Henry VIII & Thomas Cromwell - The Real Wolf Hall Documentary

The Man known to history as King Henry VII of England was born on the 28th of June 1491 at Greenwich Palace just outside of London his father was King Henry iith the first Monarch of the House of Tuda King of England and Lord of Ireland he reigned from 1485 when he seized the Throne of England at the end of the wars of the Roses to his death in 1509 when he was succeeded by his second son and namesake Henry Henry the8's mother was Elizabeth of York the daughter of king Edward IV who had ruled England

for most of the period between 1461 and 1483 as a yorkist princess her marriage to Henry iith allowed reconciliation and healing between the two great houses of York and Lancaster after years of Civil War she bore her husband seven children before Henry was born a boy and a girl named Arthur and Margaret had appeared in 1486 and 1489 three daughters and another son would follow after Henry though of these only Mary born in 1496 would live long Elizabeth Edmund and Catherine all died in infancy or for their Early Childhood years as the Second Son of

his parents Henry was never expected to be King instead that Duty would fall to his older brother Arthur the Prince of Wales Henry consequently grew up as the Royal spare rather than the heir he had several tutors at the palace at Elum where he was raised who taught him grammar rhetoric history philosophy logic arithmetic and languages including French Spanish Italian Latin and Greek Henry showed an equal facility for both Athletics and music he was said to have composed music of his own at various times throughout his life and although it is difficult to remember when

considering the obese individual with a debilitating leg ulcer which he became in later Life as a Young Man he was an athletic individual the poet John Skelton educated Henry in his moral duties while he also developed a fairly Pious Roman Catholicism his mother Elizabeth taught him to write from an early age something evinced by the similarities in their handwriting styles by the time he learned to write he already held several major titles including those of Duke of York Lord lieutenant of Ireland Earl Marshall of England and Warden of the Scottish marshes he might not have

been the heir but Henry iith certainly honored his youngest son with many titles Henry was the subject of exceptional admiration as a boy as some of the most celebrated intellectuals in both England and Europe including Sir Thomas Moore the famed author of utopia and the Dutch philosopher desiderius arasmus the most celebrated scholar of Northern Europe in the early 16th century marveled publicly at his intelligence and Charisma Mo wrote about Henry in his poetry calling him a savior and a new Messiah though Royal flattery was a commonplace of the early modern period both Moore and arasmus

met Henry as a young man in 14 99 at Elum Palace other than this Henry spent a largely happy childhood surrounded by his mother sisters and paternal grandmother all of whom openly adored him indeed some historians have speculated that it was Henry's childhood spent in the center of a circle of adoring women which made him both an individual who veered towards passionate romance but one who was also possessed of a severe pet ulence when he did not get his way on the 2nd of April 1502 Henry's older brother Arthur died possibly of tuberculosis or of

the mysterious sweating sickness a disease which historians have speculated was either a strain of influenza or a hunter virus of some kind the death of the air was in many ways the defining moment in Henry's life it was absolutely vital that a smooth succession occurred when Henry iith Died he had claimed the throne after defeating the yorkist usurper King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth field in 1485 not long before this Richard had seized the throne by imprisoning his nephews and in all likelihood having them murdered in the Tower of London this brutal act

on Richard's part had ensured that many people in England were happy to support Henry Tudor's cause in 1485 yet there also is no doubt that the House of Tudor had a very tenuous claim to the throne of England being descended through a line of the great 14th century King of England Edward III one which was widely considered to be illegitimate as it stemmed from Edward's son John of ga's marriage to Katherine swinford and the children born out of wedlock from that marriage moreover the tutors were also largely a Welsh family not something which blocked their

path to the throne legally but hardly something which the ancient Noble houses of England would have viewed well unsurprisingly there have been numerous revolts against the Tudors in the late 1480s and into the 1490s as Henry was growing up poor Henry the 7th it was all too clear that a new rival for the throne could emerge at any time and so it was vitally important that a smooth transition of power occurred when he himself died thus the death of Arthur in 1502 was a major blow the succession now rested on young Henry's shoulders this concern

for having a male Heir and ensuring a smooth succession would hang like a shadow over Henry's entire life Henry iith now took the education in Hand of his 10-year-old son who was quickly anointed as the Prince of Wales this was the beginning of a battle between Father and Son as while Arthur was still alive Henry had been somewhat ignored by the king but now that Arthur was dead and Henry was the prince of Wales the da of and forbidding Henry iith became heavily involved in his son's daily life this soon resulted in many a tussle

of Wills between the Two Chief amongst which was a disagreement over Henry's passion for jousting and other martial Sports things which Henry iith understandably prohibited him from engaging in now that they could endanger the life of the Future King young Henry was embarrassed at being restricted to competing in unarmed training exercises only whilst his friends were able to both exhibit their skills and defend their manly honor in the Jou on top of this over the next few years Father and Son drifted apart as Henry iith became an increasingly unpopular ruler on account of his financial

policies and his employment of a close cter of secretive advisers who alienated much of the political Nation from the King while Prince Henry was looked towards as the young king in Waiting who held out promise of a brighter future while Henry VII's prudent government might have earned him the resentment of his subjects he would ultimately put the English State on a sound financial footing and bequeath a large Surplus to his son one day another major feature of the years after after Arthur's death concerned his widow and the issue of Henry marrying in 1501 before his

untimely demise Arthur had married Katherine of aragan the daughter of King Ferdinand II of aragan and Queen Isabella I of Castile whose own Union had United the two major kingdoms of Spain the marriage of Arthur and Catherine had been designed to Foster an alliance between England and Spain P Arthur's death seemed to Scupper this though almost immediately thereafter Henry iith had began corresponding with Katherine's parents in Spain about the possibility of Catherine now marrying Prince Henry the negotiations wound on interminably through the 1500s or throughout which time Catherine remained in England the issues around it

concerned Catherine's Dary or marriage po poron that would be paid to the English crown by her parents and also whether or not Catherine and Arthur had consumated their marriage if they had Henry could not marry Katherine according to canon law the deliberations about the proposed marriage were still ongoing 7 years later when Henry iith died on the 2st of April 1509 when his father died died the Prince of Wales was immediately proclaimed as King Henry VII of England an atmosphere of Hope and joy prevailed amongst the Nobles courtiers Gentry and commoners alike throughout England and

many predicted the beginning of a golden age for England as the tall athletic and handsome Henry with his intelligence charm and humor ascended the throne at 17 years of age he would soon be married only 3 weeks after his father's death on the 11th of June 1509 Henry married Catherine in a brief private ceremony at the church of the observant Friars just outside of Greenwich Palace she was 6 years older than Henry and there were lingering issues about the validity of the marriage in canon law but a Papal dispensation was granted to allow it to

proceed despite how contentious it would become in later years Henry and Catherine's marriage was a happy one initially he truly respected her probably more so than any of his other wives for her part Catherine was a devoted wife even long after Henry had ceased wanting her to be two weeks after the royal wedding on the 24th of June 1509 Henry and Catherine were crowned king and queen of England in Westminster Abbey the procession route from the Palace of Westminster to The Abbey was decorated with cloth of gold and exquisite tapestries and both Henry and Catherine

were resplendent Henry in a jewel decorated cloth of gold coat with a red velvet ER trimmed robe and Catherine dressed in a rich mantle of cloth of tissue with a silk ciret of Golden Pearl on her head her long Orban hair Unbound the Archbishop of Canterbury William waram anointed the royal couple with holy oil and crowned them both to cries of viat viat Rex or long live the king it was the last time that a joint coronation of a king and queen would take place in England for nearly two Centuries with most of the six

monarchs that followed being unmarried at the time of their cination after the initial ceremony two days of feasting and armed tournaments followed including the jousting Tes which Henry's father had so disapproved of the first years of Henry's Reign were good ones the court was purposefully modeled after those of the warrior Kings of the medieval period and Henry and his courtiers enjoyed both watching and participating in in the frequent rounds of jousts and tournaments unlike his father the new monarch spent extravagantly on clothing jewels and fine furnishings while the richest Foods were served daily often with

as many as seven courses served at meal times there also seemed to be good news immediately for securing the line of succession with Catherine visibly pregnant by the winter of 1509 it was however the beginning of a turbulent natal history at the very end of January 1510 cine miscarried she was carrying a baby girl one year later in January 1511 Catherine gave birth to a son Prince Henry who tragically only survived for seven weeks before passing away the cause of his death is unclear two further children came and went in the Autumn of 1513 and

the early winter of 1514 both sons both being either still births or children who died within hours or days of their birth the information is not entirely clear Henry's famous reputation as a tyrant might lead some to believe that Catherine's initial failure to produce an air for England may have been a point of contention between the queen and her husband in fact Henry and Catherine's marriage continued in a seemingly warm and supportive state for several years Henry appears to have been both patient and understanding with Katherine's struggle to give him an heir there are good

reasons for this in 16th century England child mortality was much more common than it is today and a wife especially a noble Lord Royal wife might have a dozen or more children to compensate for the sad fact that many would not survive infancy or their childhood years depending on circumstances between 1/3 and half of pregnancies would result in miscarriages still births or infant mortality and whilst these occurrences were considered tragic Catherine's demonstrated ability to conceive easily was actually an encouraging sign that she would eventually give birth to a healthy son and Heir in the meantime

the young royal couple demonstrated impressive collaboration in the governance and management of England's Affairs Henry forgave many of his father's dettor and made efforts to bury the enity that existed with those who had clashed with his father his charm and magnanimity won him the support of both the nobility and the people as well as this Catherine was beloved for her intelligence strength piety and Devotion to the English people when Henry launched a joint invasion of France along with the Holy Roman Emperor maximilan I in the summer of 1513 he left Catherine to serve as Regent

in his absence a clear sign of the trust he placed in her the war had come up about as both an extension of the Italian wars being fought between France and Spain the dominance over the Italian Peninsula and also Henry's desire to reignite the Hundred Years War which had seen England try to conquer much of France in the 14th and 15th centuries in Italy Pope Julius II and King Louis 12th of France went at War over the Italian states ruled by the papacy Pope Julius excommunicated Louie forming a coalition of Nations to sway the young

