1536: The Year that Changed Henry VIII

by Lipscomb, Suzannah

  This portrait was an image painted by Holbein but it is unlikely to have been solely of Holbein’s making in inspiration and message. The production of portraits was a process of negotiation. Images of Henry produced as a result of a royal commission needed, above all, to satisfy the monarch’s conception of himself. They were given in anticipation of what would make them pleasing to the sitter. So while Henry must have been recognizable in Holbein’s portrait, it is likely that the picture was also acceptable because it depicted a vision of the king’s character of which Henry VIII approved. It is clear that Holbein responded to the needs and expectations of his monarch, and it is also inconceivable that he would not have been aware of the events at court in the early part of 1536 and the resulting political climate. Whatever the process of creation, his final product was evidently a great success, for it formed the basis of all the later images of the king.4

  The Whitehall Mural

  One of the images strongly influenced by Holbein’s portrait of 1536 was his full-length portrait of Henry painted the following year. This familiar image was part of a wall mural painted in the king’s chambers at Whitehall Palace. As such, because the palace burned down in 1698 (only the Banqueting House remains standing), the original painting was destroyed, and only the original sketch (cartoon) of Henry and two later seventeenth-century copies of the whole mural remain. There are also a large number of sixteenth-century copies, some dating from within Henry’s lifetime, of the portion of the mural that comprises Henry VIII’s portrait. This extraordinary image was the first full-length life-size portrait of a monarch in England, and one of the first in Europe.5

  This powerful image is how we know Henry VIII. The historian G. R. Elton once famously suggested that Henry VIII is the only English monarch identifiable from his silhouette alone. The silhouette of Henry in our mind’s eye is a man standing with legs astride, with extraordinarily wide shoulders bulked out by padded clothing and with arms bent at the elbow. This silhouette was the one given to Henry in Holbein’s full-length portrait, and this, together with the image of Henry’s face in Holbein’s Thyssen portrait, have ingrained themselves in our collective consciousness. When we think of Henry VIII, we visualize the stance, bulk, clothing and countenance of these images. But even more than this, Henry VIII’s image makes us all think we know him. David Starkey has argued that Holbein’s full-length portrait is not just the most memorable image of an English monarch, ‘it is Henry… the reason why he fascinates us… the beginning of his biography and the key to his mind’.6

  The full-length portrait of Henry VIII is part of the Whitehall mural, which also showed Henry VII and his wife Elizabeth of York and Henry VIII’s third wife Jane Seymour, grouped around a stone plinth or altar. They stand on a richly draped carpet against a background of ornate architectural features, including cartouches supported by mermen and mermaids and a large scalloped shell. They are all dressed in rich fabrics – Henry VII and Elizabeth of York wear gold, lined with ermine. He leans an arm on the top of the altar, while she folds one arm over the other and gathers her skirts in one hand. Jane Seymour stands with her hands clasped in front of her, as demurely as she had in the portrait of 1536, and a small dog is curled up on her train. All three avert their gaze from the viewer – the wives are particularly submissive, with closed body language. To the left of the altar, Henry VIII stands squarely but at a slightly defiant angle, his feet planted wide apart and his arms bent at the elbow, and with one hand he carries his gloves while the other rests on the cords of his dagger. He looks, arrestingly, straight out at the viewer. The mural measures roughly nine by twelve feet and, judging from the cartoon, the impact of the vast mural must have been tremendous. Henry VIII, in particular, at over six feet tall and extraordinarily broad, must have been hugely intimidating.7

  For, it is the representation of Henry VIII’s body that makes this image so spectacular. His wide stance has been described as a ‘fantastic amalgam of the static and the swaggering’. It derives from depictions of chivalric and spiritual heroes in the fifteenth century – Donatello’s St George, Andrea del Castagno’s Pippo Spano and Perugino’s St Michael – and thus was a stance that embodied knightly triumph. In addition, it alludes to the posture of a man in battle, as it mimics the stance of a man standing in full armour or mounted on horseback. Without any symbols of military equipment then, this pose sparked instinctive associations of Henry VIII with martial glory. In fact, Holbein’s decision here is very telling, as it seems that straddled legs were considered ‘improper’ except in the case of legendary heroes – the representation of Henry VIII in this way thus makes a claim for his status and is also at the very edge of the acceptable, bordering on lewd. To emphasize the power of the pose, Holbein also elongated Henry’s legs – much like the legs of female fashion models are stretched and airbrushed today. We know this from comparing the life-size cartoon with a model of armour made for the king in 1540 from which his actual legs appear to be considerably shorter. This strong pose, together with Henry’s tautly held arms and fists, means that he appears to brim with latent energy.8

