The distinguished author shows that in his brutality, his love of
letters, his opposition to Luther, his vacillation in religious
opinions, King Henry reflects with remarkable fidelity the age in which
he lived, both in its contrasts and its inconsistencies. "It is only the
previous history of England which can explain all the contradictions
exhibited in his conduct,--which can explain how he could be rapacious
yet sometimes generous, the Defender of the Faith yet under sentence of
excommunication, a burner of heretics yet a heretic himself, the pope's
advocate yet the pope's greatest enemy, a bloodthirsty tyrant yet the
best friend to liberty of thought in religion, an enthusiast yet a
turncoat, a libertine and yet all but a Puritan. He was sensual because
his forefathers had been sensual from time immemorial, rough in speech
and action because there had been but few men in Britain who had been
otherwise since the Romans abandoned the island. He was superstitious
and credulous because few were philosophical or gifted with intellectual
courage. Yet he had, what was possessed by his contemporaries, a faint
and intermittent thirst for knowledge, of which he himself hardly knew
the meaning." Henry was shrewd, tenacious of purpose, capricious and
versatile. In spite of his unrestrained indulgences and his monstrous
claims of power, which, be it remembered, he was able to enforce, and
notwithstanding any other vices or faults that may be truthfully charged
against him, he was, on the whole, a popular king.
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