200 REMARKS ON THE SUPPOSITION THAT HENRY VII I. WAS 



His mental constitution, his spiritual taste, and the spiritual atinos-' 

 phere that he was daily breathing, enabled Henry to lead, and not 

 to follow, his people on each and all of these debateable points. To^ 

 be further convinced that Henry was entitled to the authorship of a 

 treatise which Robertson justly says " is not destitute of polemical 

 ingenuity and acuteness,"* it may be necessary to add that Polydore 

 Virgil,t Speed,:}: Herbert, IT Holinshed,§ Strype,|| and other histo- 

 rians, have formed a correspondent judgment. The evidence ap- 

 pears to them so clear and decisive that he was the writer of the 

 Assertio, that they were induced to speak of this fact in a way which 

 shewed there was no room left, in their minds, for sc^ticism on the 

 subject. Burnett himself admits** that he had seen a copy of The 

 Necessary Erudiliofi of a Christian Man, with a variety of interli- 

 neations by the king ; and he mentions, also, other documents 

 which had received the king's amendments, and jiarticularly a 

 Latin definition of the catholic church. His alterations in his coro- 

 nation oath, and correcting and finishing touches in his royal let- 

 ters, commissions, speeches, acts of Parliament, convocation regula- 

 tions, and proclamations, have been noticed by several writers.tt 

 But Mr. Hallam, though by no means disposed to listen to the too 

 common depreciation of Henry's ecclesiastical learning, yet supposes 

 '^ that he was assisted in his work by some who had more command of 

 the Latin language." J J That prince of Latin scholars, Erasmus, how- 

 ever, declares that Henry had attained to great excellence therein, and 

 to confirm this assertion, produces a specimen of his style of Latin 

 composition, from which I must infer his capability to write the 

 Assertio, for it shews his very great proficiency in copying the gene- 



• The Reign of Charles F., vol. ii., p. 125. The first also of our most 

 popular Historians, need I add the name of Hume, remarks, that if allow- 

 ance be made for the subject and the age, the performance does no discredit 

 to his capacity. — Hist, of Engl, vol. iv., p. 3G. Both of them also might 

 with great propriety have commended the elegance of its latinity in these 

 words of Luther : "inter omnes qui contra se scripti sunt latinissimum," but 

 who at the same time forgets not, in his low scurrility, to designate it as 

 stolidissimum et turpissimum. 



t Angl Hist., p. 664. 



X The History of Great Britain, p. 79. 



f Life of Henry VI T. p. 79. 



§ Chronicles of England, ^c, vol. ii. p. 872. 



11 Eccles Mem., vol. i. p. 33. 



•* Hist, of the Reform., vol. i., p. 33. 



•f-f See Davics's A theme Britannica, vol. ii. p. 18. 



XX Const. Hist., vol. i., note, p. 64. 



