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Anyone who has had to read in the history of the Tudor Age finds his attention turned, sooner or later, to the person of King Henry VII. So much began with him—much that lasted, and much that did not last. But who was he that began it all? There are studies: Miss Temperley’s learned and lucid account of the reign, Dr. Busch’s even more learned and a little less lucid. Of shorter articles the most illuminating are those by Dr. Conyers Read and Dr. C. H. Williams. Even so, the reader is left a little defeated.

To have some notion of Elizabeth, Mary, and Henry VIII, and none of their father and grandfather, is merely tiresome. This book is a personal effort to avoid that tiresomeness. The mere difficulty of discovering Henry as a person makes him attractive, and the unspecialized reader may find matter of interest—such as the translation of Prince Henry’s protest against his marriage with Katherine of Aragon—and a more artistic interest in the picture of a King, who, having built a great edifice of monarchy, and peering about it with a candle to provide against cracks, set light to a train of powder that shattered it. Francis Bacon—and wherever Francis Bacon went future travellers have to learn from him—said of Henry VII that his nature and his fortune so ran together that no man could distinguish between them. The full distinction (which is what all biography tries to effect) may perhaps never be drawn. This is at least a conjecture.

If I say that the responsibility for the book is partly Mr. Arthur Barker’s, it is only to make an opportunity of offering a gratitude for a continued kindness and goodwill not only in relation to King Henry VII but in many incidents of the last few years.