Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History (15 page)

Young King Hal

If ever a king has captured the imagination of the general public, both during his reign and after, it is Henry VIII. It is very largely his image, “cock-sure and truculent, astride one of Holbein’s canvases” (see
plate 3
), which we conjure when we think of a king.
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For those who grew up in the twentieth century, it is difficult to separate the image in our mind’s eye from that created by film actors like Charles Laughton, Robert Shaw, Richard Burton, Keith Michel – even Benny Hill: that of a vain and corpulent lecher, eating, whoring, and executing his way through marriage after marriage, ministry after ministry. Like most popular historical orthodoxies, this one contains a grain of truth – not least in its conveyance of Henry’s “larger than life” personality. But it contains much distortion as well. The worst result of the uncritical reception of that distorted image is that it reduces perhaps the single most important watershed in English history – the Reformation – to the by-product of a single man’s foibles and appetites. This may be an acceptable cinematic interpretation, but, as we shall see, the truth is far more subtle, more complicated, and more interesting.

In fact, Henry’s contemporaries were almost universally impressed with him, especially toward the beginning of his reign. And why not? He was handsome and athletic, a skilled horseman who loved tilting, falconry, wrestling, and dancing. But Henry was more than a royal jock. He had a mind as agile as his body. Like Plato’s philosopher-king, Henry had studied mathematics as well as Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish. He corresponded with Erasmus (ca. 1467–1536) and befriended Sir Thomas More, two of the era’s greatest philosophers. Indeed, his court was a hotbed of humanist scholarship. The king himself wrote a theological treatise,
Assertio Septem Sacramentorum,
attacking the new reformist ideas of Martin Luther (1483–1546). A grateful papacy rewarded Henry with the title
Defensor Fidei
(“Defender of the Faith”) in 1521. Henry was also artistic and, in particular, musical. He sang, played the lute, the organ, and the virginals (a primitive harpsichord) and composed masses, songs, and anthems. He patronized professional artists and musicians, providing employment for the likes of the portraitist Hans Holbein (1497–1543), the composer Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505–85), and the polymath singer, actor, composer, and playwright William Cornyshe (ca. 1465–1523).

Plate 3
Henry VIII, after
Hans Holbein the Younger. Board of the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside. © Walker Art Gallery, National Museums, Liverpool.

Finally, Henry VIII could be generous to friends, charming to acquaintances, and attractively flamboyant in the presence of his subjects. During the first half of his reign, especially, he brought the aristocracy back to court by sponsoring an endless round of jousts, tilts,
mumming
, dancing, wrestling, revels, and pageants for New Year’s Day, Epiphany,
Shrovetide
, the return of the king at the end of the summer, and Christmas-time. Unlike his father, who merely presided, Henry VIII participated actively in these events, appearing in tournaments as Hercules, St. George, and other heroes: indeed, his skill in knightly combat enhanced his military reputation. His court was a moveable feast, progressing in an annual circuit around London among the half-dozen larger palaces and the numerous smaller houses which he owned. Henry did this because the 300–400 people comprising his household entourage soon overwhelmed the primitive waste disposal facilities of any given house; because he understood the need to show himself and the splendor of his court to his subjects; and finally because he was notoriously restless and hankered after new sights and sounds. After the careful sobriety of Henry VII’s last years, the English people were, perhaps, ready for a little “flash,” a little festivity, and, if they lived in the Home Counties, a great deal more contact with their ruler. Henry VIII was just the man to give it to them.

But underneath the new king’s charming and exuberant exterior beat a heart which was every bit as cold and calculating, if not as cautious, as his dad’s. Henry VIII was emotional, brooding, impulsive, greedy, unforgiving, lazy, and utterly self-centered. He seems to have felt no loyalty to any particular set of policy goals or persons. Perhaps because, for all his swagger, he was, down deep, profoundly insecure, he seems to have been swayed easily by whichever set of courtiers happened to have his ear. As a result, according to his biographer, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (?1582–1648), “Impressions privately given to the king by any court-whisperer were hardly or never to be effaced.”
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This endangered anyone not currently in the royal presence, and engendered a court life of ruthless competition and vicious intrigue. No one could feel secure. Henry VIII sacked advisers, favorites, ministers, wives as it pleased him. On the second day of the reign he imprisoned, and would eventually execute, two of his father’s most loyal, effective, and therefore unpopular tax collectors, Edmund Dudley and Sir Richard Empson. This was a popular move, especially with aristocrats feeling oppressed by his father’s financial exactions. But it was also needlessly cruel, arbitrary, and utterly disloyal to two faithful Crown servants. This break with the past set a precedent for the future: Henry VIII would seek the judicial murder of two queens, three cardinals, numerous peers and clergymen, and nearly every principal minister who ever served him. His last would-be victim, Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk (1473–1554), was languishing in the Tower of London on the eve of his beheading, when Henry himself died, thus negating the warrant, on January 28, 1547. Finally, where Henry VII had remained loyal to Queen Elizabeth, Henry VIII pursued several extra-marital affairs and fathered at least one illegitimate child. This not only affected his marital relations; it muddied future lines of succession.

