The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present (34 page)

Portugal, the nation leaning into the western Atlantic and furthest from the Mediterranean, was convinced that she could seize this profitable trade from the Mediterranean nations if a new route could be found to the Indies (as India was called). Their enthusiasm was contagious, and their Spanish neighbours became just as eager. Christopher Columbus, a Genoese sailor, decided that the best route to India lay to the west. Sponsored by Ferdinand and Isabella, he set sail in 1492 and eventually discovered the islands in the Caribbean which continue to be known as the West Indies–though they are of course nowhere near India. He had discovered the New World. Following a papal declaration that all of that unknown country a hundred leagues west of the Azores belonged to Spain and Portugal, Spain under Cortes conquered the Aztecs and created New Spain in Mexico, while Portugal took Brazil.

Meanwhile the other great effect of the Turkish move west, the dispersal of Greek scholars to western capitals and universities, fleeing from the catastrophe of the fall of Constantinople, was slowly having dramatic effects among the educated, as we have seen–most of all in their understanding of religion. Spread by the contemporary technological revolution of printing, a great change occurred in the way people thought–for the religious impulse had not died under the widespread anti-clericalism. The combination of this devotional religious movement and the outrage provoked by the scholarly discoveries of the New Learning led at last to an upheaval in Germany provoked by a monk and professor of theology named Martin Luther. Luther was already disgusted by the irreligious nature of the Church, but in 1517 his anger boiled over when he met a Dominican friar raising money to build the new Church of St Peter’s in Rome by selling papal indulgences–which provided absolution from one’s sins–from a red velvet cushion.

On 31 October that year Luther nailed his ninety-five theses or criticisms of papal teaching to the door of the Catholic church at Wittenberg, and so sparked off the religious revolution known as the Reformation. Though many had been feeling the same way, it was the first time that the pope’s power had been challenged publicly, and Luther’s action shook Christendom to its foundations. There were peasant riots, Luther was excommunicated and an official debate took place at a meeting called the Diet of Worms (a diet was an imperial council; Worms was a Rhineland town) between Luther and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was also the King of Spain and the pope’s champion. There Luther refused to retract his views. His belief that man’s salvation lay in his own faith and not in the Sacraments of the Church conferred by priests remained unshakeable. By 1530 eight of the north German princes had adopted the Lutheran faith, or Protestantism as it became known after their Protestation against the emperor. And in 1534 Henry VIII of England, Henry VII’s son, became the first king to break officially with Rome, the Lutheran princes having meanwhile tried to reconcile their Church with papal authority.

When the Reformation began in 1517, the English king who created the national Church and broke from Rome, the twenty-seven-year-old Henry VIII, was still a very devout Roman Catholic. As Henry VII’s able second son, the fresh-faced Henry may have been educated for a career in the Church, and his reaction to the Lutheran movement on the eve of the Diet of Worms in 1521 had been to write his own learned attack on Luther’s position, defending the seven Sacraments. For this the pope gave him the title ‘Defensor Fidei’ or ‘Defender of the Faith’. (By a curious historical anomaly the British monarch bears the title to this day–hence the letters ‘DF’ on the pound coin–even though as Supreme Governor of the Anglican Church he or she cannot be the defender of the Roman Catholic faith.) Two years after his accession to the throne Henry VIII eagerly joined Pope Julius II’s Holy League and later invaded France as part of the papal crusade to drive the French out of Italy. For his sterling work he was soon high in the affections of Rome. He was sent a golden rose as a sign of papal favour, and in 1515 his chief adviser, the lord chancellor and Archbishop of York Thomas Wolsey, was made a cardinal. Moreover Henry was married to the pious Catherine of Aragon, daughter of the very Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella.

In theory, therefore, there was no less likely candidate to lead the English Reformation and break away from Rome than Henry VIII. That, nevertheless, is what he did. It was the need for a male heir and his passion for a court lady named Anne Boleyn that propelled him into a religious and political revolution.

Henry VIII’s father was a cultured man and like all the Tudors he had taken an unusual amount of care with his son’s education. The new king could speak several languages, and was an accomplished musician and even composer. One of England’s favourite folk songs, the haunting ‘Greensleeves’, was said to have been written by him. A true son of the Renaissance, who certainly composed two five-part Masses and was a good lutenist, Henry VIII encouraged his court to become a centre of the New Learning. A more scientific approach to health was marked by his establishment of the Royal College of Surgeons and Physicians, and the rebuilding of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, while the Regius professorships he founded at Oxford and Cambridge still remind us of his patronage. Henry VIII was fond of exercising his wits against scholars such as his friend Erasmus, one of the most important of all the humanists (that is, students of the New Learning), and his court was as splendid as any in Europe.

