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Inventors
of the Modern World
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— SIXTH AND FINAL ARTICLE OF A SERIES —
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MONKS! MONKS! MONKS! |
HENRY VIII at about the
age of 51 in 1542.
Portrait
after Hans Holbein from Castle Howard collection.
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enry
VIII at 52 was obese, ill, and tired. He had been King of England for 34
years, but there remained work to do. Henry VIII had
established the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland as a European
power which was a nation to be watched warily or courted
earnestly, depending upon the situation. Henry intended to leave the
nation secure when he died. His young son |
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Edward was being prepared to be his
successor. He would be a Protestant king of a Protestant
England
and
Wales.
Both
Scotland
and
Ireland
were still Catholic, but Henry planned to convert their ruling nobles to
Protestantism. The influence of the Roman Catholic Church had been
quashed. |
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Detail of a new painting
of the Mary Rose,
Henry VIII's great warship that launched in 1511
and sank during the Battle of the Solent in 1545
while the king watched from shore. The life of
the great ship mirrors the reign of the king: in
both length and fortune. Painting by Geoff Hunt
commissioned to mark the 500th anniversary
of the coronation of Henry VIII in 2009. |
Likewise, Henry’s refitted navy and national military were ready to
defend Fortress Britain against all comers. 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 cultured its Auld Alliance with Scotland and gained the support of the strong Ottoman Empire
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. One of Henry's armies — with the
king at its head — made an unsuccessful incursion into France, while, at
home, a small English force routed a |
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vastly
superior Scottish army intent upon invading England, weakening Scotland
and leaving its king — Henry's nephew — dead. Henry VIII, noting that
his nephew’s successor was an infant daughter, proclaimed
peace between Scotland and England and tied that peace to the 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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Succession was evidently still very much on Henry’s mind.
Fifty-two years old in 1543, Henry VIII was chronically ill and more
despotic than ever. His lifelong quest for security and power for
England had taken a great toll on his physical and mental well being.
Securing Scotland through the marriage of his only son would be one way
to help secure England’s future. But, an insurance policy of a second
son would relieve Henry’s greatest anxieties. A new wife — Henry's sixth
— was found working in the entourage of Princess Mary. The woman — already thirty years
old and already twice widowed, but childless — was a wealthy widow from
a noble family,
Catherine Parr. Catherine
was older than Henry’s other wives at the time of their
weddings, and intimately familiar with the ways of the Tudor court. Her
competence and skill showed immediately. She took an active roll in raising Henry’s three legitimate children,
Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward, and helped Henry reconcile with his
two estranged daughters.
Catherine Parr earned the trust of Henry VIII. When Henry departed England for his
last foreign |
Catherine Parr, sixth
and final wife of
King Henry VIII. In many ways she was
the right woman for the role: devoted,
patriotic, and an excellent manager of
the king's — and England's — affairs.
Image is a detail of a portrait only
recently assigned as Catherine Parr
by an unknown artist. PD-Art. |
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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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 enry’s final foray into France ended without success. Instead
of reclaiming England’s former Continental possessions and establishing
itself as a major European power, Henry returned home with no battles
won and a great amount of England’s wealth lost. Meanwhile, in Scotland,
a gathering consensus of clans, clergy, and nobles decided to oppose the
arranged marriage between Scottish crown princess Mary and English crown
prince Edward. The betrothal to unite the royal families of Scotland and
England was a key stipulation of the July 1543 Treaty of Greenwich Henry
wished to impose on Scotland. In December of that year the Scottish
Parliament formally rejected the treaty and, instead of sending Mary to
England, cloistered her in the fortress
castle at Stirling,
Scotland, where, at the age of nine months, she was crowned
Mary
Queen of Scots.
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King Henry VIII was outraged by the Scottish |
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Mary Queen of Scots at
13
c. 1555 by Francois Clouet. |
rejection of
unification with England and the Scottish reaffirmation of ties with
Catholic France. Henry, in France leading English troops in a war to
support his alliance with the Holy Roman Empire against France, saw
Scotland’s decision to maintain ties with France as treachery bordering
on treason. The English king sent forces to punish the Scots, beginning
a series of raids, skirmishes, and battles (including the devastating
Battle of Pinkie Cleugh,
last battle between the national armies of England and Scotland) that
occurred from 1544 to 1551 and collectively are known as
”The Rough
Wooing of Scotland”.
