The notion that lust supplies the key to his marriages and their
consequences is utterly ridiculous. The most dissolute of English
kings was content, and more than content, with one wife. On the
other hand, Froude does at least give a clue when he suggests that
these frequent marriages were political moves. A female sovereign
reigning in her own right had never been known in England, and up to
the birth of Jane Seymour's son Edward the whole kingdom
passionately desired that there should be a Prince of Wales. Edward
himself was but a sickly child, and was not expected to live even
for the short span of his actual career. Credulous indeed must they
be who maintain the innocence either of Anne Boleyn or of Katharine
Howard, and there seems small use in holding with the learned Father
Gasquet that Anne was not guilty of the offences imputed to her, but
had done something too bad to be mentioned on a trial for incest. It
is a question of evidence, and the evidence is lost. But the Grand
Jury which presented Anne was respectable, the Court which convicted
her was distinguished, and neither she nor any of her paramours
denied their guilt on the scaffold. Simple adultery in a queen was
capital then, if indeed it be not capital now. In an ordinary
husband Henry's conduct would have been revolting. It is not
attractive in him. Stubbs pleads that we cannot judge him, and
abandons the attempt in despair.

--
* Oxford, 1720.
--

As he rejects with equal decision both the Roman Catholic picture
and Froude's, he only puts us all to ignorance again. Froude is at
least intelligible.