A case in a court of law is not simplified by a cloud of witnesses; and the new wealth of contemporary evidence (p.

ix) does not solve the problems of Henry's reign.

It elucidates some points hitherto obscure, but it raises a host of others never before suggested.

In ancient history we often accept statements written hundreds of years after the event, simply because we know no better; in modern history we frequently have half a dozen witnesses giving inconsistent accounts of what they have seen with their own eyes.
Dogmatism is merely the result of ignorance; and no honest historian will pretend to have mastered all the facts, accurately weighed all the evidence, or pronounced a final judgment.
The present volume does not profess to do more than roughly sketch Henry VIII.'s more prominent characteristics, outline the chief features of his policy, and suggest some reasons for the measure of success he attained.

Episodes such as the divorce of Catherine of Aragon, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the determination of the relations between Church and State, would severally demand for adequate treatment works of much greater bulk than the present.