The gravely realistic portraits of the outstanding north German painter Hans Holbein seized the king’s fancy, and Holbein was persuaded to move to London as the court artist for twenty years. A large gallery of the chief figures of the reign, now housed mainly in the National Portrait Gallery, testifies to Henry VIII as a Renaissance patron of the arts. He brought the celebrated Italian sculptor Torrigiano to London to build the tomb of his mother and father in Westminster Abbey, and by the end of his reign the monarch lived not only at Richmond Palace at Sheen but also in several new palaces, including Hampton Court, Whitehall, St James’s and Nonsuch, an exquisite timber palace in Surrey.

As well as the foreign artists the king encouraged to come to England, Italian poetry began to filter into the country, brought back by the young noblemen’s sons for whom a voyage to the sights of classical Rome was the end of their education as a gentleman. The Duke of Norfolk’s poet son, the Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt introduced the sonnet form and blank verse–both of which were Italian inventions–to England and they slowly spread outwards in ever increasing circles until they met their greatest expression in the poetry of the Elizabethan genius William Shakespeare. As part of the new interest in classical writing, Latin plays became the fashion at the universities, and in 1545 Henry VIII appointed the first official responsible for playhouses–the Master of the Revels. Henry VII had been the most frugal and careful king England had ever known and had succeeded in restoring the crown finances after a hundred years of war. Perhaps as a reaction to his severe father, Henry VIII was one of the most extravagant. He spent a fortune on glittering costumes embroidered with gold thread and on superb jewellery, as well as on the musicians and feasting that he liked to indulge himself with at all times.

The king was also very athletic, dancing, playing tennis and hunting with equal vigour. He presented a complete contrast to his father, taking after his mother’s Yorkist style of golden beauty or perhaps after his grandfather Edward IV. Standing well over six feet in his stockinged feet–as his enormous suit of armour in the Tower of London reminds us–he had great affability and charm as a young man, though like his grandfather he ran to fat as he grew older. Even on his accession, however, the new king displayed an innate ruthlessness. One of his first acts was to execute his father’s servants Dudley and Empson on the unspecific charge of treason–his true motive was to make himself popular. In all things Henry VIII was as cunning and masterful as his portraits suggest, the very model of the Renaissance prince described by the sixteenth-century Italian writer Machiavelli.

Henry VIII had a natural feel for politics which would be inherited by his daughter Elizabeth. Both understood the need to be loved by their subjects; both saw that to rule successfully an English monarch must appear to listen to the people by consulting Parliament. They recognized, too, that to be popular they had to make themselves known to their subjects. And known the new king was, whether he was addressing the House of Commons with vigour, wit and élan or going about the countryside to reinforce allegiance to what he was conscious was still a young dynasty. Despite that youthfulness, however, Henry VII’s determined efforts had ensured that his son had inherited a secure throne. There were no pretenders with a better claim than his. As an energetic fellow he soon excited the national imagination, as he was easily lured by the glamour of foreign affairs and war abroad. Though he attacked France in the name of the Holy League, his real motive was the old English dream of regaining Normandy and Gascony.

Henry VIII’s anxiety to play a role on the world stage prompted him to turn his attention to England’s defences. All over the south coast round towers and walls sprang up, for example at St Mawes in Cornwall, to show that the English lion was well protected. Moreover Henry was the first king since Alfred to build up the Royal Navy. In the first two years of his reign two enormous ships were constructed to terrify the French–the
Great Harry
and the
Mary Rose
. In 1545, however, tragedy struck: the
Mary Rose
sank with the loss of all 500 hands on board when, in action against the French and with her portholes open, she attempted too swift a turn. In 1982 she was raised fom the sea-bed, where she had lain for almost 450 years, and her sixteenth-century timbers can be visited at Portsmouth today. Henry also established the royal dockyard at Woolwich and Deptford and set up the Navy Board system to administer it.

At first Henry relied on his father’s ministers to run the government. But the vigorous prince soon found that in the chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, a young man named Thomas Wolsey, he had the sort of minister who was as ambitious as he was himself. Wolsey was energetic, charming and fascinated by international diplomacy. His plans for the aggrandizement of England, hitherto not a European power which counted compared to France or Spain, appealed to the king. By the use of shrewd diplomacy and by changing sides, England should guard her own interests by never having permanent alliances, permanently maintaining instead a balance of power between the powerful European states. Though the king enjoyed winning over the House of Commons with speeches, he was easily bored by detail, whereas Wolsey relished going down to Parliament and extracting loans for Henry’s wars.

An opportunity for Henry VIII and Wolsey to stretch their wings arose early in the reign. In 1511 the confusing game of international musical chairs, with nations grouping and regrouping to obtain possession of vulnerable Italian states, came to an end when the pope Julius II created a Holy League to drive the French out of Italy. As part of the assault on the French, Henry was to distract them in 1513 by attacking France in both the north near Calais and the south. The defeat of the French in an engagement known as the Battle of the Spurs (because more spurs were used than swords as the French ran away), where Wolsey himself fought as a knight, resulted in peace with France. This was strengthened by the marriage of Henry’s sister Mary to the aged Louis XII of France.

