nance of peace and good order in the commonweal."[177]

These principles do really appear to have determined Henry's conduct in his
earlier years. His social administration we have partially seen in the
previous chapter. He had more than once been tried with insurrection, which
he had soothed down without bloodshed, and extinguished in forgiveness; and
London long recollected the great scene which followed "evil May-day,"
1517, when the apprentices were brought down to Westminster Hall to receive
their pardons. There had been a dangerous riot in the streets, which might
have provoked a mild government to severity; but the king contented himself
with punishing the five ringleaders, and four hundred other prisoners,
after being paraded down the streets in white shirts with halters round
their necks, were dismissed with an admonition, Wolsey weeping as he
pronounced it.[178]

It is certain that if, as I said, he had died before the divorce was
mooted, Henry VIII., like that Roman Emperor said by Tacitus to have been
_consensu omnium dignus imperii nisi imperasset_, would have been
considered by posterity as formed by Providence for the conduct of the
Reformation, and his loss would have been deplored as a perpetual calamity.
We must allow him, therefore, the benefit of his past career, and be
careful to remember it, when interpreting his later actions. Not many men
would have borne themselves through the same trials with the same
integrity; but the circumstances of those trials had not tested the true
defects in his moral constitution. Like all princes of the Plantagenet
blood, he was a person of a most intense and imperious will. His impulses,
in general nobly directed, had never known contradiction; and late in life,
when his character was formed, he was forced into collision with
difficulties with which the experience of discipline had not fitted him to
contend. Education had done much for him, but his nature required more
correction than his position had permitted, whilst unbroken prosperity and
early independence of control had been his most serious misfortune. He had
capacity, if his training had been equal to it, to be one of the greatest
of men. With all his faults about him, he was still perhaps the greatest of
his contemporaries; and the man best able of all living Englishmen to
govern England, had been set to do it by the conditions of his birth.

The other person whose previous history we have to ascertain is o