e circumstances under which
it was contracted, the hesitation of the council, the reluctance of the
pope, the alarms and vacillation of his father, we may readily perceive how
scruples of conscience must have arisen in a soil well prepared to receive
them--how the loss of his children must have appeared as a judicial
sentence on a violation of the Divine law. The divorce presented itself to
him as a moral obligation, when national advantage combined with
superstition to encourage what he secretly desired; and if he persuaded
himself that those public reasons, without which, in truth and fact, he
would not have stirred, were those that alone were influencing him, the
self-deceit was of a kind with which the experience of most men will
probably have made them too familiar. In those rare cases where inclination
coincides with right, we cannot be surprised if mankind should mislead
themselves with the belief that the disinterested motives weigh more with
them than the personal.

A remarkable and very candid account of Henry's feelings is furnished by
himself in one of the many papers of instructions[126] which he forwarded
to his secretary at Rome. Hypocrisy was not among his faults, and in
detailing the arguments which were to be laid before the pope he has
exhibited a more complete revelation of what was passing in himself--and
indirectly of his own nature in its strength and weakness--than he perhaps
imagined while he wrote. The despatch is long and perplexed; the style that
of a man who saw his end clearly, and was vexed with the intricate and
dishonest trifling with which his way was impeded, and which nevertheless
he was struggling to tolerate. The secretary was to say, "that the King's
Highness having above all other things his intent and mind ever founded
upon such respect unto Almighty God as to a Christian and catholic prince
doth appertain, knowing the fragility and uncertainty of all earthly
things, and how displeasant unto God, how much dangerous to the soul, how
dishonourable and damageable to the world it were to prefer vain and
transitory things unto those that be perfect and certain, hath in this
cause, doubt, and matter of matrimony, whereupon depend so high and
manifold consequences of greatest importance, always cast from his conceit
the darkness and blundering confusion of falsity, and specially hath had
and put before his eyes the light and shining brightness of truth; upon
which foundation as a most su