Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History (87 page)

Notes

Introduction: England and its People, ca. 1485

1
Many would object to the inclusion of Ireland under any classification labeled “British.” One recent historian has attempted to get around the naming dilemma by referring to the whole archipelago as “the Isles”: Norman Davies,
The Isles: A History
(Oxford, 2000). The imprecision of this designation indicates more the difficulty of the problem than it does a solution.

2
There were prehistoric Britons already there, of whom little is known, who intermingled with the invading Celtic peoples. England was not yet called England. Only after the invasions of the Anglo-Saxons, beginning in the fifth century
CE
, would “Angle-land” emerge.

3
As this book opens in 1485, the population of Scotland was about three-quarters of a million as compared to well over 2 million for England and Wales.

4
Comprising Cheshire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, and the anomalous county of Monmouth that was at once both Welsh and English.

5
Comprising Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire. Some would also place Oxfordshire in the Midlands.

6
Comprising Cumberland, Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmorland, and Yorkshire.

7
It is significant for the study of the early modern period that Europe experienced a “Little Ice Age” from about 1550, and was much cooler than normal for the next two hundred years or so. In the 1680s, Londoners occasionally set up a temporary winter fair, with booths and streets, on the frozen Thames.

8
Specifically, Jews had been expelled from England in 1290 by Edward I and were not formally readmitted until the 1650s. However, because the Roman Catholic Church prohibited usury (i.e., lending money at interest), the English Crown and merchant community tolerated the existence of small communities of Jewish traders and financiers in major cities. Muslims were unheard of except as occasional visitors on trading voyages. For shades of belief within Christianity, see chap. 2.

9
Toward the end of the fifteenth century, beginning in the southeast and in Devon, even modest farmers were starting to build more substantial “cruck” houses of stone or wood frame with thatched roofs.

10
For an accessible selection, see
The Paston Letters: A Selection in Modern Spelling,
ed. N. Davis (Oxford, 1983).

11
The term “Great Chain of Being” was largely an invention of eighteenth-century writers. But the elements of the Chain here laid out can be traced back to the Greeks and were all recognizable to contemporaries.

12
De Genera
II.

13
Quoted in J. R. Lander,
Government and Community: England, 1450–1509
(Cambridge, Mass., 1980), p. 117.

1 Establishing the Henrician Regime, 1485–1525

1
The term “Wars of the Roses” was coined by the nineteenth-century novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott and so was unknown to Henry’s contemporaries. There is a scene in Shakespeare’s
Henry VI
in which two prominent characters pluck roses of different colors to show their allegiances. But Shakespeare wrote more than a century after the fact. One of the symbols of the Yorkist side was the white rose. But the red rose is generally thought to have originated with the Tudors; it only became associated with the Lancastrians retrospectively.

2
BL Add. MS 48031 (A), f. 139, quoted in J. L. Watts, “Ideas, Principles and Politics,” in
The Wars of the Roses,
ed. A. J. Pollard (New York, 1995), p. 122.

3
The king’s other, inconsistently loyal, brother, Clarence, had been eliminated in 1478 when he was arrested on a charge of witchcraft against Edward, taken to the Tower, and never seen again. Legend and Shakespeare have it that he was there drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine.

4
Along with the murder of Sir Edmondberry Godfrey (see chap. 9), the identity of Jack the Ripper in 1888, and, perhaps, the death of Amy, Lady Dudley (see chap. 4).

5
Quoted in J. R. Lander,
Government and Community: England, 1450–1509
(Cambridge, Mass., 1980), p. 331.

6
Quoted in Lander,
Government and Community,
p. 340.

7
The payments were intended to reimburse Henry the cost of his campaign as well as to pay arrears due on a previously agreed subsidy negotiated as part of the Treaty of Picquigny of 1475.

8
Sir T. Smith,
De Republica Anglorum,
ed. M. Dewar (Cambridge, 1982), p. 88. Quotations have been modernized in this book and the companion source book.

9
London had four members. A charter from the king granted each borough the right to send representatives to Parliament. The number of boroughs sending members rose from 222 in 1510 to 251 in 1547 and to 370 by 1603. The number of knights of the shire for Wales increased (although Welsh and Monmouth boroughs returned only one member each to Parliament), raising the number of knights from 74 to 90, for a total of about 460 members at the end of the Tudor period.

