Read Online 1536: The Year That Changed Henry VIII by Suzannah Lipscomb - Free Book Online Page B

things going horribly wrong, of betrayal, rebellion, grief, age, and ill health. But it was also a year of reaction – of Henry asserting his power through his supremacy, his image, his rapid remarriage and the festivities, through his bluster to the rebels. The impact of the year can be seen immediately in the course of 1537 when Henry cracked down on those who had rebelled against him, oversaw further dissolution of the monasteries and commissioned from Holbein the Whitehall mural, an important projection of his masculinity and power. This was truly a year that defined, changed and created the character we think of as Henry VIII.





C HAPTER 11
    1536: The Church Established
    M any contemporaries expected that Anne Boleyn’s downfall would lead to a reversal of the royal supremacy and the break with Rome. It had been, in fact, a constant hope across Catholic Europe ever since Henry and Anne’s marriage in 1533. After Henry fell from his horse in January 1536 the papal nuncio in France, Bishop de Faenza, had raised the possibility of Henry’s return to Rome, together with his conviction that ‘if the Pope gave the sentence against the king of England and acted with strictness, he [Henry VIII] would probably give in, seeing that the Pope and the Emperor were his enemies, and that he could hope for nothing [from the French]’. The nuncio was referring to the ever-present threat posed by the as yet unpublished papal bull, which would deprive Henry VIII of his kingdom and make insurgence against his rule entirely legitimate. Writing in March 1536, Charles V offered advice to his ambassador at the English court, Eustace Chapuys, on how to influence the king to return to the church of Rome and suggested that he stress the division, confusion and manifest danger that would result from the bull’s publication. 1
    After May 1536, with now both Katherine and Anne out of the way, the obstacles preventing Henry’s return to Rome seemed few. It seemed as if there were now many good reasons for Henry to mend the breach and restore himself to the open, welcoming arms of the Roman church. On 24 May, Faenza reflected that ‘it would be easy to bring back the King if it were not for his avarice’, adding ‘there was not a better opportunity of wiping out the stains on his character and making himself the most glorious King in the world’. Another European correspondent gossiped about the news of Anne’s death and the possibility of a change of religion by linking her execution to the fact that ‘images have been restored and purgatory is declared again’. Not only conservatives hoped for this, evangelicals feared it – if Cranmer’s letter to Henry on discovering the news of Anne’s apparent adultery is representative. He entreated Henry, perhaps a little disingenuously, ‘I trust… you will bear no less zeal to the Gospel than you did before, as your favour to the Gospel was not led by affection to her’. Marrying Jane also gave Rome further cause for hope. Reginald Pole, Henry’s cousin, a high-ranking noble of royal blood, who was studying abroad, would write in August that year, I ‘had trusted that that woman [Anne] has been the cause of all these dishonours had taken away all dishonour with her, especially hearing what a good lady the king hath now taken’. In June 1536, it was rumoured that Jane had ‘five times thrown herself publicly at the King’s feet, requesting him to send for his daughter and declare her Princess’. Later, another story that she ‘threw herself on her knees before the King and begged him to restore the abbeys’, suggests her loyalties were firmly with traditional religion and that she was the ideal woman to lead the king back home. Observers convinced themselves that this process would start with legitimating Mary as his heir, and putting her back in the line of succession. Chapuys expressed his hope of this on the day of Anne Boleyn’s execution and Cromwell seems to have fuelled