and he was a remorseless incarnation of Machiavelli’s Prince. He had an elastic conscience which was always at the beck and call of his desire, and he cared little for principle. But he had a passion for efficiency, and for the greatness of England and himself. His mind, in spite of its clinging to the outward forms of the old faith, was intensely secular; and he was as devoid of a moral sense as he was of a genuine religious temperament. His greatness consists in his practical aptitude, in his political perception, and in the self-restraint which enabled him to confine within limits tolerable to his people an insatiable appetite for power.
The original materials for Henry VIII.’s biography are practically all incorporated in the monumental Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII. (21 vols.), edited by Brewer and Gairdner and completed after fifty years’ labour in 1910. A few further details may be gleaned from such contemporary sources as Hall’s Chronicle, Cavendish’s Life of Wolsey, W. Thomas’s The Pilgrim and others; and some additions have been made to the documentary sources contained in the Letters and Papers by recent works, such as Ehses’ Römische Dokumente, and Merriman’s Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell. Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s Life and Reign of Henry VIII. (1649), while good for its time, is based upon a very partial knowledge of the sources and somewhat antiquated principles of historical scholarship. Froude’s famous portraiture of Henry is coloured by the ideas of hero-worship and history which the author imbibed from Carlyle, and the rival portraits in Lingard, R. W. Dixon’s Church History and Gasquet’s Henry VIII. and the Monasteries by strong religious feeling. A more discriminating estimate is attempted by H. A. L. Fisher in Messrs Longmans’ Political History of England, vol. v. (1906). Of the numerous paintings of Henry none is by Holbein, who, however, executed the striking chalk-drawing of Henry’s head, now at Munich, and the famous but decaying cartoon at Devonshire House. The well-known three-quarter length at Windsor, usually attributed to Holbein, is by an inferior artist. The best collection of Henry’s portraits was exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1909, and the catalogue of that exhibition contains the best description of them; several are reproduced in Pollard’s Henry VIII. (Goupil) (1902), the letterpress of which was published by Longmans in a cheaper edition (1905). Henry composed numerous state papers still extant; his only book was his Assertio septem sacramentorum contra M. Lutherum (1521), a copy of which, signed by Henry himself, is at Windsor. Several anthems composed by him are extant; and one at least, O Lord, the Maker of all Things, is still occasionally rendered in English cathedrals. (A. F. P.)
HENRY I. (1214–1217), king of Castile, son of Alphonso VIII.
of Castile, and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, daughter of Henry
II. of England, after whom he was named, was born about
1207. He was killed, while still a boy, by the fall of a tile from
a roof.
Henry II. of Trastamara (1369–1379), king of Castile, founder
of the dynasty known as “the new kings,” was the eldest son of
Alphonso XI. and of his mistress Leonora de Guzman. He
was born in 1333. His father endowed him with great lordships
in northern Spain, and made him count of Trastamara. After
the death of Alphonso XI. in 1350, Leonora was murdered to
satisfy the revenge of the king’s neglected wife. Several of the
numerous children she had borne to Alphonso were slain at
different times by Peter the Cruel, the king’s legitimate son and
successor. Henry preserved his life by submissions and by
keeping out of the king’s way. At last, after taking part in
several internal commotions, he fled to France in 1356. In
1366 he persuaded the mercenary soldiers paid off by the kings
of England and France to accompany him on an expedition to
upset Peter, who was driven out. The Black Prince having
intervened on behalf of Peter, Henry was defeated at Najera
(3rd of April 1367) and had again to flee to Aragon. When the
Black Prince was told that “the Bastard” had neither been
slain nor taken, he said that nothing had been done. And so it
turned out; for, when the Black Prince had left Spain, Henry
came back with a body of French soldiers of fortune under du
Guesclin, and drove his brother into the castle of Montiel in La
Mancha. Peter was tempted out by du Guesclin, and the half
brothers met in the Frenchman’s tent. They rushed at one
another, and Peter, the stronger man, threw Henry down, and fell
on him. One of Henry’s pages seized the king by the leg and
threw him on his back. Henry then pulled up Peter’s hauberk
and stabbed him mortally in the stomach, on the 23rd of March
1369. He reigned for ten years, with some success both in
pacifying the kingdom and in war with Portugal. But as his
title was disputed he was compelled to purchase support by vast
grants to the nobles and concessions to the cities, by which he
gained the title of El de las Mercedes—he of the largesse. Henry
was a strong ally of the French king in his wars with the English,
who supported the claims of Peter’s natural daughters. He
died on the 30th of May 1379.