In that same year the Scots, whose alliance with the French required them to attack the north of England, were dramatically defeated at the Battle of Flodden. James IV and the flower of the Scottish nobility were slain just inside the English border. Thus by 1514 the partnership of Henry and Wolsey and their policy of not being bound by an alliance with Spain seemed to be succeeding. The king was secure in his borders, with Scotland ruled by his sister Margaret Tudor on behalf of her son James V, and France by his sister’s husband.

Wolsey’s theory of the balance of power would dominate England’s approach to European politics for the following four centuries. It made even greater sense over the next few years when a series of deaths left the nephew of Queen Catherine, King Charles V of Spain, ruling most of Europe and the New World. The Holy Roman Emperor–as he soon became, despite the reluctance of the Electors to grant him the title, given his already considerable power and wealth–was the dynastic phenomenon of the sixteenth century. Empire indeed was the right term for the lands Charles V inherited. The Netherlands came to him through his grandmother Mary of Burgundy and the Habsburg lands in Austria through his grandfather the Emperor Maximilian, while his mother Joanna, sister of Catherine of Aragon, brought him not only Spain, but the Aragonese kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In addition to his land empire, as the heir to Spain Charles V was cash rich beyond the dreams of avarice. The discovery of silver mines in the New Spain of Mexico and Peru meant that by the middle of the century his income was far greater than that of the rest of the European states put together.

As Charles was master of the Netherlands, to whom some 90 per cent of England’s chief export wool was shipped, it was more or less obligatory for Henry to be on good and peaceful terms with him. Nevertheless there was potential for leverage thanks to the intense rivalry that developed between Charles and the new king of France, Francis I. Francis was the same kind of magnificent Renaissance prince as his fellow monarch across the Channel, and he had designs not only to re-establish France’s Italian territories but to be elected Holy Roman Emperor in Charles V’s stead. Though the emperorship no longer bore any relation to the title of the Caesars–the incumbent was customarily chosen by seven German Electors, or heads of principalities, who now more or less always bestowed the title on the House of Habsburg–it was still of some significance.

As Francis and Charles clashed again and again in the years 1520–9 over Italian territory, Wolsey remained convinced of the necessity of a relationship with France. The balance of power would be achieved by weighing in on France’s side against Charles V–from being France’s sworn enemy England would from time to time be her friend. The most notable of these diplomatic rapprochements was a meeting between Henry VIII and Francis I in 1520 known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Masterminded by Wolsey, the encounter took place in a field between the English territory of Calais and the French king’s domain, in ornate tents specially made for the occasion and furnished with gorgeous rugs. The scene was so splendid and grand–there were fountains running with wine–that the whole field seemed made of cloth of gold. A famous painting commemorating the extravaganza can be seen at Hampton Court, the palace Wolsey had begun building a few miles beyond Richmond.

The two young kings, in the prime of life, behaved more like brothers than fellow sovereigns, stealing into one another’s tents in the early mornings and even wrestling together. Nevertheless, despite these shenanigans, in the end the weight of the Netherlands wool trade and the fact that the emperor was Queen Catherine’s nephew meant that nothing much changed. England remained the enemy of France and the ally of the Emperor.

As long as all went well for the king, Wolsey was an untouchable favourite and enjoyed a most regal way of life. He was made Archbishop of York and Bishop of Lincoln, and received the income of two other bishoprics too. Carried away by his own importance, Wolsey built himself not just Hampton Court Palace but another at York Place which became the Palace of Whitehall. When he became a cardinal in 1515, Wolsey was able to override the Church’s hierarchy and to have his own way in everything, despite not being Archbishop of Canterbury and thus head of the Church. In the same year Henry also made him lord chancellor. Wolsey was therefore the most powerful official in England, since he presided over both Church and state. He was feared and disliked for his busybody ways and for his ruthlessness in dealing with Parliament. When Parliament finally refused point-blank to grant any more money to the king, Wolsey refused to recall it for seven years, depending instead on ‘gifts’ from wealthy citizens.

Wolsey’s extravagant way of life and the airs he gave himself increased his unpopularity–even his cook was reported to wear damask satin with a gold chain round his neck. As for the cardinal himself, he could only wear red robes of the finest silk trimmed with fur. All his plates were made of gold, and every day his 500 servants sat down to dinner at three great tables in one of his vast new houses. The cardinal’s appearances in public were spectacles of flamboyance, as even the most informal moments apparently necessitated an elaborate procession. The tallest and most handsome priest would walk in front of the cardinal, bearing in his outstretched arms a pillar of silver on top of which was a rather small cross. Next came the cardinal’s hat, carried on a purple cushion held by a bare-headed nobleman and accompanied by ushers who shouted as they came, ‘Make way for my Lord’s Grace!’ Then at last appeared the cardinal, his face wearing a modest half-smile, his eyes cast down, perhaps admiring feet shod in golden shoes decorated with pearls. But, for all the grandeur of this apparition, always visible in the background would be an inelegant mule. For, said Wolsey, since he was but a humble priest, it was fitting that he should travel by mule rather than by horse.