英国史第六集：Burning Convictions（1500——1558）

[00:00.00] [00:17.92] [00:20.04]There are ghosts in this place. [00:22.92] [00:23.08]You don't notice them right away. [00:25.55] [00:25.72]At first glance, Binham Priory in Norfolk [00:27.92] [00:28.08]looks much like any other English country church - [00:30.92] [00:31.08]plain and simple, limestone, limewash. Nothing fancy, really. [00:36.44] [00:37.36]But then you look around and realise something else is going on here. [00:42.31] [00:42.48]That grandiose, timber-vaulted roof. Those multi-storey arcades. [00:47.64] [00:47.80]Aren't they all just a bit too big for a parish church? [00:52.08] [00:52.24]And then you start to fill in the gaps, [00:54.24] [00:54.40]and bit by bit a lost world remakes itself, [00:58.48] [00:59.64]a world of monks and masses, of colour and plainsong. [01:04.00] [01:04.16]A world of brilliant images. [01:06.28] [01:06.44]The world of Catholic England. [01:09.60] [01:12.96]For centuries, this didn't sound strained. [01:15.96] [01:16.12]Catholic England was just another way of saying Christian England, really. [01:20.32] [01:20.48]And then, in a generation, [01:22.52] [01:22.68]it stopped being a truism [01:24.72] [01:24.88]and started being treason. [01:27.72] [01:31.80]Images of the Virgin, the apostles and the saints [01:35.00] [01:35.16]once cherished and glorified, were now mocked and vandalised. [01:40.08] [01:42.96]Here at Binham, the saints on the rood screen were expunged, [01:46.64] [01:46.80]painted over with verses from an English Bible. [01:50.96] [01:57.64]Today, they're restored, [01:59.71] [01:59.88]but the world over which they once presided is dead and gone. [02:03.96] [02:08.28]We can't bring back the lost world of Binham's painted saints [02:12.07] [02:12.24]whole and alive again. [02:14.44] [02:14.60]But just because the death of that world was so shocking, so utterly improbable, [02:20.52] [02:20.68]and because the Reformation and the wars of religion it triggered [02:24.28] [02:24.44]cut so deep a mark on the body of our country, [02:27.68] [02:27.84]we need to try and reassemble the fragments of that world as best we can. [02:33.64] [02:33.80]Only then can we hope to answer one of the most poignant questions in our history: [02:39.91] [02:40.08]Whatever did happen to Catholic England? [02:43.87] [03:26.80]We all grew up, even a nice Jewish boy like me, [03:30.35] [03:30.52]with the idea that the English Reformation was a historic inevitability, [03:35.04] [03:35.20]the culling of an obsolete, unpopular, fundamentally un-English faith. [03:40.76] [03:40.92]But on the very eve of the Reformation, [03:42.96] [03:43.12]Catholicism in England was vibrant, popular and very much alive. [03:49.20] [03:55.80]This is Walsingham in Norfolk, [03:58.00] [03:58.16]once the home of the miracle working shrine [04:00.96] [04:01.12]of Our Lady of Walsingham. [04:03.56] [04:05.32]Along with the Becket shrine at Canterbury, [04:07.76] [04:07.92]Walsingham was the must-see place for all serious 16th-century pilgrims, [04:13.20] [04:13.36]a tradition revived this century by High Church Anglicans. [04:18.48] [04:25.48]Today, you get only the faintest echoes of what Walsingham once was, [04:29.48] [04:29.64]a gaudy, rowdy mix of hucksterism and holiness, [04:33.40] [04:33.56]piety and plaster saints; [04:36.12] [04:36.28]the kind of place you'd expect to find, say, in Naples or Seville, [04:40.56] [04:40.72]not in the depths of sober East Anglia. [04:43.52] [04:46.12]But even then, as today, not everybody approved. [04:49.80] [04:49.96]Erasmus, the Catholic scholar superstar of the age, [04:53.32] [04:53.48]came here on a mock pilgrimage [04:55.48] [04:55.64]and poured scorn on tales of sacred milk [04:58.40] [04:58.56]and chapels airmailed in from the Holy Land. [05:01.80] [05:01.96]But his was the minority intellectual view, safely expressed in Latin [05:06.48] [05:06.64]and tolerated, though not necessarily endorsed, [05:09.52] [05:09.68]by members of the ruling Tudor dynasty. [05:13.15] [05:20.20]The Tudors were regular and devout pilgrims. [05:23.36] [05:23.52]Henry VIII, early in his reign, walked barefoot to the shrine, [05:26.88] [05:27.04]offering a necklace of rubies and dedicating a giant candle [05:31.28] [05:31.44]in thanks for the birth of his son, Henry, in 1511. [05:35.76] [05:36.72]Prince Henry died within weeks, [05:39.16] [05:39.32]but the king's candle continued to burn at the shrine for many years to come. [05:44.60] [05:55.68]What a strange world this Catholic England was. [05:58.84] [05:59.00]The urge for renewal and reform [06:01.04] [06:01.20]side by side with the ancient, the hallowed and the occasionally fraudulent. [06:05.44] [06:05.60]But it seems that all apparent contradictions [06:07.96] [06:08.12]could be accommodated under the capacious skirts [06:10.92] [06:11.08]of the Catholic Mother Church. [06:14.47] [06:15.92]And what a mother she was! [06:18.84] [06:21.52]Come to Holy Trinity Church at Long Melford in Suffolk, [06:25.48] [06:25.64]and you'll see just what I mean. [06:28.60] [06:30.36]This magnificent building was paid for with Suffolk wool money. [06:34.12] [06:34.28]However, what you see today are just the bare bones of what it was supposed to be. [06:39.88] [06:42.92]But we know what Long Melford in its splendour was really like [06:46.55] [06:46.72]thanks to an account left by Roger Martyn, who'd been a churchwarden here [06:50.76] [06:50.92]in the reign of England's last Catholic ruler, Queen Mary. [06:55.48] [06:57.92]Writing in the very different times of Queen Elizabeth, [07:01.36] [07:01.52]Roger Martyn, with a mixture of pride and regret, [07:05.20] [07:05.36]set out to tell future generations exactly what they were missing. [07:10.68] [07:12.96]At the back of the high altar there was a goodly mount [07:16.84] [07:17.00]carved very artificially with the story of Christ's Passion, [07:21.71] [07:21.88]all being fair, gilt and lively and beautifully set forth. [07:27.48] [07:27.64]And at the north end of the same altar [07:30.20] [07:30.36]there was a goodly gilt tabernacle reaching up to the roof of the chancel, [07:35.23] [07:35.40]in which there was one fair, large, gilt image of the Holy Trinity, [07:40.43] [07:40.60]besides other fine images. [07:43.07] [08:13.76]But Martyn's church was more than just a building. [08:16.92] [08:17.08]He describes a living world of processions and festivals, [08:20.79] [08:20.96]ceremonies and rituals involving the whole community. [08:25.59] [08:35.88]Above all this presided the "management", without whom none of it made sense. [08:41.04] [08:41.20]The priests, guardians of the mystery, [08:44.12] [08:44.28]at the heart of traditional Christian belief. [08:47.59] [08:49.52]Every time the priest celebrated communion, [08:52.52] [08:52.68]Christ crucified would be there in flesh and blood. [08:56.60] [09:03.44]The priest was the indispensable man, [09:06.40] [09:06.56]and there was no getting