THE KING’S REFORMATION
Henry VIII's break with Rome remains among the most striking
and important, but also much misunderstood, events in English
history. This novelty of the distinctive account and analysis
offered in this book lies in an emphasis throughout - against
the fashionable concentration on ministers and factions - on
VIII's leading personal role, a king who ruled as well as
reigned. My book also gives due weight, for the first time in a
single volume, to those who would not accept what was imposed
upon them, and to those who tried, at different times and in
varying ways, to deflect the king from his purpose. What the
king sought is shown to have been more consistent and more
radical than has generally been allowed. The book concludes
with troubling reflections on Henry's methods, seen as
approaching tyranny, and an assessment of the lasting legacy of
the Henrician Reformation.
The book begins with Henry's discovery that his marriage to
Catherine of Aragon was invalid - and with his passion for Anne
Boleyn. Against the legend, it is Henry, not Anne, who is
presented here as holding back from full sexual relations until
they could wed. The account of Henry's campaign to secure the
divorce from the pope highlights the king's frequent and early
threats against papal powers: these are read not as bluster but
as prophetic. But if he were to act independently, Henry would
still need the support of the church in England: through a
series of measures and pressures recounted here, Henry
ultimately secured the acquiescence of churchmen in his royal
supremacy. The famous Reformation parliamentary statutes are
presented as ratifying the steps the king had already taken.
Yet neither the divorce nor the break with Rome proceeded
without dissent. Successive chapters explore the reactions of
Catherine of Aragon, the Nun of Kent, Bishop Fisher and Sir
Thomas More, Charterhouse monks and Observant friars, and other
dissenters, to the king's demands. This analysis of those
opposed to Henry's policies emphasises the personal, rather
than political, character of much of their dissent. Catherine
did not form 'the nucleus of a political party' (Froude), nor
was she the progenitor of an 'Aragonese faction'; Fisher and
More bore witness to the truth as they saw it, rather than
organising political resistance or some underground movement.
Henry's need to assert his royal supremacy against actual and
potential opposition, and his image of himself as a reforming
monarch who would purify the church from the abuses of the
past, led to significant reforms. Too often religious policy in
the 1530s and 1540s has been presented as fluctuating and
inconsistent as Henry, himself seen at most as a secular figure
rapaciously bent on seizing the wealth of the church, was
supposedly influenced on religious matters first by one group
of courtiers and counsellors and then by another, a view
memorably expounded by the martyrologist John Foxe. 'Even as
the king was ruled and gave ear sometimes to one, sometimes to
another, so one while it went forward, at another season as
much backward again, and sometimes clean altered and changed
for a season, according as they could prevail, who were about
the
king'.
Here
I
wish
to
overturn
such
tenacious
misinterpretations. In this book, Henry emerges as the ultimate
decision maker, very much the dominant force in the making of
religious policy.
A flashback to explore the piety of the king as revealed before
the dramatic events of the break with Rome shows Henry as
devout in his attachment to the mass and surprisingly competent
as a polemicising theologian, but somewhat detached from many
features of traditional religion, especially pilgrimages and
monasteries. Influenced by Erasmus, Henry believed that the
church
was
in
need
of
purifying
reform.
The
king's
encouragement of Cardinal Wolsey's direction of the church is
presented in that light.
The visitation of the monasteries in 1535 reflected the king's
determination to assert his authority. It uncovered what was
understandably, but not entirely fairly, seen as evidence of
abuses, especially sexual misconduct. In turn that led to the
dissolution of the smaller monasteries by act of parliament in
1536, here seen as a sincerely reforming measure and not as the
first step in a preconceived programme of overall dissolution.
Henry also faced the need, in an age of increasing religious
diversity and discord, to set out what true religion was. If
Henry was more deeply committed to purifying reform than has
generally been allowed, he was no Lutheran and remained
fundamentally hostile to the central Lutheran tenet of
justification-by-faith-alone. The liturgical and doctrinal
changes announced in the Ten Articles and Injunctions of 1536
were the first of Henry's attempts to set out a middle way
between Rome and Wittenberg.
But the break with Rome and these early reforming measures,
provoked, I contend, the risings in the north of England, known
as the Pilgrimage of Grace. In substantial chapters I offer a
reconsideration of these rebellions, presenting them as popular
and counter-revolutionary movements directed against religious
policies, especially the dissolution, but ranging more widely.
