Chapter 4
In This Chapter
● Assessing Henry’s management style
● Getting to know his advisers, Wolsey and Cromwell
● Dealing with enemies
● Painting a portrait - Henry’s image
Modern politicians can learn a lot from Henry’s style of government. Unlike Henry VII, who did a lot of his own accounts checking, Hal would run a mile rather than do any paperwork - after all, he had people for that sort of thing. That makes it difficult to find all the evidence we need, but Henry’s actions always speak louder than words.
Managing Like a Monarch
In the end Henry’s management style was all about getting his own way. As the German religious reformer Martin Luther said of him, ‘Junker Heinz [Lord Harry] will do as he pleases.’ Bear that in mind as you look at what follows.
Getting in your face
Henry worked with his advisers through cosy chats on a one-to-one basis. He took aside people he could count on for support - see the later section ‘Meeting the King’s Advisers’- rather than holding huge meetings of the Council, which were likely to be long-winded and nit-picking. He asked for advice but wasn’t bound to take it, and he always let everybody know who was in charge.
One of Henry’s first actions as king was to fire Dudley and Empson, Henry VII’s financial advisers in the last years of his reign. He had these two thrown into the Tower, a hugely popular move that gave the new king street cred.
Henry was highly intelligent but his concentration span was short. Look at Chapter 3 to see how much activity he crammed into 24 hours. Clerks wrote his letters and he liked to have information in a pre-digested form. Don’t be fooled, though - he wasn’t a king who lived for pleasure alone. He was surprisingly well-informed on all sorts of topics.
Who calls the shots?
With his short attention span Henry often left much routine work to ministers and servants. So historians don’t always know whether a particular decision was Henry’s or someone else’s. The bottom line is that even if it was Thomas Wolsey who hit upon cunning plans for divorces and foreign policy or Thomas Cromwell who decided to wipe out the monasteries, the final decision was always Henry’s. Nothing happened without his say-so.
Trying to go it alone
For much of his time as king, Henry tried to go his own way without interference from the Church or Parliament. Events meant, however, that he couldn’t always do this, and by the time of his death he was actually more constrained than ever.
One of Henry’s first personal acts was to marry Catherine of Aragon (see Chapters 3 and 5). Most people at Court had advised against the union but here was Henry surprising them all with his tough insistence. Yet the move was potentially brilliant - the Spanish Alliance was still on and the couple’s children would rule over a huge Anglo-Spanish empire.
Surprise, surprise!
Henry was unpredictable. After 1540 he had mental mood swings anyway because of various medical ailments (see Chapter 3), but even before that he could turn on a sixpence (or groat, to use a coin of the time) and many was the adviser who fell because of that. Thomas
Cromwell in particular (see the later section 'Meeting the King's Advisers') thought he could read Henry's mind and lost his head as a result. Henry often let ministers - and wives - run on a loose rein only to pull them up short suddenly.
Introducing the ‘great matter'
Henry’s ‘great matter’ was his desperate desire to have a legitimate son who would take over after his death. When it was obvious that Catherine could no longer have children, he tried to get the pope to annul the marriage. For political reasons, the pope refused (see Chapter 6).
Henry’s secret marriage to Anne Boleyn in 1533 didn’t cause a break with Rome - it was a symptom of it. The king was so determined to get his own way that he took control of the Church in England away from the pope and refused to go back on that even though the pope told him he would burn in hell as a result.
Playing up Parliament
Going his own way was one thing, but taking on the pope, the hugely powerful Catholic Church and God was an enormous step and a pretty lonely road to walk. So Henry not only got his advisers on side - the ruthless Thomas Cromwell in particular - but Parliament too.
In theory, Parliament declared the Royal Supremacy (Henry’s control of the Church), which gave the body a power it had never had before and one which Henry certainly never intended. The power of Parliament increased in the next three reigns because Edward VI was a child and his sisters Mary and Elizabeth ‘only’ women. Parliament was on the (admittedly rocky) road to the almost total power it has over the monarchy today.