to Heaven but through his hands. [09:10.08] [09:14.92]But elsewhere other hands were hard at work. [09:18.12] [09:18.28]The miracle-working priest was about to be challenged by the word of God itself, [09:23.52] [09:23.68]translated into English and printed in black and white. [09:28.76] [09:30.60]Hand-written English Bibles had been in circulation since the days of the Lollards, [09:35.28] [09:35.44]that Protestant heresy that flourished briefly in the early 1400s. [09:40.36] [09:40.52]But manuscripts represented hard labour and cost pounds to buy. [09:46.20] [09:46.36]A printed New Testament, on the other hand, could be mass-produced [09:50.36] [09:50.52]and sold for a tenth of the price. [09:54.15] [09:55.28]The idea of a Bible in English, cheap and freely available to anyone who could read, [10:00.48] [10:00.64]put the fear of God into the authorities. [10:04.60] [10:05.80]William Tyndale, an ordained priest, [10:08.68] [10:08.84]was the first to take on the dangerous task [10:11.20] [10:11.36]of translating, publishing and printing an English version of the New Testament. [10:17.71] [10:17.88]Tyndale is a recognisable historical type. [10:21.35] [10:21.52]Austere, steely, unswerving, even a little fanatical, [10:26.20] [10:26.36]and disarmingly clear in his own convictions. [10:29.52] [10:29.68]"It was not possible," he wrote, "to establish the laypeople in any truth [10:34.63] [10:34.80]"except the Scriptures were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue." [10:40.64] [10:43.96]In 1524, Tyndale fled London for mainland Europe, [10:48.04] [10:48.20]ending up in Worms in Germany, [10:50.40] [10:50.56]a city which had recently been made safely Protestant [10:53.92] [10:54.08]by its allegiance to the new radical doctrines of Martin Luther. [10:58.28] [10:58.44]Tyndale's English New Testament was completed there by January 1526, [11:03.68] [11:03.84]and within weeks copies were on sale in London. [11:07.96] [11:13.96]What followed was an English version of the Inquisition. [11:18.56] [11:29.60]Denunciations, arrests, book burnings, show trials. [11:36.08] [11:36.24]Those who recanted were forced to carry before them faggots of wood, [11:40.52] [11:40.68]symbols of the bonfire that would consume them if they ever lapsed again. [11:46.55] [11:47.64]And in 1530 symbolism gave way to gruesome reality [11:51.52] [11:51.68]when a priest named Thomas Hitton [11:53.68] [11:53.84]confessed to smuggling in a New Testament. [11:56.92] [11:57.08]Condemned as a heretic, he was burned at Maidstone on the 23rd of February. [12:02.16] [12:02.32]The Reformation had claimed its first victim. [12:06.60] [12:10.60]And cheering all this on from the sidelines [12:12.83] [12:13.00]was the king, Henry VIII, dutiful son of the Church, [12:17.24] [12:17.40]whose candle at Walsingham had been burning brightly for nearly 20 years. [12:23.00] [12:26.08]In the winter of 1530, as the fire was lit under the unfortunate Hitton, [12:31.00] [12:31.16]there was no reason to think that anything would ever change. [12:35.76] [12:35.92]To understand why it did, you have to understand something about Henry, [12:39.76] [12:39.92]the man who without ever really meaning to [12:42.68] [12:42.84]turned Catholic England into a Protestant nation. [12:46.68] [13:10.76]Well, for a start, he was never supposed to be king. [13:14.28] [13:14.44]But when his older brother Arthur died, [13:16.64] [13:16.80]Henry, aged 11, became heir apparent. [13:20.48] [13:20.64]He also acquired his brother's wife, the Spanish Catherine of Aragon. [13:25.64] [13:25.80]The marriage alliance between Spain and England [13:27.95] [13:28.12]was just too important to be allowed to lapse. [13:31.67] [13:32.44]In 1509, King Henry VII died, [13:36.15] [13:36.32]and his 17-year-old son came into his own. [13:40.40] [13:43.28]The young king was a spectacular sight. [13:45.84] [13:46.00]You could practically smell the testosterone. [13:48.88] [13:49.04]Any way and anywhere he could flash that burly energy, he did, [13:53.36] [13:53.52]in the saddle, on the dance floor or here on the tennis court, [13:56.76] [13:56.92]where a besotted courtier wrote of the king's skin, [14:00.44] [14:00.60]"glowing through the fabric of his finely woven shirt". [14:04.92] [14:06.48]Then there was the famous breezy charm, dispensed like the English weather - [14:10.40] [14:10.56]in sunny periods, alternating with cloudy spells and sudden bursts of heavy thunder. [14:16.12] [14:16.28]The charm was of the rib-poking, back-slapping, [14:19.16] [14:19.32]punch-in-the-belly- arm-around-the-shoulders kind, [14:21.55] [14:21.72]which, depending on the mood of the month, [14:23.72] [14:23.88]could betoken either sudden promotion or imminent arrest. [14:28.67] [14:28.84]Henry wallowed in the praise droolingly lavished on him [14:32.80] [14:32.96]by courtiers and ambassadors. [14:35.00] [14:35.16]Henry the gallant, Henry the handsome, Henry the clever, Henry the superstar. [14:39.68] [14:39.84]The only king to have his own personal band hired to go touring with him [14:44.16] [14:44.32]and featuring young Henry himself as lead singer/songwriter. [14:48.84] [14:54.64]Egged on by the Pope, who dangled before him the title of Defender of the Faith, [14:59.76] [14:59.92]Henry was determined to make a splashy debut on the European scene. [15:04.44] [15:04.60]He tried to get his Spanish father-in-law, King Ferdinand, [15:07.48] [15:07.64]to come in on joint ventures against their mutual enemy, King Louis of France. [15:12.43] [15:12.60]But when it came to snake-pit politics, Ferdinand was a real pro, [15:17.16] [15:17.32]shamelessly exploiting Henry's lust for glory, [15:20.28] [15:20.44]but failing to deliver on the promised armies. [15:23.68] [15:25.24]Henry pushed on without him [15:27.24] [15:27.40]and, in the summer of 1513, talked up a skirmish with French knights [15:31.48] [15:31.64]into a major victory called the Battle of the Spurs. [15:36.08] [15:38.84]Meanwhile, back home, Queen Catherine and her councillors [15:42.31] [15:42.48]managed a military victory of major importance at Flodden Field, [15:46.84] [15:47.00]which left the king of the Scots, James IV, and a dozen Scottish earls [15:51.44] [15:51.60]dead on the battlefield. [15:54.36] [15:55.80]But behind all this activity at home and abroad, [15:58.80] [15:58.96]keeping the army supplied, negotiating the treaties, channelling the king's energies [16:04.20] [16:04.36]was one of the greatest organisational brains of the age - [16:07.99] [16:08.16]Archbishop of York, soon to be Chancellor of England, Thomas Wolsey. [16:13.52] [16:14.76]Let's face it, if we could find one, we could all use a Wolsey, [16:18.84] [16:19.00]a Jeeves with an attitude, someone who comes to work every day and says, [16:23.08] [16:23.24]"And what would be your pleasure, Majesty?" and then goes off and does it. [16:27.03] [16:27.20]Oh, the occasional document will come sliding across the desk for