On the divorce valuable light has recently been thrown by Dr.Stephan Ehses in his _Roemische Dokumente_.[11] The dissolution of the monasteries has been exhaustively treated from one point of view by Dr.Gasquet;[12] but an adequate and impartial history of what is called the Reformation still remains to be written.

Here it is possible to deal with (p.

x) these questions only in the briefest outline, and in so far as they were affected by Henry's personal action.

For my facts I have relied entirely on contemporary records, and my deductions from these facts are my own.

I have depended as little as possible even on contemporary historians,[13] and scarcely at all on later writers.[14] I have, however, made frequent use of Dr.Gairdner's articles in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, particularly of that on Henry VIII., the best summary extant of his career; and I owe not a little to Bishop Stubbs's two lectures on Henry VIII., which contain some fruitful suggestions as to his character.[15] A.F.