monarchs of his generation: most especially Francis I of France and Charles V, king of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor. Although ‘the wars of the roses’ had in the 1480s become wars of dynastic legitimacy, their origins were not in a squabble about blood. Rather they had lain squarely in the English polity’s inability to cope with the inane, destructively pliant kingship of Henry VI. This vacillating king, peaceful and pious, had unleased a half-century of political trauma.
Henry VIII could hardly have presented a more different character. ‘Our king is not after gold, or gems or precious metals, but virtue, glory and immortality,’ the English scholar-courtier Lord Mountjoy had written to the great Dutch humanist Erasmus on Henry VIII’s accession in 1509. Henry had many faults, as the second half of his reign would amply demonstrate, but during his early years it was clear that personal authority had finally been restored to the crown by a king whose right to rule was stronger than that of any of his predecessors since 1422. Henry’s accession thus solved two problems at once: it addressed the vague and random problem of personal authority on the part of the man who happened to become king, and the question of legitimacy as a matter of blood-right, which had been disastrously thrown open in 1460 when Richard duke of York had decided to abandon his quest for political leadership and claim the crown. The basic symbols and images of Tudor kingship presented Henry VIII as the embodiment of red rose and white rose reunited. He understood the role, and played it perfectly.
This is not to say, of course, that Henry could afford to ignore dynastic threats completely, as the Richard de la Pole saga had demonstrated. Alternative Plantagenet and ‘Yorkist’ lines of royal descent were thin, but they still existed. In the spring of 1521 Henry had acted ruthlessly to press charges of treason – conspiring or imagining the king’s death – against Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham, whose long line of descent from Thomas of Woodstock connected him to Edward III, and whose loud mouth, insufferable pride and arrogant bearing had been inherited all too obviously from his father, the foolish kingmaker duke who had rebelled against Richard III. Edward’s crime was largely a case of grumbling about royal policy, listening to prophecies concerning the king’s life and muttering that he himself might one day make a better monarch. But this was enough to bring down the greatest nobleman in England. Buckingham was subjected to a show trial at Westminster Hall, had a guilty verdict delivered to him by a tearful duke of Norfolk and was beheaded at the Tower of London on 17 May 1521. The charges against him were largely trumped up, and his trial stage-managed to produce the inevitable judgement. It is hard to imagine that Buckingham would have been so sorely treated by the king were it not for the Plantagenet blood of which he was so proud.
Other noble families might have presented Henry with concerns if he had put his mind firmly to it, but by the end of the 1520s the king’s mind was occupied with dynastic matters of a different sort. His marriage to his brother’s widow Katherine of Aragon had produced only one surviving child, Princess Mary, and his head had been turned by the woman who would become his second wife, Anne Boleyn. The issues of religious reform that exploded out of his search for a divorce during the early 1530s provided new political dividing lines just as deadly as those that had existed between the various factions of Lancaster, York, Neville, Tudor and the rest during the fifteenth century. To be sure, dynastic issues were still alive, but they were now fused with the politics of religion, shaped by domestic concerns and Henry’s increasingly monstrous sexual psychology and hunger for power and grandeur.
It was in this context that he persecuted the Pole family, condemning the aged Margaret Pole to her
Henry VIII could hardly have presented a more different character. ‘Our king is not after gold, or gems or precious metals, but virtue, glory and immortality,’ the English scholar-courtier Lord Mountjoy had written to the great Dutch humanist Erasmus on Henry VIII’s accession in 1509. Henry had many faults, as the second half of his reign would amply demonstrate, but during his early years it was clear that personal authority had finally been restored to the crown by a king whose right to rule was stronger than that of any of his predecessors since 1422. Henry’s accession thus solved two problems at once: it addressed the vague and random problem of personal authority on the part of the man who happened to become king, and the question of legitimacy as a matter of blood-right, which had been disastrously thrown open in 1460 when Richard duke of York had decided to abandon his quest for political leadership and claim the crown. The basic symbols and images of Tudor kingship presented Henry VIII as the embodiment of red rose and white rose reunited. He understood the role, and played it perfectly.
This is not to say, of course, that Henry could afford to ignore dynastic threats completely, as the Richard de la Pole saga had demonstrated. Alternative Plantagenet and ‘Yorkist’ lines of royal descent were thin, but they still existed. In the spring of 1521 Henry had acted ruthlessly to press charges of treason – conspiring or imagining the king’s death – against Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham, whose long line of descent from Thomas of Woodstock connected him to Edward III, and whose loud mouth, insufferable pride and arrogant bearing had been inherited all too obviously from his father, the foolish kingmaker duke who had rebelled against Richard III. Edward’s crime was largely a case of grumbling about royal policy, listening to prophecies concerning the king’s life and muttering that he himself might one day make a better monarch. But this was enough to bring down the greatest nobleman in England. Buckingham was subjected to a show trial at Westminster Hall, had a guilty verdict delivered to him by a tearful duke of Norfolk and was beheaded at the Tower of London on 17 May 1521. The charges against him were largely trumped up, and his trial stage-managed to produce the inevitable judgement. It is hard to imagine that Buckingham would have been so sorely treated by the king were it not for the Plantagenet blood of which he was so proud.
Other noble families might have presented Henry with concerns if he had put his mind firmly to it, but by the end of the 1520s the king’s mind was occupied with dynastic matters of a different sort. His marriage to his brother’s widow Katherine of Aragon had produced only one surviving child, Princess Mary, and his head had been turned by the woman who would become his second wife, Anne Boleyn. The issues of religious reform that exploded out of his search for a divorce during the early 1530s provided new political dividing lines just as deadly as those that had existed between the various factions of Lancaster, York, Neville, Tudor and the rest during the fifteenth century. To be sure, dynastic issues were still alive, but they were now fused with the politics of religion, shaped by domestic concerns and Henry’s increasingly monstrous sexual psychology and hunger for power and grandeur.
It was in this context that he persecuted the Pole family, condemning the aged Margaret Pole to her
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