signature, [16:31.20] [16:31.36]but nothing, really, to interrupt a hard day's hunt. [16:34.83] [16:35.00]Wolsey was a consummate manager, [16:37.80] [16:37.96]attentive to detail in both matters and men, [16:41.08] [16:41.24]someone who could stroke Parliament when that was necessary [16:44.32] [16:44.48]and who could bang heads together, even very aristocratic heads, [16:48.11] [16:48.28]when that was called for. [16:50.24] [16:50.40]He was a master manipulator [16:52.40] [16:52.56]of patronage, of honours, of bribes and of threats. [16:56.24] [16:56.40]In other words, he was a psychologist in a cardinal's hat. [17:01.24] [17:04.04]Wolsey also understood the relationship between display and power. [17:09.99] [17:11.72]He used it for his own ends here at Hampton Court, [17:15.03] [17:15.20]but he also used it for the king, [17:17.43] [17:17.60]acting as impresario for one of the greater shows in his career, [17:21.36] [17:21.52]the Field of the Cloth of Gold. [17:25.07] [17:28.68]The meeting in 1520 between Henry and the young French king, Francis I, [17:34.00] [17:34.16]was supposed to be a demonstration of heartfelt amity [17:37.79] [17:37.96]and a pointed message to the recently elected Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, [17:43.20] [17:43.36]that old enemies could, if needs be, become friends. [17:47.56] [17:47.72]But it came to war anyway, not with weapons, [17:50.72] [17:50.88]but something much more deadly - style. [17:55.12] [17:58.88]In the greatest transportation exercise seen since the campaigns of Edward III, [18:03.51] [18:03.68]Wolsey shipped over the entire ruling class of England. [18:07.44] [18:07.60]Earls, bishops, knights of the shire - 5,000 men, [18:11.48] [18:11.64]including, in a display of unconvincing humility, [18:14.68] [18:14.84]the Cardinal himself on muleback dressed in crimson velvet. [18:20.40] [18:21.28]Music played, wine ran red and white from fountains, [18:25.52] [18:25.68]a great deal of heron got eaten. [18:27.99] [18:28.16]The two kings spent hours trying on glamorous outfits [18:31.28] [18:31.44]that could be worn only once. [18:33.96] [18:34.12]They wrestled, not only with knotty problems of state, but with each other, [18:38.52] [18:38.68]the nimbler Francis at one point throwing Henry on his back. [18:42.39] [18:42.56]No doubt he laughed, no doubt he hated it. [18:46.48] [18:48.60]Somewhere in the middle of all this overdressed melee [18:51.32] [18:51.48]was a young English woman, [18:53.36] [18:53.52]a lady-in-waiting to Claude, the wife of the French king. [18:57.44] [18:57.60]This was the woman who would bring Wolsey's immense house of power [19:01.36] [19:01.52]crashing down in ruins [19:03.52] [19:03.68]and with it, inconceivably, the power of the Roman Church in England. [19:09.28] [19:09.44]Her name was Anne Boleyn. [19:12.64] [19:19.04]So much saccharine drivel has been written on the subject of Anne Boleyn, [19:23.36] [19:23.52]so many Hollywood movies made, [19:25.52] [19:25.68]so many bodice-buster romances produced [19:28.96] [19:29.12]that us serious historians are supposed to avert our gaze [19:32.72] [19:32.88]from the tragic soap opera of her life [19:35.64] [19:35.80]and concentrate on meaty stuff, [19:37.87] [19:38.04]like the social and political origins of the Reformation [19:41.92] [19:42.08]or the Tudor revolution in government. [19:44.72] [19:44.88]But try as we might, we keep coming back time and again to the subject of Anne, [19:49.72] [19:49.88]because on close inspection it turns out that she was, after all, [19:54.36] [19:54.52]historical prime cause number one. [19:56.80] [20:00.04]At the time of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, Anne would have been a teenager. [20:04.64] [20:04.80]She'd been away from England off and on since the age of 12, [20:08.00] [20:08.16]when her well-connected diplomat father, Thomas, [20:11.12] [20:11.28]arranged for her to become maid of honour to Margaret of Austria [20:14.80] [20:14.96]at one of her many courts, [20:17.40] [20:17.56]this one here at Mechelen in Flanders. [20:21.27] [20:24.76]Margaret was recognised as the world authority on courtly love, [20:28.84] [20:29.00]that theatrical form of aristocratic flirtation [20:31.92] [20:32.08]around which a whole culture had grown up. [20:35.71] [20:35.88]Desire endlessly deferred, sexual passion transfigured into pure selfless love, [20:41.72] [20:41.88]troubadours, masks, silk handkerchiefs, a lot of sighing. [20:46.72] [20:46.88]That was the theory anyway. [20:48.88] [20:49.04]While underneath the stage-managed surface, [20:51.19] [20:51.36]the old basic instincts seethed away. [20:55.68] [20:58.32]Anne returned to England in 1522, [21:01.20] [21:01.36]a sophisticated, accomplished, ambitious young woman with a mind of her own. [21:06.84] [21:12.80]Anne Boleyn entered the glittering, dangerous world [21:16.27] [21:16.44]of the Tudor court in her 20s. [21:18.83] [21:19.00]Physically she was no raving beauty, despite the long black hair and dark eyes, [21:25.11] [21:25.28]but she knew how to exploit her natural vivaciousness [21:29.40] [21:29.56]to play the game of courtly love for all it was worth. [21:34.04] [21:36.16]One of the first to fall was a man every bit as sophisticated as she was, [21:41.60] [21:41.76]Thomas Wyatt, the epitome of the Renaissance courtier. [21:45.80] [21:45.96]A soldier, a diplomat and, above all, a poet. [21:50.16] [21:50.32]His poems are heavy with the conventional lover's sighs, [21:54.44] [21:54.60]but in those apparently inspired by Anne the sighs come from the heart. [22:00.12] [22:00.28]Wyatt, unhappily married, realised he stood no chance with her, [22:04.99] [22:05.16]and in one of his famous poems compares himself [22:08.60] [22:08.76]to a hunter, vainly chasing a deer. [22:12.80] [22:15.60]Unable to divorce his wife, [22:18.28] [22:18.44]all that Wyatt could offer Anne was that she should become his mistress, [22:22.72] [22:22.88]not good enough for an ambitious girl on the make. [22:26.32] [22:26.48]And beside, there was another reason why Wyatt would never catch his hind, [22:30.84] [22:31.00]as his poem goes on to explain. [22:33.96] [22:34.12]"And graven with diamonds in letters plain [22:36.92] [22:37.08]"There is written her fair neck roundabout, 'nole me tangere' [22:41.64] [22:41.80]"For Caesar's I am and wild for to hold though I seem tame." [22:48.20] [22:48.36]"Nole me tangere" -do not touch, [22:51.40] [22:51.56]for Caesar, otherwise known as Henry VIII, [22:54.84] [22:55.00]had already committed himself to the chase, [22:57.76] [22:57.92]and the king, as we know, was an inexhaustible hunter. [23:02.60] [23:03.92]Henry really had to work hard to get Anne, harder than at any time in his life. [23:09.72] [23:09.88]The man who, as Wolsey could testify, hated writing letters [23:13.35] [23:13.52]wrote umpteen in his attempts to woo her. [23:17.40] [23:17.56]She represented everything Catherine of Aragon was