I show how after apparently appearing on the brink of success,
the rebels were defeated by a ruthlessly calculating king.
Their ultimate failure had profound effects. The rebellion
intensified the king's hostility towards the monasteries: the
consequence was the final suppression of the monasteries,
achieved by induced 'voluntary' surrender.
Henry's efforts to set out true religion are then considered
further. The Bishops' Book (1537), the royal proclamation of 16
November 1538, the Injunctions of 1538, the proclamation of 26
February 1539, the Act of Six Articles (1539) and the King's
Book (1543) are each scrutinised in depth and set in the wider
context of royal policy, notably the dissolution of the
monasteries and the suppression of pilgrimage shrines. That
leads to a substantial challenge to what has become the
fashionable orthodoxy among professional historians, the notion
of Henry as a weak man and the plaything of factions, dominated
in turn by a Wolsey or a Cromwell. Henry's participation in
debates over the nature of true religion, his copious
annotations on various statements of faith, and his letters
arguing with leading churchmen point rather to a ruler who was
very much in command. But Henry's religious policy cannot be
characterised as 'catholicism without the pope'. Instead it is
here presented as reflecting the king's largely consistent
search for a middle way - a middle way that was significantly
different from traditional religion but that rejected central
tenets of Luther's teachings.
Since Thomas Cromwell, Henry's leading minister, has often but misleadingly - been seen as an influential and often
successful advocate of evangelical if not protestant reform,
interweaved with these analyses is a reassessment of Cromwell's
religion, dealing in particular with the English translation of
the Bible, religious controversy in Calais, negotiations with
German protestant princes and Henry's marriage to Anne of
Cleves. Conventional wisdom is overturned: Cromwell emerges as
the king's energetic servant but not as a counsellor pushing
independent ideas. And a fresh interpretation is offered of the
fall of Cromwell in 1540, dismissing religious faction, and
stressing rather how the king brought about Cromwell's fall as
a means of advancing his middle way. Cranmer's religion is also
reassessed.
The conclusion draws on two themes running through the book. A
review of the methods and pressures by which Henry imposed the
break with Rome, securing compliance and crushing opposition,
makes a case for seeing Henry's rule as tyranny. The book ends
by considering the larger impact and legacy of Henry's search
for a middle way, both on contemporaries, and in on the church
of England as it was to develop, not least since it was Henry's
settlement that, after a brief period of greater reform in the
reign of his son and of reaction under his elder daughter Mary,
that was taken up and consolidated by his daughter Elizabeth.
Many of the lasting ambiguities and tensions of the church of
England are to be best understood as the legacy of Henry VIII's
ruthlessness and of his search for a middle way.
THE KING’S REFORMATION
1. HENRY VIII'S DIVORCE AND THE BREAK WITH ROME
Origins; Anne Boleyn
The campaign for the divorce
Henry VIII's case for the divorce
Henry VIII's challenge to papal authority
The threats against the church
The break with Rome
2. OPPOSITION
Catherine of Aragon
The Nun of Kent
Friars and monks
Bishop John Fisher
Sir Thomas More
Fisher's episcopal colleagues
Noblemen and parliament
Reginald Pole
3. ROYAL SUPREMACY AND REFORM
The
The
The
The
defence of the royal supremacy
piety of Henry VIII
reform of the monasteries
Ten Articles (1536)
4. REBELLION
The Lincolnshire Rebellion:
The place of rumours
The rebels' demands
The Pilgrimage of Grace
The rebellion spreads
The character of the rebellion
Monasteries and the Pilgrimage of Grace
From apparent victory to defeat
Reginald Pole
The legation
The fall of the marquess of Exeter
5. THE SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES
Attainders and surrenders
Refoundations?
The generalisation of 'voluntary' surrender
Compliance, reluctance, resistance
Glastonbury, Colchester, Reading
6. THE SEARCH FOR THE MIDDLE WAY
The Bishops' Book (1537)
The proclamation of 16 November 1538
John Lambert
The injunctions of 1538
The Six Articles (1539)
Cromwell's religion
Cromwell and Calais
The search for alliances with German princes
Henry's marriage to Anne of Cleves
The fall of Cromwell and the middle way
The King's Book (1543)
CONCLUSION
The tyranny of Henry VIII
Henry's religious legacy