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    ENGLAND'S STRONG MONARCH CREATES A MODERN NATION. BUT, AFTER THREE MORE WIVES, HENRY VIII FAILS TO ENSURE SECURITY FOR HIS REALM. |
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n the year 1537 England’s King Henry VIII was 46 years old and already in the 28th year of his reign. He was England’s national champion: a strong, willful, ambitious ruler who wished to establish England as a major European power. It was the height of the |
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Renaissance, a time when nations were coalescing from small, local city-states, |
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sclerotic fiefdoms, and
fetid, isolated backwaters of the Middle Ages.
King James V of Scotland at about 1536. James was the nephew |
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In Paris, King Francis I—often friend and always rival of Henry VIII—was establishing France as one of Europe’s two great powers, largely due to shrewd political maneuvering, including several wars of various lengths. On some occasions, England fought against France. On others England fought alongside France and sometimes Henry VIII kept England on the sidelines, thinking neutrality offered England the best advantage.
King Francis I of France, close contemporary, friend, and rival of Henry
VIII. Born less than 3 years after Henry, Francis became King of France
six years after Henry took the throne of England. Like Henry, Francis
was a Renaissance man with strong interests in athletic, scholarship,
literature, science, and the arts. He probably had at least one mistress
(Mary Boleyn) in common with Henry. And, like Henry, Francis was unable
to firmly establish religious |
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Principal opposition to France came from
the Holy Roman Empire
of Charles V: Spain + the Austro-Hungarian Empire + Holland + Belgium +
Luxembourg + large portions of Italy + small portions of France.
Emperor Charles V
was the nephew of
Queen Catherine of Aragon, first wife
of Henry VIII, and eventual father-in-law of Henry & Catherine’s
daughter, Queen
(Bloody) Mary I. Charles V had been
elected Emperor (over his principal rival Francis I of France) in 1519,
and spent the next twenty-seven years expanding and solidifying his
empire, and fighting the enemies of
Roman Catholicism
(including European Protestants and Turkish Muslims). Through
Pizarro
and Cortez
he established Spain’s empire in the New World (while crushing the great
Inca and Aztec empires), and he sponsored
Magellan’s
around the world expedition which expanded Spain’s influence in the
Pacific. He vigorously opposed Henry VIII’s divorce of his aunt,
Catherine of Aragon, and used his influence over
Pope Clement VII
to deny Henry’s request for annulment from Catherine. Charles’s
opposition, therefore, directly resulted in Henry’s
English Reformation.
Regardless, Henry VIII sometimes sided with Charles V in opposition to
Francis I. |
| established a feared Russian leadership style while building the Russian nation and sowing the seeds of empire. In a decade he would be crowned first Tsar of Russia, and ultimately known as Ivan the Terrible. | |
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At the same moment that the Renaissance was in full flower in Western Europe a similar golden age was occurring in neighboring lands to the east and south. Under Sultan Suleiman I, known in the West as Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire expanded to its greatest size and cultural glory. During the 1530s and 1540s Suleiman’s armies conquered much of Eastern Europe, reaching as far as Vienna. The Ottoman advances ceased only when Holy Roman Emperor Charles V agreed to an embarrassing treaty that ceded Suleiman Hungary and the Balkans and left Western Europe nervous. French King Francis I saw an alliance with Suleiman an opportunity to finally rid himself of Charles V. In 1537 Suleiman’s Ottomans joined the French in an unholy alliance against the Holy Roman Emperor. A series of sea battles in the Mediterranean ended the Holy Roman Empire’s naval domination of the region and forced Charles V to focus on the eastern and southern extremes of his empire, for the moment leaving the north and west free to pursue the Protestant Reformation uncontested. |
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The Western World was undergoing major changes during the first half of the 16th century. Nations were forming. New empires were emerging. Old orders were weakening. Alliances were shifting. Across Europe several strong leaders were becoming great leaders—perhaps more at one time than ever before or since. It was a propitious time to consider the qualities of despots and dictators. In Italy Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince” first appeared in 1532. A study of the power of dictators and monarchs, “The Prince” was the most important non-fiction book of the century, a virtual handbook for the rulers of the time (and for all time). “The Prince” was written in 1515, but not published until Machiavelli had been dead for five year. Less important was Thomas More’s “Utopia”, written in 1516, an allegorical novel about the benefits of republican societies—and, by extension—the disadvantages of existing monarchical forms of governance. More succeeded Cardinal Wolsey as Chancellor of England—top advisor to Henry VIII—in 1529. When More took the principled but suicidal position that Henry VIII should not disobey the Vatican in the matter of ending the king’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Sir Thomas lost his job and then his head in the Tower of London in 1535. “Utopia”—published on the Continent but not welcomed in Britain—was not published in England only in 1551, sixteen years after More’s execution, and fours years after the death of King Henry VIII. |
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new friends to convince
Western Europe’s two major powers that attacking England would not be
without serious consequences. |
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When Henry’s
chief minister and advisor
Thomas Cromwell
suggested Henry consider marrying the 25-year-old sister of William,
Duke of Cleves, from the German-Dutch border region and Sybille, wife of
John Frederick I, the Elector of Saxony and “Champion of the
Reformation.” A marriage to young Anne promised two advantages: a union
with a healthy young woman of prime childbearing age, and an alliance
with strong Reformation states in opposition to France and the Holy
Roman Empire. Henry was not one for blind dating, apparently. In 1538 or
early in 1539 he sent England’s official court artist (“King’s
Painter”), Hans
Holbein the Younger — who happened to
be German-born, German-speaking, and Protestant — to paint the portrait
of Anne of Cleves.
