Henry actually was surprisingly receptive of dissent from advisors for most of his reign. The popular image of a tyrant really only applies towards the last few years, when il health had exacerbated his bad temper. He kept Sir Thomas More around for ages, since he knew he would always gets honest advice from him.
He was (quite a big) mama’s boy when he was younger. He did seem to genuinely care for Catherine (IIRC some reports say that he wept at her death) and saw his actions as his head ruling his heart.
Yah, but - he also confined her to an estate where her health problems would be exacerbated and prevented her from seeing her daughter in the last years of her life. His actions almost surely hastened her death. I don’t doubt than he was a complex man and that many of his actions were driven by a myriad of motivations, but I feel the image of him as a loving husband forced to cast aside his beloved wife when he realised he was sinning in the face of God is equally as far from the truth as the cold blooded King who cast his loyal wife aside without a second thought when she couldn’t give him his longed-for son. There must have been elements of both, with Henry convincing himself he was the former because it’s more palatable than the latter, and probably genuinely experiencing the emotions that come with it.
There are people who speculate that Henry suffered from McLeod syndrome, which would cause miscarriages, dementia in his 30s and 40s and weakened bones. Another factor could be while married to Anne Boleyn he fell off his horse and was unconscious for awhile and feared dead. Anne miscarried after this accident.
Henry in his younger days was reasonably tolerant of dissent. He was tall (6'2"), handsome with beautiful skin and red hair, fine singing voice and talented composer, athletic, a good dancer and well educated. I think he lacked interest in the minuteia of running a government but he found talented commoners such as Wolsey and Cromwell. But he grew petty, suspicious, violent and prone to changing his mind as he aged. A severe leg ulcer didn't help.
Catholic annullments don’t make kids illegitimate now. But back in the day they did. (I don’t know when this changed)
Nope, not really. In fact, this was how Richard III was able to seize power, by claiming his nephews were illegitimate. (Claiming his brother, Edward IV had been pre-contracted to another woman when he married his wife.) If his nephews were bastards, they had no legitimate claim to the throne.
Because to do so would’ve required an Act of Parliament, or at least a major change in the laws. There WAS talk of it, but it didn’t really amount to anything. (Henry also considered having him married to his own legitimate daughter Mary!)
The funny thing is that, IIRC, the dispensention Henry received from the Pope to marry Katherine covered the possibility that her marriage with Arthur may have been consummated. (Basically, it was stated that it was unknown whether it had happened or not).
Lots of good information … but we need to keep this in the context of the Reformation … the crown was already in the process of seizing church lands and keeping the tax money in England … his hots for Anne Boleyn was kinda secondary to the whole process consolidating power.
An interesting sidebar here is that the French immediately recognized Mary, Queen of the Scots, as the rightful English monarch, Henry VII’s granddaughter … who just happened to be married to the heir to the French throne.
These people would marry their close cousins so if a better deal came along, they could petition the Pope for annulment claiming they just found out about how closely related the married couple were.
Still, in view of Church power-as-rival and engrossing of wealth and more particularly land — some estimates suppose one third of land in England to be in Church hands — which not only impoverished the state ( although the Church did a lot of good by performing state functions such as running hospitals and supporting the poor [ which though however good in itself was a usurpation of state functions precursing the welfare state ] ) but kept land away from the rest of the people since they didn’t often sell it out of the Church; it is worth noting that even confessional Catholic states in that period — or later, in the case of Austria * — let alone other new protestant states, secularised church lands and other wealth, dissolving monasteries etc…
Certainly the French waited until the Revolution, when it became a new religious duty to suppress christianity, but no ruler could indefinitely permit the Roman Church as an alternative power.
The Great Monastery of Melk remains, but Josef II closed down a lot of her sisters, and he wasn’t even particularly anti-papal.
However Mary of Scotland was the rightful monarch, and until forced by others to let her be murdered, Elizabeth recognised her as heir eventually, and after that Mary’s son.
One of the flaws of the Roman Empire, IIRC< was a lack of clear lines of succession. The heir was often as not appointed or adopted (or eventually, self-appointed).
Hereditary legitimacy was a very important thing in medieval times. That a son was the successor was a very specific and indisputable point. It was a constant. Once the rules were changed, it became open season - as mentioned above, the War of the Roses started with a claim of questionable legitimacy; it ended with Henry VII claiming the throne mainly by marriage… Matilda was not widely accepted as her father’s heir; Henry VIII variously disinherited both Mary and Elizabeth before relenting and reinstating them; Elizabeth never married rather than let a husband take her power, but thus ceded the throne to James of Scotland. Heck, William the Conqueror (aka The Bastard) claimed the throne of England because the late king seemed to have changed his mind over succession a few times.
All this is because when there was a question of succession, it would as likely as not create war and chaos. Even monarchs invited problems if they tried to game the succession process. The simple rule was - don’t monkey with the rules.
The Church was the State up until the Reformation, every King and Queen in Europe bent their knee to the Pope and were vassal to him. Please understand, this is before the era of “absolute monarchy” and that these feudal relationships were very complicated. We had Phillip VII (?) of France refusing to allow Henry II of England to swear loyalty to him. So Henry fought a war with Phillip which Henry won, forcing Phillip to accept Henry undying fealty … hello … these people were ALL insane.