  Henry’s shoulders are, as in the Thyssen, fantastically broad, a fact that is exaggerated by the puffed sleeves of his gown and the angle of his arms – they ‘metaphorically bear weight, and assume burdens’. Interestingly, a comparison of the cartoon with later copies suggests that in the original mural Henry’s shoulders were particularly wide, indicating that this was an important element of the composition. It has been noted that Holbein had used the wide-shouldered, feet-apart posture in some of his previous portraits, notably of Charles de Solier (who was the French ambassador in England at the time it was painted), Sir Henry Guildford and Jean de Dinteville, in his Ambassadors. The former is a particularly impressive image but shows only three-quarters of Solier’s figure, while Guildford is shown looking away from the viewer. In Henry’s portrait, the successful elements of all these pictures have been combined by Holbein to produce a stance and figure of striking power. As a result, it has been described as showing Henry as a ‘human fortress of imperial strength’ and depicting the ‘anatomy of a ruthless tyrant’. These are recent descriptions, but contemporaries also felt its force. Karel van Mander, in the early seventeenth century, described his reaction to the painting: Henry ‘stood there, majestic in his splendour… so lifelike that the spectator felt abashed, annihilated in his presence’. This was precisely its purpose. The picture was designed to induce awe and to intimidate the beholder.9

  Holbein also made one crucial last-minute change in his depiction of Henry VIII that further emphasized Henry VIII’s confident dominance. In the draft cartoon or sketch of the mural, Henry’s face is identical to the 1536 rendering, but in the final version, Holbein made a masterly alteration: he changed the angle of Henry’s face so that the king looks out at the spectator face-on, confrontationally catching the eye and holding the gaze. While Henry’s face is characterized by the same strong structure and squareness with which Holbein had painted him the previous year, it is clear that this face-on Henry was chosen because it more closely reflected the other messages of the painting. It could be that this compositional change may have been Henry’s suggestion after Holbein had showed him the cartoon. Either way, the final position of Henry’s head displays Henry’s will and power in an even more concentrated and forceful way than in previous representations.

  Everything about the way Henry’s body has been depicted by Holbein is intended to convey masculinity and virility. The taut limbs, brimming with latent energy, are the very model of that epitome of masculinity, the ‘man of excess’. Art historian Tatiana String recently examined the evident motifs of masculine prowess in this picture. After drawing attention to Henry’s military stance and broad shoulders, she highlighted his ‘thrusting elbow, which works as a ready sign of assertion, power and masculinity’, and his beard – which, as we saw in chapter 6, was a clear signifier of manhood. (Henry VII’s lack of a beard in this mural is a further way in
which Henry VIII claims his pre-eminence as a king and as a man.) String also highlights the way in which Henry’s figure has been arranged as two triangles with one going across the shoulders and down the arms, and one going between Henry’s straddled feet and up his legs. The triangles converge and direct the gaze at Henry’s codpiece. Using measurements of the cartoon and copies, we can tell that in the cartoon, and possibly the original mural, the spread of Henry’s legs was wider, the shoulders broader and the height of the figure greater, exaggerating this focal point even more. A codpiece was a padded box in which the genitals could rest, and contemporary portraits often show men sporting particularly large, often upright, codpieces, which were very suggestive. String notes though that by comparison with other portraits, the elaborately decorated and contrastingly coloured codpiece worn by Henry in the mural is even more overt and bulging than normal. A knotted bow directly above it further directs attention to Henry’s potency. A large codpiece obviously indicated virility and fertility – there is every likelihood that this detail in the mural reflects the news of Jane Seymour’s pregnancy – but there is more to it than that. Although we cannot delve into Henry VIII’s thoughts, nor know how Holbein was instructed, it’s not absurd to suggest that there may well have been some link between this showy display of masculinity and the emasculating events of the previous year. The man whose potency had been so publicly ridiculed and whose sense of his own male power had suffered such a devastating blow in 1536 appears here to be reasserting his masculinity in an astonishingly striking way. One further indication that this might be the case is the situation of the mural, which meant that this message of virility and strength was conveyed to those who mattered. The mural covered a wall in the king’s privy chamber at Whitehall Palace, a room accessible only to the elite of the elite – the very same courtiers, councillors and ambassadors who would have been present to witness Henry’s disgrace and dishonour at the hands of Anne Boleyn. It appears likely that Holbein had drawn on every device imaginable to produce an ‘unusually intensive concentration of masculinity’, to appease the badly-bruised ego of his king.10

  If it were the case, it was a successful strategy because it has determined that posterity, at least, has remembered Henry VIII as the epitome of manhood. The Whitehall image was the basis for all later paintings of Henry VIII and even guided the representations of later monarchs. Since then, the pose and costume of Henry VIII have been affectionately parodied, and it has been this image of Henry that has guided all portrayals of the king since, on stage and film. It is an image that has subsequently formed the basis of all other attempts to personify Henry VIII, from Richard Burton to Ray Winstone, until, in fact, the recent series, The Tudors, as Brett Dolman, Curator of Collections at Historic Royal Palaces, commented in an article in The Sunday Times: ‘It’s the first time anyone has been brave enough to do a Henry VIII programme that hasn’t started with the Holbein image!’ In April 1989, it was this image of Henry VIII that was blown up to six metres high to represent England at Coquelles near Calais to celebrate the breakthrough of the Eurotunnel (Francis I, Henry’s rival, represented France). It has become ‘the default image of royal power’, and the epitome of masculinity. It is also, of course, the stance adopted by the superheroes of popular culture: Superman and Batman project their masculinity because they fashion themselves after Holbein’s image of Henry VIII – an image whose composition may have been guided by the need to compensate for the events of 1536.11

