After the conversation was over he dismissed him before them all, drinking to Colet's health and saying 'Let every man have his own doctor, this is mine'." The picture is pleasing evidence of Henry's superiority to some vulgar passions.

Another instance of freedom from popular prejudice, which he shared with his father, was his encouragement of foreign scholars, diplomatists and merchants; not a few of the ablest of Tudor agents were of alien birth.

He was therefore intensely annoyed at the rabid fury against them that broke out in the riots of Evil May Day; yet he pardoned all the ringleaders but one.

Tolerance and (p.

135) clemency were no small part of his character in early manhood;[375] and together with his other mental and physical graces, his love of learning and of the society of learned men, his magnificence and display, his supremacy in all the sports that were then considered the peculiar adornment of royalty, they contributed scarcely less than Wolsey's genius for diplomacy and administration to England's renown.
"In short," wrote Chieregati to Isabella d'Este in 1517, "the wealth and civilisation of the world are here; and those who call the English barbarians appear to me to render themselves such.