not. [23:20.84] [23:21.00]Ten years younger, merry rather than pious, [23:24.16] [23:24.32]spirited rather than gravely deferential, [23:27.28] [23:27.44]Anne opened the way to sexual bliss, domestic happiness [23:31.07] [23:31.24]and, perhaps more important than any of these, the possibility of a son and heir. [23:36.88] [23:39.72]The estrangement between Catherine and Henry went back as far as 1511 [23:44.48] [23:44.64]and the death of their son Henry, [23:46.64] [23:46.80]who despite the offerings made at Walsingham lived only a few weeks. [23:51.48] [23:51.64]Catherine had gone on to produce a daughter, Mary, born in 1516. [23:56.76] [23:56.92]But Henry began to recoil from his queen. [24:00.04] [24:00.20]After more than 20 years, [24:02.20] [24:02.36]Henry had no legitimate male heir and no prospect of one. [24:06.52] [24:07.76]By the time that Anne came on the scene, [24:09.91] [24:10.08]Henry was convinced that his marriage to Catherine had been divinely cursed. [24:15.32] [24:15.48]The king was an assiduous reader of Scripture, [24:18.28] [24:18.44]and there must have been a sharp intake of breath [24:20.67] [24:20.84]every time he read Leviticus chapter 20, verse 21, [24:24.36] [24:24.52]in which God himself tells Moses, [24:26.80] [24:26.96]"If a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing... [24:31.08] [24:31.24]"...they shall be childless." [24:35.00] [24:36.48]Driven by his fear of dynastic extinction and his passion for Anne, [24:40.44] [24:40.60]who, as usual, refused to become his mistress, [24:43.36] [24:43.52]Henry seized on divorce as the answer to all of his problems. [24:48.52] [24:49.76]Henry wanted a papal annulment of the marriage on grounds of incest. [24:54.20] [24:54.36]But the Pope couldn't oblige, [24:56.36] [24:56.52]for in May 1527 the armies of the Emperor Charles V sacked Rome, [25:01.44] [25:01.60]and made Pope Clement a virtual prisoner. [25:04.40] [25:04.56]And Charles, who was Queen Catherine's nephew, [25:07.36] [25:07.52]wouldn't allow an annulment while he was in control. [25:11.76] [25:11.92]Wolsey was the first to be dragged under by this crisis. [25:15.60] [25:15.76]Henry had no use for a Mr Fixit who couldn't fix it, [25:19.04] [25:19.20]and Wolsey was quickly got rid of, ostensibly for fraud and corruption. [25:23.91] [25:24.08]Within a year, he was dead, charges of high treason still hanging over his head. [25:30.24] [25:31.72]It was Anne herself who, at some point in 1530, [25:35.27] [25:35.44]steered the whole problem in a radically new direction. [25:38.40] [25:38.56]She put literally into Henry's hands [25:40.95] [25:41.12]a little book that to her seemed not only fundamentally true, [25:44.36] [25:44.52]but also, given present circumstances, extremely useful. [25:49.39] [25:49.56]It was by that arch-propagandist William Tyndale, and it was called [25:53.60] [25:53.76]"The obedience of a Christian man and how Christian rulers ought to govern". [25:59.12] [26:00.32]Like all Tyndale's work it was a pungent read. [26:03.60] [26:03.76]"One king, one law, is God's ordnance in every realm," he wrote. [26:09.20] [26:09.36]In other words, the writ of the Bishop of Rome did not run in England. [26:15.23] [26:17.04]But Anne wasn't finished yet. [26:19.04] [26:19.20]With a typical mixture of conviction and self-interest, [26:21.67] [26:21.84]she got a think tank of theologians, including Thomas Cranmer, [26:25.52] [26:25.68]to come up with documents from the history of the early Church [26:29.07] [26:29.24]proving royal supremacy. [26:32.28] [26:33.48]The more he learnt about his supreme power, the better Henry liked it. [26:38.56] [26:38.72]It may have begun as a tactic in political intimidation, [26:42.11] [26:42.28]but now the royal supremacy seemed, on its own merits, a self-evident truth. [26:47.92] [26:48.08]You can almost hear him clapping his hand to his head and exclaiming, [26:51.52] [26:51.68]"How could I have been so dull as to have missed this?" [26:55.31] [26:59.76]Not surprisingly, then, around the summer of 1530, [27:03.36] [27:03.52]the telling word "imperial" begins to show up regularly in Henry's own remarks. [27:09.63] [27:09.80]Emperors, of course, acknowledge no superior on earth. [27:14.56] [27:14.72]Henry's ego, never exactly a modest part of his personality, [27:18.80] [27:18.96]now began to bloom to imperial proportions. [27:22.32] [27:22.48]And he got the palaces to house it, too, 50 of them before his reign was done. [27:27.96] [27:28.12]Some of the greatest and grandest had been Wolsey's, [27:31.04] [27:31.20]most notably Hampton Court, [27:33.24] [27:33.40]which now became the stage for the swaggering theatre of court life. [27:39.16] [27:42.84]Nothing measures the imperial scale of Henry's court better [27:47.68] [27:47.84]than the size of the space needed to feed its gut. [27:51.23] [27:51.40]Here at the kitchens at Hampton Court, 230 people were employed, [27:55.96] [27:56.12]servicing another 1,000 who every day were entitled to eat at the king's expense. [28:01.68] [28:03.36]Three vast larders for the meat alone. [28:06.04] [28:06.20]A specially designed wet larder for holding fish, [28:09.59] [28:09.76]supplied by water drawn from the fountains outside. [28:12.84] [28:13.00]Spiceries, fruiteries, six immense fireplaces. [28:17.24] [28:17.40]Three gargantuan cellars capable of holding the 300 casks of wine [28:22.40] [28:22.56]and the 600,000 gallons of ale downed each year by this court. [28:27.96] [28:28.12]And at the centre of it all, [28:30.16] [28:30.32]though carefully protected in the privy chamber from undue exhibition, [28:33.63] [28:33.80]was England's new Caesar - [28:35.87] [28:36.04]the king, at 40, colossal, autocratic, [28:40.20] [28:40.36]bestriding the realm with all the god-like power and authority [28:44.44] [28:44.60]of the Roman Caesars. [28:47.32] [28:49.68]And now inevitably, the Church, with its allegiance to Rome, [28:53.56] [28:53.72]found itself on the wrong side of a nasty argument. [28:57.51] [28:58.28]How they must have shivered at the Archbishop of Canterbury's palace in Lambeth [29:02.32] [29:02.48]when they heard Henry say of his bishops, [29:04.87] [29:05.04]"They be but half our subjects, yea, and scarce our subjects." [29:10.88] [29:14.52]The threat was clear and the capitulation inevitable. [29:18.12] [29:18.28]It came in the spring of 1532 with the so-called Submission of the Clergy, [29:23.76] [29:23.92]which conceded all of Henry's demands. [29:26.84] [29:27.00]From now on, the laws of the Church would be governed by the will of the king, [29:31.63] [29:31.80]and the king's will was clear: [29:34.16] [29:34.32]Divorce from Catherine, marriage to Anne, Princess Mary to be declared a bastard, [29:39.72] [29:39.88]recognition for the unborn child that by the spring of 1533 [29:44.48] [29:44.64]was already swelling Anne's belly. [29:47.76] [29:48.88]Anne was duly crowned at Westminster Abbey in May [29:52.27] [29:52.44]by