  The shocks of 1536 had been very great. Time and time again, Henry’s trust and certainties had been shown to be misplaced. In a play written in 1569 called The Longer You Livest, the More Fool Thou Art by William Wager, the protagonist Moros enters his fourth and final age and is stripped of his health, children, possessions and honour. It seems that almost the same had happened to Henry. In August 1536, Chapuys reported that ‘the King had lately told... [Cromwell] that he felt himself already growing old, and doubted whether he should have any child by the Queen’. The blow of all his successive losses – his lost sons by miscarriage and death, two once-loved wives now dead, his health and youth severely impaired, his masculinity and honour completely discredited – hit him very hard. The impact of these events was to make Henry, at the turn of his forty-fifth year, truly an old man. Aristotle defined a key characteristic of the aged as that if they are taken in and betrayed, they become cynical and suspicious. This is precisely what happened to Henry. He became jaundiced and disillusioned by the events of 1536. Mistrust and paranoia were not characteristics associated with Henry VIII before 1536; they were afterwards. There were later flashes, bursts of renewed youth – at the birth of Edward, at the marriage to Catherine Howard, even in his ‘merry countenance’ in his wedding to Kateryn Parr – but these were repeatedly dashed by successive events. After Edward was born, Jane Seymour contracted puerperal or childbirth fever, and her death plunged the king into mourning for over two years. Catherine Howard betrayed him and Henry was devastated – raging and weeping before his Council, he was described that year as being ‘very old and grey’. After 1536, Henry VIII, even as he grew larger physically, was diminished, and in his succeeding years, his behaviour was a continual reaction to the challenge the year 1536 had posed to his potency.12

  When we think of Henry VIII and religion, our first thought is of the break with Rome and the creation of the Anglican Church. The break with Rome happened in piecemeal fashion over the early 1530s but, contrary to our expectations, the new Church of England was not automatically a Protestant one. In fact, until, 1536, all Henry had done was ‘in effect, to create an English Catholic Church’. The Reformation, in its true sense of trying to reform the beliefs and practices of the church, did not actually commence at state level until 1536. This was the year in which Henry promulgated his new vision of church doctrine and began the work of reformation. This is not to say that crucial changes had not occurred before this point – chiefly that Henry had declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England, with responsibilities encompassing the right to determine orthodox belief and the cure (or care) of souls. But in 1536, he actually started to implement these powers to shape the new Anglican Church. As a result of his idiosyncratic religious views, even after 1536, the theological framework of the church that Henry and his advisers and bishops created was neither thoroughly Protestant nor thoroughly Catholic.2

  The decision to exercise the rights of his royal supremacy to decide theological doctrine and practice, despite Anne Boleyn’s fall and Henry’s remarriage to Jane Seymour (who was rumoured to be conservative in religion) came as a surprise to some European commentators, who had hoped for Henry’s return to the Catholic fold once Anne was safely out of the way. Instead, Henry’s decision to use the occasion to insist on the illegitimacy of his daughter Mary, to set his first minister, a layman, permanently up as his vicar-general, and to put forth his own definition of right theology, were defiant gestures. The religious rulings of this year indicated the king’s commitment to shaping his church in line with his own character and conscience. This was the year in which Henry set out the defining values of Anglicanism – values that would shape Henry’s decisions on religious policy until his death, and which can even be seen to have fundamentally shaped the church established by his daughter Elizabeth and, therefore, the Church of England today. This isn’t to suggest that Henry’s theology remained static over the succeeding years of his life – the events of 1536 themselves, especially Henry VIII’s reaction to the disobedience shown by his subjects, led to unforeseen consequences. Yet, by examining the central values of the Henrician church established in 1536 and the effect of the events of 1536 in shaping Henry’s attitudes so that these values were further entrenched, the following chapters argue for the importance and impact of Henry VIII on the Church of England, not just in its creation but in its very shaping.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Reformation in England

  The story of the Reformation in England is far from s
traightforward. Histories of it have been confused by an assumption that the later polarized categories of ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ had meaning in Henry VIII’s England; they didn’t. This was a period of exploration and fluidity – when these later polarized categories were just being created. In recent years, there has been vigorous debate among historians about the progress of reform, stemming in large part from reactions to the classic Protestant history of the Reformation, as symbolized by John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. Popularly known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, it was published in 1563 and ever since has been hugely influential in telling the story of the English church. The essential story Foxe told was of the inexorable rise of Protestantism: that the Reformation was necessary and wanted. Historians following Foxe, like A. G. Dickens, pointed to substantial evidence of decadence and moral decay in the Roman Catholic Church, with a flourishing industry of unscriptural practices, including the selling of indulgences and forged relics, and among the clergy, who ranged from ill-educated parish priests to sickeningly wealthy bishops, widespread practices of simony or the sale of offices, pluralism or the holding of more than one benefice at a time, clerical absenteeism and the keeping of concubines. At the time, even those who ultimately resisted Protestantism, such as Erasmus and Thomas More, recognized the need for reform.1