In the days before photography, subjective portraiture would have to do.
Holbein’s two portraits of Anne (now found in the Louvre and in London’s
Victoria & Albert Museum) evidently influenced Henry to pursue an
arranged marriage to Anne of Cleves. |
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wedding
night impressions. It now seemed that Anne of Cleves—Henry called her
his “Flanders Mare” — would not become a brood mare for the English
royal succession. |
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Nineteen-year-old Kathryn Howard had not done the math. Henry VIII had already been King of England for a dozen years when Kathryn was born. Now Henry was 49 years old, 300 pounds stout, suffering from gout, and with numerous boils oozing out. If Kathryn’s Prince Charming turned into a grotesque toad on their wedding night, Kathryn soon showed that she did not have the intelligence and fidelity of Catherine of Aragon, the guile of Anne Boleyn, nor the submissive chastity of Jane Seymour. Within the year rumors again circulated openly throughout the court—this time hinting at the queen’s indiscretions and, yes, infidelities with several dashing young courtiers. |
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Kathryn did not become pregnant — by Henry VIII or by any of her rumored paramours. Worried advisors, and those jealous of the powerful, Catholic Howard family, gathered incriminating evidence against the young queen. Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer — since Cromwell’s downfall the king’s most prominent advisor — presented the evidence to Henry. Kathryn was arrested along with two alleged lovers. All three were convicted of treason. Henry’s marriage to Kathryn was annulled on November 23, 1541. All three convicted co-conspirators were executed. Kathryn lost her head at the Tower on February 13, 1542. Several members of the Howard family had lands and titles repossessed by the Crown. During this same time England completed its radical Dissolution of the Monasteries program, as the property and power of the Catholic Church was taken by the nation. Minor clergy could no longer serve in the House of Lords. During the reign of Henry VIII, complications of Roman Catholic marriage laws and the political attractiveness of Reformation theology had changed the status of the Roman Catholic Church in England from one of the two great non-royal powers (along with the nobility) to insignificant and suspect. |
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In Europe, old rivals France and the Holy Roman Empire continued to battle over disputed territories in Italy, France, and elsewhere. Their constant unrest kept other European nations in an uneasy peace. Afraid to be alone and vulnerable, nations lined up on one side or the other. France gained the support of the strong Ottoman Empire |
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that controlled Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Mediterranean. The Holy Roman Empire, ignoring or forgiving past disagreements, formed alliances with parts of Germany, the Low Countries, and, ironically, with Henry VIII’s Protestant England. In 1542 Henry, now old, fat, and lame, decided to personally lead the English army on an incursion into France. Soon after Henry led his army into France, his sister’s son, King James V of Scotland, saw an opportunity to invade northern England and strike a blow for Scottish independence while simultaneously lending support for Scotland’s Auld Alliance with France. In November an overwhelming force of Scots met a relatively small English army contingent just north of the city of Carlisle at the southwestern border of Scotland and England. The Scots outnumbered the English six-to-one, but lacked cohesive direction, and were themselves quickly overwhelmed in a rout. Within two weeks King James V lay dead in Falkland Palace, and Scotland no longer posed a significant invasion threat. Henry VIII, noting that his nephew’s successor was a week-old daughter, had reason to believe England had gained a respite from major Scottish troubles for a little while at least. Nevertheless, on July 1, 1543 the terms of Henry’s Treaty of Greenwich proclaimed peace between Scotland and England and tied that peace to the |
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arranged marriage of Henry’s sole son and successor, 5-year-old Edward, to Scotland’s crown princess Mary not yet 7 months old. The marriage would unite the crowns of Scotland and England, and would re-united two branches of the Tudor family tree: Henry’s with that of his older sister, Margaret Tudor, wife of Scotland’s King James IV, and grandmother of the baby princess Mary. |
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Henry sought peace with Scotland. He wished to replace Scotland’s
historic ties with France with its natural shared geographic ties to
England. Henry also saw a way of strengthening the line of Tudor
succession by joining the royal houses of England and Scotland through
the marriage of the two distant Tudor cousins. |
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Catherine — older than Henry’s other wives at the time of their weddings, and intimately familiar with the ways of the Tudor court — went right to work, helping raise Henry’s three legitimate children, Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward, and helped Henry reconcile with his daughters from whom he had distanced himself following the dissolved marriage of Mary’s mother Queen Catherine of Aragon and the beheading of Elizabeth’s mother Queen Anne Boleyn. |
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Catherine Parr surrounded herself with wise, capable, and trustworthy advisors, and — unlike every queen since Catherine of Aragon — earned the trust of Henry VIII. When Henry departed England for his last foreign adventure in France during 1544, the king left England in the hands of his new queen, appointed royal regent — caretaker of the realm — during his absence. Catherine proved worthy of the trust Henry placed in her, making sure that his expeditionary force in France was well financed and well supplied while overseeing the crown’s domestic program and monitoring the fragile situation with Scotland carefully. Catherine exhibited strength, wisdom, and confidence in her husband’s absence, perhaps influencing the impressionable 11-year-old Princess Elizabeth, who one day soon would lead England to its first golden age as a strong, wise, and supremely confident monarch. Perhaps sensing the capability of Henry’s daughters, Catherine Parr convinced Henry to reinstate both Princess Mary and Princess Elizabeth as second and third in line to the throne following their younger half-brother Edward. |
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