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(Continued from page 403.) Mr. Hilaire Belloc has chosen of late to rewrite history in the supposed interests of the Roman Catholic Church. The third volume of his History of England recently dealt with the eve of the Reformation. Now he surveys that movement as a whole in a highly controversial essay, How the Reformation Happened (Jonathan Cape, 10s. 6d.). While Mr. Belloc rightly rejects the old notion that the Renaissance was due to material causes like the fall of Constantinople, he is inclined to believe that material causes like the Black Death of 1349 and the conquest of Hungary by the Turks in 1526 contributed directly or indirectly to the Reformation. It is well to be reminded that the Turkish victory at Mohacs weakened the
Empire just when Lutheranism was becoming formidable. But the Empire had long been feeble and could not in any event have crushed the new religious movement. Mr. Belloc is severe on the English nobility who had acquired Church lands ; for him, they and not Elizabeth, " poor woman," were the villains of the piece who prevented England from remaining in communion with Rome. He is bitter enough, in his reference to the Armada, to describe Drake as " a brave, first-rate sea captitin, murderer and thief." Does such writing serve any useful purpose? We doubt it.
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