IMAGINING HENRY VIII: CULTURAL MEMORY AND THE TUDOR KING, 1535-1625 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Mark Rankin, B.S., M.A. **** The Ohio State University 2007 Dissertation Committee: Professor John N. King, Adviser Professor David Cressy Professor Richard Dutton Professor Christopher Highley Graduate Program in English Copyright by Mark Rankin 2007 ABSTRACT Tudor and early-Stuart writers refashioned the posthumous reputation of King Henry VIII during the reigns of Henry’s royal successors in response to ongoing debate over the interconnected themes of English religious and national identity. Henry’s legacy as a potential supporter of these notions was ambivalent owing to the shifting policies in religious affairs that he displayed during his own lifetime. This ambivalence enabled writers to manipulate Henry into either a partisan supporter or strong opponent of competing religious and political ideologies after his death. By employing an interdisciplinary methodology encompassing archival research and the study of early printed materials, this study analyzes literature written about Henry in its political and historical contexts. It redresses our present lack of knowledge of how Henry acquired his modern-day status as one of England’s most memorable and recognizable monarchs. From the publication of the first complete English Bible in 1535 to the death of James I in 1625, authors manipulated Henry VIII from widely divergent perspectives and agendas. In the process, they shaped his cultural presence by arguing about his relevance to disputes over the future of the nation’s religious and political affairs. Counselors and propagandists in and around the royal court flattered both Henry and his successors in order to obtain patronage and shape the direction of policy. They frequently reminded the ii Crown that Henry had begun an evangelical Protestant Reformation that needed to be carried through to completion. They envisioned the completion of religious change according to the pattern of Henry’s program, even when, as was often the case, Henry himself had not desired additional changes. Following the return to Roman Catholicism during the reign of Queen Mary I, counselors took a slightly different approach, using Henry’s example to instruct the queen about what not to do. Following the return to Protestantism under Queen Elizabeth I, Catholic opponents continued to employ Henry’s reputation as a benchmark for their own agenda for English Christianity. Their highly biased and semi-fictional prose histories of England’s break from the Church of Rome contain the most virulent criticism of Henry VIII to appear during the early modern era. Contrary to those who would flatter Henry’s memory, they condemn him as a violent and lustful tyrant and reject Queen Elizabeth and her government as the product of Henry’s recklessness. Protestant writers under Elizabeth resented the treatment of Henry by their Catholic opponents, but they themselves struggled to understand Henry’s ambivalent cultural legacy. Many authors paired Elizabeth and her father in dynastic arguments in order to stress that Elizabeth should continue Henry’s policies even when those policies conflicted with the queen’s own views. Queen Elizabeth herself expressed reservations about her father’s cultural influence and manipulated his example to her advantage in her letters and speeches. As Elizabeth’s reign progressed, writers longed for a return to the reign of Henry VIII as an alternative to present troubles like the problem of the royal succession. Nostalgia coupled with humor reminded readers of the nation’s successes iii under Henry. Henry appears explicitly as a literary character in prose fiction and drama during the 1590s, the last decade of Elizabethan rule, where his ostentatious behavior often evokes nationalistic sentiments. Following the accession to the throne of James VI and I in 1603, playwrights such as Samuel Rowley, John Fletcher, and William Shakespeare exploit Henry VIII as dynastic model for the Stuart monarchy. In so doing, they usher in a new era of Henry’s cultural presence. Following the death of Elizabeth, the desire to flatter and not offend the Crown ceases to play a significant role in treatment of Henry’s posthumous legacy. Writers instead began increasingly to bring their representations of Henry into line with the political agendas of their respective royal patrons. Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Henry VIII, for instance, represents the Tudor monarch as a precursor to James’s own relationship with the religious policies of mainstream Protestantism during this era. In particular, Henry provides an anachronistic model for James I as a king who rises above factional conflict. Their version of Henry contains high topical appeal, since James struggled with Parliamentary factionalism during the opening decade of his reign. Throughout the Tudor and early Stuart periods, Protestant and Catholic authors disagreed about the meaning of Henry’s life both with each other and among themselves. Through their disagreements, they recreated narratives of Henry’s life as a platform for their own political engagement. In doing so, they gave this historical figure his enduring influence as one who shaped England’s literature, its polemical writing, and its understanding of its identity as a nation. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am humbled when I consider how many individuals have selflessly assisted this project. In their own ways they have each improved this study and do not share in my responsibility for flaws that may remain in its present form. John N. King, my dissertation director and doctoral program adviser, has been an outstanding model of academic rigor and personal generosity. I am very grateful to him and to my other readers, Richard Dutton and Christopher Highley, who each tolerated my sprawling early drafts and lent substantial expertise to every stage of the work. This study first came to life during my enrollment in a seminar on Tudor historical documents conducted by my fourth reader, David Cressy. I thank him for teaching me how to look more critically at sources. Greg Walker offered a valuable response to chapter one. All of my teachers have provided wise counsel at crucial moments, but Andrew Escobedo, Alan Farmer, Loreen Giese, Phoebe Spinrad, Roger Taylor, and Luke Wilson deserve special thanks. I am also grateful to Sir John Baker, Tom Betteridge, James K. Bracken, Christopher Brown, Harry Campbell, Kent Cartwright, Marisa Cull, Peter Davidson, Peter Happé, Robert Harding, Jean Howard, Drew Jones, Kathleen Kennedy, Lisa Kiser, Peter Lake, Thomas McCoog, S. J., David McKitterick, Glyn Parry, James Phelan, Elizabeth Renker, Alec Ryrie, v Michael VanDuessen, Susan Wabuda, and William Wizeman, S. J., for their encouragement, timely support, or helpful responses to specific queries. Warm thanks goes to the curators and staff at the various libraries and archives who have made this work possible. I am grateful to the following institutions for warmly facilitating my research: the Bodleian Library; the Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University (especially Valerie Hotchkiss); the British and Foreign Bible Society; the British Library; the Cambridge University Library; the Cambridge College Libraries of Emmanuel, Trinity, and St. John’s (especially Jonathan Harrison); the Denison University Library Special Collections; the Folger Shakespeare Library (especially Betsy Walsh, Heather Wolfe, and Georgianna Ziegler); the Lambeth Palace Library; the Lilly Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Indiana University; the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of The Ohio State University Libraries (especially Elva Griffith, Geoff Smith, James Smith, and Rebecca Jewett); the Archive of the Society of Antiquaries of London; the Archive of the Society of Jesus, London (Farm Street); York Minster Cathedral Library; and the Archive of the Venerable English College, Rome. I am extremely grateful to Monsignor Nicholas Hudson, College Rector; Reverend Andrew Headon, Vice Rector; Iris Jones, Archivist; James McAuley, outgoing Archivist; and Sister Mary Joseph, College Librarian, for generously accommodating my visit to the English College. I extend special thanks to Monsignor Hudson for permission to view MS Liber 1388, the only known extant contemporary Latin manuscript of Nicholas Sander’s De Origine Ac Progressu Schismatis Anglicani, during October 2005. The source of my findings concerning MS Liber 1388 is the Venerable English College. vi These findings and a facsimile reproduction of a page from the manuscript appear in this study thanks to permission granted by the Venerable English College. The copyright of the copy I received remains that of the Venerable English College at all times. I thank the following institutions for permission to reproduce illustrations from their collections: the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (Figures 13, 16); the British Library (Figures 1, 14, 15); the Folger Shakespeare Library (Figures 2, 12); the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of The Ohio State University Libraries (Figures 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11); St. John’s College Cambridge (Figure 3); and the Venerable English College, Rome (Figure 5). I acknowledge permission of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford and the Folger Shakespeare Library to transcribe selections from manuscripts in their collections in the form of an appendix. Portions of