10
Quoted in J. A. F. Thomson,
The Transformation of Medieval England, 1370–1529
(London, 1983), p. 235.

11
J. J. Scarisbrick,
Henry VIII
(Berkeley, 1968), p. 16.

12
Quoted in E. Ives, “Will the Real Henry VIII Please Stand Up?,”
History Today
56, 2 (2006): 33.

13
Quoted in C. Roberts and D. Roberts,
A History of England,
vol. 1,
Prehistory to 1714,
2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1985), p. 233.

14
Henry also had the proceeds of a French pension of £21,000 a year.

15
Pope Adrian IV (d. 1159; reigned 1154–9) was the previous, and so far only, English pontiff.

16
As a consequence, Henry’s sister and James IV’s widow, Margaret, became regent.

17
The Amicable Grant would have claimed one-sixth of the goods of wealthy lay people, one-third of those of the clergy.

2 (Dis-)Establishing the Henrician Church, 1525–1536

1
Matilda was the only surviving child of Henry I (1068/9–1135; reigned 1100–35). In 1141, in the midst of a civil war against her cousin, King Stephen (ca. 1092–1154; reigned 1135–54), she briefly controlled the country. A few months’ rule allowed no time to prove herself, but sixteenth-century historical opinion held that those months were disastrous for England.

2
For example, Henry Courtenay, marquess of Exeter, George Neville, lord Bergavenny (ca. 1469–1535), Sir Edward Neville (ca. 1482-1538), Margaret, countess of Salisbury, Henry Pole, Lord Montagu (ca. 1492–1539), Reginald Pole (1500–58), and Sir Geoffrey Pole (d. 1558) were all living descendants of either Edward IV or his brother, George, duke of Clarence.

3
His mother was Elizabeth Blount (ca. 1500–ca. 1539).

4
Technically, what Henry sought was an annulment (or actually a dispensation and an annulment, because of his previous relations with Anne’s older sister!), that is, a categorical statement that his first marriage violated canon law, was therefore invalid in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, and had, thus, in effect, never really existed. But contemporaries, perhaps tacitly recognizing that Henry and Catherine had really been married, usually referred to the king’s wished-for outcome as a divorce.

5
Brandon had married Anne (d. 1512), the daughter of Sir Anthony Browne (d. 1506), to whom he had been contracted in his youth. This took place after he had married, by papal dispensation, Margaret Mortimer (b. 1466?), whom he abandoned before marrying Anne. In order to wed Mary Tudor, he had to secure an annulment of his marriage to Anne on the grounds that the previous dispensation had been invalid! This example provided some ammunition for Henry’s claim.

6
This is disputable. Arthur is supposed to have commented to Henry that he had been in “Spain” on his wedding night.

7
Quoted in J. Guy,
Tudor England
(Oxford, 1988), p. 115.

8
See A. G. Dickens,
The English Reformation
(New York, 1964; 2nd ed., 1989); Dickens,
Reformation Studies
(London, 1982).

9
C. Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society Under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993), p. 28. See also J. J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984); E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400–c.1580 (New Haven, 1992; 2nd ed., 2005).

10
D. MacCulloch, “England,” in
The Early Reformation in Europe
, ed. A. Pettegree (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 176–7; D. MacCulloch,
The Later Reformation in England, 1547–1603,
2nd ed. (Basingstoke, 2001); E. Shagan,
Popular Politics and the English Reformation
(Cambridge, 2003).

11
Quoted in J. A. Guy, “Henry VIII and the Praemunire Manoeuvres of 1530–1531,”
English Historical Review
97, 384 (1982): 497.

12
Quoted in J. J. Scarisbrick,
Henry VIII
(Berkeley, 1968), p. 299.

13
Quoted in Guy,
Tudor England
, p. 155.

14
Quoted in R. W. Chambers,
Thomas More
(Ann Arbor, 1958), p. 350.

15
25 Henry VIII, c. 12,
Statutes of the Realm,
3: 446.

16
G. R. Elton,
The Tudor Revolution in Government
(Cambridge, 1953).

17
In fact, Cromwell’s formulation is somewhat ambiguous on one point: is loyalty owed to the king as a person (Henry VIII himself) or is it owed to his office (the Crown) or perhaps to some even less personal concept like “the State” or “England”? Most contemporaries had not yet thought this through and it is highly doubtful that Cromwell had done so. Later generations would raise the question of precisely who or what was the proper object of those loyalties.

18
Quoted in M. A. R. Graves,
The Tudor Parliaments: Crown, Lords and Commons, 1485–1603 (London, 1985), p. 80.

19
They were the courts of Augmentations, First Fruits and Tenths, General Surveyors, and Wards and Liveries.