The New World (Complete Edition). Winston Churchill

himself for death.” The King took the grim news with fortitude. Urged to summon the Archbishop, he replied that first he would “take a little sleep; and then, as I feel myself, I will advise upon the matter.” While he slept Hertford and Paget walked the gallery outside, scheming and contriving how to secure their power. Shortly before midnight the King awoke. He sent for Cranmer. When he came Henry was too weak to speak; he could only stretch out his hand to Cranmer. In a few minutes the Supreme Head had ceased to breathe.

      Henry’s rule saw many advances in the growth and character of the English state, but it is a hideous blot upon his record that the reign should be widely remembered for its executions. Two Queens, two of the King’s chief Ministers, a saintly bishop, numerous abbots, monks, and many ordinary folk who dared to resist the royal will were done to death. Almost every member of the nobility in whom royal blood ran perished on the scaffold at Henry’s command. Roman Catholic and Calvinist alike were burnt for heresy and religious treason. These persecutions, inflicted in solemn manner by officers of the law, perhaps in the presence of the Council or even the King himself, form a brutal sequel to the bright promise of the Renaissance. The sufferings of devout men and women among the faggots, the use of torture, and the savage penalties imposed for even paltry crimes, stand in repellent contrast to the enlightened principles of humanism. Yet his subjects did not turn from Henry in loathing. He succeeded in maintaining order amid the turmoil of Europe without army or police, and he imposed on England a discipline which was not attained elsewhere. A century of religious wars went by without Englishmen taking up arms to fight their fellow countrymen for their faith. We must credit Henry’s reign with laying the basis of sea-power, with a revival of Parliamentary institutions, with giving the English Bible to the people, and above all with strengthening a popular monarchy under which succeeding generations worked together for the greatness of England while France and Germany were racked with internal strife.