emperor of Germany in 1056, styled the Great, was memorable for his quarrels with pope Gregory II., whom at one time he deposed, for having presumed to judge his sovereign; but at another, dreading the effects of the papal anathemas, he had the weakness to submit to the most humiliating personal solicitations and penances to obtain absolution; which impolitic measure increased the power of the Pope, and alienated the affections of his subjects; thus circumstanced, he reassumed the hero, but too late; marched with an army to Rome, expelled Gregory, deposed him, and set up another pope. Gregory died soon after; but Urban II. and Paschal II., successively, excited his ambitious sons, Conrad and Henry, to rebel against him, and the latter was crowned emperor by the title of Henry V. in 1106; and he had the inhumanity to arrest his father, and to deprive him, not only of all his dignities, but even of the necessaries of life. The unfortunate Henry IV. was reduced to such extremities (after having fought 62 battles in defence of the German empire), that he solicited the bishop of Spire to grant him an underchaunter's place in his cathedral, but was refused. He died the same year at Liege, aged 55, a martyr to the ignorance and superstition of the age, and to his own blind confidence in favourites and mistresses.

HENRY IV., king of France (in 1589) and Navarre, justly styled the Great, was the son of Anthony de Bourbon, chief of the branch of Bourbon (so called from a fief of that name which fell to them by marriage with the heiresses of the estate). His mother was the daughter of Henry d'Aibert, king of Navarre; a woman of a masculine genius; intrepid, simple, and rustic in her manners, but deeply versed in politics, and a zealous Protestant. Foreseeing that her party would want such a protector (for her husband was a weak indolent prince), she undertook the care of the education of the young hero: his diet was coarse; his clothes neat, but plain; he always went bare-headed; she sent him to school with the other children of the same age, and accustomed him to climb the rocks and neighbouring mountains, according to the custom of the country. He was born in 1553; and in 1569, the 16th year of his age, he was declared the Defender and Chief of the Protestants at Rochelle. The peace of St Germain, concluded in 1570, recalled the lords in the Protestant interest to court; and in 1572 Henry was married to Margaret de Valois, sister to Charles IX., king of France. It was in the midst of the rejoicings for these nuptials that the horrid massacre of Paris took place. Henry was reduced, by this infernal stroke of false policy, to the alternative of changing his religion or being put to death: he chose the former, and was detained prisoner of state three years. In 1587 he made his escape; put himself at the head of the Huguenot party, exposing himself to all the risks and fatigues of a religious war, often in want of the necessaries of life, and enduring all the hardships of the common soldier; but he gained a victory this year at Courtras, which established his reputation in arms, and endeared him to the Protestants. On the death of Henry III., religion was urged as a pretext for one half of the officers of the French army to reject him, and for the leagues not to acknowledge him. A phantom, the cardinal de Bourbon, was set up against him; but his most formidable rival was the duke de Mayenne; however, Henry, with few friends, fewer important places, no money, and a very small army, supplied every want by his activity and valour. He gained several victories over the duke; particularly that of Ivri in 1590, memorable for his heroic adhesion to his soldiers: "If you love your ensigns, rally by my white plume, you will always find it in the road to honour and glory." Paris held out against him, notwithstanding his successes; he took all the suburbs in one day; and might have reduced the city by famine, if he had not humanely suffered his own army to relieve the besieged; yet the bigotted friars and priests in Paris all turned soldiers except four of the Mendicant order; and made daily military reviews and processions, the sword in one hand and the crucifix in the other, on which they made the citizens swear rather to die with famine than to admit Henry. The scarcity of provisions in Paris at last degenerated to an universal famine; bread had been sold, whilst any remained, for a crown the pound, and at last it was made from the bones of the charnel-house of St Innocents; human flesh became the food of the obstinate Parlians, and mothers ate the dead bodies of their children. In fine, the duke of Mayenne, seeing that neither Spain nor the league would ever grant him the crown, determined to afflit in giving it to the lawful heir. He engaged the states to hold a conference with the chiefs of both parties; which ended in Henry's abjuration of the Protestant religion at St Dennis, and his consecration at Chartres in 1593. The following year Paris opened its gates to him; in 1596, the duke of Mayenne was pardoned; and in 1598, peace was concluded with Spain. Henry now showed himself doubly worthy of the throne, by his encouragement of commerce, the fine arts, and manufactures, and by his patronage of men of ingenuity and found learning of every country: but though the fermentations of Romish bigotry were calmed, the leaven was not destroyed; scarce a year passed without some attempt being made on this real father of his people; and at last the monster Ravallac stabbed him to the heart in his coach, in the streets of Paris, on the 14th of May 1610, in the 57th year of his age and 22d of his reign.

