The Tudors for Dummies (AvaxHome Download) (15 page)

Getting another divorce

As archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer must have been quite used to

marrying and divorcing on Henry's behalf (for more on Cranmer, see Chapter

6). This marriage was annulled on the grounds of non-consummation. London

couldn't believe it � most ordinary people believed Henry was a stud.

Anne rolled over for Cranmer's contention (something she clearly hadn't been

able to do for Henry!) and accepted the land given to her worth �3,000 a year.

Because this was the same amount thrown at Catherine of Aragon, �3,000 was

clearly the going rate for ex-queens in Tudor England.

Nothing further happened in the William�Mary projected marriage either and

Anne stayed in England, making no attempt to return home, until her death in

1557. She never remarried and sex may well have remained a dark mystery to

her until her dying day.

Lusting After Catherine Howard

Catherine was another mistake, but a very different one from Anne of Cleves.

Henry was on the rebound and very taken with the sexpot, who was actually

five years younger than his eldest daughter. Catherine was one of the enor-

mous grasping clan of the duke of Norfolk, and she was brought up in a huge

family home at Horsham in Sussex by her step-grandmother. She could read

and write but had no academic interests beyond that.

Catherine put herself about, probably under the influence of her older sisters,

and had her first affair at 14 with her music teacher Henry Mannox. (Why is

it always music teachers? See the earlier section on Anne Boleyn.) When she

got bored with Mannox, Catherine popped into bed with Francis Dereham, a

gentleman. Their affair lasted two years. After Anne of Cleves, Henry would

probably have welcomed an experienced girl, but the fact that she had been

to bed with other men would prove fatal for her.

Falling for a temptress

Catherine joined the royal Household at about the same time that Anne of

Cleves arrived. She probably learned quite quickly from Court gossip that

things weren't going well for Henry in the bedroom, and the king got inter-

ested in Catherine by March or April 1540. 96 Part II: Handling Henry VIII

Canoodling with Catherine

Henry was besotted. He showered Catherine Catherine's motto was `No other will but his',

with expensive gifts, jewellery and furs, most but Henry was 30 years older than she was and

of which he'd got from the estate of Thomas this physical fact probably became apparent

Cromwell (Henry probably felt his adviser pretty quickly.

owed him something after the Cleves fiasco).

Once Cranmer and the Church had annulled the Cleves marriage, Parliament

petitioned the king (which was standard procedure) to find a new wife for the

sake of the succession. Henry couldn't keep his hands off Catherine even in

public, and they were married at Oatlands Palace in Surrey on 28 July.

By March 1541 Henry became ill (see Chapter 3 for his medical ailments).

His leg ulcers became infected and he feared he may die. Far from an ardent

lover, Catherine now faced life with a chronic invalid.

Pushing the limits

There may have been no evidence against Anne Boleyn in terms of adultery,

but in the case of Catherine Howard plenty of proof existed:

While Henry was ill she took up with an earlier lover, Thomas

Culpepper, a member of the Privy Chamber who believed the king was

dying and Catherine was about to become a very rich widow. She wrote

him love letters � a huge risk as privacy didn't exist in the Tudor Court.

And she canoodled with Culpepper on a royal tour to York.

She appointed Francis Dereham as her personal secretary.

Henry seems to have been completely in the dark about all this, but the

Howards had many enemies. Cranmer was told and he felt duty bound to

tell the king. Henry couldn't believe it, snarling with fury one moment and

bursting into tears the next. But he couldn't ignore his wife's adultery, and

Culpepper and Dereham were arrested. Catherine was confined to quarters.

Reaching the end of the line

Cranmer interrogated Catherine at Hampton Court on 7 November 1541 in

the presence of her father. She cracked and confessed everything with much

screaming and wailing. A grief-stricken Henry threatened to torture the girl

to death.

Culpepper and Dereham were found guilty on 1 December of `conspiring the

bodily harm of the king's consort' (having sex with Catherine). Both men

were sentenced to die by the ghastly method of hanging, drawing and quar-

tering at Tyburn. Because of Culpepper's status, Henry commuted the sen-

tence to one of mere decapitation.

Not content with bringing Catherine down, Henry destroyed the entire

Howard family and they'd never again find favour at his Court. The ex-queen

wasn't tried, perhaps to spare Henry's feelings. The entire country now knew

he was a cuckold (a man whose wife was unfaithful to him) and his embar-

rassment must have been acute enough. Catherine was condemned by an Act

of Attainder (a parliamentary ploy to avoid a trial) on 8 February 1542 and

executed five days later, this time with an axe.

