And Henry had just one strong quality that enabled him to take full advantage of this position; he seemed to lead rather than to drive, and he never wantonly challenged Parliament.

The atrocity of his acts was only equaled by their scrupulous legality.
On Henry's morals there should be less disagreement than on his mental gifts.

Holbein's faithful portraits do not belie him.

The broad-shouldered, heavy-jowled man, standing so firmly on his widely parted feet, has a certain strength of will, or rather of boundless egotism.

Francis and Charles showed themselves persecuting, and were capable of having a {279} defaulting minister or a rebel put to death; but neither Charles nor Francis, nor any other king in modern times, has to answer for the lives of so many nobles and ministers, cardinals and queens, whose heads, as Thomas More put it, he kicked around like footballs.
[Sidenote: Empson and Dudley executed, April 25, 1509] The reign began, as it ended, with political murder.