Books & Literature
Lingard's History of England, Vol. IV
Volume IV of Lingard's history — Wars of the Roses to the eve of the break with Rome: the structural pivot of the whole work.
Opening
From the wreck of one dynasty to the eve of a religious revolution. Volume IV carries England out of the Hundred Years' War, through the long bloodletting of the Wars of the Roses, into the new Tudor order — and sets it down on the very threshold of the break with Rome.
The History in This Volume
The disastrous minority and reign of Henry VI, the loss of the French conquests, and the descent into the dynastic Wars of the Roses; the Yorkist Edward IV and the brief, contested reign of Richard III, ended at Bosworth Field in 1485; the founding reign of Henry VII, who married the rival houses, crushed the pretenders, and refilled the treasury; and the first two-thirds of the reign of Henry VIII — the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the ascendancy of Cardinal Wolsey, and the gathering crisis of the king's bid to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, on which the volume ends about 1532.
Lingard's Reading
Volume IV is the long indrawn breath before the rupture. Lingard, whose History exists above all to weigh the Reformation, brings England right up to the edge of it and stops — Henry still styled Defender of the Faith for his book against Luther, the monasteries intact, the king not yet Supreme Head of the Church. The placing is deliberate: the reader is left poised, the old order still whole, so that the next volume's demolition lands with full weight.
Why This Volume Matters
It holds two of the most argued-over passages in English history — the character and fate of Richard III, and the founding of the Tudor dynasty — and positions England at the hinge of its religious history. As the volume that ends on the eve of the schism, it is the structural pivot of the whole History.
References
Provenance
Sixth Edition; Charles Dolman, London, 1854–55. One of nine volumes held of the ten-volume set (the set lacks only Vol. IX, A.D. 1660–1680). No ownership inscription noted. Part of a 27-book lot acquired February 2026; cost in the Ledger.
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