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FEBRUARY, 2009 |
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Travel is people. You may
go abroad to see the famous sites, but what you remember best are the
people you meet. Among them, like
unex-pected treasure, are a few
memorable contacts that will make your travels unique, special, and
delightful. "People" is devoted to some of those you may come in contact
with during your Home At First
travels.
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Inventors
of the Modern World
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Henry
VIII at about age 40 (c. 1531) during his extra-marital affair with and
before his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Henry was puzzling over how to
divorce his longtime queen, Catherine of Aragon, whose only living
child, the future Queen Mary I, was a girl of 14. At this moment, Thomas
More was Henry's new Lord Chancellor, having replaced Cardinal Wolsey
who would die an outcast of the king by year's end. The king claimed
Wolsey's properties as his own, including York Place in central London,
which would become the Palace of Whitehall. Here Henry installed a
cock-fighting pit, a tennis court, a wine cellar, and a tiltyard for
medieval jousting tourneys. He secretly married Anne Boleyn here in
1533, and, when that marriage ended three years later, he married Jane
Seymour here, too. When Henry died in January, 1547, it was here at
Whitehall that he breathed his last.
Portrait by the Dutch
artist Joos van Cleeve. |
A SCANDALOUS SOLUTION STARTS A REVOLUTION |
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enry VIII by the age of 33 had already had
a successful career as King of England. Politician, poet, and potentate,
Henry presided over England at a portentous period. With the coming of
the Renaissance, England needed to look no further than their king to
find an embodiment of the spirit of that enlightened age. Henry was an
athlete, a scholar, a linguist, a lyricist, and eminently aware of the
flowering of knowledge that was gradually moving Europe away from the
Middle Ages and into an unknown future. Henry VIII’s vision of the
future looked a lot like his reign. As King of England, Henry sought to
unite the countries of Britain into one nation state. This was an old
idea, but, under Henry, it had new purpose. France under
King
Francis I, and the Holy Roman Empire
(comprised mostly of a powerful, united Spain with an emerging
Austro-Hungarian alliance, and parts of Italy and the Low Countries)
under
Charles V, nephew of Henry’s
wife
Queen Catherine of Aragon,
had become major, competing, Continental powers. A united Britain, Henry
reasoned, could be the wild card in European politics, powerful enough
to be the swing vote in the France-Holy Roman Empire rivalry. |
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Henry’s
marriage to Catherine of Aragon in 1509 provided England with ties to
the newly-united Kingdom of Spain under the joint monarchy of
King
Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. That same
year, 1509, Henry signaled the development of a world class navy for
Britain with the construction of the giant warship
Mary Rose. In 1513 Henry led
one English army’s invasion of France, winning battles and capturing
territory, while another English army—directed from London by Queen
Catherine—soundly defeated the Scots at
Flodden
Field. With his 1520 summit meeting,
Field of
Cloth of Gold, with King Francis I of
France, Henry VIII established Britain as a major player in European
affairs. Everything, it seems, had been put in place to propel England
into position as a perpetual power. Everything, that is, except a male
successor to King Henry VIII, to ensure the smooth transition of
leadership from one generation to the next and the continuity of the
strength of the nation embodied in the king. And, in 1525, Queen
Catherine of Aragon was 40 years old and would not again conceive a
child. Henry, age 33, needed to solve this vexing problem or risk all
that he had accomplished.
(Read seven things you don’t
know about:
CATHERINE OF ARAGON.) |
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That kings take mistresses is a historical practice that
neither began nor ceased with Henry VIII of England. That Henry took six
wives is unusual. That he had perhaps upwards of a half-dozen (or more)
extra-marital affairs is not. That Henry took three of his six wives
from his four or five known mistresses suggests the king wished to
legitimize these relationships. Among several possible reasons Henry
VIII may have wanted to convert his cheating into honorable marriages,
only one makes absolute sense: the king saw these women as potential
solutions to the lingering question of male succession. The first of
these potential solutions gained the king’s attention in 1525 when it
became apparent that his 40-year-old wife of sixteen years, Queen
Catherine of Aragon, was no longer likely to produce an heir. |
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Anne Boleyn
was not the first mistress of King Henry VIII. She was not even the
first Boleyn to have had an affair with the king: her older sister,
Mary Boleyn,
holds that distinction. Mary had attended Henry VIII’s younger sister,
Princess Mary Tudor,
when she was sent to marry
Louis
XII,
King of France, in 1514. In Paris Mary Boleyn became a fixture of the
French court, staying on for four years after Louis XII died and
ex-queen Mary Tudor returned to England in 1515. During that time her
younger sister, Anne, joined her in service in the French court, while
their father served as the English ambassador to the court of King
Francis I, France’s great friendly rival of King Henry VIII. In 1519,
ten years into Henry’s reign, Mary Boleyn returned to England, where she
continued her career as a courtier, becoming maid-of-honour to Queen
Catherine of Aragon. As a member of the royal court Mary became known to
Henry, and sometime after |
Mary Boleyn, older
sister of
Anne Boleyn, handmaiden of
Queen Catherine of Aragon,
and mistress of King Henry VIII. |
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1520 she and the English king began an affair that probably lasted
several years. Henry never considered marrying Mary Boleyn, however.