Sorting the Scots
In Chapter 3 we have a look at Henry’s foreign policy, where he was playing with the big boys, the king of France and the holy Roman emperor. But the French had an understanding with the Scots, called the Auld Alliance, and English relations with Scotland had always been difficult. Even though the Scottish king, James IV, was married to Henry’s sister Margaret (she was 14 at the time), no love was lost between the two countries and the border lands had a history of rape and pillage.
Henry claimed to be overlord for Scotland (which wasn’t actually legal or true), and not unnaturally, the Scots resented it. Taking his opportunity, James invaded England while Henry was winning the Battle of the Spurs across the Channel (see Chapter 3), but was decisively beaten when Queen Catherine sent an English army north. The Scots king was killed at Flodden in Northumberland and his body much hacked about. Catherine sent his blood-soaked shirt to Henry as proof of the victory. An archbishop, a bishop, two abbots, nine earls and 14 lords were killed along with the king, all their bodies stripped by camp followers on the field.
James was under excommunication from the pope for having broken a peace treaty with Henry so his body couldn’t be buried in holy ground. It was left in a lead casket above ground at the monastery of Sheen in Surrey and the head was taken home by a souvenir-hunting workman at the site years later, still complete with red hair and beard. The rest of James was eventually buried in the churchyard of St Michael’s, Wood Street, City of London.
Meeting the King’s Advisers
Henry only had two chief ministers during his reign - Thomas Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell. They both died in his service.
Working with Wolsey
Thomas Wolsey was one of the last ecclesiastical statesmen in England.
As a cardinal he was a potential pope, and he was for a time legate a latere, the pope’s man on the spot. As lord chancellor for Henry, he ‘had the ear’ of the king.
Rising through the ranks
Typical of the new men of humble origins the Tudors employed, Wolsey was born the son of a butcher in Ipswich, Suffolk. In 1483 (when he was about 12) he went to Magdalen (pronounced Maudlin) College, Oxford.
Oxford was the oldest university in the country and students were generally younger than they are today. Wolsey graduated a bachelor of arts in 1486 (at the age of 16) and took his master’s degree in 1497. He then became a junior fellow (tutor), which meant he had to take holy orders (become a priest); this he did in Salisbury the following year.
Progressing with patrons
An ambitious young man like Wolsey needed a patron to get on, preferably a great lord who could open doors to a rich and important career. His first patron was Thomas Grey, marquis of Dorset, whose sons Wolsey had tutored. Dorset got Wolsey a parish in Somerset, but the marquis’s death meant that Wolsey had to look elsewhere. He left Oxford in 1502 and became senior chaplain to Henry Deane, the archbishop of Canterbury (the top job in the English Church).
Clearly not cut out for the noble (if boring) life of a country priest, Wolsey became chaplain to Sir Richard Nanfan, deputy lieutenant of Calais, and this got Wolsey the all-important entry to the royal Court. By 1509 Wolsey had become a royal chaplain and he was working for the powerful bishop of Winchester. He had met Prince Henry, who was about to become king.
Having the ear of the king
The best way to get on in the Tudor world was to be a personal buddy of the top man and Wolsey achieved this by 1512. All right, the marquis of Dorset’s campaign in France hadn’t gone well (see Chapter 3), but Wolsey’s logistical organisation had. Henry was impressed, making him almoner, responsible for all the charitable handouts the king gave. Far more importantly, he made Wolsey a member of the Council.
Getting rich in Church and state
Wolsey did well organising the Battle of the Spurs campaign too (see Chapter 3) and Henry made him dean of York, the second most important see (religious area) after Canterbury. In rapid succession, Wolsey became bishop of Lincoln, bishop of Tournai and archbishop of York.
The revenues (income) from the York job were £5,000 a year and not enough to keep up with Wolsey’s lifestyle - he had servants, horses, dogs, mistresses and several illegitimate children to pay for. By 1523 he was abbot of St Albans and lord chancellor of England. He had a staff of 430 and his annual income of £30,000 was probably more than the king’s. This meant he could build lavishly on a vast scale, as at Hampton Court, still one of the country’s top tourist attractions (see Chapter 19 for a description of this palace).