Henry to join them in the league he sent him barrels of Italian wine a gold covered rose and a shipment of Parmesan cheeses in England Archbishop waram had preached for peace and against the evils of War though eventually Henry had decided differently in this he had the support of the Lord Chancellor Thomas woy a leading religious figure in England and soon to be a cardinal of the church he was also the chief minister of Henry's government throughout much of the 1510s and 1520s and an immensely powerful figure on the 28th of June 1513 with the

decision for war already taken the king and queen arrived at DOA Castle in Kent Henry crossed the English Channel the following day to join the fight against King Louie of France for the first time in nearly a 100 years since the Glory Days of King Henry V and the Battle of ainor an English king would now seek to extend his Dominion on the continent which after the losses and the final Decades of the Hundred Years War had been reduced to nothing more than a small Enclave around Cal Henry's first first victory was a tan followed

by a Triumph at the Battle of the Spurs so named because the mounted French Knights fled the field so quickly using their Spurs to push their horses onwards as quickly as they could whilst Henry pursued his dreams of English Marshal glory in France Catherine was busy confronting an invasion of England by the Scots The Perennial Ally of the French under King James IV within two months of Henry's invasion of France King James invaded England in support of his French allies Catherine however proved equal to the challenge in Henry's absence Katherine was personally involved in the

military mobilization and strategy for England's defense when the English Everly represented by Longbow men and led by Thomas Howard the Earl of su defeated the Scots at the Battle of floden on the 9th of September 1513 at the battle the English forces were victorious over a greater Scottish force and James IV perished on the battlefield along with as many as 17,000 of his 40,000 strong Army whilst the English in contrast lost only 1,500 of their 26,000 strong host the queen in writing to Henry after the victory praised him for his successes abroad and sent as

a token of her own Triumph a shred of the Scottish King's coat to add to the king's banners as his army carried on to take parts of Flanders as well as to where Henry built a great Castle a symbol of what he believed to be his burgeoning Continental Empire 3 years later and seven years into their marriage Henry and Katherine's patience was rewarded when on the 18th of February 1516 Catherine gave birth to her daughter Princess Mary the future Queen Mary the first she would be the king and queen's only child to live beyond infancy

and into adulthood England rejoiced Mary's birth and survival 7 years into the Reign contained the promise that a male Heir might follow before long at the time no woman had ever been Queen of England in her own right although unlike in countries like France where the salic law prohibited female monarchs Mary could theoretically succeed her father one day and Henry appeared to treat his daughter as a true Princess of Wales he even sent her to live at Ludo castle where she was established with with her own miniature Court as was the tradition for the heir

to the English Throne however while Henry loved his daughter and referred to her as my Pearl in the world he still pined for a male Heir as the years went by this would become an obsession which clouded his judgment and slowly turned the loving husband and valiant king who had promised so much in 1509 into to a tyrant who tore his own kingdom apart in search of a son during the course of the 1520s it became apparent that Catherine would not produce a son and air she turned 40 in December 1525 and thereafter her chances

of delivering any further children that alone a boy who was healthy became Slimmer and Slimmer long before that time time Henry began to take Mistresses with more regularity such Behavior was not necessarily an indication of his waning interest in his wife most Kings in early modern Europe had one or multiple Mistresses in June 1519 one of these Elizabeth Blount a lady in waiting to the queen gave birth to Henry's son the king acknowledged the boy as his own child and he was named Henry Fitzroy Henry after his father while Fitzroy literally means son of the

King Henry lavished attention and titles on his son but under English law he was illegitimate and could not succeed his father still with the birth of Henry Fitzroy Henry had proven that he could father a son while the king never openly blamed Catherine for her perceived failure to producer boy the years following the birth of his illegitimate son saw a gradual decline in Henry and Katherine's previously happy relationship his dynastic troubles aside the first 10 years of Henry's Reign clearly reflected his ambitious Pursuit Of Glory Henry set out to make England the equal of both

France and Spain in wealth power and prestige early on in his Reign he sponsored the construction of dockyards warehouses and shipyards in coastal ports and sourced huge amounts of Timber from the forests of Sussex and Kent for the construction of a large Fleet en's father had become king in the very infancy of Europe's Age of Exploration not to be outdone by the Spanish he had begun a process of Naval expansion and sponsored the first major English Voyages of Discovery it is for example often overlooked that it was a pilot in English employ John cot who

became the first early modern European to reach the mainland of North America in 1497 while Columbus was still island hopping in the Caribbean but the English Navy remained small by 1509 Henry VII said about changing this and by the 1540s it had been expanded to approximately 50 ships Henry also pioneered a revolution in English International diplomacy in 1518 with the threat of a Turkish invasion of Southeastern Europe looming a prospect which alarmed all Christendom Henry signed a non-aggression pact with Charles I the new Holy Roman Emperor and queen Catherine's nephew along with Francis I King

of France the agreement was the beginning of several Summits which took place over the next two years between the three European powers largely planned and orchestrated by Henry's chief minister Cardinal Woolsey the most impressive of these diplomatic meetings was unquestionably the field of cloth of gold which took place in France near Cal from the 7th to the 25th 4th of June 1520 at the summit Henry and Francis signed a pledge of Perpetual friendship and peace Princess Mary was betrothed to the DOA of France all in attendance enjoyed a week of feasting drinking entertainment and jousting

contests amid the Exquisite tents made from gold cloth however despite the Pomp and ceremony of the field of cloth of gold the alliance between Henry and Francis would soon collapse as shortly afterwards Cardinal Woolsey negotiated an alliance with Charles I of Spain who declared war on France later in 1521 starting the Italian war of 1521 to 1526 into which England was dragged the second of three Wars which Henry would fight with France however the bulk of the fighting would play out in Italy between the French and Spanish there Henry was determined to be remembered as

a prince of intellect and virtue as well as one skilled at statesmanship the growing ferari over the writings of Martin Luther in Germany from 1517 onwards and the Protestant Reformation which it inspired soon presented him with an opportunity to demonstrate his learning Luther had emerged as a grave critic of the papacy in Rome and the wealth and power of the church in general arguing that the corruption within it needed to be rooted out and a new form of Christianity established one in which churches would be stripped of their idolatrous wealth the mass would be performed

in the vernacular tongues rather than in Latin and people would be encouraged to actually read the Bible themselves and engage with scripture Henry was a doctrinal Catholic who liked the power ceremony and tradition of the Roman Catholic Church in response to the heresy emanating from Central Europe in 1521 he composed a text entitled assertio sepm sacrorum or the defense of the seven sacraments in this Henry attacked to Luther's ideas defended sacred Catholic practices and affirmed in all religious matters the supremacy of the Pope over the church in Europe Henry even dedicated the text to Pope

Leo I 10th who in recognition of his service to the church gave Henry the title fiday Defensor meaning defender of the faith whether Henry actually wrote all of the defense of the seven sacraments remains a matter of debate Thomas Moore might well have aided him and certainly commented on drafts of the text by the mid 1520s Henry's marital situation was becoming more strained he was no longer the popular teenage King but was still a relatively young man in his 30s his thoughts had seemingly not turned of their own accord to potentially divorcing Catherine and seeking

to Remar to a woman that might sire a son instead it took the arrival of Anne berin to the Tudor Court at this time to lead Henry down this path Anne was a daughter of Thomas Bolin Henry's former ambassador to France she had recently returned from the French court with her father and was much admired for her Cosmopolitan Heir her style wit and charm her year of birth is unclear though it was probably 1501 making her a woman entering her mid 20s at the time Henry became infatuated by her for the first few months of

their courtship there seemed to be no question of Henry casting off his wife Anne knew how to play the king though she refused to become his mistress so long as he was married insisting that she would only commit in such a way to her future husband over time Henry became more and more obsessed and his letters to Anne some of which survive are full of passionate Declarations of his love and desire for her generally Anne berin has been depicted as a grasping political climber who usurped Queen Catherine's legitimate place however there is no no evidence

that she encouraged Henry's interest in her initially rather she reportedly made an Abrupt departure from court in the spring of 1527 returning to her family's home at hea Castle while some might accuse her of playing a skillful game of manipulation it seems unlikely that a young woman like Anne from a respectable but hardly powerful family could have imagined that she would become anything more than Henry's temporary mistress There is almost certainly no possibility that she imagined herself as Queen one day when Henry started courting her moreover a liazon with the king would possibly compromise her

own future marriage prospects nevertheless after her abrupt departure from Court Henry continued writing to Anne and sending her gifts in time Anne began to respond to Henry with feelings of her own and the two carried on their relationship quite publicly at court after she made her return there there is no way to know exactly for how long Anne refused Henry's sexual advances However the fact that Anne did not become pregnant throughout the nearly seven years of their courtship suggests she stayed chased while Henry and Anne were intimate with one another in other ways the likelihood

is that they did not sleep together prior to 1532 in 1527 a year or so after he began courting Anne Henry decided to seek a divorce from Catherine so he could marry Bolin he and his counselors soon latched onto a potentially legitimate reason for seeking an annulment of his near two decades old marriage when Henry had first married Catherine he had done so over objections that she had previously been married to his deceased brother Arthur and that their brief marriage had possibly been consumated this would have been in breach of canon law as Leviticus 2021

reads quote If any man should take his brother's wife it is an unclean thing they will be childless in order to sidestep this issue it had been argued back in the 1500s that Catherine and Arthur had never actually been together as man and wife thus allowing Henry to marry Catherine now 18 years after they were first married Henry very conveniently started to have a fit of conscience it was soon being argued in England that the marriage in 1509 had been a breach of natural religious law after after all on these grounds Henry began petitioning Pope

