Henry VIII. | Page 2

by influences and events which lie outside the scope of Mr. (p. vii) Froude's inquiry. Moreover, since Mr. Froude wrote, a flood of light has been thrown on the period by the publication of the above-mentioned Letters and Papers;[2] they already comprise a summary of between thirty and forty thousand documents in twenty thousand closely printed pages, and, when completed, will constitute the most magnificent body of materials for the history of any reign, ancient or modern, English or foreign. Simultaneously there have appeared a dozen volumes containing the State papers preserved at Simancas,[3] Vienna and Brussels and similar series comprising the correspondence relating to Venice,[4] Scotland[5] and Ireland;[6] while the despatches of French ambassadors have been published under the auspices of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs at Paris.[7] Still further information has been (p. viii) provided by the labours of the Historical Manuscripts Commission,[8] the Camden,[9] the Royal Historical,[10] and other learned Societies.
[Footnote 2: This series, unlike the Calendars of State Papers, includes documents not preserved at the Record Office; it is often inaccurately cited as Calendar of State Papers, but the word "Calendar" does not appear in the title and it includes much besides State papers; such a description also tends to confuse it with the eleven volumes of Henry VIII.'s State papers published in extenso in 1830-51. The series now extends to Dec., 1544, and is cited in the text as L. and P..]
[Footnote 3: Cited as Spanish Calendar; the volume completing Henry's reign was published in 1904.]
[Footnote 4: Cited as Ven. Cal.; this correspondence diminishes in importance as the reign proceeds, and also, after 1530, the documents are epitomised afresh in L. and P..]
[Footnote 5: Three series, viz., that edited by Thorp (2 vols., 1858), a second edited by Bain (2 vols., 1898) and the Hamilton Papers (2 vols., 1890-92).]
[Footnote 6: Vol. i. of the Irish Calendar, and also of the Carew MSS.; see also the Calendar of Fiants published by the Deputy-Keeper of Records for Ireland.]
[Footnote 7: Correspondance de MM. Castillon et Marillac, edited by Kaulek, and of Odet de Selve, 1888.]
[Footnote 8: The most important of these is vol. i. of Lord Salisbury's MSS.; other papers of Henry VIII.'s reign are scattered up and down the Appendices to a score and more of reports.]
[Footnote 9: E.g., Wriothesley's Chronicle, Chron. of Calais, and Greyfriars Chron.]
[Footnote 10: E.g., Leadam, Domesday of Inclosures, and Transactions, passim.]
These sources probably contain at least a million definite facts relating to the reign of Henry VIII.; and it is obvious that the task of selection has become heavy as well as invidious. Mr. Froude has expressed his concurrence in the dictum that the facts of history are like the letters of the alphabet; by selection and arrangement they can be made to spell anything, and nothing can be arranged so easily as facts. Experto crede. Yet selection is inevitable, and arrangement essential. The historian has no option if he wishes to be intelligible. He will naturally arrange his facts so that they spell what he believes to be the truth; and he must of necessity suppress those facts which he judges to be immaterial or inconsistent with the scale on which he is writing. But if the superabundance of facts compels both selection and suppression, it counsels no less a restraint of judgment. A case in a court of law is not simplified by a cloud of witnesses; and the new wealth of contemporary evidence (p. ix) does not solve the problems of Henry's reign. It elucidates some points hitherto obscure, but it raises a host of others never before suggested. In ancient history we often accept statements written hundreds of years after the event, simply because we know no better; in modern history we frequently have half a dozen witnesses giving inconsistent accounts of what they have seen with their own eyes. Dogmatism is merely the result of ignorance; and no honest historian will pretend to have mastered all the facts, accurately weighed all the evidence, or pronounced a final judgment.
The present volume does not profess to do more than roughly sketch Henry VIII.'s more prominent characteristics, outline the chief features of his policy, and suggest some reasons for the measure of success he attained. Episodes such as the divorce of Catherine of Aragon, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the determination of the relations between Church and State, would severally demand for adequate treatment works of much greater bulk than the present. On the divorce valuable light has recently been thrown by Dr. Stephan Ehses in his R?mische 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