Catherine was only 21 when she died and many in the country felt her pun-

ishment was too harsh. Henry hadn't had their marriage annulled but her

betrayal shattered him, leaving him feeling old and full of self-pity.

Slowing Down with Catherine Parr

The king's last marriage was unlike the other five. Henry had grown old not-

so-gracefully (see Chapter 3) and Catherine Parr was 30 and had been mar-

ried twice before.

Becoming available

The new queen came from Kendal in Westmoreland and her father, Sir

Thomas, was a courtier who'd been a companion-in-arms to the young Henry

years before. Catherine was 17 when her first husband died and she married

John Neville, Lord Latimer of Snape, who was a widower. She became a busy

stepmother to his children and ran his estate in Yorkshire.

By 1543 Neville was dead. Now in their London town house, Catherine

became friendly with princess Mary, who was four years her junior. The

princess taught Catherine Latin, essential to cope with the snobs who hung

around Court, and the newly widowed woman attracted two suitors:

Thomas Seymour, brother of the earl of Hertford

Henry Tudor, king of England

No contest! 98 Part II: Handling Henry VIII

Growing up: Choosing a sensible wife

We don't know what drew Henry particularly to Catherine Parr. He sent her

a present two weeks before her husband's death, so perhaps he admired the

quiet way with which she coped with adversity.

It may have been Catherine's first instinct to jump into bed with Thomas

Seymour. She was still a young woman, he was a handsome buck and Lord

Latimer hadn't been active in the bedroom for years. By June 1543, however,

Catherine was seen increasingly around the Court and she told Seymour she

was going to marry Henry.

Cranmer and Co breathed sighs of relief when the wedding took place in the

private chapel at Hampton Court on 12 July.

Anything for a quiet life

Henry was well and truly past any sort of sex by now � he may not even have

consummated his marriage to Catherine. She was a born manager and made

sure that the king kept in touch with his children. Mary was 27 and could

look after herself, but Elizabeth was only 10 and Edward was 6. It may be that

the tutors Henry arranged for them, John Cheke and Richard Fox, who were

quietly Protestant in their views, were Catherine's choice and not Henry's.

Catherine may have secretly converted to Protestantism before 1547 but she

had to keep quiet about it. She certainly joined in theological chats that Henry

had with various advisers and Stephen Gardiner, the bishop of Winchester

who hated Protestants, believed the queen was a heretic. Henry actually drew

up a list of accusations against her, perhaps with a view to putting her on trial.

Catherine may have got wind of this list and may even have seen the charges

against her when a careless adviser dropped the list in a corridor(!) because

she had a queen-to-king meeting with Henry and charmed him so much that

he forgot the idea. When the lord chancellor arrived to arrest the queen,

Henry sent him packing with a flea in his ear.

Administering angel

Despite the fact that she was made regent when Henry was fighting in France

in 1544, all Catherine seems to have done was to compose a prayer for the

soldiers to use before battle. There was to be no sending of bloody shirts

for her (check out Catherine of Aragon's actions while Henry was off fighting

in Chapter 3). Chapter 5: Six Weddings and Two Funerals 99

Catherine's role was that of peacemaker. As Henry's physical problems grew,

she nursed him, soothed him, made him laugh when she could. It can't have

been easy.

When Henry knew he was dying in January 1547 he sent for Archbishop

Cranmer, not his wife. She wasn't there at the end and even had to watch his

funeral from behind an iron grid in the chapel.

Surviving Henry

After Henry's death Catherine was still only 35 and Thomas Seymour wasted

no time moving in. He was a councillor by now and a member of the Privy

Chamber and still as handsome as ever. He was opposed, though, by his own

brother, now lord protector to the new king, Edward VI. The boy king never-

theless gave Seymour his blessing and he carried off Catherine as well as her

lands and the princesses Mary and Elizabeth, who'd been living with her.

Sadly, Catherine died in childbirth of puerperal fever in September 1548.

