In the sixteenth century, being a tyrant was less a question of what a king did than who he was. The crux of tyranny was the spirit or character that gave rise to tyrannical behaviour. William Thomas, Henry VIII’s first biographer, quoted an unnamed Italian, who after Henry VIII’s death in 1547, called him ‘the greatest tyrant that ever was in England’ before going on to describe a tyrant in the following terms:
The principal token of a tyrant is the immoderate satisfaction of an unlawful appetite, when the person, whether by right or wrong, hath power to achieve his sensual will, and that person, also, who by force draws unto him that which of right is not his, in the unlawful usurping commits express tyranny.
A tyrant could principally be identified by his character with its inclination to unbridled greed and avarice, having unrestrained lusts and appetites for things not belonging to him. When he possessed and used his power unlawfully to usurp such things, his tyranny was expressed – but was it always latent in his flawed character?3
By a modern definition (though framing the question within the standard of the period in which the subject lived), a tyrant is
a ruler who exercises arbitrary power beyond the scope permitted by the laws, customs and standards of his time and society and who does so with a view to maintaining or increasing that power.
If we wanted to test Henry VIII against this definition, we could examine vast amounts of evidence to see where arbitrary power was exercised with a view to enhancing that power. In fact, there is so much evidence that a study of the indices of tyranny in Henry VIII’s reign could produce a complete book in and of itself. Yet even a cursory survey suggests that the evidence of tyranny emerges primarily from the 1530s and later, reaching increasing pace towards 1536 and maintaining this until the end of Henry VIII’s reign.4
One of the characteristics frequently associated with tyranny is the creation of a totalitarian state and the suppression of dissent. This is hard to measure in the sixteenth century, because while contemporary thought extolled the virtues of freedom, it was not a freedom with which the modern mind would be familiar. The Henrician state was undeniably extremely intrusive into the lives of its subjects and curtailed a vast range of personal freedoms. It introduced a large number of new laws to control the behaviour of English subjects, including the Beggars Act of 1531. This legislated that vagrants, beggars and vagabonds should be half-stripped and whipped through the town or set in the stocks for three days and nights on bread and water. Other new statutes included the introduction of the penalty of death by hanging for those found guilty of buggery in 1534 (first enacted in 1540) and the first law against witchcraft in 1542. Other acts created new felonies – fishing in private ponds after dark or selling horses to the Scots both became capital offences! There was also never freedom to believe what one wanted: it was perfectly accepted that some religious beliefs were heretical, and even Thomas More, who is often championed as a defender of free speech, had as Lord Chancellor been a great persecutor of heretics. It was usual to wish to control men’s thoughts to some extent. Yet, even set in this context of the customs and standards of his time, Henry VIII’s ambitions to govern men’s minds were unusual. The manner in which Henry attempted to command men’s thoughts in order to suppress all opposition to his rule are the actions of a tyrant. The Acts of Succession and Supremacy of 1534 required that subjects swear oaths subscribing to their terms, which ‘they shall truly, firmly and constantly without fraud or guile observe, fulfil, maintain, defend and keep to their cunning, wit and uttermost of their powers’. Here was an attempt to coerce all subjects into committing themselves to Henry’s controversial policies in mind and spirit, as well as deed. As C. S. L. Davies wrote, ‘a regime which demands a show of unanimous consent is more coercive than one which merely imposes its will from above’. It effectively forbade dissent, as the chronicler Edward Hall illustrated by his comment on the Catholic Friar Forest, ‘how could he say the King was not supreme head of the church, when he himself had sworn to the contrary’. Henry believed that as Supreme Head his role encompassed the direction of theology, and his initiatives, such as the Ten Articles of 1536 designed to ‘establish Christian quietness and unity among us, and to avoid contentious opinions’ or the 1539 act ‘abolishing diversity in opinions’, were intended to conform all men to a uniform belief.5
Other evidence of the onset of tyranny is perhaps more tangible. There were convictions obtained on the basis of flimsy evidence, such as that of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, condemned as a traitor in 1521 (it was alleged that Buckingham had listened to prophecies saying he would become king when Henry died), or on the evidence of minimal witnesses, as shown by Cromwell’s note of November 1539 concerning Giles Heron, and ‘what shall be done with him, for as much as there is but one witness’. Heron was executed in 1540. The incidence of rigged trials is worthy of investigation, as is the passing of new laws to permit execution. Thomas More was, for example, originally imprisoned for refusing to swear the Oath of Succession in April 1534. He was, however, executed on 6 July 1535 on the grounds that he had rejected the king’s new title of Supreme Head, following the passing of the Act of Supremacy of November 1534 and the Treasons Act, which came into force in February 1535 and made words treasonous. One could also examine grey areas in the law, including the treatment and use of torture in the period between arrest and trial. In 1535, three Carthusian monks were chained by their necks and arms, and had their legs fettered with locks and chains in the Tower for thirteen days before their hanging and quartering, and even gentlefolk such as Anne Askew were illegally tortured: Anne was racked to make her confess to heresy and to implicate others, including Queen Kateryn Parr, in 1546. The new punishments that were introduced during Henry’s reign, including the horrific capital sentence of