He also wanted legitimate sons,
and he did not believe that Catherine of Aragon was able to give them to him.
Tico wrote:PJV -- I think Leicester probably sounds much like Lester, and Robin was a common diminuitive for Robert. From all accounts, he would have been her chosen husband, if he had been politically suitable. That he was unsuitable was probably as much Elizabeth's opinion as her ministers'.
As for Elizabeth's affair with le duc d'Anjou - I forget all the ins and outs of it, but she was a consummate politician and played many suitors over her career - usually to buy England time to regroup, or to gain the upper hand over her own ministers. I believe that neither she nor Anjou were particularly desirous of their proposed union, which would have been a union between the royal houses of France and England, but it was politically expedient for them to appear to be.
Regarding Henry VIII creating Anglicanism -- it was for many more reasons than Anne Boleyn, although that was definitely part of it. He had originally been slated for a religious career, until the death of his older brother, and had always been deeply interested in religion. It was a time of great upheaval in the Catholic church, with the revolution of Martin Luther (who Henry despised) and the Huguenots. But, I believe, that the essense of it was power -- that Henry wanted power.
I've read a little about Elizabeth I and Leicester, and it was said that he was already married and that his wife ended up dead at the end of a staircase and he was suspected of throwing her down there to kill her so he could marry Elizabeth. In the mini series the way they portrayed it was that Elizabeth had no idea he was married until someone else purposely spilled that news and it was right during the time when she was trying to work out the marriage to the Duke D' Anjou. With that news she became furious and banned Leicester from court for some 7 years. They didn't mention in the series that his wife died. They state that it is his young son who dies. In reality I wonder why Leicester was viewed as not suitable ?
In the Tudor mini series they have portrayed that Henry VIII starts out honestly a very devoted Catholic who is opposed to Martin Luther. They truly make it seem that the whole change only happens because of his desire for Anne Boleyn. In the series Henry VIII already seems totally powerful to start with and I don't think we've seen a difference in his power yet. Maybe that will come after the change in the church which they will show us when the series continues ?
They weren't "making it seem" as though Henry Tudor were a devout Catholic who opposed Luther--they were reporting historical fact. Henry wrote a defense of the Church against the charges levied by Luther in his Ninety-five Theses. For that, the pope declared him Defensor Fidelis, which means defender of the faithful, but which is usually rendered Defender of the Faith. That was no tinkering with historical fact by the television program, it was reporting the events.
Catherine of Aragon had originally been married to Henry's older brother Arthur, and the marriage was a political alliance which Henry VII had negotiated to bind Spain and England to one another. When Arthur died, and Henry became heir to the throne, his widow Catherine was married to Henry. This was because the marriage alliance was the purpose of the marriage, and no one assumed or cared whether or not Catherine and Arthur loved one another--nor did anyone know or care if Henry and Catherine would love one another. Catherine was six years older than Henry, and the evidence was that even if they were not madly in love with one another, they got along well enough. They were married for 24 years.
But Catherine failed to provide a living son, and that disturbed Henry. There had never been a Queen regnant on the English throne. When Henry I died in 1135, his daughter Matilda (or Maud), who had been married to the Holy Roman Emperor and was therefore known as the Empress Matilda (or Maud), claimed the English throne. But Stephen of Blois also claimed the throne, and they fought a civil war for 13 years over the issue. The final result of that civil war was that Stephen, his own son having died, acknowledged Henry Plantagenet, Maud's son, as his heir--and he became King Henry II. This also ties in in another aspect. Henry's Queen was Eleanor of Acquitaine. She had married King Louis of France, and had required a Papal dispensation because of consanguinity. That means sharing the same blood--they were cousins. But when their marriage went sour, she obtained a divorce from the Pope precisely because they were near cousins. She then married Henry Plantagenet, and again required a Papal dispensation, because she and Henry were cousins, and were actually more closely related than were Eleanor and Louis.
So Henry both wanted a son, because he did not want his daughter Mary to face the prospect of civil war when he died, and he wanted to get rid of Catherine in the hope that another wife could give him a son. He appealed to the Pope to have his marriage annulled, because, he claimed, the bible prohibits a man from marrying his brother's widow. That might have worked under ordinary circumstances, but the Pope, Clement VII, owed his papal throne to the influence of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, who also happened to be King Carlos of Spain, and Carlos did not agree to seeing his aunt Catherine being divorced. It didn't help Henry's case that the Emperor Charles had taken Rome militarily and that the Pope was virtually a prisoner of the Spanish King and Holy Roman Emperor. It was certainly true that Henry was lead to establish his own church in order to get rid of his wife Catherine.
