ress of the
Reformation in England, are perhaps those whose fleeting prominence was
most pregnant of good or evil for the nation and for civilisation at
large, because they personified causes infinitely more important than
themselves.

The careers of these unhappy women have almost invariably been considered,
nevertheless, from a purely personal point of view. It is true that the
many historians of the Reformation have dwelt upon the rivalry between
Katharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, and their strenuous efforts to gain
their respective ends; but even in their case their action has usually
been regarded as individual in impulse, instead of being, as I believe it
was, prompted or thwarted by political forces and considerations, of which
the Queens themselves were only partially conscious. The lives of Henry's
Consorts have been related as if each of the six was an isolated
phenomenon that had by chance attracted the desire of a lascivious despot,
and in her turn had been deposed when his eye had fallen, equally
fortuitously, upon another woman who pleased his errant fancy better. This
view I believe to be a superficial and misleading one. I regard Henry
himself not as the far-seeing statesman he is so often depicted for us,
sternly resolved from the first to free his country from the yoke of Rome,
and pressing forward through a lifetime with his eyes firmly fixed upon
the goal of England's religious freedom; but rather as a weak, vain,
boastful man, the plaything of his passions, which were artfully made use
of by rival parties to forward religious and political ends in the
struggle of giants that ended in the Reformation. No influence that could
be exercised over the King was neglected by those who sought to lead him,
and least of all that which appealed to his uxoriousness; and I hope to
show in the text of this book how each of his wives in turn was but an
instrument of politicians, intended to sway the King on one side or the
other. Regarded from this point of view, the lives of these six unhappy
Queens assume an importance in national history which cannot be accorded
to them if they are considered in the usual light as the victims of a
strong, lustful tyrant, each one standing apart, and in her turn simply
the darling solace of his hours of dalliance. Doubtless the latter point
of view provides to the historian a wider scope for the description of
picturesque ceremonial and gorgeous millinery, as well as for patheti