Henry believed that a king must be both a soldier and a man of learning. In promoting these two aspects of kingship – soldier and scholar – Henry was deliberately establishing a different type of identity for a king. His task was made easier by his remarkably varied skills and youthful energy. In addition to his linguistic skills he also had a good knowledge of the Bible, and was a student of mathematics, astronomy, geometry and cartography, and a talented musician with a strong singing voice. When he went on a progress in 1510, he occupied himself ‘in shooting, singing, dancing, wrestling, casting of the bar, playing at the recorders, flute and virginals … jousts and tourneys’. The king was depicting himself to his people as a perfect example of the dashing Renaissance prince, and they adored him for it.
The King of England and of France
How does Henry’s view of himself as ruler determine the public foreign policy of his war against France? He was fully aware of the previous triumphs of English monarchs during the Hundred Years’ War and their domination of large parts of France during that period. His personal hero was Henry V, and he yearned to recreate the glory of the Battle of Agincourt when, on 25 October 1415 – Saint Crispin’s Day – ‘King Harry’ and his troops killed up to 10,000 French, yet lost only about 110 of their own men. The English claim to the Crown of France had been dormant since 1453, but it had never been renounced and Henry sought to bring it back to English hands.
The opportunity to do so arrived early in his reign. The French were occupying parts of (what is now) Italy and Pope Julius II was trying to put together an alliance to drive them out. When King Ferdinand II of Castile joined forces with him in October 1511 to form the ‘Holy League’, Henry jumped at the chance to join it and during the following spring a joint Anglo-Spanish attack was made on Aquitaine with the intention of recovering it for England. The attempt was unsuccessful, but the Pope announced that King Louis XII should be stripped of his kingdom of France and of the title ‘most Christian king’, conferring both on Henry instead. Anticipating a coronation by the Pope himself in Paris, Henry sought to convert this papal pronouncement into concrete political reality.
On 30 June 1513 Henry invaded France. He led his troops down as far as Tournai (which is now in Belgium) and, after a successful siege, made a triumphant ceremonial entry into the town on 25 September. However, the victory was largely symbolic. He made no further inroads into France and had spent his father’s treasure in financing the campaign. He ended up being compelled to sign a peace treaty in 1514, and when Louis XII was succeeded by the 20-year-old Francis I, Henry was confronted by a French version of himself, which injected a new competitive dynamic into the Anglo-French relationship.
Henry and Francis were too alike and too jealous of each other to be friends, but they recognized their mutual strength and avoided direct confrontation. The tense diplomatic stand-off between them was magnificently displayed when they met just outside the English-held territory around Calais in June 1520. This was called the ‘Field of Cloth of Gold’ – so named because of the silk and gold thread in the hundreds of tents and costumes.
A huge temporary palace was erected for the reception of Henry, where 30-foot-high walls made of canvas were painted to appear as brick or stone, with a slanting cloth roof giving the illusion of leaded slates. Outside, two fountains spouted red wine, and Henry’s following alone consumed up to 2,200 sheep in a month. Francis was greatly taken with two monkeys which accompanied Henry’s retinue, and insisted that they attend every banquet.
Although the Field of Cloth of Gold was supposed to secure a lasting peace in Europe, it actually achieved nothing. Both as a man and a king Henry remained frustrated. Foolishly, he challenged Francis to a wrestling contest and lost. This severely dented his pride, and soon afterwards the relations between England and France worsened, with Henry forming an alternative alliance with Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, who then declared war on France. The Field of Cloth of Gold ended up symbolizing the ultimate failure of Henry’s diplomatic ambitions – with France in particular, and also in general. Throughout the rest of his reign he continually and futilely switched allegiances between the major European powers, and finally in 1544, a last invasion of France succeeded in capturing Boulogne but at the cost of bankruptcy. Henry’s dream to emulate the glories of Henry V was never realized.
During Henry’s campaign in France in 1513 the Scots took the opportunity to rampage south of the border. Catherine had been left in control during her husband’s absence and oversaw an army which defeated the Scots at Flodden. King James IV of Scotland was killed in the battle, and Catherine was able to send Henry his bloodstained hauberk as a trophy. But the marriage was already in difficulties, mostly as a result of Henry’s mounting anxiety for a male heir. Catherine lost a child who only lived for a few hours in 1514, and although she gave birth to a healthy daughter, Mary, in 1516, she was always conscious that she was expected to produce a boy. She was now 30 years old, approaching middle age by contemporary standards, and as her beauty faded, Henry’s eye started to stray.
Portrait of older Catherine by an unknown artist, c.1525
It was probably during Catherine’s pregnancy with Mary that Henry took his first mistress, the 16-year-old Elizabeth Blount. The affair lasted three years, and Catherine was wise enough to conceal her feelings about it in public. Catherine’s Catholic faith supported her in 1518 through another (and final) delivery of a child who did not live long, and the birth of Henry’s illegitimate son in 1519, whom the king publicly acknowledged by naming him Henry Fitzroy (meaning ‘son of the king’).
Henry took the birth of Henry Fitzroy as proof that the problem of securing a male heir was all Catherine’s fault, and she became increasingly desperate. While she remained popular with the people and still performed her queenly duties (in 1520 she accompanied Henry to the Field of Cloth of Gold and entertained King Francis I to dinner), her personal relationship with Henry was failing. When she was 35 years old, even though Henry had ended his affair with Elizabeth Blount soon after the birth of their son, he quickly replaced her with another mistress, Mary Boleyn, who was Catherine’s lady-in-waiting. Thereafter Henry and Catherine drifted even further apart.
Securing the male succession to the Crown consumed Henry’s thoughts, had ruined his first marriage, and would eventually lead to the dramatic break with Rome and the Roman Catholic faith and the establishment of the Church of England. Yet the course which Henry eventually took was not inevitable at the beginning, for Henry was brought up as a devout Catholic. In 1521 he had defended papal supremacy by publishing Defence of the Seven Sacraments (Assertio), which had earned him the cherished title of ‘Defender of the Faith’ from Pope Leo X. Yet by 1527, with Catherine no longer capable of producing a son, he had formed the conviction that his marriage to her was unlawful in the sight of God. He grounded this belief on a passage in the Old Testament (Leviticus 20:21), which prohibited a man taking his brother’s wife. Henry interpreted the original Hebrew text to mean that such a marriage would be ‘without sons’, and convinced himself that Catherine’s prior marriage to his brother Arthur explained why they had no living male heir. So in the summer of 1527 he sent his secretary, William Knight, to Rome to argue that his marriage be annulled, but Knight’s mission was completely unsuccessful.
Was Henry’s ‘scruple of conscience’ about his marriage to Catherine genuine, or was it merely an excuse to allow him to annul the marriage and take another wife? We may strongly suspect the latter but cannot know with