Six wives frame by frame In The Private Life of Henry VIII Jane Seymour, the most gorgeous queen was Genevieve played by Wendy Barrie, is preparing for her Bujold and the funniest, in The Private Life, was wedding while Merle Oberon's Anne Boleyn Elsa Lanchester as Anne of Cleves. No film on is on her way to the block. Merle's headgear Henry's wives can fail, if only because of the and dress were faithfully modelled on the best- gorgeous clothes and the soap opera drama known portrait of Anne, but she didn't have the that they all lived through with Bluff King Hal. feisty, yet fragile beauty of Genevieve Bujold The most recent television series, The Tudors, in Anne of the Thousand Days. All the queens had an ageless Jonathan Rhys Meyers as were played by fine British actresses in Keith Henry with the wrong colour hair and not look- Michel's Six Wives of Henry VIII: Annette ing a pound over ten stone. The clothes were Crosbie was Catherine of Aragon; Dorothy Tutin good, so was the heraldry in the Court scenes was Anne Boleyn; Anne Stallybrass was Jane and there were lots of candles. If the king was Seymour; Elvi Hale was Anne of Cleves; Angela looking down at this production, he'd no doubt Pleasance was Catherine Howard; and Rosalie have been delighted by it all! Crutchley was Catherine Parr. For my money, 100 Part II: Handling Henry VIII

Building a New Church:

Henry and Religion In This Chapter

Heading up the Church

Quarrelling with Rome

Mixing with reformers

Milking the monasteries

Y ou can't understand Henry VIII's reign without talking about religion.

The fact that the Catholic Church was a political, money-making and

greedy organisation and that all Christian kings had to work with the pope

because he was `God's vicar [number two] on Earth' was bound to cause

trouble in a century in which the Reformation was taking place all over

Europe.

As we explain in Chapter 5, Henry's reason for breaking with Rome was

simple: he wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon so he could marry Anne

Boleyn. At first, Henry saw the break as a personal spat between him and the

pope � what's God got to do with it? Well, rather a lot, as it turned out.

The break with Rome didn't affect ordinary people very much at first. Church

services went on as before, priests went on as before. Church buildings were

brightly painted with scenes from the Bible, and the mass was in Latin. In

short, same old, same old. Among educated people, though, deep divisions

and real concerns existed.

Catholic and Protestant: What's the difference?

Today's society in the Christian west is much Held services (the Mass) in Latin.

more secular than in Tudor times, and the dif-

Believed that priests shouldn't marry.

ferences between Catholic and Protestant

don't seem terribly important (although some Protestants in the 16th century

Catholics and Protestants would no doubt dis-

Didn't believe in transubstantiation.

agree!). To explain the differences would take

a For Dummies book in itself but, in a nutshell, Didn't accept the Pope as their boss.

16th-century Catholics

Believed that Heaven and Hell were real

Believed in transubstantiation, the miracle places.

of the communion bread and wine turning

Didn't believe in pilgrimage or self-sacrifice.

into the flesh and blood of Christ.

Used vernacular Bibles (for example, Bibles

Believed that the Pope, who ran the

written in English in England, French in

Catholic Church, was appointed by God.

France, and so on).

Believed that Heaven and Hell were real

Held services in the vernacular.

places.

Were quite happy with married priests.

Believed that going on pilgrimage and suf-

fering were vital to keep God happy. Bearing all these points in mind can be helpful

as you tour through the chapters on religion in

Used a Latin Bible.

this book.

Looking at Henry's Beliefs

Have a look at a modern British coin. You can see the queen's head (the

idea of putting the monarch's face on coins as a regular thing dates from

Henry VII, so everybody in the country knew what the king looked like).

Along with the date, the coin also has a lot of initials. The initials DG sum up

Henry VIII's hotline to Heaven � Deo Gratias (by the grace of God). FD means

Fidei Defensor (defender of the faith) and that's a pretty strong hint about

Henry's personal beliefs. It was a title given to him in 1521 by Pope Leo X,

for burning the books of Martin Luther, the German monk who'd dared to

attack the Catholic Church four years earlier and began what came to be

known as the Reformation. Chapter 6: Building a New Church: Henry and Religion 103

Heaven and hell were real places to the Tudors. So was purgatory, a sort of

halfway house in which sinners sins were purged (painfully) before they could

enter heaven. Hell was terrifying, staffed by legions of devils. And of course it

was St Peter (regarded as the first pope) who held the keys to heaven.

