Note (back) — Chapter XII

All these circumstances, real and alleged, would be quite convincing as reasons for Henry's failure; but they are singularly inconclusive as explanations of his success, of the facts that his people did not rise and depose him, that no Spanish Armada disgorged its host on English shores, and that, for all the papal thunderbolts, Henry died quietly in his bed fourteen years later, and was buried with a pomp and respect to which Popes themselves were little accustomed. He may have stood alone in his confidence of success, and in his penetration through these appearances into the real truth of the situation behind. That, from a purely political or non-moral point of view, is his chief title to greatness. He knew from the beginning what he could do; he had counted the cost and calculated the risks; and, writes Russell in August, 1533, "I never saw the King merrier than he is now".[865] As early as March, 1531, he told Chapuys that if the Pope issued 10,000 excommunications he would not care a straw for them.[866] When the papal nuncio first hinted at excommunication and a papal appeal to the secular arm, Henry declared that he cared nothing for either.[867] He would open the eyes of princes, he said, and show them how small was really the power of the Pope;[868] and "when the Pope had done what he liked on his side, Henry would do what he liked here".[869] That threat, at least, he fulfilled with a vengeance. He did not fear the Spaniards; they might come, he said (as they did in 1588), but perhaps they might not return.[870] England, he told his subjects, was not conquerable, so long as she remained united;[871] and the patriotic outburst with which Shakespeare closes "King John" is but an echo and an expansion of the words of Henry VIII.