But even Governments do not invent out of their own heads, or put into statutes what is foreign to the public mind.

They employ the arguments most likely to prevail, and these must be closely connected with the circumstances of the day.

No recital in an Act of parliament can prove incontestably that the monasteries were stews, or worse.

That such a thing could be plausibly alleged, and generally believed, is itself important, and history must take account of popular views.

Debates were not reported in the sixteenth century, nor was freedom of speech in Parliament recognised by the Crown.