a new Archbishop of Canterbury, [29:54.80] [29:54.96]the obliging Thomas Cranmer. [29:58.00] [30:05.20]So, a reformation of sorts, but not yet a Protestant reformation. [30:10.44] [30:10.60]The English Church may have broken from Rome, [30:12.83] [30:13.00]but no core doctrines had been touched. [30:15.60] [30:15.76]The real presence of Christ in the mass was preserved. [30:18.72] [30:18.88]Priests were still expected to be celibate. [30:20.95] [30:21.12]Prayers in the Bible were still in Latin. [30:23.96] [30:24.12]The beautiful stained glass at Fairford Church in Gloucester [30:27.64] [30:27.80]offended no official doctrines. [30:30.96] [30:31.84]And so things might have remained, but they didn't. [30:34.88] [30:35.04]To understand why, we need now [30:37.19] [30:37.36]to look at one of the most extraordinary working partnerships in British history, [30:41.68] [30:41.84]Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell, [30:45.23] [30:45.40]Wolsey's former enforcer and now Secretary of State. [30:50.52] [30:51.80]Here they are, then, the Tudor odd couple, [30:54.52] [30:54.68]on the frontispiece of an English Bible. [30:58.52] [30:59.36]You take away one, and the Reformation wouldn't have happened, [31:02.67] [31:02.84]at least not the way it did. [31:05.44] [31:05.60]Because they were like two pillars, theological on the left [31:08.68] [31:08.84]and the political on the right, with the king, triumphant, in the middle. [31:14.68] [31:14.84]Their agenda was always more radical than the king's. [31:18.31] [31:19.12]Cromwell's Protestantism [31:21.12] [31:21.28]was the product of the kind of anti-establishment killer instinct [31:24.20] [31:24.36]you might expect from a Putney clever Dick out to make a name for himself. [31:28.72] [31:28.88]Cranmer's convictions were more profound and thoughtful, [31:33.04] [31:33.20]but he too had strong personal reasons to side with the Reformers. [31:37.28] [31:37.44]Shortly before he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, [31:40.56] [31:40.76]Cranmer had secretly married a German woman, Margareta, [31:44.39] [31:44.56]thereby committing himself to one of Luther's most shocking innovations. [31:50.32] [31:51.92]Cranmer, like Cromwell, was devoted to the Renaissance idea [31:55.39] [31:55.56]of a strong prince in a strong Christian state. [31:59.72] [31:59.88]The people were going to be given their Bible from on high, [32:03.84] [32:04.00]authorised, and no other version was going to be tolerated. [32:07.84] [32:08.00]This picture of an orderly, even authoritarian Church of England [32:12.16] [32:12.32]is exactly what you see on the frontispiece of this Great Bible, [32:16.56] [32:16.72]officially commissioned by Thomas Cromwell and published in 1539. [32:21.75] [32:27.04]Thomas Cromwell is probably the least sentimental Englishman [32:30.96] [32:31.12]ever to run the country. [32:33.12] [32:33.28]He understood with a clarity that Henry could never quite manage [32:36.59] [32:36.76]that it would not be enough for the break with Rome to be proclaimed [32:40.00] [32:40.16]and then expect everyone to fall into line. [32:42.96] [32:43.12]He was anticipating a fight, and he was prepared to fight hard. [32:48.07] [32:49.96]Cromwell knew that sooner or later [32:51.96] [32:52.12]the Pope would throw his big gun into the battle - [32:54.96] [32:55.12]excommunication. And if the king was to win the war, [32:58.75] [32:58.92]he'd better fight back with something more or less novel in the language of politics, [33:03.16] [33:03.32]namely patriotism. [33:05.47] [33:05.64]The country had to be aroused to a new sense of its sovereignty, its potency. [33:10.59] [33:10.76]Demonise Rome as the foreigner, the alien, the enemy. [33:15.24] [33:18.96]To this engine of chauvinist propaganda, [33:21.56] [33:21.72]Cromwell added the necessary machinery of coercion. [33:25.64] [33:25.80]An oath had to be sworn recognising the royal supremacy, [33:29.68] [33:29.84]the legitimacy of the heirs of the king and Queen Anne, [33:32.80] [33:32.96]and the bastardisation of the Lady Mary. [33:36.75] [33:37.68]Insulting the new queen was treason, [33:39.96] [33:40.12]calling the king a schismatic or a heretic was treason. [33:43.59] [33:43.76]For the first time in English law, it was a crime just to say things. [33:49.36] [33:51.28]Cromwell managed to turn England into a frightened, snivelling, jumpy place [33:56.44] [33:56.60]where denunciation was a sanctimonious duty [34:00.31] [34:00.48]and countless petty little scores got settled by people who were protesting [34:04.92] [34:05.08]that they were just doing "the right thing". [34:08.55] [34:14.28]Nowhere in Cromwell's strong-arm regime [34:16.92] [34:17.08]did his shock troops seem to enjoy their work more thoroughly [34:20.28] [34:20.44]than in the visitations to the monasteries, [34:23.28] [34:23.44]done with lightning speed during the course of 1535 and early 1536. [34:30.12] [34:31.64]The uprooting of nearly 10,000 monks and nuns, [34:35.24] [34:35.40]the destruction of an entire ancient way of life [34:38.40] [34:38.56]had little to do with reforming zeal. [34:42.32] [34:45.92]When you look at Cromwell's flying squads up close and in action, [34:49.63] [34:49.80]you don't really get the impression of a bunch of men [34:51.84] [34:52.00]who thought of themselves as renovators. Wreckers, more likely. [34:56.20] [34:56.36]For one thing, they seemed to enjoy their work a bit too much. [34:59.91] [35:00.08]"I laid unto him a concealment of treason," [35:03.24] [35:03.40]wrote one of Cromwell's hit men to his chief about a prior he had at his mercy. [35:08.48] [35:08.64]"I called him heinous traitor in the worst terms I could devise, [35:13.59] [35:13.76]"and him all the time kneeling and making intercession unto me [35:18.08] [35:18.24]"not to utter to you the premises of his undoing." [35:22.52] [35:22.68]Such were the pleasures of reform. [35:25.60] [35:27.64]The property bonanza that followed the dissolution of the monasteries [35:31.24] [35:31.40]was on a scale no other English revolution ever approached. [35:36.16] [35:36.32]Abbeys like this one at Laycock were offered at bargain basement prices, [35:40.60] [35:40.76]and loyalty to the new order secured with bricks and mortar. [35:45.63] [35:45.80]The former residents were soon forgotten [35:48.19] [35:48.36]or reduced to delectable family legends of headless nuns and spectral monks. [35:54.92] [36:13.56]Let's call the next chapter of the story, "circa regna tonat" - [36:19.16] [36:19.32]around the throne the thunder roars. [36:23.36] [36:25.20]Thomas Wyatt used the line in a poem written in a cell in the Tower of London [36:30.40] [36:30.56]after he'd just witnessed the execution of five innocent men. [36:34.64] [36:34.80]A few days later, an innocent woman would also die. [36:38.64] [36:38.80]As you probably know, she was Anne Boleyn, [36:41.64] [36:41.80]and as you can probably guess, the author of this bloody