Wielding influence
Everybody got the message: if you wanted to get anything out of Henry - a grant, a job, some land, a title - then you had to go through Wolsey first. Naturally, this made Wolsey a lot of enemies - nobody likes a greedy, monopolistic lord chancellor, especially one who’s come from nowhere, like Wolsey.
As chancellor Wolsey was the most powerful man in the country except for Henry. As long as he did the king’s work - and did it well - he was fine. For the first 14 years of Henry’s reign it was Wolsey who actually ran the country. Even so, he could never relax; there were always upstarts like Thomas Cromwell looking for a leg-up and Wolsey had to be constantly on his guard.
Centralising the government
To make himself more powerful and ensure that his word was being obeyed all over his kingdom, Henry decided to centralise the government. Wolsey’s men got the job done:
● The Council of the North got more power (nominally under Henry Fitzroy, Henry’s illegitimate son).
● The Council of the Welsh Marches (borders) got more power (nominally under Henry’s 9-year-old daughter, Mary).
Wolsey also increased the power of the Court of Chancery and in the king’s Council used the Court of Star Chamber as never before.
A duke gets done in
Henry naturally favoured the nobility - that was, after all, how it had been for centuries - but Wolsey preferred lesser men who could be controlled and who'd be totally loyal to the king. One problem was Edward Stafford, the duke of Buckingham. One of the 'old guard', Buckingham wanted the job of high constable, which actually no longer existed. It didn't help that Stafford's father had been executed for treason by Richard III and that he had a vague claim to the throne himself. Stafford detested Wolsey because of the man's common birth. So Wolsey did a hatchet job on Buckingham, finding unhappy servants who swore in a show trial that the duke had an 'ill mind' towards Henry and was planning to stab him to death. This was clearly treason. Henry fell for it and Buckingham went to the block in May 1521.
Wolsey’s work in equity jurisdiction (the king’s right to correct any defects in a previous legal decision) is probably his most important lasting legacy.
Star Chamber was a good idea in that it gave the government control over legal cases, but it also soon became swamped with requests. Some of Henry’s Council did nothing else but sit as judges - even Wolsey did from time to time. So Wolsey expanded the business of an already existing court - the Court of Requests or Poor Men’s Causes - to handle what was, in effect, pro bono work.
Dabbling in foreign policy: the Treaty of London
Most of Wolsey’s claim to fame rests in his handling of international politics.
People used to claim that Wolsey wanted to be pope; he had the chance in 1521 and again in 1523. There’s only ever been one English pope, Nicholas Breakspear, aka Adrian IV (see British History For Dummies, Sean Lang, published by Wiley). But Wolsey always put England first and in foreign affairs only carried out Henry’s wishes.
The Treaty of London of 1518 (see Chapter 3) was Wolsey’s most brilliant achievement and the high-water mark in his European success. After that, it was downhill all the way.
The Field of the Cloth of Gold (see Chapter 3) was Wolsey’s party - he was one of the best events managers of his day - but the main point of all the expense and glitter was to cement friendships between Henry and Francis I. That failed and the pair parted the best of enemies.
Allying with the emperor
Charles V wanted war, especially against Francis I, and Henry did his best to keep out of it, trying to play one king off against the other and waiting for his own opportunities.
Wolsey’s job was to make all this work by:
● Raising money for armies
● Trying to mediate between Charles and Francis
Neither was a great success.
Falling from grace
The Anglo-French Treaty of Westminster, which Wolsey worked out in 1527, led to opposition from Charles V. What happened next made matters worse.
Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was in meltdown. The only man in the world legally able to grant a divorce was the pope (Clement VII) and Henry gave Wolsey orders to sort it out. Wolsey was in the dark about Anne Boleyn and only heard about the affair from someone else - not exactly a sign of trust between a king and his right-hand man.
Henry expected Wolsey, as the pope’s man in England, to push Clement into co-operating. Clement, however, was surrounded by Charles V’s army camped outside Rome, and Charles was the nephew of the much-put-upon Catherine. So no deal. Eventually, in 1529, the problem was passed to Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, now the pope’s official protector of England, but Campeggio was playing hardball and all attempts failed.