boiling in cases of poisoning, meted out to Richard Roose in 1531, might also be judged as evidence of tyranny. The treatment of the church and the manner in which the monasteries were dissolved could be considered, as could the issue of consent to new laws. Further evidence could be supplied by the work of other historians who have explored the king’s judicious and unpredictable use of pardons – there was a tendency for general pardons to remit fewer and fewer crimes of importance as the reign wore on – and Henry’s dangerous and manipulative role in the attempted coups against Archbishop Cranmer, Bishop Gardiner and Kateryn Parr in the 1540s. Another key discussion has been about the 1539 act which decreed that proclamations made by the king should be obeyed; historians have questioned the extent to which this was a despotic measure that sought to give royal proclamations the same status and power as acts of parliament. This could be compared with the 1536 Minorities Act, which gave Henry’s heir, on reaching the age of twenty-four, ‘full power and authority’ to revoke by letters patent any act of parliament made before that point, and the extent to which Henry VIII’s use of parliament made it an unchecked instrument of the royal will. To what extent did Tudor statutes add to the personal power of the king? Maurice Latey believes that tyrants often become convinced of their own divinity, and Henry VIII’s assumption of the title of Supreme Head of the Church of England suggests a version of this.6
In all these areas, I am persuaded that symptoms of tyranny were rare until the 1530s (Buckingham’s execution in 1521 is a notable, but singular, exception), when gradually the incidence of questionable and inhumane practices accelerated, reaching its apogee in 1535–6: after this point, as we shall see, the evidence of tyranny became compelling.
Henry VIII’s Revenge
We can chart change in Henry VIII’s character from the differing reports that observers made of him in these later years, compared with those made when the king was a young man, which primarily stressed his ease of companionship and gentle graciousness. In the guarded, diplomatic and understated language of ambassadors, comments were now made about Henry’s increasingly irascible temper – that the ‘King was irritated and that his ministers were at a loss to account for it’ and capricio
us unpredictability – ‘people worth credit say he is often of a different opinion in the morning than after dinner’. Other remarks were made about the pig-headedness that made him ‘very stern and opinionate’, or how he mistreated his counsellors – he would, for example, ‘beknave’ Thomas Cromwell twice a week, hitting ‘him well about the pate’. After Cromwell’s death, Henry turned his fury on his other counsellors, reproaching them for forcing his hand and blaming them that ‘upon light pretexts, by false accusations, they made him put to death the most faithful servant he ever had’. In March 1541, when his leg was particularly bad, Henry was said to have a ‘mal d’esprit’, and he responded angrily to tales that his subjects were murmuring at the charges imposed upon them and their ill-treatment over religious matters, by complaining that ‘he had an unhappy people to govern whom he would shortly make so poor that they would not have the boldness nor the power to oppose him’. It was reported that Henry had also ‘conceived a sinister opinion of some of his chief men’ and railed against them ‘that most of his Privy Council, under pretence of serving him, were only temporising for their own profit, but he knew the good servants from the flatterers, and …would take care their projects should not succeed’. While those at Henry’s court could hope for glory, wealth and position, the dangers and trials of being in close proximity to this mercurial and volatile king were great.7
Charles de Marillac, the French ambassador, provided a damning analysis of Henry VIII in August 1540, which is worth quoting at some length:
This Prince seems tainted, among other vices, with three which in a King may be called plagues. The first is that he is so covetous that all the riches in the world would not satisfy him… Everything is good prize, and he does not reflect that to make himself rich he has impoverished his people, and does not gain in goods what he loses in renown…. Thence proceeds the second plague, distrust and fear. This King, knowing how many changes he has made, and what tragedies and scandals he has created, would fain keep in favour with everybody, but does not trust a single man, expecting to see them all offended, and he will not cease to dip his hand in blood as long as he doubts his people. Hence every day edicts are published so sanguinary that with a thousand guards one would scarce be safe… The third plague, lightness and inconstancy, proceeds partly from the other two… and has perverted the rights of religion, marriage, faith and promise…
Taken with evidence of Henry’s spiteful interest in the manner of Anne Boleyn’s death and the viciousness of his letters on how to deal with the Pilgrims, this all adds considerably to the body of evidence that suggests Henry VIII had become tyrannical. This is not to suggest that temper, egoism, pride and obstinacy sprang suddenly from a character who had always previously shown peace and light. According to the sixteenth-century’s notion of tyranny, tyranny would always have been latent in his character. We know that although Henry was kind, affable and generous in his younger years, he was also wilful and egotistic. Nevertheless, this wilfulness and egoism had now reached a new level: something had catalyzed this latent tyranny into reality.8
