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Unit Three OB * The Reformation • The First Succession Act • Henry's disregard for the Church and fixation on creating an heir eventually led him to execute More on ground of treason. • Though More had been useful, his Catholic reservations had turned him into an obstacle. • Henry had already found a better supporter in the inventive Thomas Cromwell, whose Protestant tendencies made him the ideal fellow to push Henry's religious reforms through Parliament. • Thomas More, however, was canonized by the Catholic Church and became a saint. As a matter of fact, have a cousin who attends St. Thomas More High School • Anne Boleyn & the Second Succession Act • Back on the home front, Anne turned out to be much more of a handful than Henry had anticipated. * The Reformation • Anne Boleyn & the Second Succession Act • On the personal side, Anne's intellectual independence and her sometimes violent temper often embarrassed Henry at court. • On the political side, Anne's outspoken Protestantism caused no end of trouble for Henry and threatened to undermine his deft balancing of Protestant and Catholic interests in England. • Anne was forever dabbling in politics, raising Protestants to high positions in both the Church and the State. • Henry had to make concessions to his more orthodox subjects to keep his kingdom from descending into the religious warfare and political upheaval that was quickly consuming northern Europe. • None of this would have mattered so much if Anne had managed to produce the son she had promised. • In this Anne failed, though it was not for want of trying. * The Reformation • Anne Boleyn & the Second Succession Act • Anne suffered a series of miscarriages, culminating in 1536 with the stillborn birth of an identifiably male child. • It must have seemed to Henry that heaven itself was punishing him, or laughing at him. • Eventually Henry had enough and decided that Anne had seduced him through witchcraft. • In the same year, after a travesty of a trial, Anne Boleyn was sentenced to death by beheading, along with her brother and many of her kinsmen. • As Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn had been deemed illegitimate, so too was the fruit of that union. • In 1536, Henry pushed the Second Succession Act through Parliament declaring that Elizabeth (like Mary before her) was an illegitimate child. * The Reformation • Anne Boleyn & the Second Succession Act • This, of course, left Henry without an heir. • So the act of succession also decreed that, in the lack of a direct heir, the king would be succeeded by whomever he chose. • Moreover, insisting on the legitimacy of Elizabeth or Mary became punishable as treasons. • Yet, perhaps most telling is an amendment in the act that made it treason to criticize the execution of Thomas More, suggesting that the ghost of More was far harder to dispose of than More himself. • Jane Seymour: A Son at Last! • The day after Anne's execution, Henry was already well on his way to his third marriage. • Drawing once again from the pool of his queen's ladies in waiting, Henry picked out Jane Seymour. * The Reformation • Jane Seymour: A Son at Last! • The two were engaged that very day and married a mere ten days later. • We know little about Jane, as her time in the limelight was very brief. • Yet, the next year, Jane provided Henry with the son he had always wanted. • Henry rejoiced at the birth of his new son, Edward, who would succeed his father to the throne. • But Henry's joy was mixed with sorrow, as Jane died soon after from complications related to childbirth. • Even after her death, Henry is said to have considered Jane his only true wife. • He was buried beside her in St George's Chapel in Windsor. * The Reformation • Jane Seymour: A Son at Last! • At last Henry had the heir he had gone through so much trouble to produce. • However, young Edward was a sickly child, and Henry was concerned that the boy might die before he could succeed him. • Moreover, a royal marriage offered political opportunities that were too good to pass up. • Wife #4: Anne of Cleves • Eager to match the King with a protestant power, Thomas Cromwell (now Henry's chief minister) pushed the king to marry Anne of Cleves. • Henry did not want to marry a woman he'd never seen, so he dispatched his favored artist, Hans Holbein (of Kung Fu Christ fame), to paint a portrait of his wife to be * The Reformation • Wife #4: Anne of Cleves • Anne was no beauty, her face being pocked by scars from an earlier battle with smallpox. • Holbein's artistic license got the better of him though, and he depicted Anne in the best light possible. • Fooled by this depiction, Henry agreed to the marriage. • Upon Anne's arrival in England, Henry realized that Cromwell had pulled the old bait and switch on him. • He had the marriage annulled and Cromwell executed. • Anne, however, he