Page:The religious life of King Henry VI.djvu/11



ERY few words are necessary to introduce this small volume upon King Henry VI. It deals mainly with his religious life and personal character, and not at all with the political events of his reign or with the sanguinary struggles between the royal Houses of York and Lancaster for the possession of the throne of England. Regarding the stirring episodes of the Civil War of the Roses, and partly at least in consequence of the total collapse of Henry and his murder in the Tower of London, our modern historians in their account of this reign have occupied themselves, not unnaturally, but little with the personality of the unfortunate monarch. The entire destruction of his royal authority has been considered as sufficient to describe him briefly as a weak and vacillating ruler, about whom little good can be said: whilst the fact that for a brief space of time his mental faculties gave way,