A Brief History of Henry VIII by Derek Wilson

Author:Derek Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472107633
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Chapter 7

‘THESE BLOODY DAYS. . .’

The event of 7 September 1533 was an anticlimax. Anne Tudor, as we must now call her, was safely delivered of a healthy, redheaded baby, the image of its father – except for one crucial fact: the child was a girl (Elizabeth). For the last twelve months everything had been moving towards the final justification of Henry’s stubborn defiance of the pope, the English church establishment and the bulk of his own subjects. Many were the advisers who had warned him against casting off Catherine in favour of Anne: Wolsey, More, Suffolk (and his wife, the king’s sister), Francis I, Elizabeth Barton and even Martin Luther, but Henry had gone his own way. Had the baby been a boy, as all the augurs had dutifully predicted, Henry would have been vindicated, opponents of the Boleyn marriage would have been forced to accept the new dispensation, diplomats could have begun work on the restoration of relations with the pope and the emperor and the people at large would have welcomed the securing of the succession. The clouds would have drifted away to leave a landscape bathed in sunlight. As it was, little had changed. Anne’s friends could take comfort from a successful pregnancy and safe birth. Her enemies were quick to insist that God would never bless a bigamous marriage.

Henry and Anne had kept their wedding secret throughout the preceding winter. This was vital because they needed Cranmer to declare the king’s first marriage void. He could not do that until he had become archbishop and he could not become archbishop until the necessary papal bulls had been received. They arrived in mid-March 1533. Then regime change shifted into top gear, led by the two ‘TCs’. On 14 March Cromwell introduced into parliament the measure which would be the legislative lynchpin of the English Reformation – the Act in Restraint of Appeals. Its celebrated preamble was a forthright statement of the royal supremacy:

Where by sundry old authentic histories and chronicles it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an empire. . .governed by one supreme head and king and having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the same, unto whom a body politic, compact of all sorts and degrees of people divided in terms and by names of spiritualty and temporalty, be bounden and owe next to God a natural and humble obedience; he being also institute and furnished by the goodness and sufferance of Almighty God with plenary, whole and entire power, pre-eminence, authority, prerogative and jurisdiction to render and yield justice and final determination to all manner of folk resiants or subjects within this realm, in all causes, matters, debates and contentions happening to occur, insurge or begin within the limits thereof, without restraint or provocation to any foreign princes or potentates of the world.128

The immediate object of the Act was to scotch, once and for all, the attempt of Catherine and her supporters to have her case heard in Rome but its impact was very much wider.

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