de la Pole, but opened a series of fresh marriage schemes, which entertained the king during the short remainder of his life. The most important of these was the engagement of the lady Mary to the archduke Charles ; but the king himself, who had lost his wife in 1503, was in the matrimonial market, and his adventures contribute the one semi-comic element to this severely business-like reign. The death of the archduke Philip in 1506, the advanced years of Ferdinand, and the proved impracticability of Maximilian, seemed to be opening out a career for a new leader in Europe ; and many eyes were turned on Henry. He was willing enough to marry, perhaps the queen dowager of Naples; perhaps the archduchess Margaret; the latter marriage would have given him a direct hold on the Netherlands and a possible claim on the regency of Castile, especially if the young Charles should become his son-in-law. With two such competitors, however, as Ferdinand and Maximilian the diplomatic game was slow and cautious. And in the midst of it Henry died, on April 21st, 1509. I cannot now presume to enter upon two remaining aspects of the reign, the social and the religious, although both of them furnish us with details not less important, and scarcely more entertaining than those which we have now gone through. As for the social history, I can only say that it must be read chiefly in the Statutes concerning trade, labour, and agriculture, and the slightly increasing store of such letters as we have in the Paston and Plumpton collections: the letters of Erasmus and the scholars of the time. More's Utopia, and a very few other sorts of materials, add a little to the light that is beginning to shine towards the close of the reign. Ecclesiastically Archbishop Morton's design of visiting and reforming the monasteries was a partial anticipation of the much greater scheme of Cardinal Wolsey. There is little or no religious persecution; there is little