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History and Evolution:
By William E. Steinman:
Part 104, Henry VIII Part 2:
March 21, 2005:
While Henry was messing around with Anne Boleyn and trying to dump Catherine another fellow was coming to power in England. This was Thomas Cromwell. He was first brought into the court by Wolsey as his solicitor. Cromwell was good and worked his way up to Wolsey's confidential adviser. Of course, to do that, he had to preform some dirty deeds for Wolsey like seeing to the demise of some minor monasteries. That did not get him many friends.
After Wolsey lost his power in 1529, Cromwell made his move. He got into Parliament and exhibited enough skill to get the attention of Henry VIII. It seems Cromwell was as good at impressing the King as he had been with Wolsey. By 1530, he was in the King's Service. By 1531 he was in the King's inner circle of confidants. Cromwell was no piker. While he was working Henry on one side, he was also moving up in the House of Commons. He took a whole bunch of offices there and ended up in control of the council. Along the way he got a peerage. He became Lord Cromwell of Wimbledon.
Cromwell was most valuable to the King because he took an active role in Henry's fight against the pope's religious dominance in England. Through a series of acts he reduced the flow of church money to Rome, he caused the clergy to submit to the King in matters of legislation, and he passed the Act of Restraint in Appeals to Rome. This established his theory of the supremacy of the state, particularly in cases involving matrimony and distribution of property. Then in 1534 he put through the Act of Supremacy. That made Henry VIII the head of the church in England.
Meanwhile, in 1533 Henry named Thomas Cranmer to be the first Protestant archbishop of Canterbury. One of Cranmer's first acts was to preside over the trial that declared Henry's first marriage to Catherine annulled. In fact, it was kind of just a formality since Henry had already married Anne Boleyn a few months earlier. The Pope immediately pronounce a sentence of excommunication, but no one seemed to shake in their boots. They had all rather expected it. This whole brouhaha was the final reformation which established the Church of England as distinct and separate from the church of Rome.
It was all this mucking around with the church and supremacy that got the King's chancellor Sir Thomas More in trouble. We covered this in essay 60. Briefly, More refused to assent to the Act of Succession that declared Henry's marriage void and his marriage to Anne valid. For More, it was not about Anne but about the wording of the oath he was required to take. It repudiated the power of the pope. He was not willing to do that so he ended up about a head shorter for his trouble. Cromwell was instrumental in More's trial and perjured himself by so doing. In fact, he lied in his teeth. Nothing much changes in government over the years.
Cromwell continued to move up and became baron Cromwell and was appointed the King's deputy in charge of the church. He was not very good at that, and he alienated the King by getting him to marry Anne of Cleves in a political move to form an alliance with some German royalty and the Lutherans. Henry hated Anne of Cleves and he wanted the Church of England to remain orthodox Catholic. By1540, Cromwell's enemies got the ear of Henry VIII and that was the endo of Cromwell's meteoric career. He was arrested as a heretic, and executed without even the formality of a trial. It ended Cromwell's life alright, but it also marked the beginning of the end of good government under Henry. Actually Henry had never run the government. It was first run by Wolsey and then by Cromwell.
It was only under Cromwell's control that the government was purposeful with coherent policies. He enhanced the power of the crown, mostly by assimilating the wealth of the monasteries he shut down. He also put the king further under control of the Parliament and thus continued the slow ascendancy of the democratic institutions in England. Although it seemed other wise at times, the rule of law generally prevailed.
There were some exceptions to be sure. We have mentioned some key ones. These were the murder of two queens, the murder of sir Thomas More, and the murders of Wolsey and Cromwell. Besides these, there were about 50 other victims of the bloody ax and block. Some of these murders were to ensure the ascendancy of Henry's heir, Edward VI. All of this gave Henry VIII his well earned reputation as a man of blood.
By 1540, Henry was becoming dangerous to anyone near him. His mind was definitely going under as he became more and more paranoid. Of course, there were many in the court who were willing to nurture that paranoia in hopes of personal gain. About that time Henry began to overeat and turned into a real blimp. He also married Catherine Howard. After he sent her to the axman he came completely unglued. He was a physical and emotional wreck when he took his last wife, Catherine Parr.
This is the guy, who in 1542 decided to get into the European wars again. He joined the Emperor and seeing that, the Scots joined the French. The Scots lost a battle at Solway Moss and the Scottish king James V died shortly afterward. Then Henry tried for an alliance with Scotland through marriage between the heirs, but that came to naught. The Scots, as always, resisted the notion. By that time the kingdom was again in bankruptcy from supporting foreign adventures. On January 28, 1546, Henry VIII died, a sick worn out miserable man. He had neglected to arrange for the ascendancy of his heir, so there were problems to come.
One other important event under the rule of Henry VIII came
near the end of his reign in 1536. This was the so called First
Act of Union which incorporated Wales into the realm. In fact,
Wales had been under the rule of England sicne1284 when the Statute
of Wales annexed Wales to the crown of England. What the Act of
Union did, was to create legal counties within Wales just as they
were in England. The effect was to give the Welsh people political
status equivalent to the English with equal justice and representation
in Parliament. This was no small thing since it established a
uniform system of common law in Wales. This was, in fact, another
step in the evolution of democracy in the kingdom.
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