Note 478 — Chapter II · (continued 3)
Reading edition
Hallam, who thoroughly understood Henry the Eighth, adds in a note (Const. Hist. i. 36); “After all, Henry was every whit as good a king and man as Francis I, whom there are still some, on the other side of the channel, servile enough to extol; not in the least more tyrannical and sanguinary, and of better faith towards his neighbours.” The famous letter of Francis about all being lost except honour is now disbelieved, but it is characteristic all the same. I have said something about this in the Fortnightly Review, December, 1876.
It is singular enough that in 1546 some reader of the “Normanniæ Nova Chronica,” after the entries about the misdeeds of William Rufus in 1098, bursts out (p. 9) into a fierce invective against the vices and oppressions of Francis the First, as far surpassing those of Rufus. If men murmured in 1098, how much more reason had they to murmur in 1546.