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Stress, Faction and Ideology in Early-Tudor England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

E. W. Ives
E. W. Ives
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Type
Review Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 193 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 Specific chapters are devoted to Barclay, Erasmus (Praise of Folly), Hawes, More, Skelton, Surrey, Wyatt and to the drama.

2 Walker, G., John Skelton and the politics of the 1520s (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 16–23Google Scholar. Fox points out that Walker's argument that the Howard allusions date from 1495 requires Skelton still to complete the text in 1522–3 and hence to publish references apparendy to living patrons which actually applied to deceased namesakes 30 years earlier.

3 Fox does not deal with Walker's pregnant identification of ‘maister Newton’ (ibid. p. 20), although the latter's suggestion that the expression ‘to have owt a pardon’ refers to illuminating a manuscript is far-fetched.

4 E.g. Fox associates Godley Queene Hester with Katherine Howard but a paper by Dr Walker associating the play with Wolsey is in the press. There is also a danger that once a text is assigned to a context, the context is interpreted in the light of the text.

5 For the above see Ives, E. W., Anne Boleyn (Oxford, 1986), pp. 83–99Google Scholar (hereafter, ‘Ives 1986/I’). Fox appears to ignore the problem of the canon, Wyatt, e.g. ‘That time that myrthe dyd stere my shypp’ (p. 258Google Scholar, n. 5) is probably not by Wyatt (ibid. p. 89).

6 Ibid. pp. 6–11.

7 Note also that the correct acknowledgements for the plates are: 1 = 2, 2 = 3, 3 = 4, 4 = 6, 6 = 8, 8 = 9, 9 = 10, 10 = 11, 11 = 12, 12 = 14, 14 = 15, 15 = 16, 16 = 17; no plate 17; 2, 5, 7 and 13 as printed. Plate 14 is not Anne Boleyn (ibid. p. 53). Plate 15 was not owned by Henry VIII and hence has no relevance to Wyatt's poem ‘Who so liste to hounte’ (Rowlands, J., Holbein (Oxford, 1985), p. 130)Google Scholar. Wyatt is unlikely to have seen the execution of Anne Boleyn (Fox, p. 267); the cells in the Bell Tower overlook Tower Hill, so that the poem ‘Who lyst his welthe and eas Retayne’ probably refers to the deaths of her ‘lovers’.

8 Warnicke, R. M., The rise and fall of Anne Boleyn, pp. 67–8, 252–3 (hereafter ‘Warnicke 1989’)Google Scholar; Wyatt, Thomas, Collected poems, ed. Daalder, J. (Oxford, 1975), p. 90Google Scholar; the first line of the poem, given by Warnicke as ‘is sodayne’, should read ‘if’.

9 Ives 1986/1, pp. 83–99.

10 For a detailed discussion of evidence in Wyatt's poetry of a supposed relationship with Anne Boleyn, see ibid. pp. 88–93.

11 For this see ibid. p. 17, n. 51, and Gairdner, J., ‘Mary and Anne Boleyn’, in English Historical Review, VII (1983), 54Google Scholar, n. 2.

12 Paget, H., ‘The youth of Anne Boleyn’, in Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, LIV (1981), 162–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 E.g. Francis I's complaint when Anne was recalled in 1521, Ives 1986/1, p. 40.

14 Warnicke, R. M., ‘Anne Boleyn's childhood and adolescence’, Historical Journal, XXVIII (1985), 942 (hereafter‘Warnicke 1985/1’)Google Scholar, suggests that Henry Clifford's biography of Jane Dormer provides ‘corroborative but independent evidence’ for Camden's date. Clifford wrote in 1643; Jane Dormer, his source, was born in 1538 and therefore could only have passed on second-hand stories, very probably from Marian Catholic sources.