Clement iith in Rome for an annulment to his first marriage whereby he could then marry Anne the king would spend more than half a decade pursuing what became known at court and in English political circles as his great matter he would change English political and religious history in the process the process began with a direct appeal to Pope Clement II it was not unknown for popes to Grant annulments to marriages on rather dubious legal grounds where the marriage was one which had not resulted in a male air this could avoid disruptive succession disputes and Wars

however there was no possibility of Clement doing so in this case right around the time he began petitioning Clement in 1527 the Spanish and Imperial armies of Emperor Charles I Katherine of Aragon's nephew had sacked and occupied the city of Rome with the Pope a virtual prisoner of Charles there was no way he could agree to anull the marriage Henry then turned to Cardinal woy who had never failed him and who owed literally all he had to the King woy was not born to the nobility the son of a butcher from ipswitch he was originally

an obscure chaplain until under Henry's patronage he was made a bishop then Archbishop and finally a cardinal and Papal leot in England to Woolsey would fall the task in the late 1520s of resolving the king's great matter woy had not only been Henry's Lord Chancellor he had also been his Mentor but in time his failure to procure the sort after divorce would lead to his ruin the Cardinal working with Cardinal cedo a special legot appointed by the pope set up a letin court to determine Henry's great matter but the court was unable to reach a

decision and instead ruled that the issue should be decided by the College of cardinals in Rome it is unclear whether Woolsey truly wanted to give Henry his desire or if he saw the danger of allowing the king to divorce his famously Pious Catholic wife and Mary Anne who was rumored to be sympathetic to the small but growing community of Lutheran Protestant reformers that had emerged in London Oxford and Cambridge whatever his intentions the failure of the leaton Court led to wolves's downfall as Henry commanded his arrest and imprisonment citing the treasonous tone of letters woy

had written to Vatican officials however the Cardinal in fact died of natural causes on his way to London before Henry could ever have him executed Henry also took possession of Hampton Court The Fabulous Palace which Woolsey had personally transformed from a modest Country House setting it up as a royal residence thereafter following the Cardinal's downfall Henry did not sit idly by waiting for the pope to change his mind instead he began to Canvas the opinion of theologians at Europe's universities asking them to study deliberate and pronounce a verdict on the merits of his case for

divorce however Henry would be disappointed twice more as the majority of univers univers theologians and later the College of cardinals would decide in favor of Queen Catherine declaring the King's first marriage valid in law it is unclear when Henry first began to consider repudiating the Pope's Authority in England thus removing the obstacle to his divorce and Berlin's influence as a Lutheran sympathizer and reformer is entirely plausible as is the influence of Thomas Cromwell a figure who had risen as a servant of woles but who survived the Cardinals downfall and inv vagled his way into Henry's

confidence around 1529 he would come to dominate the government in the 1530s alternatively the key figure in the king's move towards splitting from Rome was an otherwise little known clergyman and theology Professor from Cambridge by the name of Thomas cranmer according to cranmer who was at that time a moderate Lutheran but would become a more radical calvinist in years to come Kings were anointed by God and answered only to God therefore Henry should not have had to pursue his divorce through legal channels he certainly did not need the permission of the Pope to divorce his

wife this emboldened Henry to formerly break with the Roman Catholic church and pursue a claim to be the Supreme head of the Church of England it would take nearly two years for Henry to achieve this over the resistance of both Parliament and the English clergy but by 1532 Henry secured his wish and was forly acknowledged as the Supreme head of the church in England after being browbeaten Parliament had legislated a full break with the Pope stopping virtually all payments of ecclesiastical dues to Rome Henry made Thomas cranmer the new Archbishop of Canterbury the most powerful

ecclesiastical appointment in the country empowering him to oversee enforcement of the new Supremacy and the split with Rome then in May of 1533 Archbishop cranmer finally declared Henry's marriage to Catherine invalid and granted the king his long-desired divorce by that time Henry had already been remarried for 4 months having wed Anne Berlin in a secret ceremony on the 25th of January 1533 Anne was pregnant by then though she and the King probably did not know this on the day of their Union as on the 7th of September 1533 just seven and a half months after

their marriage Anne gave birth to their first child though Henry expressed his Delight he cannot but have been disappointed that it was a baby girl they named her Elizabeth after Henry's long deceased mother Henry well understood the enormity of what he had done and he moved swiftly to consolidate his new powers there were two two issues firstly Catherine of aragan was still widely popular and the majority of the English people sympathized with her cause and that of her and Henry's daughter Mary who was now being legally excluded from the succession secondly the majority of the

English people were still staunch Roman Catholics and viewed figures like cranmer suspiciously as clerics who were Now intent on exploiting the king's marital drama to impose a Protestant Reformation in England Henry knew he would have to establish control quickly his answer was the act of Supremacy which he proposed following his marriage to Anne and which parliament passed in 1534 the ACT required all the king's subjects to swear an oath recognizing Henry as Supreme head of the church and affirming the legality of the King's marriage to anolin refusal to swear the oath would be considered treason

and all office holders and political figures will be required to swear it many refused Chief amongst them Henry's old friend and Mentor Sir Thomas Moore Moore had largely retired from court and public life in general in 1532 dismayed at the drift of political events though he had been quite happy to exploit wo's downfall to become Lord Chancellor a few years earlier as of 1535 he remained one of only a few of Henry's prominent subjects who still had not taken the oath his refusal to do so soon resulted in MO being imprisoned in the tower at

his trial when it was clear that he would be found guilty he loudly affirmed the authority of the Pope and rejected Henry's Supremacy over the Church of England for this he was sentenced to death for treason a crime which carried the gruesome penalty of being hung drawn and courted it is a small Testament to his remembrance of Moore's friendship and service to him that Henry commuted his sentence to beheading the punishment was carried out on the 6th of July 1535 before which Moore declared in a loud clear voice that he died quote the king's good

servant and gods first Henry had finally removed all who seemed openly opposed to the New Order the death of Katherine of aragan from natural causes on the 7th of January 1536 appeared to remove the last barrier to the legitimacy of Henry and Anne's marriage but a dark cloud still hovered Anne had become pregnant two more times in quick succession following the birth of Elizabeth yet both pregnancies had resulted in miscarriages as this occurred Henry and Anne's relationship was growing increasingly strained due to the Queen's perceived failure to adjust to her new role of wife as

Henry's mistress she might have been allowed a c amount of License to speak and act as she pleased her prolonged refusal to sleep with Henry likely put her in a rather dominant position as well however as Henry's wife and as Queen she was expected to act in a different fashion roles to which she did not easily adjust all of this took place against the backdrop of her miscarriages and the fact that Henry's second marri was proving no more successful in terms of producing a male Heir than his first in the spring of 1536 after another

miscarriage accusations of an's alleged adultery abounded at court Henry chose to believe them private interrogations of the Queen's household elicited fantastic claims of her degeneracy with several individuals accusing using her of conspiring against the king adultery and even incest with her own brother George at a speedy trial that was cobbled together which Anne was not permitted to be present at she was found guilty and on the 31st of May 1536 and Berlin was taken to the scaffold and beheaded with dignity she spoke briefly and movingly of her love for the king her sins of pride

and her desire that the people would pray for her the exact circumstances of her trial have been widely debated and even half a millennium later there is no agreement as to whether or not the charges against her were completely or only partially fabricated in order to remove her from the scene as quickly as possible what we do know is that within 24 hours of his second wife's execution Henry was already betrothed to one of Anne's ladies in Waiting Lady Jane Seymour she soon became his third wife while Lady Jane like her family had sworn the

oath of Supremacy she was a Pious Catholic as a result many people expected that now with anolin gone Henry would back track on some of his radical religious policies however the reforms if anything accelerated and Henry ordered Thomas Cromwell to begin the dissolution of England's monasteries around this time in 1536 abies shrines and monasteries throughout England and Wales were suddenly taken under State ownership the dissolution of the 800 or so monasteries was undertaken for two reasons firstly the Protestant reformers who had managed to acquire positions of power in England during the early 1530s under cover

of aiding the king in his great matter were opposed to monasticism in general Protestants viewed the religious orders as worldly organizations that had helped the pope corrupt the word of God and argued that monasticism had no basis in religious Doctrine secondly the King was convinced that dissolving the monasteries was a good idea because it would lead to an absolutely enormous Financial windfall as their precious books gold chales and other valuables were sold off along with their lands with this money Henry speculated he could clear his debts and initiate a new war with France the rightful

duty of any English Monarch the dissolution was not implemented without resistance in the Autumn of 1536 a massive Uprising broke out in the north of England this became known as the pilgrimage of Grace Henry only quelled it through attempts at appeasement followed by brutal reprisals Marching In The Name of the King carrying banners depicting the Five Wounds of Christ the rebels demanded the restoration of the abies the Revival of sacred Catholic ceremonies and the dismissal of the king's devious ministers that had led him astray in recent times the rebels numbered an incredible 40,000 strong the

largest army yet seen on English soil in Tudor times to appease the mob Henry initially promised them pardons if they dispersed and ended their Rebellion however when further disturbances broke out Henry Unleashed a brutal repression and hundreds of Rebel leaders were arrested and executed indeed even his own family were not spared Henry's WTH as when the wife who replaced amberin Jane Seymour begged him on her knees to restore the abies he exploded withe get up do not presume to meddle in my affairs remember an the desecration of the monasteries continued a pace for four more

years the confiscated wealth briefly made Henry one of the richest monarchs in Europe while internationally England was viewed as a pariah state by many a country which had adopted the hated Protestant Faith the emergence of which was leading to religious wars and inquisitions all over Europe Henry was unperturbed though instead the king resolved to use his newly appropriated Fortune to build up the country's defenses ordering the construction of hundreds of forts and gun imp placements along the English Coast the materials for which often came from the monasteries and abies themselves making England a veritable Island

Fortress in the process which combined with the growing English Navy formed the blueprint for English defensive and offensive strategies for many years to come between 1536 and 1539 Henry was also convinced by crma and others to pursue other avenues to reinforce the new religious life of England for instance the 10 articles of Faith were published in 1536 an English translation of the Bible appeared in 1537 as well as the institution of the Christian Man colloquially known as The Bishop's book by 1539 it was clear to Henry that the theological and doctrinal differences between Catholics and

Protestants had hardened and the situation had grown even murkier Henry realized that preserving his Supremacy and securing peace in religious life was going to require uniform if he could not simply Proclaim it he would have to impose it by law thus Henry first established a special Committee of clergymen to deliberate on six doctrinal questions the answers to which would form the basic articles of faith for the Church of England naturally the committee knew what was expected of them and they produced six articles of Faith which essentially preserved the Catholic doctrines and observance with which Henry

and many other conservatives in England were comfortably familiar English Protestants were crushed and it seemed that the only aspect of Catholic Doctrine which the six articles had left out was allegiance to the pope this was what the henrician Reformation was all about creating a Catholic Church where Henry instead of the Pope was the leader these religious shifts and turns require some further explanation here in 1539 and 1540 there seemed to be a tilt back to Catholicism the reason for this was that Henry was never a Protestant a doctrinal Catholic he had allowed some Protestant reformers

to acquire positions of authority within the English church in the early 1530s as they had for facilitated his divorce then he had allowed them to continue introducing a moderate form of Lutheranism in the mid 1530s as they enriched him through their proposal to dissolve the country's religious houses but by the end of the decade as the Protestant faction had nothing left to offer him he reacted against the earlier reforms and essentially reimposed Catholicism orbe it while maintaining the split from Rome and his own Supremacy over the Church of England this final shift in 1539 and