held blameless. • Not wanting to upset her brother, the Duke of Cleves Henry granted Anne a fine estate, invited her to all holiday gatherings and officially referred to her as 'the King's sister. * The Reformation • Wife #5: Catherine Howard • Tired of wedding for political reasons and weary of pandering to Protestants, Henry was determined to enjoy at least one of his wives. • He therefore married the young and beautiful Catherine Howard. • Catherine, however, was dissatisfied with the fat and aging king and took every opportunity to cheat on old Henry. • Henry soon caught wind of her clandestine love affairs and had her executed, along with several of her lovers. • Catherine Parr and the Third Succession Act • Exhausted by this series of wives (and probably wary of pretty women), King Henry's sixth and final wife was a matronly woman named Catherine Parr. • Parr was cultured and sensible. * The Reformation • Catherine Parr and the Third Succession Act • As a protestant sympathizer, Parr encouraged Henry to lean more toward the protestant side of the coin, yet she did so gently and reasonably, unlike the fiery Anne Boleyn. • These features made Catherine Parr the ideal companion for Henry during his final years. • Catherine was also instrumental in reconciling Henry with his estranged daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. • Her influence is often cited as the main cause for Henry's passing of the Third (and final) Succession Act, which returned Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession, behind Prince Edward and any children Henry might have by Parr. • This last clause proved unnecessary, as Henry had no further children in the remaining four years of his life. • Henry VIII died in 1547 and was succeeded to the throne by his son Edward VI. * The Reformation • England vs. Rome: Old Conflict, New Henry • As the Protestant Reformation swept across northern Europe, a very different sort of reformation was taking place in England. • Unlike the reformations of the mainland, which were mostly theological in nature, England's Reformation was decidedly political. • The debate in England was not about whether one was saved by Protestant faith or by Catholic sacrament. Instead, it was about who had the greater authority in England - the King or the Pope. • This debate was not a new one for England. English monarchs have a long history of butting heads with the Pope. • Many English kings saw the Roman Catholic Church as having entirely too much power in their country. • Conversely, many popes saw the English Crown as too eager to stick its fingers into matters of faith. * The Reformation • England vs. Rome: Old Conflict, New Henry • Four centuries earlier, during the Investiture Conflict of 1103, Henry I of England challenged the Pope over the right to appoint people to local Church positions. • A generation later, Henry II also tried to decrease the Pope's influence in England. In the Constitutions of Clarendon of 1164, Henry asserted that clergymen accused of civil crimes were subject to the civil law of the land, rather than the ecumenical law of the Church. • In this light, Henry VIII was simply resuming a centuries-old conflict between the King of England and the Pope in Rome. • Though Henry VIII would eventually gain the power to appoint bishops or to hold criminal priests to account, his initial conflict with the Pope was much more personal. • Henry was simply trying to provide an heir to his throne, and the Pope got in the way by refusing to annul Henry's marriage to the then-barren Catherine of Aragon. * The Reformation • England vs. Rome: Old Conflict, New Henry • Henry VIII struggled with Rome to get his annulment • You need only know that the conflict over annulment eventually led Henry to circumvent the Pope's authority and have his marriage to Catherine annulled by Parliament, rather than by the Pope. • The annulment was not the first challenge to the Pope's authority. It was preceded by many acts that gradually took powers that were traditionally associated with Church authorities in Rome and transferred them to secular authorities in England. • Thomas Cromwell: Undermining the Papacy • Henry was aided in his struggle with Rome by an English statesman named Thomas Cromwell. • Thomas Cromwell was an active supporter of the Reformation and a harsh critic of the Papacy. * The Reformation • Thomas Cromwell: Undermining the Papacy • It was Cromwell who persuaded Henry to turn his battle over annulment into a full-scale legal break from Rome. • With Henry's approval and Cromwell's goading, Parliament passed a series of laws undermining Papal authority. • In 1529, Henry began by finishing what his predecessor, Henry II, had started so long ago, ensuring that the clergy were subject to the common laws of England, rather than the Church laws of Rome.
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