Henry had pinned all his hopes on the annulment and he was furious, blaming Wolsey for not managing the impossible. Henry fired him as chancellor and Wolsey died at Leicester Abbey on 29 November 1530 on his way to London to face trumped up charges of treason.
If you remember awesome Orson Welles in A Man For All Seasons, you might feel sorry for Wolsey, but nobody did at the time. And besides, a new chancellor, Thomas More, was lurking around the corner.
Carrying on with CromWett
Henry knew exactly where he wanted to go but not always how to get there. Wolsey had been very competent and hard-working and the search was on to find a successor.
Coming from nowhere
Wolsey’s successor as Henry’s fixer was Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell never actually became Chancellor, but he was Privy Councillor, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary of State, and Master of the Rolls. Not bad for someone whose origins were as humble as his predecessor’s. He was born about 1485, probably in Putney, west of London and his father was a shearman and innkeeper. Like Wolsey, he went to Oxford University, but, quarrelling with his father, he travelled throughout Europe, working at whatever came to hand, including military service for the French in Italy and operating as a merchant in Antwerp, then the heart of the international business community.
Becoming a legal eagle
Back home by 1516, Cromwell was now fluent in several languages and joined Wolsey’s service, teaching himself law on the way. Three years later he sat on Wolsey’s Council and his law work made him so much money that he became a gentleman by 1522.
Two years later Cromwell joined Gray’s Inn in London. This was one of several Inns of Court, like Furnival’s and Lincoln’s, which were colleges that trained the country’s best lawyers. Cromwell probably taught at Gray’s, where he would have rubbed shoulders with the best legal minds of his day. London had no university at this time but Gray’s Inn took the place of one.
Surviving Wolsey
When a great man falls, those around him stand a chance of falling as well.
It takes someone of exceptional ability to become indispensable to the state and that’s exactly what Cromwell did.
Cromwell got himself elected as an MP for Taunton in Somerset. He caught Henry’s eye as a good man and a fine legal brain, and by 1531 he was a member of the king’s Council.
Coming to Henry's aid
By 1532 the king’s ‘great matter’ had reached crisis point. Thomas More, one of the few men to stand up to Henry on moral grounds (see ‘Telling Friend from Foe’, later in this chapter), resigned from his job as chancellor and
Cromwell’s clever actions in the months ahead meant that the job went to him. So what did he do to secure the top job?
● He drew up the Act in Restraint of Appeals, which stopped people going over the king’s head to the pope (see Chapter 6). This made Henry’s second marriage (to Anne Boleyn) legal.
● He turned his office of secretary into a clearing house for royal business. As with Wolsey, every request to the king now had to go through Cromwell, giving him enormous power.
● He co-ordinated all the work that the Council did, including the great laws that covered treason, the succession and the Act of Supremacy (see Chapter 6).
● He realised that knowledge was power and he set up a network of agents and informers that was better informed than Henry VII’s. Elizabeth’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham, carried on Cromwell’s network (see Chapter 14), which was the forerunner of today’s MI5 and MI6.
Dissolving the monasteries and making money
It was probably Henry’s idea to dissolve the monasteries because at a stroke he could get rid of support for the pope (always strongest in the monasteries) and get some cash (he was always strapped) into the bargain.
Cromwell’s job was to make it all work and he became the most hated man in England as a result. Many believed that the master secretary was evil - check out Leo Mckern’s performance in A Man For All Seasons to get the flavour of a thoroughly unpleasant individual.
From 1536 the smaller monasteries were shut, and from 1536 the rest followed. The land was sold off to the highest bidder and all income went to the king. By 1540 every monastery in England had gone, but their beautiful ruins are everywhere (check out Fountains, Glastonbury, Rievaulx, Jervaux and many more; see Chapter 6).We look at the dissolution in more detail in Chapter 6.
Culling a queen
Cromwell got the job of removing Anne Boleyn when it turned out that she too wasn't going to give Henry a son. He'd supported Anne earlier because she was part of the whole Royal Supremacy deal, but now he worked on accusing her of adultery and witchcraft.