1540 would be the last major one of the henrician Reformation henceforth the church remained doctrinally Catholic down to the end of the Reign and a more thoroughgoing Protestant Reformation would have to wait until the next Reign all of this was overseen by a monuk who appeared increasingly tyrannical in the 1530s Henry was widely appreciated as a generous and goodh humored Monarch in his early days but later in life he was often regarded as a bully with a hideous temper there is a fairly concrete explanation for this change of temperament which is that Henry was in

almost constant pain with an ongoing disability on the 24th of January 1836 2 days before an Bolin miscarried her last child and 5 months before her execution the still vigorous 45-year-old Henry suffered a terrible accident in the jousting lists when he fell from his horse the heavily armored horse then fell on Henry nearly crushing his leg and he was unconscious for several hours when he awoke he would find that his life had changed forever his accident had opened an older wound on his leg which over time became ever more ulcerated part of the problem was

that 16th century Physicians believed that wounds should be left open to allow the P to continue draining from them the buildup of which according to the humoral theory of medicine that prevailed at the time could cause illness many any of the treatments Henry was subjected to over the remaining 10 years of his life probably did more harm than good causing increasing infections and inflammation in an age before effective pain relief his health issues led to a more D obese and ill-tempered Monarch with the King drinking more to dull the pain in his leg and also

gaining a dramatic amount of weight it is speculated he weighed well over 300 later in his life and had to be carried around Court in a reinforced litter Henry's marriage to Jane Seymour later that same year and her pregnancy 7 months later likely brightened Henry's hopes for the future Henry and Jane had only been married about 15 months when she gave birth to Prince Edward this seemingly set the seal on all of Henry's Lon held Ambitions for a male Heir but tragically Jane would only live for another 2 weeks dying of pual fever after Edward's

birth while Overjoyed at the birth of a son Henry was crushed by Jane's death whether it was because she had given him the male Heir that he had so long desired or because they had not been married long enough for Henry's love to fade the king went into deepest mourning and seclusion he would not marry again for more than two years however both Henry and his courtiers understood that just one son was not enough to guarantee the security of the throne after all Henry had himself become king as his older brother had died prematurely thus

people soon began urging him to remarry again and produce a spare Heir Henry's fourth wife was an of cleaves a German princess and sister to the Duke of cleaves marriage negotiations were entered into as part of efforts to end England's International isolation by negotiating an alliance with the schmal calic league an association of small Lutheran principalities in Germany Henry commissioned the great Tudor Court painter Hans holine to go to Germany and paint Anne's portrait when he received hine's depiction of her Henry admired Anne's Beauty and Poise but when she arrived in person to England Henry

expressed intense disappointment screaming abuse at Thomas Cromwell and exclaiming I like her not yet because he had already alienated predominantly Catholic Europe Henry did not wish to offend his new German allies and so he duly married an of cleaves on the 6th of January 1540 but as the Catholic reaction against the Protestant reforms continued in the weeks that followed Henry immediately began to seek Avenues to have the marriage annulled she has evil smells about her Henry insisted after the wedding night seemingly ignoring his own stench from his ulcerated leg he also claimed that the quote

looseness of her breasts and other tokens indicated that she was not a virgin within 6 months Henry had his marriage to Anne annulled on the grounds of her supposedly binding pre-contract to marry the son of the Duke of Lorraine an fared better than most of Henry's wives she accepted the analment with Grace and Henry gifted her an estate and an annual income she would live the remainder of her life in England Henry then imprisoned his Lord privy seal Thomas Cromwell in the tower for his mishandling of the king's marriage Cromwell was beheaded on the 28th

of July 1540 on the same day enry married the niece of the Duke of norfol 17-year-old Katherine Howard like Anberlin Katherine Howard has been depicted poorly her behavior does however tell us much about the marriage to the King Henry was 51 years old when he married Katherine and growing older sicker and heavier all the time there were rumors also of his impotence some historians have speculated that such sexual problems might have formed the basis of Henry's failure to consumate his marriage to an of cleaves as well under these circumstances it is hardly surprising that the

teenaged Catherine found her new role as Queen tedious unrewarding even lonely she began an affair with Thomas kuler one of the broal Grooms arranging clandestine meetings writing him love letters and sending him gifts rumors of her behavior soon began to circulate and it eventually came to light that she had also engaged in a sexual relationship with her private secretary Francis Derham before marrying the king Catherine would pay the ultimate price for the mistakes of her tragically short life as she was beheaded on the 13th of February 1542 at the age of 19 the day after

the executions of both culer and darham the political shifts and turns of of the Reign were not entirely confined to England Henry for instance Incorporated Wales more fully into the English State through legislation passed in the 1530s and early 1540s more substantial still were developments in Ireland the English lordship had first emerged here owing to a partial conquest of the island in the 12th and 13th centuries but the Civil Wars of the 15th centur had weakened English rule though Henry had contemplated leading an army to Ireland at various points in the 1510s and 1520s he

never did so ultimately considering any money spent in Ireland to be wasted he had no choice though but to act when the son of the ear of kildair revolted in 1534 in the aftermath of this a Coty of officials in Dublin convinced the government that a more interventionist program of gradual conquest of the independent Irish Lordships was desirable to reaffirm English Power in Ireland hence in 1541 Henry became the first English king of Ireland when an act for the kingly title was passed through the Irish Parliament all his predecessors had held the inferior title of

Lord of Ireland this ensured a commitment to expanding English rule on the island and a major program of conquest and colonization would be entered into from 1546 onwards with huge consequences for the course of Irish history on the 12th of July 1543 Henry married his sixth and final wife Katherine PA she was attractive twice widowed educated and highly intelligent the 31-year-old Catherine seemed a good match for Henry she was a mature sensible woman who made a marked effort to be a mother to Henry's three children and encouraged a much closer family environment it was at

this time that Henry decided to reinstate his daughters Mary and Elizabeth whom he had previously declared to be illegitimate to the line of su succession after his son Edward Henry and Catherine seemed to enjoy both a cooperative and companionable marriage and when Henry launched yet another Invasion of France in 1544 he made Catherine Regent in his absence a clear endorsement of his trust in her while they were a seemingly good match they did Clash over religious matters Katherine par was a committed Protestant reformer she published no less than three books all of which testified to

her religious convictions her second book prayers and meditations published in 1545 was the first book published by an English Queen in her own name her writings did not endear her to the more conservative religious elements at court many of whose prejudices Henry himself shared Catherine did not publish her third book The lamentation of a sinner until after Henry's death the final major Act of Henry's Reign was his new war with France this was again a part of a wider war between the Spanish and Austrian habsburgs and the French it also became the most substantial of

the three Wars Henry fought against King Francis I of France there were two key aspects to this firstly Henry squandered basically the entire enormous Financial windfall he had received from the dissolution of the monasteries in sending an army to France one which achieved nothing other than capturing the town of bolog south of Cal it would be governed as a new English Enclave there for a few years before being handed back to the French the second ele element of the war which was more substantial in some ways became Henry's efforts to bludgeon the Scots into making

their infant Queen Mary the who had succeeded her Father James I when she was just a week old in December 1542 marry Prince Edward Henry's goal in pursuing what became known as the rough wooing was to try and unite Scotland under England by having the children of Edward and Mary one day rule over a United Britain the war with the Scots was still in full swing when Henry died and the rough wooing would eventually fail like virtually every other element of Henry's foreign policy during his long Reign by late 1546 Henry had become increasingly ill

and after making a few final adjustments to his will he withdrew from public view into seclusion at whiteall Palace his condition deteriorated steadily over the month of January 1547 yet Henry's Physicians feared to inform him of their strong suspicion that he was dying on the evening of the 27th of January 1547 Archbishop Thomas cranmer was summoned to hear Henry's last confession by the time cranmer arrived he found that the king's condition was such that he was unable to speak granma comforted the King by asking if he trusted in God in reply the king squeezed cranmer's

hand Henry died in the early hours of the morning of the 28th of January 1547 at 55 years of age it was in many ways a fitting end to his life and the strange religious changes that occurred during his Reign the Catholic Monarch being given the last rights by a Protestant Archbishop with the king's passing his son by Jane Seymour became King Edward v 6 clearly as a 9-year-old he would be unable to rule in his own right for several years in the interim his government would be dominated first by his Uncle Edward Seymour Duke

of Somerset as Regent until early 1550 and then by John Dudley Duke of North umberland thereafter the boy King was surrounded by Protestant reformers and in the late 1540s a much more thorough Protestant Reformation was entered into one which saw English churches stripped of their wealth and idolatrous adornments the Bible made widely available in English and a new book of common prayer issued as a way for English men and women to engage with God's word directly Archbishop cranmer who Henry had raised to such Heights in the 1530s was the architect of much of this ultimately

it was a short-lived effort at a radical calvinist Reformation as Edward died in the summer of 1553 at just 15 years of age a brief effort to install Lady Jane Gray a grand niece of Henry VII as Edward's successor by the Protestant party at court in the two weeks following the death of Henry's son proved unsuccessful with this Mary Tudor Henry's daughter by Katherine of Adan came to the throne those present as Queen Mary was crowned at Westminster on the 1st of October 1553 must have wondered what Henry's actions had all been for here was

his daughter by Catherine of aragan being crowned as Queen of England after all yet 5 years later it made a kind of sense when Mary died too and her half sister Elizabeth daughter of an berin ascended as Queen Elizabeth I a Protestant though a very moderate one she oversaw the creation of an Anglican Church that her father would have probably approved of Henry's life and Reign was a fascinating mixture of both the best and the worst of kingly behavior in early modern Europe his Reign held out High Hopes initially and started well with a happy

marriage to Catherine of aragan and efforts to reassert England's place as a major European power on the continent after the decline brought about by the walls of the Roses in the 15th century Guided by fig like Cardinal woy and Thomas Moore Henry was a revered king and a defender of the Roman Catholic Church the Turning Point came in the mid 1520s as it became clear that his marriage to Catherine would not produce the desired male Heir Henry's father's Shadow must be considered in all of this Henry the 7th's presence from the grave ever warning his

son to ensure the preservation of the house of tuders precarious hold on the throne by having a healthy legitimate son over the next decade Henry VII tore England apart in pursuit of this goal splitting from Rome and allowing the Inception of an English Protestant Reformation even though Henry himself remained a doctrinal Catholic his worst inclinations were being followed by the 1530s with the dissolution of the Monas myeres being entered into purely for financial reasons inciting a massive popular Revolt in the North in the process one wife was divorced two were executed and another was cast

aside almost as soon as Henry laid eyes on her one Jane Seymour finally delivered him the son he had always sought though it cost Jane her own life the tragic irony of it all was that the the son in question Edward V 6th would only live for six years after Henry himself a half a century of female rule followed and England did just fine without a male Monarch what do you think of King Henry VII was he a brutal Tyrant or was his concern for producing a male Heir at all costs understandable given the Civil

