culty. It is two centuries and a half since
Lord Herbert produced his _Life and Reign of Henry VIII_.[1] The late
Mr. Brewer, in his prefaces to the first four volumes of the _Letters
and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII._, published under the direction
of the Master of the Rolls, dealt adequately with the earlier portion
of Henry's career. But Mr. Brewer died when his work reached the year
1530; his successor, Dr. James Gairdner, was directed to confine his
prefaces to the later volumes within the narrowest possible limits;
and students of history were deprived of the prospect of a
satisfactory account of Henry's later years from a writer of
unrivalled learning.

[Footnote 1: The edition cited in the text is that
of 1672.]

Henry's reign, from 1530 onwards, has been described by the late Mr.
Froude in one of the most brilliant and fascinating masterpieces of
historical literature, a work which still holds the field in popular,
if not in scholarly, estimation. But Mr. Froude does not begin until
Henry's reign was half over, until his character had been determined
by influences and events which lie outside the scope of Mr. (p. vii)
Froude's inquiry. Moreover, since Mr. Froude wrote, a flood of light
has been thrown on the period by the publication of the above-mentioned
_Letters and Papers_;[2] they already comprise a summary of between
thirty and forty thousand documents in twenty thousand closely printed
pages, and, when completed, will constitute the most magnificent body
of materials for the history of any reign, ancient or modern, English
or foreign. Simultaneously there have appeared a dozen volumes
containing the State papers preserved at Simancas,[3] Vienna and
Brussels and similar series comprising the correspondence relating to
Venice,[4] Scotland[5] and Ireland;[6] while the despatches of French
ambassadors have been published under the auspices of the Ministry for
Foreign Affairs at Paris.[7] Still further information has been (p. viii)
provided by the labours of the Historical Manuscripts Commission,[8]
the Camden,[9] the Royal Historical,[10] and other learned Societies.

[Footnote 2: This series, unlike the _Calendars of
State Papers_, includes documents not preserved at
the Record Office; it is often inaccurately cited
as _Calendar of State Papers_, but the word