ABSTRACT
THE reign of Henry VIII opened in a blaze of glory.Contemporaries were ready to be impressed; Henry VIIhad never been an inspiring figure, and in his later yearsorder having been restored-a cold, calculating, and cautious government held little to attract the livelier members of a nation which remembered an heroic past. Legitimate demands Vlere termed exaction, and a foreign policy based on matrimony rather than war roused no enthusiasm. By contrast the new king, not quite eighteen when he ascended the throne on 21 April 1509, promised wonders. In his young days, Henry was a handsome giant \vith a predilection for athletics; he hunted and shot, played tennis and wrestled, with the best of them. In addition he was intelligent, a capable musician, quite well-seen in theology, a patron of the arts and learning. Foreign ambassadors as well as his own subjects praised him to the skies. Parts of this chorus may be discounted as the sort of exercise in Ciceronian Latin of which the age was fond, and as the kind of adulation which a king-conscious generation offered to a youthful monarch as a matter of course. But scepticism can be taken too far. Undoubtedly Henry was an impressive figure; he remained one throughout a long reign even in later days when muscle had turned to fat. Undoubtedly, too, his mental powers were considerable. At eighteen his character was yet forming, and precisely what his abilities were can only be decided when his life's work has been considered. There is no doubt, however, that many men both high and low, both commonplace and exceptional, expected great things. A month after his father's death, Henry fulfilled his dying wish by marrying Catherine of Aragon, six years older than himself. The scene seemed set for a happy and prosperous reign.
