It’s still #reformationmonth and in this episode we look at the journey Henry VIII took from being a loyal servant of the Pope, named Defender of the Faith, to someone who tore down the old religion in England, founding his own Church of England.
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Episode transcript:
Hello, and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko, and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and to be more deeply in touch with our own humanity.
This is Episode 88. The second in the four-part series on the English reformation that I’m doing this year, the 500th anniversary of the Ninety-five Theses. This second one is on the Henrician Reformation in general. If you didn’t listen to the previous one, go back and do so. It’s on the medieval English Church pre-1520’s.
I need to thank my patrons before I do anything else. I have amazing patrons! Thank you to Kathy, Juergen, Ashley, Kendra, Anne Boleyn also known as Jessica, Elizabeth, Cynthia, Judy, Ian, Laura, Barbara, Sharkiva, Amy, Alison, Joanne, Kathy, Christine, Anneta, that’s my mom, Candace, Rebecca from TudorsDynasty.com, Al, and Shandur, and my newest patron Mary. I love you guys so much! You’re awesome, thank you so much. To find out how you can join this exclusive list, head on over to Englandcast.com and click on the donate and support button at the top menu. Last the Agora Podcast of the Month. The Agora Podcast of the month this month isn’t a podcast. It’s a series of podcasts – Agoraphobia. Each core member does a spooky episode on something Halloween, which I don’t know why I’m talking like that. Anyway, check out Agorapodcastnetwork.com or facebook.com/AgoraPodcastNetwork to see the different episodes that people are doing.
So when we left off last week, I was talking about the state of the medieval English church which while it was experiencing complaints from various sectors, both within the church itself and from those outside, like the Lollards, there was no real push for starting a new church. Even people like William Tyndale, who was eventually executed for publishing the Bible in English, started out trying to seek patronage and reform from within. So what happened then that made England turn in a span of less than 20 years from being a devout country with a supportive monarch to one where literally every monastery and nunnery was gone?
The history of the Henrician Reformation can be broken down into three phases. Phase One was set into motion when Henry realized that he would likely not have a legitimate son by Catherine of Aragon. Henry needed a male heir to ensure the stability of the succession. The height of the Wars of the Roses was only about 50 years in the past, still within the living memory of some who were still alive, and Henry did not want to risk everything. His father had founded everything he had fought for, everything he did to build a stable dynasty because he could not have a male heir. Henry did have an illegitimate son, so he knew that he was able to have a male child and he needed a legitimate one. He was a very religious man, and he studied the Bible for answers. I know that sounds funny – “Henry was a religious man,” but he really was. He was a really religious person. And he studied the Bible for answers. His mind got stuck on a verse from Leviticus 20, verse 21, and it says that if a man takes his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing, and the couple will have no children since Henry had married his brother’s widow. He believed that this was speaking directly to him. Now conveniently at the time, Henry also fell for Anne Boleyn. She was younger, Catherine of Aragon at this time was in her early 40’s, and was two decades younger than she was, so she was presumably fertile, and she also did not give in to Henry’s invitations to become his mistress, and she said she wanted to be his wife or nothing. So Henry decides to have his marriage dissolved.
Now, like we talked about last week, cases involving marriage did not go to a civil court, they went to a religious court. Henry being king would not go to a normal parish religious court the way Joe, farmer, might go to his parish church or his parish priest. Henry needed to go to the Pope. Remember how I said that the church and the secular governments operated almost as a parallel universe, Henry was the head of his secular universe, he needed to go to the head of the sacred universe that would be the Pope to ask for an annulment. This wasn’t actually that much of an uncommon thing, and it had been done in France just a few decades before when the queen there was persuaded to retire to a nunnery and the king got himself a new model. This isn’t the most unusual thing, the Pope should have easily have been persuaded to grant an annulment. But the fact was, Catherine’s nephew was waging a war in Italy and he managed to control the Pope. And so it became more difficult than it needed to be. Henry really just needed a delegation from the Pope to come to England and say “Yes, your marriage is invalid.”