The wooing, despite the disastrous defeat of the Scots at Pinkie Cleugh
late in 1547, did not succeed. Mary did not marry Edward. Instead, she
was spirited away — first hidden at
Inchmahome Priory
on an island in a small lake in
the Trossachs
of
Central Scotland,
then, in July 1548 to France, where she grew up in the court of
King
Henry II. A decade
later she wed her childhood friend, Francis, heir to the French |
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throne, and a year later, they ascended to the thrones of |
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France and Scotland upon the death of the French King Henry. Mary’s
claim — as a direct Tudor descendant of
English King Henry
VII
— eventually led to her return to Britain, her capture,
and her execution in England with the blessing of her cousin,
Queen
Elizabeth I.
During Henry VIII’s final years the great king had reason to
become fearful that all of his plans had been compromised and all of his
goals would not be reachable in his lifetime. Beyond Ireland, England
had no empire. Only the income earned by the church and monastic lands
Henry had confiscated kept his treasury from bankruptcy. Scotland could
not be counted on. His staunchest allies — the Holy Roman Empire and its
allies in northern Europe — were England’s allies only because they
shared a common foe: the marriage of convenience of France and the
Ottoman Empire. Spain and the Vatican surely could only be counted on as
fair weather friends by Henry VIII. Henry’s personal power had been
mitigated by his need to work with Parliament to secure the funds
necessary to pursue his military expeditions. His personal life had been
a series of marital crises for fifteen years.
Henry found it necessary to rid himself of enemies real or
imagined — including two queens (Anne
Boleyn and
Catherine Howard),
three principal advisors (Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas More, and Thomas
Cromwell), and many members of the nobility, the court, and the church —
by capital punishment. Some estimate that Henry purged Britain of
several tens of thousands of perceived enemies of the Crown by the
various gruesome means that were employed at the time. As he neared his
own demise, Henry sent more and more of his countrymen to their own. But
he succeeded only in making anyone opposing his views fearful of his
rage and power. He was not able to convince all British Catholics to
become Protestants. He was not able to convince Reformation Protestants
to become adherents of the Church of England. He was not able to
convince the Scots that their future properly belonged in Great Britain.
He was not able to frighten his European neighbors into believing that
England was a major power.
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The Battle of the Solent occurred July 19, 1545. The superior French
Navy caught the British Navy in the channel
between mainland Britain (near Portsmouth) and the Isle of Wight. A French
invasion force was repelled by the
outnumbered Isle of Wight militia, and the French fleet withdrew. Henry's
great flagship, the Mary Rose, sunk
during the battle (gray shaded circle, center of picture), probably from
taking in water in its waterline gun ports
during a squall. Henry VIII (magenta circle in the center of the picture),
who observed the events of the day from
the English encampment, no doubt realized the relative weakness of the
English Navy. The picture is an edited
version of The Cowdray Engraving of the original painting, made from
eyewitness testimony shortly after the battle.
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Indeed, Henry’s longtime friendly rival and competitor,
King
Francis I of France,
elected to give Henry some of his own medicine a year after the English
king had invaded France for the last time. In July, 1545, a French
armada of over 200 ships and 30,000 men attacked the south of England at
the Isle of Wight near the port of Portsmouth. A vastly smaller English
force, with substantial help of the citizen militia of the Isle of
Wight, repulsed the French onslaught — the last time the territory of
England would be invaded by a foreign military force. The English
checked the French, but only with significant losses of its own —
including the king’s giant warship, the
Mary Rose
— losses that
showed the weakness of the English Navy, and suggested that Henry’s
England was not yet a first-rate European power. |
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King Henry VIII dared to believe he could transform a little
island off the northwestern coast of Europe into a major European power,
a modern nation under the rule of a powerful central monarch assisted by
a subordinate Parliament representing the concerns of the nobility and
an enlightened middle class. He believed these things were possible
because he was a child of the
Renaissance
and the embodiment of
a
Machiavellian prince
who saw the concept of modern nationhood the logical replacement for the
church-dominated, medieval feudal system.
This vision was not Henry’s alone, but shared by his great
rivals, Francis I of France and
Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire.
