PREFACE. xv 



ful industry. It is a striking illustration of the fact, 

 that economical history has no break in its chain of 

 causes, that we are still engaged with a problem which 

 had its remote but certain beginnings in the wanton- 

 ness of Henry the Eighth, and in the rapacity of that 

 aristocratic camarilla of adventurers which he planted 

 round the throne of his infant son. 



JAMES E. THOROLD ROGERS. 



OXFORD, 

 December 29, 1881. 



* : # * The reader will find some errata in these two 

 volumes. Most of them are obvious, and are some of 

 those typographical errors which no pains will exclude. 

 But none in the third volume have been of such a 

 kind as to preclude my drawing the inferences of the 

 fourth, for nearly every figure has been of use to me. 



