ and thus naturally ‘he raves, through the history of many centuries’. 35 Lingard, in a
Vindication of his History addressed to several critics, including Southey and Todd, took
a characteristically cooler but more damaging approach, tackling directly the
preconceptions, national amour-propre and religious prejudice that disinclined Anglicans
to believe his account of the role of Henry VIII’s divorce in the Reformation. Of the
circumstances of the King’s second marriage to Anne Boleyn he wrote:
We are referred … to the passage, in which I state that Henry was secretly married to Anne Boleyn on the
25 th of January, in a garret at the western end of Whitehall. Mr Todd will not believe that the king of
England ‘would condescend to celebrate his marriage in a garret’, nor is he the only critic whose ire has
kindled at this unfortunate expression. The king’s object was certainly to conceal the ceremony from the
33
Southey, The Book of the Church, 1, prefatory note.
34
Southey, The Book of the Church, 1, Introduction.
35
Milner, Strictures on the Poet Laureate’s ‘Book of the Church’, pp. 3-4.
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