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 N