Wars which had racked England for so long in the 15th century please let us know in the comment section and in the mean time thank you very much for [Music] watching The Man known to history as Thomas Cromwell is generally understood to have been born in 1485 or or shortly before this in Putney in the county of su his father was Walter Cromwell a blacksmith in the town who had also worked previously as a Fuller and as a cloth Merchant virtually nothing is known about cromwell's mother although she may have been called Catherine Marvel and

came from Staffordshire having significant ties to the glossip a family who were members of the Gentry from darbishire much like his mother's identity most of cromwell's early life is shrouded in mystery his father evidently prospered in his business activities in the 1490s and as a consequence was able to organize a number of good marriages for Thomas' sisters to members of the local Gentry whilst Walter also served on juries in Putney a role which carried a minimum wealth requirement yet Cromwell himself was somewhat disorderly and he later described himself as a Ruffian in his Youth and

was even rumored to have been briefly imprisoned at one point much of this chaotic behavior in his early years stemmed from an unpleasant home Life Walter Cromwell despite his success in the Putney area was a heavy drinker one who was regularly in trouble with the law for forging documents amongst other offenses he also clashed with his son and may have been excessively physically violent towards Thomas at a time time when some degree of corporal punishment was usual in male child rearing whatever the exact specifics of the family setup it is clear that young Thomas was

unhappy with it and as a consequence he left Putney when he was still in his teenage years and he would spend the next several years wandering far from home as with his childhood and teenage years we have frustratingly little information about cromwell's early adult years he traveled throughout Western Europe in the early 1500s visiting France and Italy as a consequence later in his life he was fluent in several Continental languages we do know that he served as a soldier during this time and fought with the French at the Battle of gilano a substantial engagement which

took place in Central Italy on the 28th of December 1503 between the French and their Italian allies on one side the Spanish and their Allied states on the other the iberians and the galicians had been engaged in a long running War for dominance of the Italian Peninsula since the early 1490s and these Italian Wars would endure for another half a century Cromwell though resolved quickly that he was better off lending money rather than fighting and by the late 1500s he was working in a merchant and banking house run by Franchesco Fresco Baldi in the City

of Florence the home of the Renaissance Cromwell spent the next 10 years there as well as traveling further north in the low countries in France where he worked in the cloth trade in the early 1510s thus by the time that he returned to England in around 1515 he had developed a wide range of European contacts knew the continent's politics and was multilingual shortly after his return to England Cromwell married Elizabeth Williams the Widow of Thomas Williams a yman of the guard and a woman who originally hailed from Thomas's native Putney herself the couple would have

three children Gregory Anne and Grace moreover Elizabeth's father Henry had served as a gentleman Usher to King Henry iith and as a consequence Thomas was able to obtain a role in the English cloth trade through his father-in-law's contacts this was a period in England's history when men of humble backgrounds could aspire to rise far the ruling Dynasty the tutors were themselves an upstart family of Welsh origin with a very tenuous claim to the throne of England however the founder of the line Henry iith had managed to come out as the ultimate Victor in England's long

Civil Wars of the 15th century the so-called Wars of the Roses after which he ascended to the throne in 1485 never nevertheless the tutor's hold on power was always questionable and when Henry's son and namesake Henry VII became king in 1509 he was conscious that he needed a legitimate male Heir conceived in wedlock to secure the line and his quest to do so would come to Define his reign as well as profoundly altering the course of England's political and religious history and shaping cromwell's life in the process that however lay some time ahead and in

the late 1510s and into the early 1520s Cromwell was building his business links his work in the cloth trade also saw him straying into legal work or soliciting although such employment did not require a legal degree at the time a jack of all trades Cromwell also worked as a money lender during these years and in 1517 was sent as a deputy for the town of Boston in Lincolnshire to Rome to obtain plary indulgences from Pope Leo I 10th for the town a task he succeeded in accomplishing after a private meeting with the head of the

Roman Catholic church early in 1518 on his return to England he continued to rise speedily by 1520 he was well established amongst the London Merchant community and had gained a reputation as an efficient legal representative this work grad ually brought Cromwell into contact with individuals in the city of London who had extensive connections outside the city and up River at the seat of government around whiteall Westminster and Lambeth and it was through these connections that Cromwell first came to the attention of the king's most powerful minister at that time the Archbishop of York Cardinal Thomas

woy it was the beginning of a relationship which would bring Cromwell Into the Heart of government Thomas woy was the son of a butcher from ipswitch who had risen meteorically in the early 16th century to become the Archbishop of York and then Cardinal appointed by Pope Leo I 10th in 1515 an office which made him the most powerful religious figure in England and that same year he was also appointed as Lord Chancellor of England by Henry VII he would gradually increase his control over Henry VII's government in the years that followed Henry was a traditional

King who saw his role as one of making war with France in the same vain as his medieval predecessors accordingly the muni of day-to-day government in England was left to administrators such as Woolsey and the Cardinal was so effective in this position that by the 1520s he had attained a position as Henry's chief minister making him the most powerful political figure in England next to to the king himself following his initial encounter with Cromwell in 1521 woy employed the Putney born Merchant and lawyer sporadically in the years that followed often to facilitate his engagements with

the powerful London Merchant Community as a result cromwell's Financial interests and social standing continued to grow and in 1523 he was elected as a member of parliament for the first time thus as he neared his for th year Cromwell was rising in the world there is substantial evidence to suggest that cromwell's interest in high politics was also quite broad by this time a document of his from this period contains an assessment of England's perennial Wars with France Henry VII was one of the last monarchs to continue England's efforts to conquer territory on the continent a

role inherited from England's medieval monarchs and the 100 Years War of the 14th and 15th centuries however by the time Henry ascended to the throne England's possessions in France had been reduced to the pale around C on the North Coast of the country nevertheless Henry believed that war could be renewed with some success and he spent exorbitant amounts of money in order to do so in his text Cromwell rounded on this policy arguing that it was not possible from a logistical or financial perspective for the English crown to continue to try to conquer France and

instead he proposed that Henry should conquer Scotland and this would put England in a more secure position to in time consider renewing the war with France it is an interesting early statement of his political outlook for Cromwell politics was the art of what was practical and possible and also what could be paid for by a fiscally limited English Treasury throughout the mid 1520s Cromwell continued to acquire further positions notably as a subsidy commissioner for middlex an office which involved him assessing the value of lands and goods for the imposition of crown taxation he was also

elected as a member of Gray's Inn one of the senior legal establishments in London but it was his skill in one particular area which was garnering him most favor as by the mid 152 s Cromwell had established himself as a particularly gifted legal expert in land conveyancing at a time when the enclosure of traditional common lands in the countryside was making vast tracts of land available for private purchase consequently during this time Cromwell represented Woolsey and several of his closest servants in a series of land conveyancing Arrangements which worked out very favorably for the Cardinal

it was as a result of this business that Cromwell ended up effectively being hired by Woolsey on a more permanent basis in 1524 then in the years ahead he grew ever closer to Henry's leading Minister particularly so as he became involved in a scheme which Woolsey was pioneering to have England's monastic houses and their lands and possessions variously distributed between the crown and its servants this work was enormously profitable for all involved and Cromwell would have recourse to it on a much grander scale in years to come by now Cromwell was well liked by Woolsey

and either in 1526 or 1527 he appointed Thomas to his private Council of advisers it is noteworthy though that Cromwell did not acquire a position within the king's government Henry VII's Administration was largely run by a group of senior Nobles such as the third Duke of Norfolk Thomas Howard and the Duke of suffk Henry's closest friend Charles Brandon as well as administrators such as woy additionally a large cohort of lower ranking figures held various positions at court as clerks and officials but Cromwell did not obtain one of these positions rather throughout the late 1520s he

was employed indirectly by the government through Woolsey and it is unclear exactly what relationship Cromwell might have had with the King during these years nevertheless his prominence as wolves's legal advisor ensured that he was increasingly recognized as an important figure in political and Mercantile circles conversely though his personal life was blighted at this time cromwell's wife Elizabeth died sometime around 1527 and his two young daughters Anne and Grace also passed shortly afterwards in what might have been an outbreak of the sweat sickness in London a mysterious illness which ravaged early modern London and the cause

of which is still unclear as well as this all was not well at court Henry VII had been married to Katherine of aragan a member of the Spanish royal family since 1509 a son named Henry was born shortly afterwards in January 1511 but he died within weeks at a time of very high infant mortality a daughter Mary followed in 1516 but a legitimate male Heir continued to elude Henry VII given the weak claims of the Tudor dynasty to the English Throne Henry became increasingly obsessed with producing a legitimate son to succeed him by the early

