levy war and prosecute his enemies with the sword, trusting so to bring them to reasonable conditions: and his loving subjects, considering it was their office and duty to support his Majesty in all just quarrels with their bodies, lands, and substance, and minding to bear with his Highness in this his most gracious and godly enterprise, calling to remembrance that certain sums of money had been advanced to his Highness by way of loan—which sums of money, as was notoriously known, his Highness had fully and wholly converted and employed[1] for the commonwealth and defence of the realm—declared that all such loans should be finally remitted and released.'
The funds being thus provided, at least for immediate necessities, it remained, since the King was going in person into France, to make arrangements for his possible death in the course of the campaign. In 1536, when he seemed to be without a legitimate child, he had been empowered to fix the succession by his will.[2] There was now a prince, and although from the present Queen there was no visible prospect of issue, yet it was necessary to provide for the possibility of further issue being born. A will, as the law stood, would have been
- ↑ 35 Henry VIII. cap. 12. I confess myself unable to see the impropriety of this proceeding, or to understand the censures which historians have so freely lavished upon it: unless, indeed, they have believed that all wars in any generation but their own are necessarily unjust, and all taxation tyranny; or have believed that the Parliament was generous to the King at the expense of a limited number of credulous and injured capitalists. On a question of taxation, the proof of contemporary complaint is the only justification of historical disapprobation.
- ↑ 28 Henry VIII. cap. 7.
