So unique was his personality, so singular his achievements, that he appears in the light of a special dispensation sent like another Attila to be the scourge of mankind, or like a second Hercules to cleanse, or at least to demolish, Augean stables.

The dictates of his will seemed as inexorable as the decrees of fate, and the history of his reign is strewn with records of the ruin of those who failed to placate his wrath.

Of the six queens he married, two he divorced, and two he beheaded.

Four English cardinals[16] lived in his reign; one perished by the executioner's axe, one escaped it by absence, and a third (p.

002) by a timely but natural death.