1520s he had despaired of this child being produced through his marriage to Catherine and so by 1525 Henry was looking elsewhere and was increasingly infatuated with Anne Bolin the daughter of a prominent Court figure Thomas Bolin and the niece of the Duke of Norfolk from 1527 the king had been determined to divorce Katherine and Mary Anne but this ran contrary to Catholic Doctrine and Woolsey was inclined to resist Henry's wishes in this regard moreover the city of Rome was under Spanish control at that time and the Spanish King was Charles I Katherine's nephew he was

determined to prevent any pope from granting Henry an analment to his marriage the Quest for such an analment would Define English politics for many years by 1529 as Cromwell was reaching the height of his power in wo's employe the Cardinal was increasingly under attack by an Bolin and her allies and Henry frustrated by the Cardinals failure to obtain a divorce for him from Catherine was soon won over by their arguments and in the Autumn of 1529 he stripped Wolsey of all of his titles and much of his wealth and power and banished him from the

court the following year Woolsey was accused of treason but died while on his way to London to face the charges on the 29th of November 1530 now Cromwell was understandably convinced that wo's fall would also spell the end of his own political career and would also lead to his ruin if the berin Howard faction decided to follow up their victory over the Cardinal by attacking wool's former servants and allies additionally Thomas was genuinely distressed by what had happened to his former Patron a man with whom he had formed a personal connection by 1529 but he

survived the Fallout from Wes's dest ruction relatively unscathed by utilizing a number of other court connections he had built up throughout the 1520s Cromwell was able to be returned as an MP to the parliament which convened in November 1529 a sign that he had lived to fight another day politically the next few months were critical in cromwell's career during early 1530 he acted as an agent at court for Woolsey who had dep parted for his Archbishop Rick of Yorkshire upon his downfall in October 1529 at this time Henry still retained considerable affection for his former

Chief Minister a figure whom he had removed from Power owing to the influence of his lover and Bolin and her Associates and Cromwell ingratiated himself to Henry as the Cardinals representative for his part Cromwell remained loyal to his former Patron to the end even as the berlins moved in to destroy woie completely late in 1530 moreover by the time that woy died in November 1530 Cromwell was well enough known to the King and his skills apparent enough that Henry brought him into the Royal government he was made a member of the king's private Council and

was appointed as a receiver General a significant posting within the Royal exer a sign of his growing influence is seen and the increasing number of petitions which Cromwell was receiving from individuals all over England in 1530 and 1531 such petitions were generally addressed to individuals who were perceived to have substantial influence with the monarch of the day cromwell's real Ascent though occurred between 1531 and 1533 owing to his increasingly significant role in acquiring the king the divorce which he wanted what was more and more referred to as his great matter previous efforts at obtaining a

divorce had focused on the fact that Katherine of addan had been previously married to Henry's deceased older brother Arthur in the early 1500s and that Henry's subsequent marriage to Catherine was invalid as the union between Arthur and Catherine had been consummated however when this particular approach had failed failed to gain an analment from the papery during wolsey's last year's in power several individuals had turned to the idea of splitting entirely from the Roman Catholic church and establishing Henry as the Supreme head of an independent church of England this emerging doctrine of the royal Supremacy was

being formulated by a team of Scholars who were collecting evidence from the Bible and Anglo-Saxon texts and histories to substantiate the idea that the English church had always been independent of Rome and governed by the Kings of England an argument which it must be said had very little factual Foundation to it but it could potentially be very beneficial as head of the English church Henry could Grant himself a divorce from Catherine Cromwell was soon involved in the movement to establish the Royal Supremacy and find a resolution to the Great matter for instance early in 1531

Cromwell was charged with bringing the Archbishop of Canterbury William warum over to the King's camp in this regard waram reluctantly agreed in large part because nobody at this stage was fully sure what establishing the Royal Supremacy would even mean in practice after this Cromwell was drafted into a small group of individuals around the king who were charged with establishing the royal roal Supremacy in practice and finally gaining an annulment of Henry's marriage to Katherine in 1532 the king and his counselors turned to Parliament and sought their Ascent to it as a precursor to eventually bringing

the clergy on side it met with mixed success and on the 14th of May 1532 was temporarily suspended then 2 Days Later the Lord Chancellor of England Sir Thomas Moore a committed believer in the supremacy of the pope and someone who could see where events were leading resigned his position the problem for more was that the question of the royal Supremacy and Henry's divorce was increasingly getting tangled up with the religious changes which were tearing Europe apart a topic to which we now turn Henry's quest for a male Heir and the marital complications which were

attendant upon that Quest might have remained a rather Limited bit of English political Intrigue had they occurred during another historical period but they would acquire a much broader significance as a result of having occurred in the late 1520s because Henry was seeking his divorce at this time his efforts became hopelessly mixed up with the wider religious and political Intrigue which was sweeping through Europe at this time in 1517 a German religious reformer by the name of Martin Luther had pinned a series of 95 thesis up in the town of vitberg in Germany documents which roundly

criticized the papacy in Rome for its corruption and worldliness Luther was particularly castigating of the Pope's sale of indulgences or pardons from sin for cash and other abuses such as the giving of cardinal ships and Bishop Ricks to the family members of well-connected aristocratic families is ultimately Luther's actions set off a chain of events which he cannot have predicted in the years that followed thousands of political pamphlets and newsletters questioning everything about Christian doctrine and the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church were printed all over Europe using the new medium of the printing press as

these appeared huge sections of Western and Central Europe became Havens for these protesters or Protestants this was what has become known as the European or Protestant Reformation during the course of it many new religious denominations emerged in Europe notably Lutheran Protestants and reformed Calvinists as well as more Fringe groups such as the anabaptists who believed in adult baptism these groups had new views on Christian doctrine they challenged the Pope in Rome and they believed that the Bible should be read in the vernacular language of a given country rather than in Latin and some of them

even argued that priests should be allowed to marry and that the wealth and ostentation which was on display in churches should be stripped away and mass celebrated in a more auster setting although these ideas were initially confined to Germany the Swiss cantons and parts of the low countries and France by the mid 1520s they were gaining Traction in England Henry was initially very hostile to the Protestant movement and even penned a tract entitled defense of the seven sacraments arguing against the views of the German reformers this action LED Pope Leo I 10th to bestow the

title defender of the faith on Henry in 1521 but the emergence of his divorce as a political issue and the opposition of the papacy to it soon saw him being pulled in the direction of the religious reformers the question of cromwell's own own religious views has divided historians he was not a Hardline Protestant or at least he certainly wasn't when he first entered government indeed it is clear from his correspondence of the 1520s that at least until 1526 or 1527 he held very traditional Roman Catholic religious views however the late 1520s witnessed a change as

he debated the new religious ideas which were arriving to England from the continent with friends in London such as miles Coverdale the man who would go on to publish the First full print edition of The Bible in English in the mid 1530s thus in 1530 we find evidence of Cromwell being critical of the priesthood and its corruption consequently just as Cromwell was transitioning from being wool's servant to entering the direct employ of the king he was also beginning to adopt a very moderate Protestant stance and this may have become more radical as the 1530s progressed

as was the case with other early English Protestants Coverdale for instance was a Roman Catholic archdeacon in the 1510s before becoming a moderate Protestant in the late 1520s but by the time he died in the early 1550s he had come round to being a radical calvinist puratan it is possible that Cromwell also experienced a gradual drift towards a more pronounced protestantism as the years went by Cromwell though would not be the only influence working to introduce a moderate form of protestantism into England during the 1530s the prevalence of Henry's great matter as a political problem

in England in the early 1530s allowed others who wished to initiate religious reform in England to acquire the king's ear at this time and none was as significant as Thomas cranmer a Cambridge scholar who had been involved in efforts to build a portfolio of evidence to support Henry's quest for an analment of his marriage to Katherine since the late 1520s as part of this work crma was sent to Europe on several missions between 1529 and 1532 during which he met many Protestant reformers on the continent then having visited the Protestant city of nurenberg in Germany

he married Margaret osiander the niece of the Le ing Protestant reformer there affirming his belief in clerical marriage cranmer returned to England as a moderate Lutheran he was soon appointed as Archbishop of Canterbury by Henry VII and would become the most significant figure of the early Protestant Reformation in England granma and several other reformers such as Bishop Edward Fox would act with Cromwell to introduce the Reformation to England in the course of the 1530s it had become clear by mid 1532 that the concept of the royal Supremacy would be pressed forward with and that this

would act on some level as the basis for Henry dispensing with his first wife and Marrying an Bolin however even before the break with Rome or the divorce were finalized Henry married his new bride and on the 14th of November 1532 they were wed in secret the king king would later justify this action by falling back on the earlier argument that Catherine and his deceased brother Arthur had consummated their marriage and that as a result their own marriage was invalid nuls were undertaken more formally in January 1533 but it was only in May 1533 that

Henry had Archbishop cranmer officially declare his marriage to Catherine null and void by this time Catherine had been exiled from the court for several years and had resided at various royal castles away from London she had maintained a dignified court and claimed that she was still the legitimate Queen she did not return to Spain but rather spent the next few years living at kimbolton Castle in Cambridge where her servants continued to address her as the queen Henry who had a great affection for Catherine in the past was content to allow her to do so although

it nevertheless removed a problem for the government when she died there in January 1536 it now remained for the Royal Supremacy to be rubber stamped and the break from Rome to be formally entered into after months of wrangling in Parliament throughout 1533 and 1534 an act concerning the king's highness to be Supreme head of the Church of England was passed by parliament on the 3rd of November 1534 though the wording of the Act was such that it was made clear that this was just recognizing a Supremacy which was already in effect already months earlier Cromwell

and other government ministers had begun pressurizing the clergy and political figures into swearing the new oath of Supremacy whereby Henry was acknowledged as the Supreme head of the Church of England many refused among them Sir Thomas Moore who was a arrested charged with treason and ultimately executed in July 1535 then once the initial campaign had been waged in London and its environments Commissioners were dispatched far and wide throughout the country to have England's political Community swear their allegiance to Henry as the new head of the country's church and the importance of this was perfectly clear

the price of Henry obtaining his long sought after divorce and Anne was a very real split from the papacy in Rome it just remained to be seen what other religious Innovations would follow with his divorce finalized and his marriage to Anne completed Henry turned to rewarding those who had helped him resolve his great matter already in 1532 and early 1533 the king had granted Cromwell a number of offices including those of Master of the jewels Clerk of the hanipa and Chancellor of the exer then in April 1534 just as the supremacy campaign was heating up

the king appointed Cromwell as his principal secretary and chief minister the significance was clear Cromwell had now succeeded Woolsey to a large extent 5 years after the Cardinals downfall the new secretary brought great energy to the government with a forensic attention to detail he began forming the Kingdom's finances in the mid- 1530s introducing new taxes and cutting back on expenditure and his range of interests was wide and Humane amongst his papers are numerous memoranda in which he discussed plans for reforming England's education system its agriculture industry and trade and the relief of the poor his

