than does his daughter. No monarch occupies so strange a position in
history as Henry VIII. A sincere Catholic, so far as doctrine went, and
winning from the Pope himself the title of Defender of the Faith
because of his writing against the grand heresiarch of the age, he
nevertheless became the chief instrument of the Reformation, the man
and the sovereign without whose aid the reform movement of the
sixteenth century would have failed as deplorably as the reform
movements of the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries had failed. A
legitimate king, though the heir of a successful usurpation, and
holding the royal prerogative as high as any man who ever grasped the
sceptre, he was the tool of the mightiest of revolutionists, and poured
out more royal and noble blood than ever flowed at the command of all
the Jacobins and Democrats that have warred against thrones and
dynasties and aristocracies. He is abhorred of Catholics, and
Protestants do not love him; for he pulled down the old religious
fabric of his kingdom, and furnished to the Reformers a permanent
standing-place from which to move the world, while at the same time he
slaughtered Protestants as ruthlessly as ever they were disposed of by
any ruler of the Houses of Austria and Valois. Reeking with blood, and
apparently insensible to anything like a humane feeling, he was yet
popular with the masses of his subjects, and no small share of that
popularity has descended to our time, in which he is admired by the
unreflecting because of the boldness and dash of his actions and on
account of the consequences of those actions, so that he is commonly
known as "bluff King Hal," a title that speaks more as to the general
estimate of his character than would a whole volume of professed
personal panegyric, or of elaborate defence of his policy and his
deeds. But this is not sufficient for those persons who would have
reasons for their historical belief, and who seek to have a solid
foundation for the faith they feel in the real greatness of the second