Mary was already married: to
Sir
William Carey,
an attendant to the king. |
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Anne Boleyn, for whom
King Henry VIII had his
marriage of 24 years to
Catharine of Aragon
annulled. |
Mary’s younger sister followed a similar educational and
career path, with some important differences. Like Mary, Anne used her
family’s aristocratic position and its ties to the English royal family
to gain access to the courts of the kings of France and then England.
She also served Mary Tudor while she briefly was Queen of France, and
stayed on to serve the new French queen until being recalled to England
by her father in 1522. Anne, young, talented, sophisticated, and
attractive, quickly found favor in the English royal court, where, for
the next four years, she was pursued by several suitors. Most successful
among these was the equally aristocratic son of the Earl of
Northumberland,
Henry Percy,
to whom she became secretly engaged until the Earl learned of the
betrothal and had it broken off.
In 1526, Anne was about 25 years of age, unmarried, and
working in Queen Catherine of Aragon’s entourage when she first
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received the romantic
attentions of England’s king. Henry, knowing his queen to be beyond
childbearing probability, may have seen potential in Anne that was not
possible in her married older sister. Anne quickly understood her
potential as well, and, not wishing simply to be another in a string of
king’s mistresses, put off Henry’s physical advances until he told her
that he intended to make her his queen.
(Read seven things you don’t know about:
ANNE BOLEYN.) |
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In this grand political chess game, Anne Boleyn’s ambition to
become queen matched Henry’s imperial imperative to have a legitimate
son and heir. For Henry, time was now running out. In 1528 he was 37
years old and beginning the 20th year of his reign with the question of
succession very much on his mind. To have a legitimate heir, Henry must
be legally married to the mother. To be legally married in the 16th
century, the church had to officially recognize the union. |
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The church
was the Roman Catholic Church of Rome, headed by
Pope Clement VII.
Henry, looking for a way out of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon,
requested an annulment from Pope Clement, based on the idea that, by
church rules at the time, any marriage between him and his brother’s
wife could not be legal and should be annulled. (Under the rules in
place at the time, such a union would be considered a kind of incest
because in the view of the church your brother’s wife would not be your
sister-in-law, but your sister.) Catherine of Aragon protested that her
short marriage to Henry’s weak and unhealthy older brother
Prince Arthur
had never been consummated, and, therefore—and again in the eyes of
church rules at the time—was not a true marriage.
Pope Clement had
his own problems. Rome and the Vatican had chosen badly in siding with
France in their war against Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire. At the
very moment of Henry’s request for a papal annulment, the pope was under
arrest and imprisoned by the Holy Roman Emperor. Charles V remained
loyal to his aunt Catherine of Aragon and more than a little suspicious
of King Henry’s rising power in Europe. Predictably, his influence over
the |
At the time of Henry
VIII's request for
an annulment from Queen Catherine of
Aragon, Pope Clement VII was a captive
of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and
nephew of Catherine. Pope Clement
could not have granted the annulment
if he had wanted to -- and there were
good reasons to want to. |
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captive pope helped result
in the denial of Henry’s request. Now the King of England had to find
another way to ensure the future stability of his country. |
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Thomas More, a favorite
among King
Henry VIII's advisors, was elevated to
Lord Chancellor after the purge of Cardinal
Wolsey. More, first non-cleric to hold the
position, was a lawyer, a scholar, and a
writer. Although he initially agreed with the
king's view that his marriage to Catherine
of Aragon should be annulled, once Pope
Clement VII denied the request, More
would not help Henry VIII defy Rome and
establish a Church of England. For defying
Henry, More, who during his brief tenure
had condemned several heretics to death,
was imprisoned in the Tower of London,
tried for treason, and beheaded. |
When Henry
VIII’s top ministers and the Archbishop of Canterbury could not or would
not help him convince the pope to annul the king’s marriage to
Catherine, Henry sacked them, replacing them with men who were willing
to offer Henry creative solutions to his dilemma. The great
careers—indeed the lives—of English cleric-statesmen
Cardinal Wolsey
and Thomas More
ended tragically as they were caught up in the battle between their king
and the Church. Henry put supporters of his aims into important
positions: a minor cleric,
Thomas Cranmer, became
the new Archbishop of Canterbury—supreme church official in England—and
a little-known attorney,
Thomas Cromwell,
replaced Wolsey and More as the king’s top minister/advisor in
Parliament.