In their time, modern warfare was invented, modern navies developed, and
intercontinental empires imagined or established. All three great kings
left heirs, and their heirs continued the national rivalries into the
next century. All three great kings defined their times unlike other
monarchs before them. Importantly, the visions they shared for strong
national powers and empire building continued through their successors,
who built the modern world. |
HENRY VIII portrayed
near
the end of his life. He lived
to be almost 56 years old,
but in his later years was
ravaged by chronic
injuries and illnesses. |
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EDWARD VI, King of
England,
lived only to age 15. His reign
did not ease Henry's greatest
concern: royal succession. |
enry
VIII died of accumulated illnesses and festering wounds late in January 1547. His son and heir,
King
Edward VI, was but nine
years old. Two months later King Francis I of France died. His son and
heir,
King Henry II,
was 28 years old. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, ruled for nine more
years until failing health caused him to abdicate in favor of his son,
King Philip II of Spain.
The progeny continued to pursue the dreams of their powerful fathers:
• King Edward VI (King of England from 1547-53) was bright
and eager, but too young to rule. His uncle
the Duke of Somerset
(brother of his mother, Queen Consort
Jane Seymour)
served as regent and Lord Protector for two years until sacked and
executed.
The Duke of Northumberland
replaced Somerset in the role (but without the official title) of Lord
Protector until Edward VI died at the age of 15. Northumberland used his
position to place his daughter-in-law
Lady Jane Grey
(queen from July 6-19, 1553) on
thethrone. |
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• King
Henry II (King of France 1547-59) continued to persecute Protestants
throughout France. He took Mary Queen of Scots into his court and raised
her as a French Catholic. He arranged her marriage to his son,
Francis II.
When Henry II died, Francis II became King of France and King Consort of
Scotland at age 15, and Mary Queen of Scots became Queen Consort of
France at age 17.
• Queen Mary I (Queen of England 1553-58; aka
Bloody Mary
because of her persecution of Protestant “heretics” during her reign)
ascended to the throne despite being Catholic, despite Edward VI’s
deathbed proclamation that she would not be permitted to succeed him.
When Lady Jane Grey was seen to be an interloper by most Englishmen,
Mary assembled a force, entered London and wrested the crown from poor
Lady Jane, who was thrown into the
Tower of London
along with her scheming father-in-law, Northumberland.
Mary,
unmarried and Catholic, promptly concerned |
KING HENRY II of France.
When he died of wounds suffered
in a joust, Mary Queen of Scots
ascended to the throne of France. |
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herself
with producing a legitimate heir and blocking the |
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succession of her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth to
the |
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MARY I, Queen of
England.
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throne. In 1554 she married
her second cousin, Philip II of Spain, who immediately became King (&
co-monarch) of England. Two years later, upon the abdication of ailing
Charles V, Mary took the title of Queen Consort of Spain. Despite
proscriptions to the contrary, Philip and Mary involved England in
foreign wars in the interest of Spain, wars which did not go well
(England lost its last Continental possession, Calais, and was left
nearly bankrupt) and cost the dual monarchs most of what little
popularity they had in Britain. Despite two presumed pregnancies the
royal couple remained childless, distancing husband from wife and
leaving Mary broken-hearted. Mary’s Protestant half-sister replaced her
on the thrones of England and Ireland upon Mary’s death in 1558 of
complications from her second phantom pregnancy. |
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• King Philip II (King of Spain 1556-98, King Consort of England
and Ireland 1554-58 with Queen Mary I) — also King of Naples and King of
Portugal — expanded his father’s New World empire and plundered its gold
and silver to bolster the Spanish economy and underwrite Spain’s golden
age. Philip also took on his father’s role as protector of Christianity
and Catholicism by opposing (often with his armies) the Ottomans, the
French, and — after his wife Mary’s death and Elizabeth’s spurning of
his advances — his former subjects, the English.
• Queen Elizabeth I (Queen of England 1558-1603) replaced her
half-sister
Queen Mary I
at age 25. With renewed dedication, Elizabeth brought the strength,
wisdom, and vision of her father, Henry VIII, back to the throne. She
achieved his unrealized goals of turning England into a major European
power, with a developing |
PHILIP II - King of
Spain and
King Consort of England. |
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empire in the New World. Her reign — much less despotic
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than her father’s or her sister’s — saw a flowering of
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ELIZABETH I, Queen of
England. |
the arts and sciences in England that resulted in a golden age.
Despite rumors of having many suitors, Elizabeth never
married, and never bore children. A staunch Protestant, she rejected her
ex-brother-in-law King Philip II’s proposal for marriage.
