In other words Henry had more of intellect and less of passion than his grandfather. Edward’s early and secret marriage was no proof of passion. Early marriages are not the monopoly of any temperament; sometimes they are the product of the mere caprice, or the self-will and the feeble restraint of the passionless, and sometimes the product of the raw and immature judgment of the passionate. Edward deserves our pity, for he had everything against him; he had no models, no ideals, no education, no training. The occupation of princes at that time brought good neither to themselves nor anyone else. They went up and down the country to slay and be slain; to take down from high places the severed heads of one worthless dynasty and put up the heads of another dynasty equally worthless.

The eighth Henry derived nothing from his father—the seventh,—nothing of good, nothing of evil. One of the most curious errors of a purely literary judgment on men and families is seen in the use of the epithet “Tudor.” We hear for example of the “Tudor” blood shewing itself in one, of the “Tudor” spirit flashing out in another. Whether Henry VII. was a Tudor or not we may not now stop to inquire. Henry VIII. we have seen took wholly after his Yorkist mother. Of Henry’s children, Mary was a repetition of her dark dwarfish Spanish mother; the poor lad Edward, whether a Seymour or a Yorkist, was certainly not a Tudor. The big comely pink Elizabeth was her father in petticoats—her father in body, her father in mind. Henry VIII. in fact while Tudor in name was Lancastrian in dynasty, and Yorkist in blood. No two kings, no two men indeed could well have been more unlike, bodily, mentally, and morally, than the two Henrys—father and son. The eighth was communicative, confiding, open, frank; the seventh was silent, reserved, mysterious. The son was active, busy, practical, conspicuous; the father, although not indolent, and not unpractical, was nevertheless quiet, dreamy, reflective, self-restrained, and unobtrusive. One was prodigal, martial, popular; the other was prudent, peaceful, steadfast, and unpopular. He is said indeed to have been parsimonious, but the least sympathetic of his historians confess that he was generous in his rewards for service, that his charities were numerous, and that his state ceremonies were marked by fitting splendour. Henry VIII. changed (or destroyed) his ministers, his bishops, his wives, and his measures also, many times. Henry VII. kept his wife—perverse and mischievous as she was,—till she died; kept his ministers and bishops till they died; kept his policy and his peace till he died himself.

Henry VII. is noteworthy mainly for being but little noticed. The scribe of whatever time sees around him only that which is conspicuous and exceptional and often for the most part foolish, and therefore the documents of this Henry’s reign are but few in number. The occupants of high places who are careful and prudent are rarely popular. His unpopularity was moreover helped on in various ways. Dynastic policy thrust upon him a wife of the busy unimpassioned temperament—a woman in whom deficient emotion and sympathy and affection were not compensated by any high qualities; a woman who was restless, mischievous, vain, intriguing, and fond of influence. Elizabeth of York had all the bad qualities of her father and her son and had very few of their good ones. A King Henry in feminine disguise without his virtues was not likely to love or be loved. Domestic sourness is probably a not infrequent cause of taciturnity and mystery and seclusion in the characters of both men and women. It was well that Henry was neither angry nor morose. It says much for him moreover that while he was the object of ceaseless intrigue and hostility and rancour he yet never gave way to cynicism or revenge or cruelty.

With a tolerably happy marriage, an assenting and a helpful nobility, and an unassailed throne, it is difficult to put a limit to the good which Henry VII. might have done and which it lay in him to do. As it was he smoothed the way for enterprise and discovery, for the printing press and the new learning. He was the first of English monarchs who befriended education—using the word in its modern sense. It is curious that the acutest changes in our history—the death of a decrepit mediævalism, the birth of the young giant modernism—happened in our so-called sleepiest reign. Surely the “quiet” father had a smaller share of popular applause than he deserved, and as surely the “dashing” son a much larger share. But in all periods, old and new, popularity should give us pause: yesterday, for example, inquisitors were knelt to, hailed with acclamation and pelted with flowers, and heretics were spat upon, hissed at, and burnt, but to-day’s flowers are for the heretics and the execrations are for the inquisitors.

Thus then in all characteristics—intellectual, moral and bodily—Henry VIII. must be placed in the unimpassioned class. It may be noted too in passing that all the portraits of Henry show us a feeble growth of hair on the face and signs of a convex back—convex vertically and convex transversely. We do not see the back it is true, but we see both the head and the shoulders carried forwards and the chin held down towards the chest—held indeed so far downward that the neck seems greatly shortened. It is interesting to observe the pose of the head and neck and shoulders in the portraits of noted personages. The forward head and shoulders, the downward chin (the products of a certain spinal configuration) are seen in undoubtedly different characters but characters which nevertheless have much in common: they are seen in all the portraits of Napoleon I. and, although not quite so markedly, in those of our own General Gordon. Napoleon and Gordon were unlike in many ways, and the gigantic self-importance and self-seeking of Napoleon were absent in the simpler and finer character. In other ways they were much alike. Both were brave active busy men; but both were fitful, petulant, censorius, difficult to please, and—which is very characteristic—both although changeable were nevertheless self-willed and self-confident. Both were devoid of the deeper passions.

THE WIVES QUESTION.

NOTE IV.

It is affirmed that no one save a monster of lust would marry six wives—a monster of lust being of course a man of over-mastering passion. It might be asked, in passing, seeing that six wives is the sign of a perfect “monster” if three wives make a semi-monster? Pompey had five wives, was he five-sixths of a monster. To be serious however in this wife question, it will probably never be possible to say with exactness how much in Henry’s conduct was due to religious scruples; how much to the urgent importunity (state-born importunity) of advisers and subjects; how much to the then existing confusion of the marriage laws; how much to misfortune and coincidence; how much to folly and caprice; how much to colossal self-importance, and how much to “unbounded license.”

History broadly hints that great delusions, like great revolutions, may overcome—especially if the overcoming be not too sudden—both peoples and persons without their special wonder. In such delusions and such revolutions the actors and the victims are alike often unconscious actors and unconscious victims. Neither Henry nor his people dreamt that the great marriage question of the sixteenth century would excite the ridicule of all succeeding centuries. Luther did not imagine that his efforts would help to divide religious Europe into two permanently hostile camps. Robespierre did not suspect