drama [36:45.43] [36:45.60]was Thomas Cromwell. [36:47.99] [36:51.48]It wasn't the birth in 1533 of a baby girl, Elizabeth, that did for Anne. [36:57.51] [36:57.68]Henry was disappointed, but he didn't turn against his new wife. [37:02.08] [37:02.24]No, he laid his hand on the baby's head, [37:05.08] [37:05.24]recognising her as his legitimate daughter [37:08.04] [37:08.20]and hoped for better luck next time. [37:10.80] [37:11.80]18 months later, Anne was pregnant again. [37:16.00] [37:16.16]At the beginning of January 1536, more good news. [37:20.36] [37:20.52]Catherine of Aragon was dead. [37:23.04] [37:23.20]Henry was relieved. "God be praised," he said, [37:26.12] [37:26.28]"that we are free from all suspicion of war." [37:30.12] [37:32.44]Maybe it was at this point that the cogs and wheels of Cromwell's mind [37:36.92] [37:37.08]started to whirl. [37:39.08] [37:39.24]For Cromwell had decided to engineer a reconciliation [37:42.24] [37:42.40]between Henry and the Emperor Charles V. [37:45.64] [37:45.80]With the Emperor's Aunt Catherine now safely dead, [37:48.08] [37:48.24]the timing was perfect except for one thing - Anne. [37:54.08] [37:54.24]For the price of peace would doubtless include the relegitimising of Lady Mary, [37:58.80] [37:58.96]and to this Anne would never agree. [38:01.96] [38:02.12]Therefore, so Cromwell reasoned, Anne must go. [38:06.16] [38:08.84]On the 29th of January, Anne miscarried. [38:12.31] [38:12.48]Had the baby lived, it would have been a boy. [38:15.28] [38:15.44]The disaster seems to have reawakened Henry's darkest fears. [38:19.80] [38:19.96]"I see now that God will never give me a male heir," he told Anne. [38:24.88] [38:25.04]To one of his intimates he hinted that Anne had seduced him through witchcraft. [38:30.96] [38:31.12]Anne was defenceless. [38:33.12] [38:33.28]Cromwell moved against her with breathtaking speed and ferocity. [38:37.07] [38:37.24]From the decision to act, taken around Easter time 1536, [38:41.32] [38:41.48]to the first arrests, took just two weeks. [38:44.87] [38:45.04]Anne was doomed. [38:47.08] [38:50.48]What Cromwell now cooked up was a thing of pure devilry, [38:55.40] [38:55.56]a finely measured brew, one part paranoia, one part pornography. [39:00.40] [39:00.56]Moments of dalliance, nothing really untoward in a Renaissance court. [39:05.19] [39:05.36]A handkerchief dropped at a May Day tilt, not belonging to the king. [39:09.04] [39:09.20]A dance taken with a young man, also not the king. [39:13.40] [39:13.56]A blown kiss, a giggle. [39:15.56] [39:15.72]All these were twisted by Cromwell into a carnival of unholy, traitorous sex. [39:22.40] [39:24.52]The Queen, it seems, had had sex with just about everyone. [39:28.23] [39:28.40]She'd had sex with her court musician, she'd had sex with the Groom of the Stool, [39:33.24] [39:33.40]the most important courtier in the privy chamber. [39:36.00] [39:36.16]She'd had sex with the king's tennis partner, presumably between sets. [39:40.32] [39:40.48]She'd even had sex with her own brother. [39:43.52] [39:43.68]She had presided like some possessed Messalina [39:47.20] [39:47.36]over this diabolical orgy of treason, [39:50.52] [39:50.68]even perhaps conspiring to pass off the poisoned fruit of all this copulation [39:54.96] [39:55.12]as the royal heir. [39:57.04] [40:00.92]It was the confession of her musician, Mark Smeaton, extracted under torture, [40:06.00] [40:06.16]that supplied the fig leaf of legality for Cromwell's judicial murders. [40:11.32] [40:11.48]It was enough to send all five of Anne's so-called lovers to the block. [40:15.80] [40:15.96]Thomas Wyatt, swept up in a wave of arrests, but spared prosecution, [40:20.52] [40:20.68]saw them die, peering through a grating of his cell in the bell tower. [40:25.80] [40:27.76]"The bell tower showed me such a sight that in my head sticks day and night, [40:33.71] [40:33.88]"that did I learn out the grate, for all favour, glory or might, [40:38.64] [40:38.80]"that yet circa regna tonat." [40:43.56] [40:47.64]Two days later, it was Anne's turn. [40:51.19] [40:51.36]As a special privilege, [40:53.36] [40:53.52]an expert swordsman had been brought over from France to do the job. [40:57.52] [40:57.68]"I heard say the executioner is very good," Anne told the constable at the Tower. [41:02.55] [41:02.72]"And I have a little neck." [41:05.08] [41:05.24]And then she put her hands around her throat and burst out laughing. [41:09.36] [41:21.16]When news of Anne's execution reached Dover, [41:24.28] [41:24.44]it was said the candles in the town's church spontaneously ignited. [41:30.12] [41:31.68]For the vast majority of the country, [41:33.68] [41:33.84]which despite the break with Rome still regarded itself as Catholic, [41:38.24] [41:38.40]her death seemed like a long overdue judgement [41:41.52] [41:41.68]on those they called heretics and twopenny bookmen. [41:46.60] [41:53.72]Cromwell, meanwhile, stepped up his assault on the old religion [41:57.56] [41:57.72]with a series of fierce injunctions, enforcing royal supremacy [42:02.00] [42:02.16]and crushing the cult of saints and shrines. [42:06.04] [42:07.48]The Becket shrine in Canterbury, the richest in the land, [42:10.64] [42:10.80]was vandalised and ransacked. [42:13.92] [42:14.96]The following year, 1537, Henry, with a new wife, Jane Seymour, [42:19.80] [42:19.96]celebrated the longed for arrival of a son, Edward. [42:24.64] [42:25.72]But twelve days later, mourned the death of his new queen. [42:29.84] [42:32.84]At Walsingham, the statue of the Virgin was burned. [42:36.55] [42:36.72]Henry's account book for that year contains the following bald statement: [42:41.24] [42:41.40]"Payment for the king's great candle at Walsingham. [42:44.60] [42:44.76]"Salary for the abbot - nil." [42:48.52] [42:50.64]But then, a remarkable thing happened. [42:53.60] [42:53.76]The king decided enough was enough and tried to put the genie back in its bottle. [42:59.63] [42:59.80]An instinctive conservative, he'd been angered and alarmed by the passions [43:04.24] [43:04.40]that religious controversy had aroused. [43:06.52] [43:06.68]And he blamed the English Bible. [43:09.48] [43:09.64]Instead of being read quietly with silence, [43:12.32] [43:12.48]the Bible was now being bandied about in acrimonious disputes [43:16.48] [43:16.64]that raged in ale houses and taverns, [43:19.36] [43:19.52]the exact opposite of the respectful scenes [43:22.68] [43:22.84]promised in Cromwell's Great Bible. [43:25.80] [43:26.68]In 1543, a law was introduced restricting the reading of the Bible in English [43:31.60] [43:31.76]to churchmen, noblemen and gentry. [43:35.23] [43:35.40]For ordinary people who'd got used to the idea of an English-speaking God, [43:39.56] [43:39.72]this was a real deprivation. [43:42.28] [43:42.44]We get an inkling of that in a brief inscription [43:45.16] [43:45.32]written that year by an Oxfordshire shepherd [43:48.04] [43:48.20]on the flyleaf of