Money had many times the purchasing power that it has in 1920.
[2] The word, meaning "prayer," indicated, like the English "benevolence" and the French "don gratuit," that the tax had once been voluntarily granted.
[3] The dollar, or Thaler, is worth 75 cents, intrinsically.
{277} CHAPTER VI ENGLAND SECTION 1.

HENRY VIII AND THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

1509-47 [Sidenote: Henry VIII, 1509-47] "The heavens laugh, the earth exults; all is full of milk and honey and nectar." With these words the accession of Henry VIII was announced to Erasmus by his pupil and the king's tutor, Lord Mountjoy.

This lover of learning thought the new monarch would be not only Octavus but Octavius, fostering letters and cherishing the learned.

There was a general feeling that a new era was beginning and a new day dawning after the long darkness of the Middle Age with its nightmares of Black Deaths and Peasants' Revolts and, worst of all, the civil war that had humbled England's power and racked her almost to pieces within.
It was commonly believed that the young prince was a paragon: handsome, athletic, learned, generous, wise, and merciful.