Henry VIII. | Page 3

in his
Römische Dokumente.[11] The dissolution of the monasteries has been
exhaustively treated from one point of view by Dr. Gasquet;[12] but an
adequate and impartial history of what is called the Reformation still
remains to be written. Here it is possible to deal with (p. x) these
questions only in the briefest outline, and in so far as they were affected
by Henry's personal action. For my facts I have relied entirely on
contemporary records, and my deductions from these facts are my own.
I have depended as little as possible even on contemporary
historians,[13] and scarcely at all on later writers.[14] I have, however,
made frequent use of Dr. Gairdner's articles in the Dictionary of
National Biography, particularly of that on Henry VIII., the best
summary extant of his career; and I owe not a little to Bishop Stubbs's
two lectures on Henry VIII., which contain some fruitful suggestions as
to his character.[15] A.F. POLLARD. PUTNEY, 11th January, 1905.
[Footnote 11: Paderborn, 1893; cf. Engl. Hist. Rev., xix., 632-45.]
[Footnote 12: Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries, 2 vols., 1888.]
[Footnote 13: Of these the most important are Polydore Vergil (Basel,
1534), Hall's Chronicle (1548) and Fabyan's Chronicle (edited by Ellis,
1811). Holinshed and Stow are not quite contemporary, but they
occasionally add to earlier writers on apparently good authority.]
[Footnote 14: I have in this edition added references to those which
seem most important; for a collected bibliography see Dr. Gairdner in
Cambridge Modern History, ii., 789-94. I have also for the purpose of
this edition added references to the original sources--a task of some
labour when nearly every fact is taken from a different document. The
text has been revised, some errors removed, and notes added on special
points, especially those on which fresh light has recently been thrown.]
[Footnote 15: In Lectures on Mediæval and Modern History, 1887.]

CONTENTS. (p. xi)

CHAPTER I.
Page The Early Tudors 1
CHAPTER II.
Prince Henry and His Environment 15
CHAPTER III.
The Apprenticeship of Henry VIII. 43
CHAPTER IV.
The Three Rivals 78
CHAPTER V.
King and Cardinal 108
CHAPTER VI.
From Calais to Rome 136
CHAPTER VII.
The Origin of the Divorce 173
CHAPTER VIII.
The Pope's Dilemma 195
CHAPTER IX.
(p. xii)
The Cardinal's Fall 228

CHAPTER X.
The King and His Parliament 249
CHAPTER XI.
"Down with the Church" 278
CHAPTER XII.
"The Prevailing of the Gates of Hell" 302
CHAPTER XIII.
The Crisis 331
CHAPTER XIV.
Rex et Imperator 362
CHAPTER XV.
The Final Struggle 397
CHAPTER XVI.
Conclusion 427
Index 441
CHAPTER I.
(p. 001)
THE EARLY TUDORS.
In the whole range of English history there is no monarch whose

character has been more variously depicted by contemporaries or more
strenuously debated by posterity than the "majestic lord who broke the
bonds of Rome". To one historian an inhuman embodiment of cruelty
and vice, to another a superhuman incarnation of courage, wisdom and
strength of will, Henry VIII. has, by an almost universal consent, been
placed above or below the grade of humanity. So unique was his
personality, so singular his achievements, that he appears in the light of
a special dispensation sent like another Attila to be the scourge of
mankind, or like a second Hercules to cleanse, or at least to demolish,
Augean stables. The dictates of his will seemed as inexorable as the
decrees of fate, and the history of his reign is strewn with records of the
ruin of those who failed to placate his wrath. Of the six queens he
married, two he divorced, and two he beheaded. Four English
cardinals[16] lived in his reign; one perished by the executioner's axe,
one escaped it by absence, and a third (p. 002) by a timely but natural
death. Of a similar number of dukes[17] half were condemned by
attainder; and the same method of speedy despatch accounted for six or
seven earls and viscounts and for scores of lesser degree. He began his
reign by executing the ministers of his father,[18] he continued it by
sending his own to the scaffold. The Tower of London was both palace
and prison, and statesmen passed swiftly from one to the other; in silent
obscurity alone lay salvation. Religion and politics, rank and profession
made little difference; priest and layman, cardinal-archbishop and
"hammer of the monks," men whom Henry had raised from the mire,
and peers, over whose heads they were placed, were joined in a
common fate. Wolsey and More, Cromwell and Norfolk, trod the same
dizzy path to the same fatal end; and the English people looked on
powerless or unmoved. They sent their burgesses and knights of the
shire to Westminster without let or hindrance, and Parliament met with
a regularity that grew with the rigour of Henry's rule; but it