a small religious tract. [43:51.32] [43:51.48]It reads, "I bought this book when the Testament was abrogated [43:55.72] [43:55.88]"that shepherds might not read it. [43:58.44] [43:58.60]"I pray God amend that blindness. [44:01.44] [44:01.60]"Written by Robert Williams, keeping sheep upon Saintbury Hill." [44:06.36] [44:12.40]By the time Williams wrote his prayer on his hillside, [44:15.44] [44:15.60]the course of reform in England had suffered major setbacks. [44:20.52] [44:20.68]In 1540, Cromwell had fallen, tossed to the executioner [44:25.76] [44:25.92]after his schemes for an alliance with Europe's Lutheran princes collapsed. [44:31.24] [44:32.12]Unfortunately for Cromwell, the Lutheran princess, Anne of Cleves, [44:36.60] [44:36.76]the mail-order bride he'd arranged for Henry, [44:39.32] [44:39.48]had turned out to be nowhere near as cute as Hans Holbein had painted her. [44:44.96] [44:48.32]By then, Parliament had enacted the six articles [44:51.60] [44:51.76]which under pain of death outlawed marriage for priests [44:55.20] [44:55.36]and reaffirmed the sanctity of the mass. [44:58.83] [45:00.72]To the dismay of the reformers, [45:02.72] [45:02.88]these core Catholic beliefs turned out to be Henry's, too. [45:07.28] [45:09.92]So Henry's final position on matters of religion was this: [45:13.96] [45:14.12]A national Church divorced from Rome, but remarried to the English crown, [45:19.56] [45:19.72]stripped of cults and shows, but still in essence Catholic. [45:24.20] [45:24.36]All things considered, [45:26.36] [45:26.52]Henry was pretty satisfied with the middle way he thought he'd found. [45:30.07] [45:30.24]Which is what we see in this massive picture from the studio of Hans Holbein. [45:34.68] [45:34.84]King Henry, all-powerful, all-knowing, [45:38.31] [45:38.48]the guardian and ruler of the temporal AND the spiritual realm. [45:43.92] [45:47.52]The munchkins grovelling at his feet are the Guild of Barber-Surgeons. [45:52.31] [45:52.48]They hail the king as the healer and a great physician, [45:55.52] [45:55.68]which is just how Henry liked to see himself in his final years - [45:59.36] [45:59.52]the Tudor medicine man who had laid the body of England on the operating table [46:04.55] [46:04.72]and cut out the cancers of popery and superstition. [46:08.80] [46:08.96]The patient was now fully recovered, the nation duly grateful, [46:12.56] [46:12.72]the operation a complete success. [46:16.00] [46:18.32]Except, of course, it wasn't, because after Henry would come Henry's children, [46:23.19] [46:23.36]each with their own idea of what was best for the country's health - [46:27.80] [46:27.96]Edward, the heir apparent, and his half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, [46:32.72] [46:32.88]both of whom were restored to the succession [46:35.08] [46:35.24]a few weeks before their father's death. [46:38.44] [46:39.16]Between them they covered the religious spectrum [46:41.16] [46:41.32]from hard-line Protestant to fanatical Catholic. [46:45.00] [46:45.16]And the road the country took after Henry, [46:47.31] [46:47.48]back to a Catholic past or forwards into a Protestant future, [46:51.40] [46:51.56]would depend, like never before, on the lottery of births, deaths and marriages. [46:58.08] [47:01.20]When Henry died in 1547, [47:03.80] [47:03.96]he left ?00 to pay for two priests to say prayers for his soul forever. [47:10.36] [47:11.84]You have to wonder how he apparently failed to notice [47:14.44] [47:14.60]that Edward had been educated by fervent Protestants [47:17.68] [47:17.84]who obviously had no time for such superstitious nonsense. [47:22.36] [47:25.04]Led by Thomas Cranmer, they saw the nine-year-old boy king [47:28.80] [47:28.96]as a new Josiah, [47:30.96] [47:31.12]the biblical king who had taken it as his mission to destroy idolatry. [47:36.40] [47:39.40]Now this would be the real Reformation. [47:42.79] [47:42.96]For just look what happened in the six years of Edward's reign. [47:46.35] [47:46.52]All the customs and ceremonies of the old Church, [47:49.44] [47:49.60]the blessing of candles at Candlemas and palms on Palm Sunday were banned. [47:54.92] [47:55.08]Away went the religious guilds and fraternities. [47:58.84] [47:59.00]The cults of saints that had survived Cromwell's attacks, [48:02.63] [48:02.80]along with their relics and their pilgrimages, were forbidden. [48:06.48] [48:06.64]And images, statues, stained-glass, paintings, [48:10.84] [48:11.00]were attacked with chisels and limewash. [48:14.68] [48:21.88]A new Book of Common Prayer required in all parishes for the first time [48:26.12] [48:26.28]brought English into the heart of the church service. [48:30.76] [48:30.92]To get a measure of the cultural revolution that took place, [48:34.71] [48:34.88]you need only come here to Hailes Church in Gloucestershire. [48:38.88] [48:43.28]Three years of state-sponsored iconoclasm have produced this. [48:48.23] [48:48.40]No more stone altar, just a user-friendly communion table. [48:54.67] [48:59.08]This whole arrangement is designed to abolish the distance [49:02.28] [49:02.44]between the priest and his flock. [49:04.75] [49:04.92]The screen which had been a barrier protecting the mystery of the mass [49:09.00] [49:09.16]is now just a way in to the communion, [49:12.08] [49:12.24]a gathering of the faithful along with their priest. [49:16.40] [49:18.32]As if all this wasn't shocking enough, [49:21.16] [49:21.32]imagine that some day in 1550, [49:24.32] [49:24.48]when, for the first time, the priest invited the congregation to partake of communion, [49:30.32] [49:30.48]using those English words never before heard in church, [49:34.76] [49:34.92]"dearly beloved". [49:37.44] [49:37.60]The familiarity of this must have made many of them squirm, [49:41.31] [49:41.48]rather like these days hearing a trendy vicar insist, "Call me Bob." [49:46.84] [49:48.68]This radical transformation wouldn't have been possible [49:51.88] [49:52.04]without the active support of Edward. [49:54.76] [49:54.92]While Edward led the Protestant state, resistance came close to home, [50:00.48] [50:00.64]as he recalls in his diary. [50:03.44] [50:03.60]The Lady Mary, my sister, came to me at Westminster, [50:07.23] [50:07.40]where after salutations she was called of my council into a chamber [50:11.76] [50:11.92]where it was declared how long I had suffered her mass. [50:15.44] [50:15.60]She answered that her soul was God's, and her faith she would not change. [50:19.96] [50:20.12]Nor would she dissemble her opinion with contrary doings. [50:23.91] [50:25.16]Edward's chronicle records one of several run-ins [50:28.16] [50:28.32]he and his councillors had with Mary. [50:30.55] [50:30.72]The mass had been outlawed since the Act of Uniformity in 1549, [50:35.08] [50:35.24]but Mary ignored the ban. [50:37.68] [50:37.84]Indeed, she increased her attendance to two, even three times a day. [50:42.87] [50:43.84]She may have had a martyr complex a