greatest achievement in this respect was a poor law finalized in 1536 which made individual localities responsible for providing relief to its most vulnerable citizens here Cromwell was effectively responsible for initiating the first system in England whereby the state made provision to Aid the least well off within it this was Cromwell the secretary Cromwell the man is more difficult to pin down we know a great deal about how he managed the tutor state but it is much more difficult to decipher his own views on matters and his own internal emotions this is for the very simple

reason that amongst the thousands of extant letters to and from Cromwell housed amongst the states papers and other collections the letters which were written by others and sent to Cromwell far outnumber those which he composed himself moreover the correspondence which he composed himself was generally of a political nature and we have very few instances of documents in which he wrote to friends and Close Associates to express his private thoughts and emotions indeed sometime around 1533 or 1534 he sat for a portrait which was painted by the celebrated Renaissance artist and henrician court painter Hans holine

the younger copies of the painting today in The Frick Gallery in New York City and the National Portrait Gallery in London show an administrator painted from the side his face Stern and impassive he doesn't display any discernable emotion and the viewer gets the feeling that this is how Cromwell wanted Hine to depict him tellingly this is in contrast to hine's depiction of prominent figures he painted in England notably Sir Thomas Moore though cromwell's star was on the rise throughout the mid- 1530s that of the woman whom he had helped to become Queen was not Anberlin

had been crowned as Queen of England on the 1st of June 1533 she was already pregnant by then and the entire court waited with baited breath throughout the late Summer and Autumn to see if the long hoped for male air would appear but when Anne gave birth to a girl on the 7th of September 1534 at Greenwich Palace Henry professed to still love his new wife yet his disappointment was clear to to all who encountered the King around this time and things only deteriorated further in the months that followed having finally obtained the crown she

had waited so long for Anne became increasingly arrogant at court and the enemies of the Berlin Howard faction were growing in number then a major rupture between the queen and the King followed around Christmas 1534 when Anne suffered the first of either two or three miscarriages which would come in quick succession by late 1535 the relationship was in terminal Decline and Henry had discussed with several of his ministers Ways by which he could divorce Anne his mind seems to have been made up by the time of her final miscarriage in January of 1536 and Cromwell

would be critical in her downfall anberlin's eventual demise came as a result of charges of adultery incest and treason which historians generally agree were fabricated and which Cromwell was Central to Bringing against her ever since she had gained the king's eye in the mid 1520s rumors had abounded about Anne's past sexual liazon now in early 1536 new charges surfaced that Anne had recently committed adultery with multiple individuals including a musician Mark smon the famous poet Sir Thomas Wyatt a prominent cour Sir Henry Norris and even Anne's own brother George Bolin the latter bringing with it

charges of incest Cromwell moved quickly and after days of Investigations most of the figures involved were under arrest and circumstantial evidence and witness testimonies of them visiting Anne's Apartments was collected Anne herself was arrested on the 2nd of May 1536 Henry as ever unwilling to deal directly with the indications of his actions disappeared from sight Trials of the accused followed in miday and after a perfunctory adjudication each was found guilty and sentenced to death hence it was that Anne Bolin the woman whom Henry VII had torn England apart trying to marry was executed on the

19th of May Less Than 3 years after she had been crowned as Queen of England an's demand eyes was hastened by the fact that Henry had already set eyes on a third wife his latest interest was Jane Seymour the daughter of Sir John Seymour a prominent courtier whose base was at Wolf Hall in Wilshire Jane had served as a maid of honor to Queen Catherine in the early 1530s but only first came to the king's attention in February 1536 Cromwell favored and promoted the Union as Jane was a relatively demure figure who would Mark a

departure as Queen from the scheming of Anne she and Henry VII were married on the 30th of May 1536 just 11 days after Anne's execution it would be a short-lived marriage but in light of Henry's quest for a male Heir it was highly successful on the 12th of October 1537 Jane gave birth to a baby boy at Hampton Court the Young Prince Edward was christened 3 days later but his mother fell ill just over a week later from postnatal complications and died on the 24th of October 1537 Henry who was capable of eloquence at times

wrote to King Francis I of France that Divine Providence hath mingled my joy with bitterness of the death of her who brought me this happiness she was bued in St George's Chapel at wind a castle the only one of his Six Wives to be afforded a queen's burial 10 years later Henry would be buried alongside her the arrival of Jane into the king's orbit in 1536 had lent a degree of stability to the Kingdom's Politics as it did Cromwell was free to focus to a greater extent on The Wider Affairs of the Tuda dominions and

one of cromwell's greatest successes in these years was the he managed to prevent Henry from entering into any major Wars Henry perceived of his role as King in the same vein as some of his medieval predecessors and he admired earlier Kings such as Henry V who had engaged in Wars on the continent England had found itself at war with France twice already during his Reign between 1512 and 1514 as part of the wider War of the league of Cambra between France and Spain and a gain between 1522 and 1526 these earlier conflicts have proved very

costly and yet no territorial gains in France were made conversely Henry had managed to compromise the finances of England which his father had worked carefully to put on a sound footing between 1485 and 1509 Cromwell who was opposed to such costly overseas Adventures managed to guide England through the most peaceful period it enjoed enjoyed during Henry VII's entire Reign a fact he should be credited with indeed no sooner had he passed from the scene in 1540 then Henry entered into a series of wars with Scotland and France in 1542 which would drag on interminably for

the remainder of the decade and which proved ruinous to the Tudor States finances cromwell's role as an innovator in administration during these years is also clear between the 1950s and the 1970s the leading historian of Tudor England of the day Jeffrey Elton published several Works which hypothesized that Cromwell was responsible for a revolution in Tuda government Cromwell Elton argued had fundamentally overhauled the way the administration of Henry VII's government worked in the 1530s and while some aspects of that thesis have subsequently been revised substantially there is little doubting that Cromwell was largely responsible for the

emergence of the privy Council in England during the late medieval period the king had governed in association with a small Royal Council usually composed of five to 10 leading Nobles and church figures already under Henry iith there was an increasing Reliance on professional administrators who were not members of the aristocracy but Cromwell expanded the Royal Council into what subsequently became known as the privy Council this would eventually consist of between 10 and 20 people occupying positions such as Secretary of State Lord Chancellor Lord Treasurer and Lord Chamberlain and the privy Council would govern England for

centuries to come and is effectively the Forerunner of the modern-day government's cabinet of ministers Cromwell more than anyone else in English political history was responsible for creating it one of the more overlooked aspects of cromwell's period of political ascendancy is his impact on the governance of Ireland the English state had conquered much of the neighboring island in the 12th and 13th centuries but in subsequent years the English lordship there had been pushed back into the east of the country by over two dozen independent Gaelic Lordships thus by the early 1530s the English presence was larg

ly restricted to the city of Dublin on the east coast and a number of counties in its immediate Hinterland and the bulk of the country was actually controlled by the Irish Lords such as the o'neals and odonals of ster and the O'Briens of Northern monster while many of the English Lords there such as the Fitzgerald of Desmond and the south of the country had galzed in that they had adopted the Irish language and culture and the Irish political system moreover London's control over even the Dublin centered pale or lordship was very tenuous and real Authority

there actually rested in the hands of the Fitzgerald Earls of Kildare woy though had attempted to rejuvenate English rule in Ireland and trying to reign in the house of kildair when Cromwell continued this policy the fitzgeralds revolted against Henry VII in 1534 this was a threat to tudo rule but also an opportunity the kildair Rebellion which erupted in 1534 was responded to by sending a small English army to Ireland it quickly crushed the rebellion and by 1535 the heads of the House of kildair were under arrest and the erom was temporarily suppressed there was now

an opportunity to adopt a wholly new approach to Ireland many English officials had arrived in Ireland as part of the suprem of the rebellion and they now began petitioning Cromwell to undertake A Renewed program for the conquest of Ireland Beginning by reducing the Irish Lordships immediately adjoining Dublin and its Hinterland but while Cromwell was broadly favorable to this approach Henry VII blocked it in 1537 arguing that it would prove too costly accordingly Cromwell began to consider other proposals which suggested that Ireland could be reformed by having the Irish Lords take their lands from Henry VII

along with English titles of nobility this policy of anglicization was adopted in subsequent years but it would soon be abandoned in favor of a program of military conquest in colonization a strategy which would eventually bring all of Ireland under English rule at the end of the Tudor period in this respect Cromwell was significant as one of the first figures to rein invigorate English rule in early modern Ireland as significant as cromwell's work as an administrator and in managing English foreign policy on the continent and in Ireland was he is mainly remembered during this time for

the ongoing religious reform which occurred in the mid to late 1530s and the expansion of the English Reformation the split from Rome and the establishment of the royal Supremacy in the early 1530s had div Ed England from the Roman Catholic hierarchy within Europe but the newly independent church of England remained doctrinally Catholic and there is little doubting that Henry VII always was and would remain a traditional Christian but the reforms which were required to ensure the king's divorce from Catherine in 1533 had opened the floodgates for further reforms in large part because Cromwell was now

at the heart of government and was increasingly disposed to Protestant Innovations while Thomas cranmer a man who was becoming more and more radical in his religious views with each New Year had risen to become the Archbishop of Canterbury as a result of his usefulness to Henry in the resolution of his great matter together Cromwell cranmer and a cohort of other reformers introduced a series of other religious reforms in the mid and late 153 ities which gradually began to push England into the Protestant Camp one of the clearest early signs of this occurred in 1535 when

a campaign to suppress or dissolve the religious houses within the Tuda dominions was commenced with Continental religious reformers had been deeply critical of the monastic orders in Europe which held enormous wealth and which were deemed to be both corrupt and ha of idleness accordingly some religious orders have been dissolved in the lands of newly Protestant states on the continent and Cromwell now elected to push the king towards doing the same in England Henry was won over not by any theological arguments but by the simple reasoning that the exercise could generate an enormous Financial windfall for

the crown treasury if they were suppressed and their lands and assets confiscated and this was money Henry imagined which could be used to fund a new war in France and indeed after Cromwell died it was there that Henry would squander most of what ured having convinced the king the suppression campaign was commenced with by the end of the 1530s hundreds of monasteries friaries and nunneries had been suppressed bringing to an end the religious orders in the tutor dominions and having drastic implications for everything from poor relief to local landholding practices throughout England Ireland and Wales