So in 1528, the Papal legate Cardinal Campeggio, whose name is so much fun to say, let’s say it together, “Cardinal Campeggio! A piece of pizza for Cardinal Campeggio!” I might edit that out. So Cardinal Campeggio arrived, and Henry is certain that he’s going to get his wish. This is the famous trial at Blackfriars where Catherine of Aragon gives her impassioned speech kneeling in front of Henry saying that Henry knew she was a virgin when he married her, that she had not consummated her marriage with Arthur, so it was not a valid marriage, and she was his true wife. Catherine’s nephew had more victories in England this is Emperor Charles V, the Pope is stuck between the two men, Campeggio is recalled, and they say that the case just needs to be decided in Rome, the Pope’s really just trying to stall for time here and thus begins the first phase of the Henrician Reformation in which Henry threatens the privileges of the church as a way to persuade the Pope to cooperate with him.
So in 1529, we see Cardinal Wolsey‘s fall, Henry calls Parliament and urges them to share complaints against the clergy for their abuses, not just Wolsey. And we talked about Wolsey last time, and how all the nobility were resentful of men like him within the clergy, these people who had wealth and yet who was Wolsey? He was the son of a butcher from Ipswich, right? So who is this person that he can have all of this power and essentially run the government? Wolsey was unable to get the divorce, this was really in his realm, and Henry was disappointed with him. And so we start to see him fall. We start to see Parliament coming and being given permission to air all of their complaints. It’s like the airing of the grievances. Do you guys know that Seinfeld, the one with the Festivus, and a big part of Festivus is the airing of the grievances? So this is what we have, we have the airing of the grievances in Parliament, and everybody starts bringing it all out. Henry puts the flame to the resentments that the nobility and the others have long felt towards the clergy. But still, there’s no threat that he wants to go any further. In fact, after having all of these complaints sent to him, these records of abuses building up, this sort of database, he sends Parliament into recess for over a year.
So during this time period in 1530, Henry creates a group of scholars and theologians and lawyers, both in England and liaising with their counterparts throughout Europe, to start to build a case against Rome. In 1530, the Pope tells Henry that he needs to go to Rome, he forbids him from marrying again until he appears before the Pope. Henry’s furious being treated like a normal human being, rather than being treated like a king. He urges his lawyers to keep pressing forward. At this time, this is nothing more than a fight over jurisdiction. There’s no hint of reform here. It’s simply a question of who holds the power to determine the outcome of the king’s marriage in England, is it the king or is it the Pope? The collection of the papers that this group of scholars put together is actually still around, it’s called the “Collectiana”, and it shows that they were building a case showing historical precedent. England had precedent to settle internal non-spiritual matters that may have traditionally been in the church’es jurisdiction. They had In short, settled certain internal cases without the help of Rome. They believed that within England, the king has absolute power, including power over church matters that were not strictly spiritual.
This moves Henry to put more pressure on the clergy hoping that it will encourage the Pope to give him what he wanted. In 1530, he indited the entire class of clergy for …the Pope over him, and he forces them to recognize his authority. They finally agree, they add in a clause “So far as the law of God allows.” So we basically at this point, just have a fight between Henry and the church. Henry and the church have a falling out. And this isn’t that unusual. Lots of kings have had fights with the Pope. Most English kings have had a fight or two with Rome. Brexit isn’t a new idea. England has long bristled at the idea of a foreign power based in Rome, telling it what to do. But until this time, we are not looking at any reform, of religion, of worship, of anything like that. It’s a legal case. And it deals strictly with jurisdiction.
But when the Pope shows that he is unwilling or unable to do anything to help move things forward, a young man named Thomas Cromwell sees a way forward for Henry. We move into phase two – royal supremacy. So between 1532 and 1535. Thomas Cromwell was a man who was raised in London, not from a great family. He had been a soldier, he eventually went into the law and he rose in the household of Thomas Wolsey after Wolsey’s fall. He stays in service with the king because he’s a very intelligent man. He sees a way for Henry to move forward. It’s built on legal arguments. The argument is royal supremacy. Cromwell starts an agenda of putting forward legislation that will force the hand of the clergy. First is the Act of Restraints Against Annates. Annates were payments made to Rome whenever a cardinal or a bishop was appointed, and these payments were stopped. They were actually ruled to be canceled but the act wasn’t enacted right away, it was held as a bargaining chip for Henry.