But in 1509 these dark events were mostly in the future and Henry’s good qualities – apart from his laziness – to the fore. The new king and queen got along well, not least because she gave him his freedom. He spent most of his time “hanging out with the boys,” that is, his courtiers. He turned the Privy Chamber into a kind of gentleman’s club whose members spent their days and nights hunting, gaming, drinking, and occasionally whoring. This led one observer to remark in 1515 that the new king “is a youngling, who cares for nothing but girls and hunting and wastes his father’s patrimony.”
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All of which raises the question: “But who was running the country?”

The Great Cardinal

At first, Henry VIII was content to let his father’s old advisers govern from the council – the unfortunate Empson and Dudley excepted. But as they began to die off or retire, a new minister came to dominate: Thomas Wolsey, soon to be a cardinal and archbishop of York (1470/1–1530). Wolsey had started from humble beginnings, reputedly the son of a butcher from Ipswich, Suffolk. But he had managed to go to Oxford on a poor boy’s scholarship and his intelligence and capacity eventually landed him a place as a chaplain, first to the archbishop of Canterbury, then to Henry VII. He began the new reign as royal almoner, charged with distributing the king’s charity. Henry soon recognized that his almoner’s organizational abilities fitted him for something more ambitious. Wolsey managed Henry’s military campaigns in France in 1512–14 (see below) so successfully that the king rewarded him with an archbishopric in 1514. The pope bestowed on him a cardinal’s hat in the following year. Cardinal Wolsey was energetic, competent, and shrewd, yet one of the most hated men ever to hold high office in England. Why should this be so?

As a churchman, Wolsey was, first of all, a notorious pluralist; that is, he usually held several ecclesiastical positions at once. Thanks to the king’s favor he was named dean of Lincoln in 1509, bishop of Lincoln then archbishop of York in 1514, cardinal in 1515, abbot of St. Albans and bishop of Bath in 1518. In 1524 he exchanged the bishopric of Bath for the wealthier see of Durham; in 1529 he gave up Durham for the even more lucrative bishopric of Winchester – all of which he held simultaneously with that of York. Finally, from 1518 Wolsey was the pope’s personal representative, or
legate
á latere,
in England. This accumulation of high Church offices meant, first of all, that Wolsey had a vast income. Bishoprics and abbacies had extensive estates attached to them, the money from which was at Wolsey’s disposal. Moreover, he sold subordinate Church offices, a practice condemned by the Church as simony. At the height of his power his income was something like £35,000 a year. This was a colossal sum. To put it in perspective, his nearest noble rival made, perhaps, £8,000 a year and the king himself had just over £90,000 per year in revenue with which to run his government!
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Wolsey loved to display his wealth: he ate well, dressed magnificently, processed through the streets of London pompously, and built two great palaces, York Place in London and Hampton Court up the Thames Valley, which outshone anything in the king’s possession. Wolsey was also a generous benefactor, founding Cardinal College, Oxford (now Christ Church), which was the largest and most lavishly funded academic establishment in England. Admittedly, as a cardinal, Wolsey was a prince of the Church: that is, he was expected to live in great state. His wealth and ostentatious display would not have been out of place in Renaissance Italy. But they
were
out of place in Renaissance England, and, for many observers, they did not sit well with the cardinal’s priestly status or humble origins.

Perhaps even more astonishing – and infuriating – than the Great Cardinal’s immense wealth was his neglect of pastoral duty and aggrandizement of place and power. Wolsey clearly could not be simultaneously resident in each of his sees, or personally serve the needs of their flocks, for they were widely scattered about the country and none of them was close to his usual residence, York Place in London. This offended churchmen who wanted reform. Nor could reformers have been pleased that Wolsey found positions within the Church for his own children – fathered, of course, out of wedlock and in violation of his vows of celibacy. By holding so many positions in the Church, he and his offspring kept other able men out of them. Above all, as papal legate, Wolsey virtually ran the Church of England. He felt little need to consult the pope, the king, or his fellow bishops. This ended up weakening the English Church on the eve of the Reformation by reducing both its contact with Rome and the size and experience of its leadership.

Wolsey monopolized civil as well as ecclesiastical office. He was, first, from 1515, lord chancellor of England, which made him the Crown’s chief legal officer and the keeper of the Great Seal. This meant that the most important documents issued by the government, such as treaties, grants of land, and acts of parliament, could only be sealed with his cooperation. Since Wolsey’s nominees also served as lord (keeper of the) Privy Seal and the king’s private secretaries, virtually no document carrying royal authority could be issued without the cardinal knowing about it and, presumably, approving it. In other words, the king and his ministers, both major and minor, had to consult Wolsey before any policy could be undertaken, grant made or official installed. While the final decision on any matter of importance was always Henry’s, the king’s delegation of day-to-day and patronage decisions to the cardinal meant that those decisions were, often, foregone conclusions.

By aggrandizing so much influence with the king, Wolsey virtually destroyed the significance of the council as a source of advice. On the other hand, he increased the council’s significance as an administrative and judicial body. He asked it to investigate the problems of illegal retaining, profiteering in the grain trade, enclosure, and vagrancy – thus provoking more aristocratic resentment from those who engaged in the first three. As lord chancellor, Wolsey presided over the courts of Chancery and Star Chamber. In fact, he was a fair and hardworking judge. He prided himself on rendering impartial justice to the poor, even against the king’s own officials, and harangued the council on the need to enforce justice equitably. Wolsey ensured that these courts were no respecters of persons, ruling against even the most powerful in a way that lower courts might not dare.