It is another matter, however, to suggest that he did so because he was "in love" with Anne Boleyn. At the time Anne came to court, her sister Mary was Henry's mistress, and there is good evidence that he had diddled their mother, as well. But marriages are matters of policy. Although Anne may been his lover when he appealed to the Pope for an annulment, there is little reason to claim realistically that he wanted a divorce because he was "in love" with Anne. The Pope dithered for six years, and by that time, Henry had had enough. So he basically told the Archbishop of Canterbury to annul the marriage, and to sanctify his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Then, because the Pope would side with Catherine if she appealed the annulment (which she certainly would have done), he cut a deal with Parliament, and the Act of Supremacy was passed, which made the King the head of the Church of England.
There was little to choose between the Episcopal Church of England and the Catholic church--they are both ritualist churches, and no significant changes in theology or ritual practice accompanied the change. The point was that Henry intended to divorce Catherine, or have the marriage annulled, and he took the steps necessary to accomplish that. There is evidence that Henry was already poking someone else at the time he married Anne Boleyn, but whether or not, none of these events were motivated by "love," they were all motivated by dynastic policy.
With all respect,
that is not a reason for singling her out, as a matter of dynastic policy,
from the other 1000s of chics of England,
unless she had a particular reputation
for great fertility,
which was not the case insomuch as she was reputed to be virginal.
Setanta wrote:To get a son.
In the Tudors mini series and in some of things I've read it states that Anne purposely refused to be just his mistress and pushed him for marriage in order get what she considered a better rank. This all implies then that if Anne would have agreed to be his mistress like her sister Mary had done, then he wouldn't have bothered with divorcing Catherine.
If he started out as a devout Catholic and Defender of the Faith it would have taken a lot for him to change the situation with the Church that he had grew up with and thought to be the way things were. In the mini series they showed that protestants did differ in beliefs from the Catholics. The Protestants were not giving much importance to the apostles and one on the mini series said he doubted that they ever even existed.
I am just guessing but I think it had to be a combination of an extreme attraction to Anne Boleyn in the beginning and also the desire to have a male heir that motivated him. If it was just to get a son.....then there was no guarantee about that.
Henry did not "single out" Anne Boleyn, he was, as is said in our times, already "in a relationship" with her. PJV writes that if Anne had consented to be his mistress, he would not have divorced Catherine. That is false. In the first place, she was his mistress, and the evidence is that this was true by 1525. He asked for the annulment in 1527, and it was not until 1533 that he tired of the papal dance and resorted to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Act of Supremacy. Remove Anne Boleyn from the equation, and nothing changes. If it had not been Anne, it would have been someone else, because his object was to get a healthy male heir, to obviate the succession problems if his only heir were a woman. It is important to recall that Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who became King Henry VII, was the first monarch of a new dynasty, of which Henry VIII was only the second member. Henry Tudor (Henry VII) had gained his throne by main force, at the end of 30 years of civil war in England. A peaceful and undisputed succession was, for obvious reasons, uppermost in the mind of Henry VIII.
Making too much of Anne Boleyn is silly in an historical context. She, personally, was not important, but her womb was important. Note that having rid himself of Anne, Henry made four more attempts to get a son by marrying.
Good summation of those historical times. The studio should hire you to keep them in line. They make sometimes silly, inconsequently changes that don't add or substract much of anything. I think they just want to historical scholars to find someone wrong, like 'Where's Waldo."
Setanta wrote:Henry did not "single out" Anne Boleyn, he was, as is said in our times, already "in a relationship" with her. PJV writes that if Anne had consented to be his mistress, he would not have divorced Catherine. That is false. In the first place, she was his mistress, and the evidence is that this was true by 1525. He asked for the annulment in 1527, and it was not until 1533 that he tired of the papal dance and resorted to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Act of Supremacy. Remove Anne Boleyn from the equation, and nothing changes. If it had not been Anne, it would have been someone else, because his object was to get a healthy male heir, to obviate the succession problems if his only heir were a woman. It is important to recall that Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who became King Henry VII, was the first monarch of a new dynasty, of which Henry VIII was only the second member. Henry Tudor (Henry VII) had gained his throne by main force, at the end of 30 years of civil war in England. A peaceful and undisputed succession was, for obvious reasons, uppermost in the mind of Henry VIII.
Making too much of Anne Boleyn is silly in an historical context. She, personally, was not important, but her womb was important.
Note that having rid himself of Anne, Henry made four more attempts to get a son by marrying.
I am certain that u have described the situation
with PERFECT historical accuracy.
Henry needed, and was obsessed with acquiring, at least one
LEGITIMATE son to inherit the monarchy and preserve the dynasty.
He remained in a chronic state of alarm,
until Jane Seymour ( wife #3 ) gave him what he craved.
Little did he know that his only son wud survive him by only 6 years.