And next came the Supplication Against the Ordinaries. This was a petition against the dreaded church courts and their abuses. The church finally had to respond to this. They put up a big fight and Henry gets mad, and by May of 1532, they give in. The clergy officially recognized his supremacy within England, and they ended any claim they had of independence. And from Rome, we still get crickets. In August of 1532, fate intervened for Henry. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Warham died. Henry could appoint a new Archbishop and he appointed Thomas Cranmer, a Cambridge reform-minded man who had been a part of the team of scholars that Henry had appointed to look into his case back two or three years ago, when he first started building up that team.
By autumn of that year, Anne sees that things really will start to move forward. She gives in to Henry’s advances, they start sleeping together. And by the end of the year, she’s pregnant. The child needs to have no question of illegitimacy hanging over it, and so the case needs to move forward fast. In May of 1533, Parliament passes the Act in Restraint of Appeals. This says that any decisions in England on cases in England are final, they cannot be appealed outside of England. So this is Parliament saying when things are decided in England, they stay in England. In May, just a couple weeks later, 1533, Crammer puts together a court very quickly, annuls Henry’s marriage to Catherine, and in June Anne is crowned Queen of England. Three months later in September, Princess Elizabeth is born and that same month, the Pope excommunicated Henry, but similarly, with some of the acts that Parliament had passed, he holds the excommunication in suspension, again, a bargaining chip hoping that Henry will turn back to him, Henry doesn’t.
In 1534, we see the Act of Succession which outlines the new line of succession through Anne’s children. This requires that oaths be taken from all of the leading men in court and officeholders around the country. There’s also an Act for Submission of the Clergy and the Act of Supremacy, both of which outline Henry’s supreme position in England, and these are all put together by Thomas Cromwell. These are all masterminded by Cromwell to build a legal case for Henry leaving the Pope and annulling his marriage. These acts are backed up with a series of executions to enforce them. Among the executions, we see Bishop Fisher, who we talked about last week as a reformer within the church, and also Thomas More.
After the break with Rome and the executions, we move into the third phase, which is the true part of the Henrician Reformation – the part that comes after he’s married to Anne. As we talked about, royal supremacy has nothing to do with changes to the doctrine or changes in worship, it was simply a legal issue. And had the Reformation not been going on in Europe, had these papers and books from Germany not reached England, it’s entirely possible that the issue would have ended there. But Henry’s problems did not take place in a vacuum. It took place in the context of the changes in Europe, it made England an immediate ally, however unwillingly, against the Pope, with places like Germany and Switzerland. They were kind of allies thrown together, because the enemy of my enemy is my friend, or the enemy of my friend, whatever. You guys know what I mean. So while Henry maybe didn’t look at Germany and Switzerland and the Protestant Reformation going on there, and so yeah, “I want to ally with that”, it wouldn’t have been maybe something he was naturally drawn to. He needed to have allies against the Pope. And they were also against the Pope. And so boom, they’re friends. Most of the bishops and the nobility were willing to go along with Henry because of the need to have a male heir, but they still hoped for reconciliation. The nobles especially were happy to see the clergy put in their proper place. We talked about that last time, but they still weren’t reformers, as we would think of them. Henry himself came to believe that he was put there in order to purge England of its abuses and false doctrines. And he took that role very seriously. But he was also highly susceptible to anyone who was around him, the influence of those around him. And in the 1530’s, those who were around him were Cranmer and Cromwell. And these were two Thomases who were in favor of reform and big reform.
So in 1536, they passed The Ten Articles of Faith. These were injunctions that moved England towards reform in a very slow sort of way. Then in 1536, Cromwell organizes a visitation to the monastery. Now this is to look for abuses. So he sends delegates out to monasteries throughout the country to look for and find abuses. They find abuses. And so this leads to the dissolution of the monasteries. Any monastery worth less than 200 pounds is dissolved by the end of 1536. And the land and the wealth reverts back to the crown. Now, this was not set up as an attack on the idea of monasticism, but on abuses that were found within the monasteries.
