rd for legal forms, wars of religion might have desolated the land
and swept away thousands of lives. London saw many a hideous sight in
Henry's reign, but it had no cause to envy the Catholic capitals which
witnessed the sack of Rome and the massacre of St. Bartholomew; for
all Henry's iniquities, multiplied manifold, would not equal the
volume of murder and sacrilege wrought at Rome in May, 1527, or at
Paris in August, 1572.[1178] From such orgies of violence and crime,
England was saved by the strong right arm and the iron will of her
Tudor king. "He is," said Wolsey after his fall,[1179] "a prince of
royal courage, and he hath a princely heart; and rather than he (p. 440)
will miss or want part of his appetite he will hazard the loss of
one-half of his kingdom." But Henry discerned more clearly than Wolsey
the nature of the ground on which he stood; by accident, or by design,
his appetite conformed to potent and permanent forces; and, wherein it
did not, he was, in spite of Wolsey's remark, content to forgo its
gratification. It was not he, but the Reformation, which put the
kingdoms of Europe to the hazard. The Sphinx propounded her riddle to
all nations alike, and all were required to answer. Should they cleave
to the old, or should they embrace the new? Some pressed forward,
others held back, and some, to their own confusion, replied in dubious
tones. Surrounded by faint hearts and fearful minds, Henry VIII.
neither faltered nor failed. He ruled in a ruthless age with a
ruthless hand, he dealt with a violent crisis by methods of blood and
iron, and his measures were crowned with whatever sanction worldly
success can give. He is Machiavelli's _Prince_ in action. He took his
stand on efficiency rather than principle, and symbolised the
prevailing of the gates of Hell. The spiritual welfare of England
entered into his thoughts, if at all, as a minor consideration; but,
for her peace and material comfort it was well that she had as her
King, in her hour of need, a man, and a man who counted the cost, who
faced the risk, and who did with his might whatsoever his hand found
to do.

[Footnote 1178: In three months of "peace" in 1568
over ten thousand persons are said to have been
slain in France (_Cambr. Mod. Hist._, ii., 347). At
least a hundred thousand were butchered in the
Peasants' War in Germany in 1525-6, and thirty