[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.
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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. That he was fond of sports, strong and in early life physically attractive, is well attested. The principal evidences of his learning are the fulsome testimony of Erasmus and his work against Luther. But it has been lately shown that Erasmus was capable of passing off, as the work of a powerful patron, compositions which he knew to be written by Latin secretaries; and the royal author of the Defence of the Seven Sacraments, which evinces but mediocre talent, received much unacknowledged assistance.
If judged by his foreign relations Henry's statesmanship was unsuccessful. His insincerity and perfidy often overreached themselves, and he was often {278} deceived. Moreover, he was inconstant, pursuing no worthy end whatever. England was by her insular location and by the nearly equal division of power on the Continent between France and the emperor, in a wonderfully safe and advantageous place. But, so far was Henry from using this gift of fortune, that he seems to have acted only on caprice.