David
Another historical inaccuracy
was that Henry Fitzroy ( the King 's beloved bastard from Elizabeth Blount )
was shown as being created Earl of Nottingham and Duke of Richmond
at the age of 7 years and one day,
and dying almost immediately thereafter;
whereas, in fact, he lived to the age of 17.
One of the problems of "television history" is that it doesn't provide context. The average British subject in the street may not know who Maud the Empress and Stephen of Blois were, nor "the She Wolf of France" and her lover Mortimer, nor of Henry VI and his Queen Margaret of Anjou. You can bet that Henry Tudor, Henry VII, and his son Henry VIII knew who they were.
All three women are identified with turmoil in the English polity. Maud the Empress claimed the throne by right of being the daughter of the deceased King Henry I (whose own claim to the throne was dubious--his brother, William Rufus, the son of William the conqueror, was murdered, and Henry literally left the body on the ground in the New Forest to hurry to London to be crowned, which he accomplished without the authority of the church, and despite having an older brother with a better claim). A civil war ensued because Stephen of Blois, a grandson of the Conqueror claimed the throne.
Isabella, the "She Wolf of France" was the wife of Edward II, who was himself very likely a homosexual, who nevertheless did his duty by the succession and produced a son, who would become Edward III. Isabella and her lover, Mortimer, "put away" the King, who was then, on some unknown date, murdered in his cell. The peers and barons of England eventually rose against Isabella and Mortimer; Mortimer was executed, and Edward III became King at age 14. It becomes more ironic, because Edward claimed the French throne because he was "in the right line," his mother having been a daughter of King Philip IV of France, one of the last of the Capetians. Her older brothers both died without male heir (Louis X was succeeded by a son, John I, who soon died), as did her younger brother, and so the throne was transferred to the Valois branch of the Capetians. Claiming direct descent form Hugh Capet in the right line, Edward claimed the French throne, and started the Hundred Yeas War with France.
At the other end of the Hundred Years was is Henry VI. His father, Henry V, had defeated the French decisively at Agincourt in 1415, and in 1420, imposed terms on the mad King Charles le bien aimé (Charles the Beloved), which included marrying his daugher Catherine, and recognition of the English claim to the French throne. I've already explained how Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who became Henry VII, was descended both from Catherine Valois, and from John of Gaunt, one of the sons of King Edward III. What is significant here is that Henry VI was no kind of King. His wife, Margaret of Anjou, was the true ruler of England, so long as the armies loyal to her were able to defeat their Yorkist enemies. Thanks to the ignorance of Shakespeare, modern readers believe that it was Margaret of Anjou who was called the She Wolf of France.
Whichever queen one alleges to have been a "she wolf," the lesson to Henry Tudor, Henry VIII, was clear. Without an undisputed male heir to the throne, the kingdom could, and likely would be thrown into turmoil. This was even more true as his father had only come to the throne by defeating Richard III, the Yorkist King. His claim was not all that well-founded, which is why he had married Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII's mother, and why he had married Margaret Tudor to the King of Scotland. The policy of both Henry VII and Henry VIII was to take all steps necessary to preserve the dynasty.
Ironically, of course, Henry VIII was succeeded not just by his son, but by two of his daughters, and eventually, by James VI and I, whose claim was founded on descent from the female line, Margaret Tudor being his great-grandmother. Eventually, two great-granddaughters of James, Mary II and Anne, would succeed to the throne. By the time Victoria became Queen regnant in 1837, the English had come to believe that having a ruling Queen was quite an ordinary thing.
You never get, and never will get, that sort of historical context from television.
True.
Thank u for your considerable efforts
and historical erudition.
Another ( gratuitous ) historical inaccuracy
was the assertion that during the King 's affair with Elizabeth Blount
( which resulted in her presenting him with Henry Fitzroy in 1519 )
that she was in a state of adultery.
Cardinal Woolsey is portrayed as mentioning that the King
found it necessary to placate an angry,
jealous husband by awarding him a title of nobility.
In fact, she was never married
until a few years after birth of the royal bastard.
I wonder how many instances of this false history
have been inserted into this mini-series,
and I wonder y thay have chosen to commit these misrepresentations.
David
Watched two episodes and concluded this was not nearly as good as "Rome," even with its lapses into rewriting history.
Setanta wrote:The average British subject in the street may not know who Maud the Empress and Stephen of Blois were, nor "the She Wolf of France" and her lover Mortimer, nor of Henry VI and his Queen Margaret of Anjou.
I worry about this constantly.
Steve 41oo wrote:Setanta wrote:The average British subject in the street may not know who Maud the Empress and Stephen of Blois were, nor "the She Wolf of France" and her lover Mortimer, nor of Henry VI and his Queen Margaret of Anjou.
I worry about this constantly.
Then u shud TELL them.
( better to lite a candle than to curse the darkness )