Henry VIII., king of England, was the second son of Henry VII., by Elizabeth the eldest daughter of Edward IV. He was born at Greenwich, on the 28th of June 1491. On the death of his brother Arthur, in 1502, he was created prince of Wales; and the following year betrothed to Catherine of Aragon, prince Arthur's widow, the Pope having granted a dispensation for that purpose. Henry VIII. acceded to the throne, on the death of his father, the 22d of April 1509, and his marriage with Catherine was solemnized about two months after. In the beginning of his reign he left the government of his kingdom entirely to his ministers; and spent his time chiefly in tournaments, balls, concerts, and other expensive amusements. We are told that he was extravagant in his pleasures, that, in a very short time, he entirely dissipated 1,800,000l. which his father had hoarded. This will seem less wonderful, when the reader is informed, that gaming was one of his favourite diversions. Nevertheless he was not so totally absorbed in pleasure, but he found leisure to sacrifice to the resentment of the people two of his father's ministers, Empson and Dudley. A house in London, which had belonged to the former of these, was in 1510 given to Thomas Wolsey, who was now the king's almoner, and who from this period began to insinuate himself into Henry's favour. In 1513, he became prime minister, and from that moment governed the king and kingdom with absolute power. In this year Henry declared war against France, gained the battle of Spurs, and took the towns of Tercouene and Tournay; but before he embarked his troops, he beheaded the earl of Suffolk, who had been long confined in the tower. In 1521, he sacrificed the duke of Buckingham to the resentment of his prime minister Wolsey, and the same year obtained from the Pope the title of Defender of the Faith.

Henry, having been 18 years married, grew tired of his wife, and in the year 1527 resolved to obtain a divorce; but after many fruitless solicitations, finding it impossible to persuade the Pope to annul his marriage with Catherine, he espoused Ann Bullen in the year 1531. During this interval his favourite Wolsey was disgraced, and died; Henry threw off the Papal yoke, and burnt three Protestants for heresy. In 1535, he put to death Sir Thomas More, Fisher, and others, for denying his supremacy, and suppressed all the lesser monasteries.

His most sacred majesty, having now possessed his second queen about five years, fell violently in love with lady Jane Seymour. Ann Bullen was accused of adultery with her own brother, and with three other persons: she was beheaded the 19th of May, He married Jane Seymore the day following. In 1537, he put to death five of the noble family of Kildare, as a terror to the Irish, of whose disloyalty he had some apprehensions; and in the year following he executed the marquis of Exeter, with four other persons of distinction, for the sole crime of corresponding with cardinal Pole. In 1538 and 1539, he suppressed all the monasteries in England, and seized their revenues for his own use. The queen having died in childbirth, he this year married the princess Anne of Cleves; but disliking her person, immediately determined to be divorced; and his obsequious parliament and convocation unanimously pronounced the marriage void, for reasons too ridiculous to be recited: but this was not all; Henry was so incensed with his minister and quondam favourite, Cromwell, for negotiating this match, that he revenged himself by the hand of the executioner. Yet this was not the only public murder of the year 1540. A few days after Cromwell's death, several persons were burnt for denying the king's supremacy, and other articles of heresy.

His majesty being once more at liberty to indulge himself with another wife, fixed upon Catharine Howard, niece to the duke of Norfolk. She was declared queen in August 1540; but they had been privately married some time before. Henry, it seems, was so entirely satisfied with this lady, that he daily blessed God for his present felicity; but that felicity was of short duration: he had not been married above a year, before the queen was accused of frequent prostitution, both before and since her marriage: she confessed her guilt, and was beheaded in February 1542. In July 1543, he married his fifth wife, the lady Catherine Parr, the widow of John Nevil lord Latimer, and lived to the year 1547 without committing any more flagrant enormities: but finding himself now approach towards dissolution, he made his will; and, that the last scene of his life might resemble the rest, he determined to end the tragedy with the murder of two of his best friends and most faithful subjects, the duke of Norfolk and his son the earl of Surrey. The earl was beheaded on the 19th of January; and the duke was ordered for execution on the 29th, but fortunately escaped by the king's death on the 28th. They were condemned without the shadow of a crime; but Henry's political reason for putting them to death, was his apprehension that, if they were suffered to survive him, they would counteract some of his regulations in religion, and might be troublesome to his son. Henry died on the 28th of January 1547, in the 56th year of his age, and was buried at Windsor.

As to his character, it is pretty obvious from the facts above related. Lord Herbert palliates his crimes, and exaggerates what he calls his virtues. Bishop Burnet says, "he was rather to be reckoned among the great than the good princes." He afterwards acknowledges, that "he is to be numbered among the ill princes;" but adds, "I cannot rank him with the worst." Sir Walter Raleigh, with infinitely more justice, says, "If all the pictures and patterns of a merciful prince were lost to the world, they might again be painted to the life out of the history of this king." He was indeed a merciless tyrant, a scurrilous politician, a foolish bigot, a horrible assassin. See ENGLAND, no 253—292.