the foremost changes in religious practice were reserved for the period between 1536 and 1538 in July 1536 the 10 articles of Faith were promulgated as part of the new religious doctrine of the Church of England these were hardly radical and adhered to many traditional Roman Catholic practices but there were a number number of Innovations for instance while the Articles affirm that the body and blood of Christ were present in the Eucharist and that Penance was necessary for salvation there were two issues which the Continental reformers were challenging the Articles did state that Purgatory was doctrinally

uncertain but indulgences for remission of sins should be rejected and images and icons in churches were of only limited sanctity all beliefs which were associated with the Lutheran in Germany and elsewhere these beliefs were further strengthened in the late 1530s as Cromwell took a personal interest in rooting out what was deemed to be idolatry the worshiping of saints and their relics and the use of too much iconography in churches yet it would not be until the reign of Henry's son Edward the 6th that this campaign really took off with English churches stripped down to Bear

altars and all signs of ostentation removed the 10 articles were augmented and expanded in 1537 with the compilation of a new book named the institution of the Christian man more commonly known as The Bishop's book compiled by the archbishops and Bishops of England in conjunction with political figures such as Cromwell the book effectively offered a full set of instructions for how Mass should be conducted in England as well as the status of the sacraments the decoration of churches and numerous theological matters and in its totality it moved the Church of England further away from Catholicism

and closer to protestantism for instance the book confirmed that henceforth only three of the seven sacraments baptism the Eucharist and Penance were actually ordained as core sacraments by Christ there were further prescriptions on the veneration of saints and images but most significantly the book leaned towards the concept of justification by faith alone a core Protestant principle which rejected the Roman Catholic belief that salvation could be earned through good works this new Lutheran and reformed principle argued that salvation was only obtained through one's faith in God with the inclusion of this principle in the book cranmer

and Cromwell were inherently pushing the Church of England closer to outright protestantism the religious reforms did not go unopposed across a country which was still overwhelmingly populated by traditional Roman Catholics the most severe reaction came from the north of the country where discontent with the religious Innovations became mixed with popular unrest over economic conditions in 1536 the Revolt which resulted is known as the pilgrimage of Grace it was sparked by the arrival of Commissioners which Cromwell had sent North to dissolve several monasteries there these officials were attacked in October and the rebels then occupied Lincoln

simultaneously a more substantial Rising erupted in Yorkshire led by a local lawyer named Robert ask these Rebels seize the city of of York on the 24th of October and had amassed an army of 30,000 Men by the early winter little could be done to quell the unrest in the weeks that followed and the rebels devised a series of Demands at pontefract in December 1536 which included criticism of Cromwell and his role in government eventually the pilgrimage failed because the Duke of Norfolk who was sent North to suppress it convinced ask that some of their demands

would be granted and the rebel Army dispersed this weakened them and norfol was able to deal with the remaining rebels in the late winter and early spring of 1537 in the process executing approximately 250 of the chief troublemakers ask included cromwell's downfall though would not arise from Regional Rebellion such as that which broke out in the north of England in 15 36 it would come from much nearer to home and was brought about by several of the individuals with whom he had served in government for the better part of a decade the king's secretary had

made many enemies in the 1530s notably the Duke of Norfolk Thomas Howard the most powerful magnet in England and a man who viewed Cromwell as a commoner and an upstart furthermore norfol was increasingly at the head of a conserv conservative faction which disapproved of the course of religious policy he was joined in his opposition to Cromwell by other ecclesiastical and Noble figures notably Steven Garder the conservative Bishop of Winchester from 1537 onwards they began to exploit the king's growing unease at the pace and extent of religious reform to begin undermining cromwell's position at court and

in Henry's eyes they were able to do so because despite the extent that England had lurched fitfully into the Protestant camp in the 1530s Henry was still a doctrinal Catholic himself this reality would be further compounded at the end of the decade when a number of controversies coalesced to fatally undermine cromwell's position surprisingly some of the damage which was inflicted on Cromwell at this time came from France firstly a controversy arose in the English pale around Cal in 1539 over the presence of several radical preachers there who Cromwell and cranmer had purposefully removed from England

then there were issues surrounding the official publication of an English language translation of the Bible by Miles Coverdale that same year and Henry was uncomfortable with these developments as such they provided room for Norfolk to promote the issuance of a series of six articles just Weeks Later which constituted a backlash against the Protestant 10 articles and The Bishop's book of 1536 and 1537 in these new six articles renewed emphasis was placed on clerical celibacy and the concept of transubstantiation ideas which had been railed against by the Protestant faction in the mid 1530s and all of

this brought brought the emnity between norfol and Cromwell out into the open then on the 29th of June 1539 when dining with several other magnets and the king at cranmer's residence a heated discussion between Cromwell and the Duke erupted during the course of which Howard accused Cromwell of dishonesty to which the secretary suggested norfol was disloyal to his King it was now a duel to see which of them could win out in Henry's good graces those who opposed Cromwell were presented with a prime opportunity to fatally discredit the secretary in the months that followed beginning

in 1538 Henry's government had opened negotiations with an alliance of small Protestant States in Germany known as the schmal calik league it was believed at this time that Catholic France and Spain were set to Ally with each other against newly Protestant England and Cromwell and others in government believed England needed allies of its own thus by the spring of 1539 negotiations had started to Center on a potential marriage between Henry and an of cleaves the sister of William I the Duke of the duchies of ulich cleaves and Berg in Western Germany Cromwell greatly favored the

marriage Alliance believing it to be the best means of securing the Protestant settlement in England but it soon soured a treaty was signed between England and the league in October 1539 but when an arrived in England in December Henry decided she was not attractive enough all the same he went ahead with the marriage on the 6th of January 1540 but 3 Days Later their Union was quickly annulled after he failed to consummate the marriage Henry allowed Anne to remain in England and granted her several residences but Cromwell was badly damaged by the entire Affair the

an of cleaves Affair was the beginning of the end for Cromwell his enemies had him on the ropes now and in early April the French ambassador to England shal de marak reported back to Paris that cromwell's days were numbered much as had happened with Woolsey a decade earlier Cromwell had not lost Henry's favor but but the King was so swayed by a growing Coalition of individuals at court who opposed the secretary that he could not resist the temptation to bring Cromwell down then when a new Parliament opened a few days later there was much talk

of the scaling back of many of the religious reforms which have been introduced during the 1530s conversely in a highly anomalous move Henry granted Cromwell a peerage in mid April when he bestowed the title of Earl of Essex on Thomas and promoted him to the position of Lord Chamberlain on the surface there was an air of normality returning to things at court in the early summer Cromwell was overseeing the establishment of the court of wards a new court which supervised the raising of children who Rose to the peage while still minors and administered their Estates

during their youth but then just Days Later cromwell's career would come to a shuddering halt on the 10th of June 1540 Cromwell arrived at a meeting of the privy Council upon his arrival into the privy Council chamber he was arrested by the palace guards on charges of treason and heresy reving in his victory over his longtime rival the Duke of Norfolk came forward and removed the symbols of the order of the G England's highest Noble order from Cromwell the secretary was then LED away and taken down river to the Tower of London trumped up charges

were placed against Cromwell the most ludicrous being that the former secretary was conspiring to marry Henry's daughter Mary and thus Place himself in line to become a royal consort when the king died Henry as ever was nowhere to be seen in all this Cromwell wrote to him near Midsummer to appeal for Mercy but he should have had more than enough knowledge of his Monarch by now to be aware of how futile an Endeavor this was on the 28th of July Cromwell walked out onto Tower Green in his last speech he denied having aided Heretics his

execution a moment later was botched it took several blows before his head was severed by the Executioner his head was then set on a pike on London Bridge and the same day Henry VII married norfolk's niece C Howard and a conservative backlash against the Protestant Reformation was initiated Thomas Cromwell is an enigma he rose from shadowy Beginnings in Putney to become one of the most powerful individuals in England in the 1530s yet while his career and work profoundly impacted on the history of early modern England the man himself remains impenetrable and largely unknowable unsurprisingly historians

views on Cromwell have varied widely over the past 500 years most Generations have tended to see him as a Machiavellian schemer who was willing to rip apart the social and religious fabric of England in an effort to ingratiate himself to the one man who could guarantee him Power King Henry VII but others following the work of Jeffrey Elton have concluded that Cromwell was a remarkable administrator who fermented a revolution in Tuda government which shaped how modern government cabinets function indeed his power within the government is even unclear was Cromwell effectively wo's successor in the 1530s

and did he dominate the government or was Cromwell just one part of a wider Council of ministers or be it one whose indefatigable energy as a bureaucrat and admin ministrator ensured that he was involved in all the major decisions that were made at whiteall and Westminster throughout the 1530s in reality these Divergent views have emerged because Cromwell was a man of striking contradictions for instance he is someone for whom we have evidence of his loyalty and kindness towards others Cromwell was genuinely distressed about wolves's fall in 1529 and yet we also have evidence of how

ruthless he could be notably in his pursuit of anolin and her supposed lovers when it suited him politically in the mid 1530s indeed we get the sense that Cromwell tried to Foster an impression of a do man lacking in interest or emotion this was an act he was actually a cultured man who had lived in Italy at the height of the Renaissance patronized the Arts and Music and spoke multiple languages he provided arms and food for up to 200 poor people outside his home every day in the 1530s and had a genuine commitment to social

reform equally his religious views were relatively moderate and although he set in motion the introduction of the Protestant Reformation into England he was no religious extremist or Puritan perhaps what he was above all was a hard working bureaucrat one who was possessed of an unflinching loyalty to his Monarch even Henry months after he had consigned Cromwell to the Grave lamented that Thomas had been the most faithful servant he ever had thus what we are left with is a peculiar and enigmatic character he rose on the strength of a sincere loyalty to woy and then he

reached the peak of his powers by facilitating the B borderline Megamania of an increasingly tyrannical Monarch but in facilitating that same King he was given enough leeway to introduce a series of genuinely Progressive reforms ones which improved the administration of the English government introduced many sorely needed changes in the functioning of the English church and attempted to bring about a series of societal and fiscal reforms to a country which was on the cusp of enormous economic and social changes but it was a fian bargain with a man who was generally content to tear England apart

in order to see that his dynasty was protected ultimately in 1540 Cromwell became just one more victim of that same Monarch what do you think of Thomas Cromwell was he a movellan schemer who plunged England into Rel ious and social chaos in order to acquire power or was he a faithful servant of the English State who did his best to temper the worst impulses of a tyrannical King please let us know in the comment section and in the meantime thank you very much for watching