The necessarily muted and circumspect language of diplomats at Henry’s court means, though, that our best evidence for the king’s changing character is his actions; specifically, as Marillac described it, the way he dipped his hand in blood. A classical story gives a hint about how tyranny manifests itself. Periander, a tyrant who ruled Corinth in seventh century BC, was once asked for advice on how to rule by Thrasybulus of Miletus. Periander took the messenger out into the fields and, without saying a word, lopped off the tallest ears of corn with his stick. In his book, In the Lion’s Court, Derek Wilson argues that Henry did just that after 1536: ‘most of the reign’s acts of sanguinary statecraft occurred during the last decade… It was in 1536 that bloodletting of those close to the Crown became frequent…[and] in his later years the lion’s claws were out more often’. For a striking difference between Henry’s early reign and his last decade is the way that Henry treated those he knew personally whom he thought had wronged him. The incidence and circumstances of such executions before and after 1536, and, especially, the increasing tendency not to pursue conviction through due process and common law trial but through parliamentary attainder and a widening definition of treason, provides compelling evidence of Henry VIII’s increasingly savage temper and misanthropic character.9
Prior to 1536, there had been a handful of executions of high-status victims following conviction of treason by common law. Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, who had been councillors to Henry VII, were executed in August 1510. This was probably either because they were held to blame for the injustices and oppressions of Henry VII’s reign, and because the young king, who had come to the throne only a year before, needed to prove his justice, or as the result of a court coup. The charge of treason came from the fact that on 22 April 1509, both had, allegedly, conspired ‘to hold, guide and govern the King and his Council’ by summoning a force of men to come to London as Henry VII lay dying – the suggestion being that they had intended to stage a coup d’état and destroy the new king, Henry VIII. Having been imprisoned in the Tower since 1506, Edmund de la Pole was finally executed (despite Henry VII’s earlier promise that he would not be) in May 1513 on a charge of treason. This was because of his previous association with a recently re-emerged Yorkist conspiracy led by his brother, Richard. The Duke of Buckingham was, as we have seen, executed in 1521, having been found guilty of treason before a jury of peers. Like Edmund de la Pole, his royal blood (by descent from Edward III) made him dangerous and, while his conviction for treason was on the basis of allegation, hearsay and speculation, it is likely that his ambitions for the throne were plausible. At a time when Henry VIII was starting to worry about his succession, Buckingham was perceived as a threat to the crown. Finally, More and Fisher’s deaths, along with the Carthusian monks in 1535, more than a year after they went to the Tower and on the basis of laws enacted during their incarceration, were particularly notable as evidence of Henry’s steadily growing despotism.10
It all came to a head in 1536, when Anne Boleyn, Rochford, Henry Norris and the others were tried by common law and found guilty of high treason. The actual charge of treason was conspiracy to procure the king’s death (referring presumably to Anne’s conversations with Norris) but this was dressed up with a charge of adultery, even though adultery by or with a queen was actually not an act of treason by law. The charges of adultery were prefaced by the repetition of the words ‘treasonably violated the queen’, but if the intercourse had been consensual, no crime remained. This is highlighted by the fact that adultery with the queen was created a treason in later legislation to deal with Catherine Howard’s infidelity.11
Other significant figures indicted and tried after this point include the rebels of 1536 – Aske, Darcy and Constable etc., on the basis of evidence constructed to prove treason after the December pardon – and a group of alleged conspirators in 1538, including Henry’s cousins, Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter and Henry Pole, Lord Montague (Reginald Pole’s brother). The alleged conspirators were charged with two counts under the 1534 Act of Treason: desiring the king’s death and denying him his title of Supreme Head. Of their supposed armed rebellion there is little evidence. They were followed a few months later by Henry VIII’s close companion and childhood friend, Nicholas Carew, after he had responded angrily to an insult made by the king, for his part in ‘abetting’ Exeter’s conspiracy. All three deaths provide a striking example of Henry’s willingness, by this point in his life, to send those near him to the block in cases of perceived threat or personal betrayal. As examined in chapter 7, the king had suffered great humiliation in Anne and Rochford’s trial. Perhaps the hope of avoiding a repeat of this incident helps explain why after this point, of all the influential and high-status people executed at the king’s behest, only the Pilgrims’ leaders and the Exeter conspirators were tried and executed by judicial process. Everyone else of high status accused of high treason wa
s convicted and executed on the basis of parliamentary attainder – a route that was just about legal but one which entirely circumvented the due process of trial and defence, and which thus removed any possibility of the accused being found innocent and released. It is not simply that the number of people close to the king who were executed increased after 1536 – something which could, in part, be justified on the basis of increased threats to the throne – it was also that the method of dealing with these miscreants became more savage; for Henry had changed.12
Parliamentary attainder had traditionally been used to convict fugitives in exile or to extend the terms of convictions already passed through common law, generally to ensure that the estates of those who had been convicted and executed through common law were forfeited to the Crown. In the first twenty years of his reign, Henry VIII used them in this traditional and infrequent manner. But studies by scholars Stanford Lehmberg and William Stacy show that the use of the attainder dramatically increased in the 1530s – in fact, this decade saw the heaviest use of parliamentary attainder in English history – and, moreover, the attainder was being used in an entirely new manner. Now, an act passed through parliament could in itself declare the accused guilty and condemn them to death – even when defendants were available for trial by common law – without needing to cite specific evidence or name precise crimes.13
1536: The Year that Changed Henry VIII Page 17