A. K. Chidgzey

From the 13th century, there was a groundswell movement toward reformation. Wycliffe, the Lollards, Hus, Luther.

And then back in England, everyone is hearing about what is happening in Germany and a lot of people are freaking out, including Henry VIII, who we’ll get to in a second. But along comes William Tyndale who was inspired by Wycliffe and Luther and who also translated the bible. But he had to go to Germany to print his translation. This was almost discovered when the printer started bragging about it to everybody. So Tyndale had to find a new printer. So that’s a hard business lesson for this printer, but I mean it’s also pretty obvious.

The translation was printed and smuggled back into England. The authorities knew about this and so their brilliant idea was to purchase every single copy to get them off the street. Tyndale just took the money straight to the bank and started working on a second edition. So the Catholic English succeeded in funding a new and better Bible translation. So again there’s another valuable business lesson.

So anyway, these new reformation ideas were circulating throughout England and slowly gaining traction. So bear that in mind and let’s now make our way into the court of the Tudor family. Henry Tudor, or King Henry VIII, was your typical king, in all the good ways and all the bad ways. He was tall, athletic, attractive, intelligent, and proud, very very proud.

His father, Henry VII had won the war of the roses and took the English throne from the House of York and quickly and powerfully consolidated his rule. He arranged for his son Arthur to be married to Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. This allied the English with the powerful Spain and basically put France into a chokehold.

However, only four months into his reign, Arthur died. So it was quickly arranged for Catherine to marry Arthur’s younger brother Henry VIII, to ensure that the relationship between England and Spain remained strong. Normally, this would go against church law, because Henry was Catherine’s sister-in-law, but the pope gave them a dispensation, allowing them to marry. Keep this in mind, this becomes important later. When Henry ascended the throne, he was very powerful and very wealthy. He controlled a lot of land.

And he knew about all of these reformation ideas. So to make a point he had a bonfire and burnt all of Luther’s books, at least as many as he could get his hands on. He also wrote a book condemning Luther. It has the catchy title of Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, which means ‘Defence of the Seven Sacraments’. It impressed the Pope and so the Pope gave Henry the title Fidei Defensor, which means ‘Defender of the Faith’. So if Henry’s ego wasn’t inflated enough before this, it was well and truly now.

This also pleased Henry’s advisor and friend, Thomas More. More was an accomplished lawyer, theologian, and politician who was staunchly Catholic and very much did not like the Protestant movement. He was a pretty intense man, practicing self-flagellation. See my episode on asceticism to learn more about what this means. He was a powerful man who accomplished a lot for Henry…until he didn’t. And we’ll return to old Tommy in a moment.

But there were troubles at home. It was absolutely vital that the king produce a male heir. And Catherine, unfortunately, was unable to help him out with this. She sadly had a few still births, and the son that she had given birth to died at seven weeks old. But then she eventually did give birth to a healthy child. There was just one problem. The child was a girl. They named her Mary.

Now, Henry did actually already have a son, but this was an illegitimate child, which is just a horrible thing to call someone. Henry had a son, named…Henry…Henry Fitzroy, with Elizabeth Blount, who was one Catherine’s maids of honour.

But with Mary, Henry started to believe that he was being punished by God. Because girls are gross and infested with cooties. No that’s not true. There’s actually a few layers here. The theological idea behind the concept of the monarchy is what is called the divine right of kings. God is the one who places the monarch on the throne, the king derives his authority from God and so stands accountable only to God. So not having a son was seen by Henry and others as a divine indictment. It seemed to Henry that God was saying “Your line ends here.”

So what did Henry did do to receive such a judgment from God? He concluded that it was because he married his brother’s widow, based on a verse from Leviticus: If a man takes his brother’s wife, it is impurity; he has uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.

So he set out to have his marriage to Catherine annulled, making a big show of his deep sorrow for breaking God’s laws. He sent Cardinal Thomas Wolsey off to find a way to legally end the marriage. It was argued that the pope had been wrong to provide the dispensation that allowed Henry and Catherine to marry, thus making their marriage invalid. In response, Catherine, who was not wanting their marriage to be annulled, and who appears to have been properly deeply in love with Henry – they had been married for almost 20 years by this point – she argued that she and Arthur had never actually consummated their marriage, and so the dispensation was not actually necessary. Hence, Henry’s argument was invalid and there was no good reason to get an annulment.