Knowing that her Catholic cousin Mary Queen of Scots was
thought by many the legitimate heir to the Tudor throne — King Henry II
of France recognized Mary Queen of Scots as the legitimate Queen of
England — Elizabeth had Mary imprisoned and eventually executed.
Ironically, it was the son of Mary Queen of Scots,
King James VI of Scotland,
who followed Elizabeth I to the throne of England, as
King James I.
Like Elizabeth, James was a staunch Protestant, whose sponsorship of a
new official English-language Bible carries his name. |
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enry VIII has never been an
especially admired or popular man or monarch within his own country.
Ruthless, merciless, obsessive, compulsive, and domineering, Henry was a
man to be feared. The stress of constant political intrigues,
exacerbated by the chronic illness and pain of his later years, gave
rise to an overwhelming paranoia that rendered the old, obese, dying
king violently dangerous.
But Henry VIII succeeded without his knowing. He carried
forward the concept of a unified British nation, centrally controlled
from strong leaders in London that was first envisioned by the early
Normans and first instituted by King Edward I. Influenced by the surging
enlightenment of the Renaissance, Henry translated Edward I’s concept of
medieval kingdom into that of a modern empire.
King Henry VIII died with
many of his life’s
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KING HENRY VIII.
Sketch c. 1540 possibly from
Hans Holbein or associate. |
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ambitions unrealized. Although he had succeeded in siring |
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a male
heir, it would be his second daughter, Elizabeth, who would make Henry’s
visions realities:
• Britain became secularized. Elizabeth put an end to the Tudor
wavering on the question of Roman Catholicism. The Crown would be
titular head of the national church. Dissenters would be tolerated with
suspicion and prejudice. Britain would never again be Catholic.
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Queen Elizabeth I,
during whose reign the
English Navy became a major force that
made England a world power, fulfilling the
vision of Henry VIII. This painting, by
George Gower c. 1588, is known by its iconography as " the Armada
Portrait". |
• Britain would become an empire growing rich from the
exploitation of its foreign colonies. Having lost all its continental
possessions and gained nothing in the New World from its alliance with
Spain, Elizabeth tolerated privateers interfering with Spanish treasure
ships on the Atlantic and in the Caribbean. English eyes turned west
toward the New World. Spain held most of the West Indies, Central and
South America, but only minor toeholds in North America. Elizabethan
Britain saw opportunities north of the Spanish colonies and would soon
compete with France, Holland, and Sweden to become the dominant power in
North America.
• Britain would become a major sea power. Competition with Spain
and France forced Elizabeth to complete Henry’s great navy. The French
invasion near Portsmouth and the great
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challenge of the Spanish Armada forced England
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to build
a modern navy that would serve to protect the island nation and extend
its influence around the world.
• A strong central government would effectively manage the
domestic affairs of a
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united
England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Parliament |
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became an important
partner of the monarchy, providing
representation of Britain’s, widespread citizenry who now looked to
London for direction.
• Stability of Royal Succession. A monarchy in which male heirs
were no longer considered mandatory promised the stable transition of
power from one dynasty to the next. Henry VIII was replaced by his son
(by wife Jane Seymour), who was replaced by Mary (Henry’s daughter by
Catherine of Aragon), who was replaced by Elizabeth (Henry’s daughter by
Anne Boleyn), who was replaced by James (Henry’s grandniece by Mary
Queen of Scots) the founder of the Stuart Dynasty and first monarch of
the modern British Empire.
With the advent of the Stuarts at the start of the 17th
century the Middle Ages ended in Britain. Henry VIII, last English king
to joust in armor, anticipated the Modern Age. Less than fifty years
following his death, his great-grandnephew, King James I, began his
reign as the first modern English monarch. During his reign English soil
would be claimed in Virginia and Massachusetts. Henry VIII would have
recognized the new age as his legacy. Who would dare argue with him? |
KING JAMES I of England.
James, despite being the son of a
former Scottish, Catholic Queen of
France, represented security and
stability to Britain: male, with a
healthy male heir; Protestant;
healthy; intelligent; and politically
shrewd. Britain's North American
empire began in earnest during his
reign, while a golden age of arts
and letters prospered at home.
Portrait by John I. Decritz c. 1610. |
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– END OF PART VI –
CONCLUSION
OF THE SERIES
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.
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•
ENGLAND •
LONDON •
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THIS ARTICLE
FIRST APPEARED MARCH,
2010. |
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