One thing that many people don't realize is that Henry considered himself a Catholic his entire life. And at one time he'd had an honored place in the Church. He wasn't trying to split England from Rome so much as he was holding out for a better deal from a more amenable Pope. The first ultra-Protestant monarch was his son Edward VI, who started reigning as a literal child and had a boy's inhuman level of commitment. He was followed by Catholic traditionalist Mary and Elizabeth, who nudged the modern Anglican Church into being.
Edward was the son of Henry and Jane Seymour. The Seymours were a colorful bunch. Edward Seymour (well, this particular Edward Seymour) was Lord Protector for the young king, and a truly harried bureaucrat. The Lord Protector's younger brother, Thomas, emerges as the villain of the early chapters. Whether this is a fair assessment of the man, one could ask, but he certainly seems like a great role for hammy stage actors. Marrying Henry's widow Catherine Parr made him the young Elizabeth's stepfather and...let's just say he wasn't exactly an all-star stepfather.
2 comments:
I'd read good reviews of The Six Wives of Henry VIII but never got around to reading that book, nor this one either. I probably should as the Tudors were a fascinating group and I can see why the author has dedicated her career to writing about them.
As far as knowing about Henry VIII not wanting the split England from the Church of Rome my guess is that not many people have seen A Man For All Seasons a film that depicts the last few years of Sir Thomas More's life. Henry wanted his marriage to Katherine annulled so he could re-marry in hopes of fathering a male heir. The country had recently survived The Hundred Years War and the War of the Roses and Henry didn't want a return of the conflict. More refused to petition the pope about the annulment or making Henry the official head of the Church of England. Things continue to get complicated. It's only outdated by the fact it might be hard to find these days but it's an amazing film with an all-star (for the mid 60s) cast.
The rigors of childbirth in those days included having official witnesses in the room who guaranteed the child actually came out of the queen. No wonder Elizabeth was known as the 'Virgin Queen', although whether she was is still an unaswered question - yet another interesting biography by Allison Weir.
Our local library carries only some of her fiction.. disappointed again but not surprised.
Henry's six wives were a motley group and I'm sure a good subject for Weir's book. The Tudors and the crowd around them were a fascinating group at an equally interesting time. Where do British ideas about propriety and not getting ideas above your station come from? In part they came about because not too long ago, power-hungry schemers were the norm.
I haven't seen A Man for All Seasons as of yet. A few years ago I did watch Becket with Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole. It's also about the conflict of Church and State in Britain, although it's set much earlier. Thomas More is also known for coining the term "utopia," although when he wrote about Utopia it was in a satire.
It sounds a little weird that childbirths needed official witnesses. Did they think that these women were stuffing pillows under their dresses and having babies brought to their doorstep like Uber Eats? Whether or not Elizabeth was an remained a virgin, she did use her spinsterdom to enhance her power. Her father had drawn up a will laying out a new succession for after his death. She managed to outlive just about everyone else on it.
It looks like her fiction concentrates on the same eras, and many of the same figures, as her nonfiction. She does know an admirable amount about it.
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