Laws against witchcraft appeared for the first time in Henry's reign and it was very convenient that Anne had a rudimentary sixth finger on her left hand, which was taken to be an obvious sign of sorcery. Cromwell now put about the fact that Anne had trapped Henry by bewitching him.
For more details on Anne's end, flick to Chapter 5.
Killing Cromwell
When you’re the earl of Essex, chancellor of the exchequer, secretary of state and master of the rolls, not to mention vicar general and lord privy seal, you can expect a bit of opposition, and that’s exactly what Cromwell got. He was hated by:
● The nobility, especially the powerful duke of Norfolk, who regarded him as an upstart
● The Church, because he destroyed the monasteries
● Conservatives, because he introduced an English Bible and supported preachers who leaned towards Protestantism
While Henry was busy in the spring of 1540 with the shock of the arrival of Anne of Cleves (she wasn’t quite the beauty he’d expected) and lusting after Catherine Howard (see Chapters 3 and 5), the arch Protestant basher Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, accused Cromwell of heresy.
The crime of heresy was a handy one to have at your disposal in the 16th century. Anyone not following the traditional religious line could be charged with heresy - and the penalty was death.
Cromwell was condemned by an Act of Attainder in July 1540, which meant no trial (if there had been, so little evidence against him existed he’d probably have got off) and he was executed on Tower Green days later. It was the hottest summer in living memory and he went well, maintaining his innocence but with the surprisingly magnanimous words, ‘I am condemned by the law to die . . . I have offended my prince, for the which I ask him heartily forgiveness.’
Telling Friend from Foe
Henry’s high-handed decisions throughout his reign made him enemies. Some opposed his:
● Act of Supremacy
● Destruction of the monasteries
● Seeming over-reliance on advisers like Wolsey and Cromwell
● Wars with France, especially when taxes went up and a French fleet appeared off the south coast in 1545
And of course, there were those who loved him because of the above. You have to remember that the king was the Lord’s anointed. Cross the king and you crossed God. Others believed that the king’s decisions were always right because he was king; anything bad was probably the work of evil men like Cromwell.
Offending Henry
It was always a risky business to upset the king and those who did - Wolsey,
Cromwell, Buckingham, More, various wives - usually came to a sticky end.
Three who got away with it were:
● Catherine of Aragon: She was furious when Henry told her he didn’t consider their marriage legal in the eyes of God or man - oh, and that meant Mary was illegitimate too. She kept up her opposition for ten years, yet he never took action against her.
● Sir George Throgmorton: He spoke out against Henry in the Commons, and when the king sent for him to explain himself he told him outright that he disapproved of his relationship with Anne Boleyn on account of the fact that the king ‘had to do’ with her sister and mother. ‘Never with the mother,’ Henry answered, and a very lucky Sir George walked away (backwards, of course, and having bowed three times).
● Thomas Cranmer: He was archbishop of Canterbury and he, Cromwell and Henry all sang (literally!) from the same hymn sheet until 1539. Then Henry put the brakes on religious change by bringing in the Six Articles (see Chapter 6) which underlined the basics of the Catholic Church. Cranmer quietly opposed Henry on this and lived to tell the tale. Henry also backed him over charges of heresy when the archbishop seemed to favour Protestant preachers and he turned a blind eye to the fact that Cranmer was married (all priests were supposed to be celibate).
Disagreeing with Henry was easy (there was a lot to criticise), but you had to do it in private so that people couldn’t use gossip against you and you couldn’t oppose the king openly in case that became rebellion. Henry took criticism, not opposition.
Meeting Henry's enemies
There was nothing to rattle anybody’s cages until 1529 and the king’s ‘great matter’. Buckingham had gone (see the earlier sidebar ‘A duke gets done in’) because he was a potential threat and no more. It was breaking with Rome that caused much of the problem.
The most prominent opposition to Henry came from:
● Thomas More: A family man who lived in Chelsea, west of London, More was a lawyer and scholar who served Henry faithfully under Wolsey. He didn’t want to be chancellor and resigned in 1532 because he saw the way the religious wind was blowing. He refused to acknowledge Henry as head of the Church under the Royal Supremacy and was imprisoned and beheaded.
