.

(p.

001) THE EARLY TUDORS.
In the whole range of English history there is no monarch whose character has been more variously depicted by contemporaries or more strenuously debated by posterity than the "majestic lord who broke the bonds of Rome".

To one historian an inhuman embodiment of cruelty and vice, to another a superhuman incarnation of courage, wisdom and strength of will, Henry VIII.

has, by an almost universal consent, been placed above or below the grade of humanity.