Henry III. (1390–1406) king of Castile, called El Doliente,
the Sufferer, was the son of John I. of Castile and Leon, and of
his wife Beatrice, daughter of Ferdinand of Portugal. He was
born in 1379. The period of minority was exceptionally anarchical,
even for Castile, but as the cities, always the best supporters
of the royal authority, were growing in strength, Henry was able
to reduce his kingdom to obedience, and, when he took the
government into his own hands after 1393, to compel his nobles
with comparative ease to surrender the crown lands they had
seized. The meeting of the Cortes summoned by him at Madrid
in 1394 marked a great epoch in the establishment of a practically
despotic royal authority, based on the consent of the commons,
who looked to the crown to protect them against the excesses
of the nobles. Henry strengthened his position still further
by his marriage with Catherine, daughter of John of Gaunt and
of Constance, elder daughter of Peter the Cruel and Maria de
Padilla. This union combined the rival claims of the descendants
of Peter and of Henry of Trastamara. The king’s bodily weakness
limited his real capacity, and his early death on the 25th
of December 1406 cut short the promise of his reign.
Henry IV. (1453–1474), king of Castile, surnamed the Impotent,
or the Spendthrift, was the son of John II. of Castile and Leon,
and of his wife, Mary, daughter of Ferdinand I. of Aragon and
Sicily. He was born at Valladolid on the 6th of January 1425.
The surnames given to this king by his subjects are of much more
than usual accuracy. His personal character was one of mere
weakness, bodily and mental. Henry was an undutiful son, and
his reign was one long period of confusion, marked by incidents
of the most ignominious kind. He divorced his first wife Blanche
of Navarre in 1453 on the ground of “mutual impotence.”
Yet in 1468 he married Joan of Portugal, and when she bore a
daughter, first repudiated her as adulterine, and then claimed
her for his own. In 1468 he was solemnly deposed in favour
of his brother Alphonso, on whose death in the same year his
authority was again recognized. The last years of his life were
spent in vain endeavours, first to force his half-sister Isabella,
afterwards queen, to marry his favourite, the Master of Santiago,
and then to exclude her from the throne. Henry died at Madrid
on the 12th of December 1474.
HENRY I. (1008–1060), king of France, son of King Robert and
his queen, Constance of Aquitaine, and grandson of Hugh Capet,
came to the throne upon the death of his father in 1031, although
in 1027 he had been anointed king at Reims and associated
in the government with his father. His mother, who favoured
her younger son Robert, and had retired from court upon
Henry’s coronation, formed a powerful league against him, and
he was forced to take refuge with Robert II., duke of Normandy.
In the civil war which resulted, Henry was able to break up the
league of his opponents in 1032. Constance died in 1034, and
the rebel brother Robert was given the duchy of Burgundy,
thus founding that great collateral line which was to rival the
kings of France for three centuries. Henry atoned for this by
a reign marked by unceasing struggle against the great barons.
From 1033 to 1043 he was involved in a life and death contest
with those nobles whose territory adjoined the royal domains,
especially with the great house of Blois, whose count, Odo II.,
had been the centre of the league of Constance, and with the
counts of Champagne. Henry’s success in these wars was largely
due to the help given him by Robert of Normandy, but upon the
accession of Robert’s son William (the Conqueror), Normandy
itself became the chief danger. From 1047 to the year of his
death, Henry was almost constantly at war with William, who
held his own against the king’s formidable leagues and beat
back two royal invasions, in 1055 and 1058. Henry’s reign