mile wide, [50:46.76] [50:46.92]but Catholic Mary knew her challenge was simply to bide her time, [50:51.52] [50:51.68]to wait for Edward to die, preferably childless. [50:55.28] [50:55.44]And sure enough, in 1553, this is just what happened. [51:00.96] [51:06.68]And so England's first female ruler since Queen Matilda [51:10.39] [51:10.56]ascended the throne with just two aims in mind: [51:13.68] [51:13.84]To return England to its obedience to Rome, [51:16.31] [51:16.48]and to produce a Catholic male heir who would keep it that way. [51:21.64] [51:21.80]Mary's first aim was achieved with amazingly little resistance [51:25.00] [51:25.16]after it was made clear all those rolling acres [51:27.92] [51:28.08]and all real estate sold off during the dissolution of the monasteries [51:31.92] [51:32.08]would not be restored to the Church. [51:35.47] [51:36.36]In 1554, both Houses of Parliament, contrite as naughty children, [51:41.88] [51:42.04]knelt and asked forgiveness from the Pope's legate, Cardinal Poole, [51:46.24] [51:46.40]for all the anti-papal legislation passed since the 1530s. [51:51.16] [51:52.84]Orders went out for the repainting of churches, the carving of roods, [51:56.76] [51:56.92]the restoration of the Latin mass. [52:00.44] [52:00.60]Heretical England had been received back into the fold, [52:04.31] [52:04.48]had been forgiven by Mother Rome. [52:07.40] [52:11.72]But all this would be literally fruitless [52:14.60] [52:14.76]if Mary was unable to produce a good Roman Catholic heir. [52:19.76] [52:19.92]Her choice of husband was Philip II of Spain. [52:23.60] [52:23.76]To Mary, of course, this union had special personal meaning, [52:27.76] [52:27.92]the vindication of a long dead Spanish mother, Catherine of Aragon. [52:32.28] [52:32.44]If a Spanish Catholic marriage had been right for England then, [52:36.12] [52:36.28]then it should be right for England now. [52:39.20] [52:39.36]But that was 50 years ago. [52:41.36] [52:41.52]Much had been done that could not now be undone. [52:45.31] [52:50.48]A Catholic marriage now was not something that could be taken for granted. [52:56.00] [52:57.60]It now seemed a bad match. It seemed a foreign idea. [53:01.60] [53:01.76]The Queen is a Spaniard at heart, it was said, [53:04.76] [53:04.92]and loves another realm better than this. [53:08.00] [53:09.80]When Thomas Wyatt, the son of Anne Boleyn's old poetical admirer, [53:13.72] [53:13.88]led an army to the gates of London, he cast himself as a patriot, [53:18.36] [53:18.52]pledged, as he said, "to the avoidance of strangers". [53:22.68] [53:23.60]Xenophobia was not enough to dethrone Queen Mary. [53:26.80] [53:26.96]Wyatt's army melted away. [53:30.08] [53:38.68]Ecstatic that for the first time in her lonely life [53:41.76] [53:41.92]she had someone she could rely on, a Spanish consort, [53:45.76] [53:45.92]Mary set about the zealous work of cleansing her realm of the Protestant heresy, [53:51.24] [53:51.40]undoing Edward's reformation as completely as she could. [53:55.19] [53:55.36]By fire, if that's what it took to do the job properly, and it did. [54:00.80] [54:02.96]In three years, 220 men and 60 women were burned on Mary's bonfires. [54:10.00] [54:10.16]Some, like Archbishop Cranmer, were high-profile victims, [54:15.36] [54:15.52]but most were ordinary people, cloth workers and cutlers. [54:19.88] [54:22.12]And it wasn't just the literate who died. [54:24.72] [54:24.88]Rawlings White, a fisherman, paid for his son to go to school and learn to read, [54:30.04] [54:30.20]so the boy could then read the Bible to him each night after supper. [54:34.99] [54:35.16]Joan Waist of Derby, a poor blind woman, [54:38.12] [54:38.28]saved up for a New Testament and then paid people to read it to her. [54:44.31] [54:47.92]But all this was in vain, for Mary, like Edward, died childless, [54:53.16] [54:53.32]suffering frantically through two false pregnancies, [54:56.79] [54:56.96]the second a cancer of the womb. [54:59.96] [55:00.12]The resurrection of Catholic England was doomed. [55:04.48] [55:04.64]Anne Boleyn had triumphed from the grave over Catherine of Aragon, [55:08.24] [55:08.40]as her daughter, Elizabeth, would outlast Mary and undo all her pious hopes. [55:14.67] [55:21.00]Elizabeth cast herself as the healer, [55:23.60] [55:23.76]someone who would bring the violent pendulum swings of the religious war [55:27.44] [55:27.60]back to a calm and steady centre, [55:30.12] [55:30.28]a middle way between the courses chosen by her half-brother and her half-sister. [55:36.44] [55:41.52]She outlawed the mass and brought back the Book of Common Prayer, [55:45.48] [55:45.64]but she allowed and encouraged priests to remain celibate [55:49.27] [55:49.44]and was certainly in no hurry to abolish the Catholic calendar of saint's days. [55:55.39] [55:57.44]But if Elizabeth put out the fires of religious fanaticism, [56:00.88] [56:01.04]she lit them in the breasts of patriotic Englishmen and women. [56:05.88] [56:06.04]For as cautions as she was, Elizabeth couldn't help her reign being seen by many [56:10.83] [56:11.00]as the reinstatement of a truly English way. [56:15.00] [56:17.44]Under Elizabeth, Englishness was discovered, [56:20.36] [56:20.52]celebrated, shouted from the roof tops, [56:23.28] [56:23.44]and it was, above all, a Protestant Englishness. [56:27.04] [56:27.20]With hindsight, God must have meant this to happen all along. [56:32.48] [56:34.28]Now, Protestantism and patriotism were one and the same, [56:38.76] [56:38.92]and the history you've just seen, [56:41.07] [56:41.16]which at the outset had nothing to do with national identity, [56:44.55] [56:44.72]at the end became obsessed with it. [56:47.60] [56:47.72]And when the Pope offered to bless anyone who would assassinate Elizabeth, [56:51.80] [56:51.96]that bond only became stronger. [56:54.60] [56:54.76]Now Catholics would be forced to choose between their Church and their Queen. [57:00.16] [57:03.56]English Catholic priests trained in foreign seminaries [57:06.84] [57:07.00]would be smuggled into the country and end up either dead [57:10.20] [57:10.36]or in hiding with Catholic families who were rich and powerful enough to protect them. [57:16.23] [57:21.52]So if we ask ourselves the question we asked at the beginning of the programme, [57:26.15] [57:26.32]"Whatever happened to Catholic England?" [57:29.24] [57:29.40]The answer is that it ended up down here, [57:32.68] [57:32.84]in a priest-hole, like this one at Sawston Hall outside Cambridge. [57:38.40] [57:38.56]The splendour of Long Melford reduced to a cloak-and-dagger church. [57:44.36] [57:49.76]For the Catholics of Elizabeth's England [57:52.23] [57:52.40]the retreat of the priesthood to the country house [57:54.87] [57:55.04]would be a final disaster. [57:57.84] [57:58.00]What was once the national Church would become a faith on the run. [58:03.48] [58:06.00]The End! [58:51.48]

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