This is true using the Catholic line-of-succession. Mary murdered her husband in not-exactly-cold-blood, which provided the Protestant Parlament excuse to remove their Catholic Queen once and for all. Mary disdained flight to France (where she still held the title of Dolphin being she was the widow of a former King), choosing rather to journey to England in the hopes that if Elizabeth would just sit and listen to Mary, she would promptly give her the crown of England. Obviously Elizabeth had Mary’s head lopped off and only afterwards did Elizabeth name James VI of Scotland her heir. He was a Protestant.
Catholics and Protestants killing each other continued until just 20 years ago … insane
No, the Church was not the State. Acknowledging vasseldom ( as John I did of the Pope ) did not mean the Pope was John’s master, nor that the Church owned England, except in the most rarefied ultimate sense, nor that she exercised the functions of government over England ( or anywhere except in the Papal States ). [ Besides which, it was abrogated not long after: the Church of Rome has not made any claim through vassalage. Although she has obviously continued the vile claim that all rulers are subordinate to her through papal privilege.
We thought huge wars against this ultimate evil in the High Middle Ages, and although Germany, the then Reich, was broken and the Papacy triumphant, it is better to lose honourably than permit wickedness. As I said elsewhere, for Royalists, Canossa is our Kronstadt.
There is no such thing as Catholic Succession. By any form of hereditary right through primogeniture ---- which was the law then and before ---- Mary was the heir.
Mary’s problem was not that she was an alleged murderess, nor that she trusted Elizabeth’s honour too much ( Elizabeth had her imprisoned for 18 years on no charge, before any accusations of plotting against Elizabeth; however she didn’t want Mary killed ], nor that she was an unbigoted Catholic.
It was that she was invincibly stupid.
Again, it all comes down to legitimacy of succession.
If Elizabeth did not acknowledge the heir with the primary, valid claim to the throne, she would invite chaos. If she picked someone loyal in England - well, the essence of succession is that the previous monarch is dead. Lord WhoseIt may be QE I’s favourite, but a lot of good that would do him when she’s dead. Then, all the equally endowed lords will say to themselves, “He’s got no better claim than I other than the fancy of a dead queen.” Can Lord WhoseIt rely on the army? The other lords, now that the Queen is dead? Half a dozen likely jealous candidates would start marching on London, and likely James and his French friends would too. (I have no idea who QE I might have favoured)
The simplest and most peaceful route is not mess with the rules of succession.
(The protestant parliament did so for James II and look what it got them… 2 rebellions in 1715 and 1745 one of which came close to winning.)
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If Elizabeth did not acknowledge the heir with the primary, valid claim to the throne, she would invite chaos.
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But it is far from certain that Elizabeth ever did acknowledge James as her heir. Certainly not publically. The most that can be said is that some of those who were present claimed that on her deathbed she had given some sort of indication that she preferred him.
Moreover, there was an obvious legal obstacle to James’s claim and it was not at all clear that it was one that any nod from Elizabeth could overcome. The 1543 Succession Act had given Henry VIII the right to settle the succession and he had then done so in his will. (Although whether Henry was in any more of a fit state than Elizabeth to do this on his deathbed is another matter.) That will had designated the descendants of his younger sister Mary as his heirs after his own descendants, thereby giving them priority over those of his elder sister Margaret, i.e. the Stuarts. But the 1543 Act had granted the right to settle the succession only to Henry himself. Indeed, accepting that his successors had the same powers would mean that Edward VI’s attempts to change the succession had been valid and that would mean that the Greys had a better claim than either James or Elizabeth herself.
This was why James was always careful to claim that he had succeeded on the basis of primogeniture and that this was a right which could not be overridden by statute. But, just to be on the safe side, his first Parliament made a point of passing the 1603 Succession Act recognising him as king ‘by inherent birthright’.
Apart from all his marriage problems, Henry was chronically short of cash. When Cromwell pointed out how rich the Catholic Church was; added to his problems with the Pope and the Englishman’s dislike of having some foreigner making decisions about their affairs, The Catholic church’s days were numbered.
Henry VII was financially prudent, and left his son enough to get by — although it is always worth pointing that no English King before the 88 revolution had a standing army, which cut down on costs ( although all of them were expected to pay for hundreds of state expenses with very little taxes ) but also meant little protection against rebels and other scum — but Henry rather wasted that legacy on popular sports such as invading France, as quickly as he later wasted the monies gathered from the Dissolution on bribing nobles and gentry.
Which meant they were secure enough and settled enough to rebel in the next century.
Both Mary and Elizabeth were declared illegitimate by their father after his marriages to their mothers were annulled; Googling the term “retrospective annulment” turns up citations such as this one:
By the later fifteenth century English secular courts seem to have taken the view that any children born to a couple whose marriage had subsequently been annulled were rendered retrospectively illegitimate. – An Illustrated History of Late Medieval England By Chris Given-Wilson
I thought that, technically, even after 1688, it was a matter of annual approval by Parliament (up until the mid-1950s?), so that it was in effect a Parliamentary army that could be stood down at any time, rather than a standing army - hence it’s the British Army but the Royal Navy.
There’s no conclusive proof of that, and most historians reputable historians believe she was framed. The accusation is based mainly on the so-called “Casket Letters”, which were said to be written by Mary, but only a few people saw the originals, and only copies exist today. Even then they weren’t necessarily all that convincing, and the originals were destroyed some time later. There’s a good chance they were forgeries.
Also, Darnley never gave Mary symphilis, at least to my knowledge – do you have a cite for that? Yes, he himself had it at one point, but I’ve never read of him passing it on to her.
(Yes, I know my cite is Wiki. It’s late and I don’t have time to find anything else at the moment, but that particular article is fairly accurate.)
