ABSTRACT
HENRY VIII was, perhaps, the most highly educated person for his time who ever sat on the throne of England. Whether Lord Herbert had any authority for saying that as a younger son Henry was originally destined for a clerical career and the throne of Canterbury, it is certain that he was educated like the most learned clerk. Under John Skelton, Bernard Andre, and others he received the best grammar school, song school, and university education of the day, in Latin, literature, rhetoric, dialectic, and music, besides knowing French, Italian, and Spanish. Hence it was that he became the excellent speaker and writer, the eminent theologian and the expert musician he is admitted to have been. Hence his zeal for learning and for education. No king ever showed more desire to promote learning and learned men, and none was more impressed and desirous of impressing on others the advantages, or did more for the advancement of education. Whether in the statutes of the realm or in the ordinances and statutes of the many foundations of his time, he was never tired of expatiating on the necessity of education and the benefit that educated men were to church and commonwealth.
