28 MAY 1892, Page 27

Chronicles of King Henry VIII. of England. Translated from the

Spanish by Martin A. Sharp Hume. (Bell and Sons.)—A manu- script bearing the title given above (in Spanish) was brought before a learned Society in Madrid in 1873. Inquiry showed that many earlier copies existed in Madrid and the Escurial. Some of these carried on the story to the death of the Protector Somerset; others were continued into the reign of Mary ; but the latter con- tinuation was clearly by another hand. The document is of con- siderable interest, but of not much historical value. The writer, about whose identity the translator makes some judicious remarks, was not a well-informed person. He gives only one date, and that egregiously wrong, as he makes 1530, the year in which Wolsey died, to be that of the beginning of his power. He confuses the order of the King's marriages, and he says there were ninety thou- sand parishes in England, and that the revenues of all of them had been seized for the King (in Edward VI.'s time). But there are some curious pictures of life, and possibly some particulars of history not mentioned by other chroniclers.