Cranmer cleared
the way for Henry to marry Anne Boleyn by declaring Henry’s marriage to
Catherine of Aragon annulled. When King Francis I of France offered his
blessing, Henry VIII felt confident enough to go through with the
marriage to Anne, first secretly late in 1532, then openly and
officially in January of 1533. Anne was quickly pregnant with Henry’s
child. Catharine of Aragon, protesting all the while, had already been
banished from the court and exiled to a series of drafty castles in
distant parts of the kingdom. Demoted to Princess Dowager of Wales, she
died in an obscure castle in Cambridgeshire three years after losing her
husband to Anne and losing her crown. |
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Predictably, the
pope wished to stop the king, but had to rely on the Church structure in
England to do so. Now the game of dare-double-dare took on an
irreversible momentum and hurtled toward the brink of separation.
Cromwell escorted several pieces of legislation through Parliament that
gradually stripped the Church of its powers to tax, own property, and
control church activities in England. The new laws recognized the
English monarch as highest authority in the land in matters both civil
and spiritual. In Rome, Pope Clement VII issued orders leading to the
excommunication King Henry VIII and Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas
Cranmer. |
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Although Henry never wished
separation from the Roman Catholic Church, by 1534 he could no longer
retreat. Henry was certainly aware of
Martin
Luther’s Protestant
Reformation
that had been spreading throughout Germany and other parts of Northern
Europe for fifteen years. He knew his friend, Francis I of France, no
longer automatically bowed to the orders of the Vatican. Gradually,
Henry VIII came to see the modern nation-state as a strictly sectarian
vehicle of the king’s will and Parliament’s consent. No longer would any
outside body—and especially the Roman Catholic Church—have any power
over England. For the English, the direct path to God no longer would be
through Rome, but through Canterbury, and, ultimately, through London.
The
Anglican Church
was born out of the turmoil surrounding the great question of royal
succession. Pope Clement VII had raged defiantly as first Martin Luther
and then Henry VIII challenged the Church’s broad powers in Europe. But
the pope was powerless to stop the great schisms of the Luther’s
theological Reformation and Henry’s political
English Reformation.
Little more than a year and a half after Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn,
Pope Clement VII died in Rome. Before his death Clement had commissioned
Michelangelo
to paint the ceiling of Sistine Chapel. The
Renaissance
had reached its apex. The
Middle
Ages
were transforming into a more modern time. |
Martin Luther in 1529.
Born 7½ years
before Henry VIII, Luther, like the
English king, pursued his controversial
arguments with the Vatican until his
excommunication and the establishment
of an alternative Christian church.
Among his chief adversaries: Charles V,
Holy Roman Emperor. Luther's
translation of the Latin Bible into
vernacular German influenced those
who would translate the Bible into
English. Luther died less than one year
before Henry. Both men were principal
figures in the high Renaissance of
Western Europe that helped invent
the modern world. |
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On June
1, 1533, Anne Boleyn was crowned as the second queen of Henry VIII. Two
months later she gave birth to a healthy child. But not a boy child.
Henry named the baby
Elizabeth after his beloved mother, but
he was not pleased. Now Henry had two children, two daughters by two
wives and no legitimate male successor. The clock was still ticking:
Henry was 42 years old.
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Princess
Elizabeth at about 13 years old, at about
the time of her father's death (1546-7). Her mother,
Queen Anne Boleyn, had been executed ten years earlier.
Ironically, although Anne Boleyn's failure to produce
a
male heir for Henry VIII contributed greatly to her
downfall, her daughter became one of England's
greatest and strongest willed monarchs, whose
reign realized her father's dream of England
becoming a major world power. |
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– END OF PART III –
TRAVEL BACK IN
TIME TO TUDOR ENGLAND:
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Read
all about it here:
TUDOR ENGLAND TODAY.
See
where King Henry VIII lived, played, worked, and died.
Tudor history can still be explored in person: in castles,
palaces,
inns, and pubs throughout London and England.
HOME AT FIRST
helps you relive Tudor history, while you
live in a comfortable, modern
lodging next door to the
Tower of London at our
APARTMENTS AT ST. KATHARINE’S MARINA.
ENGLAND MARKS THE
500TH ANNIVERSARY OF HENRY VIII
Several suits of
Henry’s armor—showing the king’s
progression from his
athletic 20s to his immense late-40s—may be seen at
Windsor
Castle, where a
special exhibition of
Henry VIII related
artifacts will be presented until April 18, 2010.
This special exhibitions mark the 500th
anniversary of the beginning of the
reign of King Henry VIII.
For more information, see:
•
THE ROYAL COLLECTION AT WINDSOR CASTLE
Learn all about travel with
HOME AT FIRST
to:
•
ENGLAND •
LONDON •
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— COMING IN PART IV —
Next Time: Two Marriages End in Death,
but Finally There Is a Male Heir
SEE ALSO: PART I
& PART II
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THIS ARTICLE
FIRST APPEARED FEBRUARY, 2009. |
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