People have always been so uncomfortably obsessed with women’s sex lives, but this instance is extreme. The fate of the nation and the church in England rested on whether or not Catherine was a virgin when she married Henry. Man, that is so messed up.

But ultimately, the decision didn’t come down to this at all. Poor Catherine was humiliated for practically no reason at all, because the pope made his decision based on a whole other political reason, one that was much more expedient and closer to home.

You see, Catherine’s nephew was Charles V, who just happened to be the king of both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. In other words, he reigned over most of Europe and was right on the Vatican’s doorstep. Charles was powerful, rich, and much closer in proximity to the pope then England was. The pope could simply not afford to anger Charles. Even though the pope had been very supportive of Henry, Henry being the great defender of the faith, if he annulled the marriage to Catherine, this would be an enormous insult to Charles. So, he refused to annul the marriage.

And this was all Cardinal Wolsey’s fault. Obviously. At least in Henry’s eyes. He was charged with treason, a crime punishable by death, but on his way to London for decapitatio, Wolsey died by natural causes.

Thomas Cranmer stepped up to continue the anti-Catherine brigade. That’s really not a job anyone would want, I don’t think.

“So why did this job become available? What happened to the last person who worked here?”

“Ummm…let’s just say he no longer has the headspace to continue the job.”

And Thomas More became Lord Chancellor, even though More opposed the annulment.

In the background of all of this – who wasn’t really in the background, everyone knew about her – was another important person you should know about. Anne Boleyn. She was a maid of honour to Catherine and who caught Henry’s eye. Henry started paying her special attention in court. It was well known that Henry had mistresses, including Elizabeth Blount around the same time as Catherine gave birth to Mary, and then Anne’s own sister, Mary Boleyn. So it’s all a little bit weird, but this behaviour was not that weird or uncommon for kings. But Anne was extra special.

Catherine was kicked out of court and her rooms were handed over to Anne. Believing his marriage to Catherine to be invalid, Henry married Anne in secret, who soon became pregnant. But we’ll look at Anne a little more closely in the next episode. Trust me, it gets weirder.

But also bear in mind that Mary, who was a teenager at this point, was watching this all happen. But she was watching from afar because she had been sent away and was not allowed to see her mother.

A series of acts were then pushed through Parliament. In his inability to annul his relationship with Catherine, Henry decided to just annul his relationship with the pope. Over several years, inspired by the likes of Luther and Wycliffe and the like, Henry sought to strengthen his own power and weaken England’s ties to the pope. And it began with money.

In 1532, the same year Henry secretly married Anne, the Act in Conditional Restraint of Annates was passed, which meant the taxes that were normally sent off to the Vatican from churches in England, now went to the English crown. The following year, the Act in Restraint of Appeals was passed, which meant that the pope had no say over what happened in England. Henry was now able to formally get rid of Catherine (even though this supposedly wounded him deeply) and marry Anne publicly. A number of other acts were passed, usually to do with taxes or landownership, but also declaring that Mary was illegitimate and so could not inherit the throne.

But the big one was the act of supremacy in 1534. This was the definitive statement of England’s separation from the pope. The term church of England is used here, meaning that the church had officially split from the Roman Catholic Church. Also, significantly, the king is declared the only supreme head of the church of England. The king and his successors effectively took the position of pope within the Anglican church.

Henry co-opted the emerging ideas and theology of reformation to provide the theological justification for all of these changes. However, I don’t think Henry’s motivations were purely theological. I do think he had something of a sincere care for the church, but I think his motivations were primarily about power and about economics. Henry did not like being told what he could or could not do, and he had such an inflated sense of self worth, he was a bit of an egomaniac, so when Catherine couldn’t give birth to a son and when the pope wouldn’t allow the annulment, his pride was wounded and he threw a tantrum.

But with all the political changes, there was a sudden influx of cash. Catholic properties, cathedrals, monasteries, nunneries, were ransacked. Henry and his comrades were already rich, but now they were much richer. And I think that was a major impetus to split from the pope. Why should he allow all this money to be sent to Italy, what good did the pope even do for England if he couldn’t even give Henry an annulment? Henry thought he could do it all himself and keep all the cash.

A major argument in support of this is that the theology and church practice was not actually really changed. The church basically stayed catholic, except it was English and Henry had replaced the pope. Just like he had replaced his wife.

Something I like to point out to my history students is just how often economics and politics come into the history of the church. Money and power are often just as significant, if not more significant, than theology. It’s surprising just how often the church is dictated by worldly concerns.