● John Fisher: He was chaplain to Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII’s mother, and bishop of Rochester in Kent. He opposed Henry’s divorce from the start and followed More’s fate, but not before the pope (Paul Ill) made him a cardinal. Like More, Fisher became a saint in 1935, everybody having forgotten the fact that he’d been carrying on a treasonable correspondence with Charles V shortly before his arrest.
● Reginald Pole: A relative of the Tudors, he’d been educated at Henry’s expense. He opposed the king over the ‘great matter’, but Henry let him go to Italy (then considered the centre of learning) to continue his studies. From here, Pole launched an anti-Henry book and worked with the pope to make life as difficult for the king as possible. Henry couldn’t reach Pole, but he made sure Cromwell’s spies watched and ultimately arrested the various members of his family left behind. Some of these were executed, including Pole’s aged mother, the countess of Salisbury (cries of ‘Shame!’).
● The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536: This became the greatest political protest of Henry’s reign. What its leaders wanted was to put the clock back four years before all the upheavals with the Church began. Henry was sympathetic at first, because clearly no ill will against him personally existed. But a minor rising in Yorkshire tipped the balance and 125 ringleaders were hanged, 12 from the walls of Carlisle and 62 in surrounding villages. Churchmen weren’t immune either - four canons, nine monks and an abbot all faced the rope (more cries of ‘Shame!’).
Sir Thomas More - a man for all seasons
Much painted by Hans Holbein, the king's Court artist, More was a Humanist who wanted to reform the Church from within. His book Utopia, written in 1516, puts him right up there with the best scholars of the Renaissance. His History of King Richard III started the trend for modern biographies. In 1935 he was declared a saint, having performed miracles after his death as a martyr.
Robert Bolt's excellent play A Man For All Seasons has been filmed twice with Paul Schofield and Charlton Heston as More. Schofield in particular is brilliant, and check out the mood swings shown by Robert Shaw as Henry. Vanessa Redgrave had a bit part as Anne Boleyn in the Schofield version and played More's wife alongside Heston.
Selling the Image
Outward show was as important to Henry’s style of government as the hard work done by others behind the scenes. Henry looked every inch a king and his hearty, boisterous lifestyle (see Chapter 3) backed this up. Weddings, births of royal children and hosting important visitors were all excuses to hold a tournament, spend money and show off.
Painting power
Check out the famous portrait by Hans Holbein. Henry has:
● Huge confidence - note the body language of hands on hips and feet planted firmly apart
● Lots of money
● Powerful legs
● Superb taste in clothes
● Very broad shoulders
But that was all front. Check out the portrait again. Henry has
● Far too much body fat (a 54-inch waist, as we explain in Chapter 3)
● Little piggy eyes that seem to trust no one
● Terrible taste in soft furnishings (see the wall behind him) - but of course, that’s just our opinion!
And remember what we can’t see:
● His ulcerated leg, bandaged under his hose (tights)
● His bad breath
● His near baldness (carefully hidden by the plumed hat)
We always think of Henry with short hair and a beard. In fact, he wore his hair long until the mid 1530s, and although he grew several beards during his reign he quickly got bored with them and had them shaved off (no doubt by one of his company of barber surgeons).
As you see in Chapter 16 on his daughter Elizabeth, health, strength, beauty and youth were all just smoke and mirrors.
Reflecting greatness in buildings
To accentuate his greatness, Henry built or acquired a set of magnificent houses:
● Bridewell in London was rebuilt from decay over a seven-year period and cost Henry £20,000.
● Hampton Court had been Wolsey’s place. Henry took it over after he fired the man in 1530. (For more about this palace, see Chapter 19).
● St James’s Palace in Whitehall was built from scratch in the 1530s.
● Nonsuch Palace, south of London, was Henry’s fantasy home. It had a park of 2,000 acres, cost £24,000 and was still unfinished at the time of Henry’s death.
Punching above his weight
Henry was colossal, but the image he projected at the time and the image we have now is even greater. His people loved him for his greatness. He stood up to the French, the pope and the holy Roman emperor.
The Reformation may have been a European development, but Henry’s contribution to it - one that he never intended - was that it became peculiarly his. British historians called it the Henrician Reformation.