The monasteries though, especially in more rural places away from the universities and trade centers, they provided more than just spiritual service. They were schools and hospitals, places for travelers to rest. And so people were fearful of what would happen once they were gone. This then led to the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, the big rebellion in the north of England. I actually did an episode on that last year, I think, so you can go back and listen to the rebellions, the series of rebellions I did to learn about those religious rebellions in Yorkshire and Cornwall in the west country. As a result of those rebellions, once they were suppressed, which they were, the monasteries were encouraged and persuaded to surrender to the crown. And by 1540, every monastery and nunnery in England was out of business. The monks were given pensions or encouraged to find new work, those who were young enough, the nuns went back to live with their families, their stories of entire nunneries small ones, going to together to live with, for example, if there was a wealthy abbey, they would go live with their family and continue to practice their way of life within the family home. But you see, suddenly 4% of the population is without their traditional work. So they’re having to retrain, there’s a lot of upheaval around what’s going to happen with those people.
In 1537, Henry published the Bishop’s Book, which was a set of homilies that again moved towards a more Protestant definition of faith. And by 1538, all of the shrines in England were dissolved, including Walsingham, which we talked about last week. Canterbury and others, they were broken up on the grounds that they had been centers of idolatry and again, abuse. In 1538, England also introduced the Bible in English. Now, this was the Great Bible. This was a translation based on Tyndale, who was a Protestant by the time he was executed. And in the frontispiece, you see an engraving of Henry VIII sitting on his throne. It’s a very famous engraving. He’s sitting on his throne, he’s receiving the word of God directly from above, from God and the angels, and then it’s moving through him, and passing on to his happy subjects who are so eager for this knowledge and this truth.
But after that, things start to slow down. Henry had a male heir by Jane Seymour – Edward. And many hoped that that would end things that they could all just go back to the Pope, he had his son now it’s all just calmed down. It didn’t end there. But he did wind up becoming more and more influenced by the conservative faction at his court led by Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester and Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. Henry still saw himself as the Head of the Church. Conservatives though were worried about Protestantism gone wild. They talked to the king about Anabaptists being found in London. The massive movement of Protestants in London of all these heretics who before had to go underground, and now they were above ground taking over.
So by late 1539, Henry endorses the Act of Six Articles which were Catholic, and returned England to a more Orthodox form of worship. A year later, Cromwell’s beheaded extensively for encouraging heresy, but really for bungling up Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves. With Cromwell gone, many people tend to see this next period as a return to traditional religion. And it’s true that without one of the main people pushing for reform, things did slow down a bit, but Henry never went directly with his counselors anyway, he answered only to his conscience, and his conscience had its own understanding of the divine.
Henry would burn heretics, Protestant heretics, and Catholics. One set for heresy of denying transubstantiation and the other for denying rural supremacy. Sometimes he did it on the same day just to prove his point. And while Henry was more influenced by the conservatives in this period, he never abandoned Cranmer. In fact, he protected Cranmer from those who were seeking his downfall, and religion never went back to the true orthodoxy, because things had gone beyond repair. The shrines were gone, the relics were collected as part of the disillusion and burned, there was no more hanging rosary beads from a saint statue or praying to St. Cuthbert’s toenail or visiting a shrine to pray to a specific saint for your toothache. Women in childbirth were told that they could no longer pray to saints but only to God. No more girdles that supposedly belonged to the Virgin Mary to help ease their labor pains. There was no more purgatory. purgatory was gone from England. Service books were in English, the Bible was in English. Once you unleash things like this, you can’t put things back to how they were. Even more important, the tutors of Edward and Princess Elizabeth had been appointed by Archbishop Cranmer and they were Protestant tutors.
So while Henry lived, the true Protestants would always be a minority, and Henry would continue to be influenced by the Catholics, by the conservatives. He would burn heretics, he would until the day he died, maintain that you needed to believe in transubstantiation, the miracle of the body and blood of Christ becoming the wafer and the wine during communion. That was necessary for Henry, to be able to believe that, and he burned Protestants for not believing that up until right before he died. But when he died, this minority, the Protestant minority, suddenly got a king to represent them. That king was only nine. So he’s very easily persuaded by his Protestant family, his Protestant tutors around.
And next week, that’s where we’re going to pick up with Edward white-washing the walls and painting over frescoes and breaking stained glass windows, and then Mary trying to put it all back together and patch it up with some superglue and some scotch tape.
So there we have it. Links for everything including the books I’m using this month, the videos, everything like that are in Englandcast.com. Thanks so much for listening, and I will be back next week. Bye, bye!
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