Of this fact there is ample evidence at hand, though it would be beside the mark were I to discuss it at the present moment. Unimpeachable contemporary evidence on this subject is afforded by the despatches of Chapuys to the Emperor Charles V., recently published in the volume of State papers for this period (1530–1).
Cromwell did a great work, and narrowly missed doing a far greater. Yet the outcome of his work, as of every man's work, was greatly modified by the nature of the material with which he performed it; and one of the great modifying agents was the personal character of Henry VIII. I will not enter here into the interminable dispute as to how far a great man modifies his age, and how far he is himself modified by it; but I think it must be admitted that, in the whole history of our own country at least, there has been no single man who has fixed so strongly or for so long a time upon its institutions, its laws, its history, its whole subsequent national life, the impress of his own vices, virtues, and even caprices as King Henry VIII. There is no man, also, of whose character more divergent estimates have been formed. It is, indeed, a character most difficult to estimate. He was not in any worthy sense a great man, for there was a vein of pettiness as well as a vein of selfishness running through his character from first to last; but he was a man endowed with great talents and versatility, considerable learning, and withal with a vast amount of courage and force of character of an irregular kind, which made him always a powerful force, but one the direction of which could not be calculated beforehand. We should never forget, in trying to unravel the character of Henry VIII., that the son of Henry VII. was also the grandson of Edward IV. He seems to have inherited some of the virtues and almost all the