Shifting perspectives

At first, Henry accepted Catholic ideas fully, knowing that not to was heresy

and that a heretic would be excommunicated. Henry's book Assertio Septem

Sacramentorum (Assertion of the Seven Sacraments) was never likely to hit

the bestseller lists, but it spelt out his Catholic ideas pretty clearly and the

pope liked it.

Henry later came to believe in his own hotline to God and his

people expected him, as king, to show the way in religious matters as

in everything else.

Henry never doubted the thinking behind Catholic ideas (except purgatory �

he wasn't sure about that), but he did think that monks were a waste of time

and he questioned the role of the pope. After all, the man was just another

political leader (usually Italian), so Henry thought he shouldn't be seen in any

special light.

The seven sacraments The Church looked after people's spiritual Eucharist: Celebrating the mass in which needs by carrying out the seven sacraments: you take bread and wine that become, by

miracle, the flesh and blood of Christ.

Baptism: Dunking babies in holy water to

make them members of the Church. Extreme unction (last rites): Given by priests

for the remission of sins and the comfort of

Confession: Admitting sin to a priest with

the dying.

the idea of repentance and forgiveness.

Holy orders: Becoming a priest in the

Confirmation: Confirming the promises

Catholic Church.

made on your behalf by your godparents at

baptism. Matrimony: The act of marriage. 104 Part II: Handling Henry VIII

Read all about it

The clergy always said that only they could interpret the Bible, especially

at a time when few people could read and the book was written in Latin and

Greek. But Henry came up with the idea to publish an English Bible so that

ordinary people could understand it themselves. The Bible came out in 1536,

and after 1538 every church in the land had to have a copy available.

Henry was appalled at how casually people treated the Bible. In his last

speech to Parliament in 1545, he said, `I am very sorry to know how unrev-

erently that most precious jewel, the Word of God [the Bible] is disputed,

rhymed, sung and jangled in every ale house.' He tried to recall the Bible

so that only gentlemen had access to it, but that didn't work; the Bible was

everybody's.

Getting back on track:

The Act of Six Articles

Henry must have realised that in attacking the pope, breaking with Rome (see

the following section) and allowing the English Bible, he was beginning to

sound a little bit like Martin Luther, whom he hated. So he got Parliament to

pass the Act of Six Articles in 1539, which underlined the traditional ideas of

the Catholic Church:

Chastity: All priests were to remain celibate; no hanky panky.

Confession: Good for the soul.

Communion: Only bread could be given to laymen; no wine.

Private masses: Should be held for the souls of the dead.

As far as the mass went, Henry put it front and centre in the religious scheme

of things.

Transubstantiation was the Catholic belief that at communion the bread

and wine actually turned, by a miracle, into the flesh and blood of Christ.

Protestants were already saying the bread and wine were only symbols. Henry

tried to reverse their view.

The official title of the act was `An act for abolishing diversity in opinions'. Big

brother? You bet! Especially when Henry tried to include widows as a group

forced into chastity on pain of death. Chapter 6: Building a New Church: Henry and Religion 105

Rewriting The Bishops' Book The Bishops' Book was written in 1537 without So he issued his own version in 1543, stress- Henry's authority and he wasn't happy about ing the importance of Bible reading and it. What it said about the mass in particu- deciding that no non-priests could hold lar seemed to be far too Protestant. The First services or deliver sermons. Henry made over Commandment made it permissible to pray 100 changes to the bishops' version. On the to Christ, but not God the Father. The list of bit about all men being equal in God's eyes, `don'ts' in the book included `divination and Henry said this applied to the soul only. Nobody, palm reading, uncleanly and wanton words, in 1543, was ready for democracy! tales, songs, sights, touching, wanton apparel and lascivious decking'.

Putting religion into practice

How did Henry run the Church after breaking with Rome? He saw himself

as having potestas iurisdictionis (being the organisational head). He never

claimed (unlike the pope) to have any priestly role, but he did call the shots

as he made clear in the Articles of Visitation drawn up by Thomas Cromwell

in the autumn of 1536, which decreed:

English priests must now reject the pope. From now on, the pope was

just the bishop of Rome.

Lots of holy days (saints' days) were to be removed from the calendar.

Worship of images was banned.

Churches had to provide English as well as Latin Bibles.

Laying the foundation for

the Royal Supremacy

Henry believed his religious views were his own and he was answerable only

to God. He listened to conflicting opinions and could argue well, but in the

end his word was law.

In fact, English kings had often controlled sections of the Church before: