Cal._, ii., 104).]

[Footnote 17: There were two Dukes of Norfolk, the
second of whom was attainted, as was the Duke of
Buckingham; the fourth Duke was Henry's
brother-in-law, Suffolk.]

[Footnote 18: Empson and Dudley.]

[Footnote 19: "Sua cuique civitati religio est,
nostra nobis." Cicero, _Pro Flacco_, 28; _cf._ E.
Bourre, _Des Inequalites de condition resultant de
la religion en droit Romain_, Paris, 1895.]

[Footnote 20: _Cf._ Bishop Scory to Edward VI. in
Strype, _Eccl. Mem._, II., ii., 482; Fortescue, ed.
Plummer, pp. 137-142.]

[Footnote 21: _E.g._, _L. and P._, i., 679.]

What manner of man was this, and wherein lay the secret of his (p. 004)
strength? Is recourse necessary to a theory of supernatural agency, or
is there another and adequate solution? Was Henry's individual will of
such miraculous force that he could ride roughshod in insolent pride
over public opinion at home and abroad? Or did his personal ends,
dictated perhaps by selfish motives and ignoble passions, so far
coincide with the interests and prejudices of the politically
effective portion of his people, that they were willing to condone a
violence and tyranny, the brunt of which fell after all on the few?
Such is the riddle which propounds itself to every student of Tudor
history. It cannot be answered by paeans in honour of Henry's intensity
of will and force of character, nor by invectives against his vices
and lamentations over the woes of his victims. The miraculous
interpretation of history is as obsolete as the catastrophic theory of
geology, and the explanation of Henry's career must be sought not so
much in the study of his character as in the study of his environment,
of the conditions which made things possible to him that were not
possible before or since and are not likely to be so again.

* * * * *

It is a singular circumstance that the king who raised the personal
power of English monarchy to a height to which it had never before
attained, should have come of humble race and belonged to an upstart
dynasty. For three centuries and a half before the battle of Bosworth
one family had occupied the English throne. Even the usurpers, Henry
of Bol