Treason doth never prosper. What’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
[INDENT] – Sir John Harington (1561-1612)
[/INDENT]
Plus of course the machinations to get one’s own faction and family into positions of power and wealth, by persuading Henry (usually through their most virginal daughter) that he needed them rather than some other bunch of ne’er-do-well upstarts, as much as, or rather than, by actually plotting against him personally.
I’d note Henry Tudor actually won the throne from Richard III on the strongest of all pretexts–right of conquest, he defeated Richard’s armies and Richard himself was killed at Bosworth Field.
This is a great point that actually is very rarely brought up. While Henry had immediate dynastic needs to elevate the English Church such that they could grant him the dispensation he needed to end his marriage with Catherine, there were broader benefits as well–more political independence from Rome, and the ability to curry broader favor by attacking “corrupt” Catholic institutions. The ordinary people had paid hefty taxes and fees to support Catholic dioceses and monasteries for generations, a lot of the peasants were pretty outraged by some of the corrupt practices that were being exposed in the administration of these institutions at the time.
The number of monks and nuns had been steadily declining in England for at least a century. Many of the institutions that were closed in the dissolution of the monasteries had only a small handful of people.
Henry closed down about 900 religious houses, but the total number of people affected was only about 12,000. So an average of about 13 people per institution. Considering that the minimum number for them to function was supposed to be 12, many of these places must have had less than the minimum. The land ownership, tithes, etc. were out of all proportion.
The writing had been on the wall for Catholicism in England for a long time.
Henry didn’t want much changed in the Church otherwise, but under Edward fundamentalist Protestants came to power, under Mary Catholicism was restored, and Elizabeth tried to follow a middle path. It was mostly Elizabeth who set the tone for the future of the Anglican Church.
Yes, although this cuts both ways. The monastic institutions may have been inefficient, venal and frequently corrupt, but they also did most of the heavy lifing with regard to social and community services - schools, hospitals, care of the poor and the sick, etc. They may not have done this to a very high standard, but they nevertheless did it to a much higher standard that the rudimentary secularised replacements that were introduced for this purpose, and the result is the dissolution of the monasteries was attended by much disruption and hardship at the lower end of society, and much resulting unrest and even outright rebellion.
Plus, corrupt as the monasteries may have been, the practice of seizing their assets and simply handing them over to favoured supporters of the king as their private property wasn’t noticeably less corrupt.
The other point to make is that the, ah, reorganisation of monasteries by the civil authorities was under way well before Henry broke with Rome, though the break with Rome did enable the process to be intensified and accelerated. And other European countries managed similar reforms and reorganisations without embracing Protestantism. So while the English reformation was convenient way of advancing the dissolution of th monasteries, it wasn’t the foundation for it, and something very similar could have been acheived without it.
The trouble with that logic is that then anyone who can raise an army can claim the same. This is why following the traditional order of succession as much as possible is the least disruptive path. This is also why pushing a person with a legitimate claim, even a tenuous one, will attract more followers to any rebellion. This is why even decades later, Henry VII and VIII were on the lookout for anyone who would claim they had a more legitimate claim to rule.
IIRC in the end Henry VII married Elizabeth of York to strengthen his claim, since she was the daughter of Edward IV.
“Right of conquest” is not a pretext, only a description of how the person came to power.
I believe that the only ruling house to rule Britain after Alfred the Great without making some claim to relationship to a previous ruling house may have been the Danes under Sweyn Forkbeard, whose “pretext” was attacks by the Anglo-Saxons on Danes living in England.
As md2000 says, “right of conquest” as a justification for rule can lead to great chaos, as in several periods in the Roman Empire when factions of the Praetorian Guard or other military leaders seized the throne in rapid succession merely because they were able to.
The concept of right of conquest didn’t work that way.
If an existing ruler conquered another territory, then he was considered to rule it (de facto) by right of conquest.
But if a subject of a ruler overthrew him by armed rebellion, that was NOT considered to be right of conquest.
In the case of Henry VII, his case was that
a) Richard had overthrown Edward V and murdered him, and thereby forfeited all rights to the throne, and
b) The House of York didn’t have a right to the throne in the first place.
Henry himself had only the most tenuous and debatable right to the throne, via his mother Margaret Beaufort, but he was the best candidate the House of Lancaster could put forward, and gained support as a compromise candidate on condition that he married Elizabeth of York.
And also to ensure that both the Yorkist and Lancastrian claims devolved to the same people- his children.
The problem was, once one person did it (Richard III) and then another (Henry VII) then it becomes less shocking for the next person. In both cases, note, as with Lady Jane, there was a connection of some authenticity and some “stretching it” to the original legitimate claimant. Thus Henry VIII was wary of possible rival claimants, and the nobility after him were equally wary of making the eligibility of claimants debatable, and equally wary of bypassing whoever should be the proper claimant.
After all, even if for expediency Henry chose to have assorted marriages annulled or declared invalid, at the time of their birth all three children were the production of marriages recognized as legitimate at the time. Retroactive “illegitimization” would be as questionable as declaring a legitimate heir ineligible.
(allegedly Henry actually had one bastard son and nobody ever suggested legitimizing him.)