15 Paget, , ‘The youth of Anne Boleyn’, p. 165, n. 21Google Scholar.

16 That young children were sent to Margaret (Warnicke, 1989, p. 12) is beside the point.

17 Gairdner was obviously correct to say that ‘the handwriting…is too firm to be that of a very young child’: Gairdner, , ‘Mary and Anne’, p. 56Google Scholar.

18 Warnicke 1985/1, p. 948. A further problem arises over Anne's position in the Boleyn family. Warnicke 1989, p. 9 (declining to accept the implications Gairdner drew from dating Anne's birth in 1507: Gairdner, , ‘Mary and Anne’, pp. 57–8)Google Scholar, claims that an elder daughter must have had priority in being accepted at the Habsburg court and hence that Mary Boleyn was the younger sister, born c. 1508. This requires the rejection of the French record of payment to Marie Boulonne as one of the entourage accompanying Mary Tudor to France in 1514 (a double scribal error is suggested: ibid. p. 261, n. 32; Ives 1986/1, p. 33), and also of the specific references to her grandson, Lord Hunsdon, to Thomas Boleyn's ‘eldest daughter Marye’ and to Elizabeth I being ‘daughter and heire of Anne yongest daughter of Thomas (Round, J. H., The early life of Anne Boleyn (1896), p. 18)Google Scholar. That Mary was the senior was, of course, the essence of the claim Hunsdon was advancing to the earldom of Ormonde. One may also note that if born in 1508, Mary Boleyn would have been eleven or perhaps just twelve years old when married in February 1520.

19 Warnicke, R. M., ‘The fall of Anne Boleyn: a reassessment’, in History, LXX (1985), 1–15 (hereafter ‘Warnicke 1985/2’)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This largely derivative article (which does nevertheless make the valuable point about the importance of the Seymours in 1536) is disavowed in the final footnote (Warwicke 1989, p. 240, n. 20).

20 ‘denying the antecedent’.

21 Correspondance du Cardinal Jean du Bellay, ed. Scheurer, R. (Paris, 1969)Google Scholar. Warnicke is particularly and uniformly dismissive of the value of Chapuys' reports. He is presented throughout as a victim of official disinformation and the analysis of his sources (p. 2) conspicuously ignores the private contacts which he built up and which, with his evident critical acumen, made him an outstanding ambassador: Mattingly, G., ‘A humanist ambassador’, in Journal of Modern History, IV (1932), 75–85Google Scholar.

22 Warnicke 1989, pp. 139, 140, 160; note also: ‘political faction(s)’ (pp. 135, 142, 154, 158); ‘opposing parties’ (p. 135); ‘she and Cromwell formed a faction at court with the goal of increasing the number of reformist clergy’ (p. 158); ‘a faction with a well-developed religious policy’ (p. 159); ‘forming a faction to recruit reformers’ (p. 162).

23 Cf. the argument that because Anne and Cromwell each exercised independent patronage as well as routing applicants to the other, there was no factional link (pp. 136–40).

24 Elton, G. R., ‘Tudor government: the points of contact, (iii) the Court’, in Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. 5th ser., XXVI (1976), 226–7Google Scholar, rightly argued that any model of faction must make room for ideology. But since policy was what the king willed, there were strict limitations on how overt or precise advocacy of ideology could be, beyond such ‘code words’ as ‘the gospel’ or ‘catholic’. Hence policy debates were largely conducted and resolved in terms of people, e.g. Anne promoted evangelical reform principally in terms of promoting reforming clerics. ‘However much ideas or policies are involved…the emphasis is on the advancement of such concerns by the advancing of people’: Ives, E. W., Faction in Tudor England (2nd edn, 1986), p. 6 (hereafter ‘Ives 1986/2’)Google Scholar.

25 Note that, despite the above, Warnicke 1989 does admit faction in the fall of Wolsey, : ‘the faction that opposed him materialized in relation to the event and not before it happened’ (p. 88)Google Scholar.

26 Neale, J. E., ‘The Elizabethan political scene’, in Proceedings of the British Academy, XXXIV (1948), 97–117Google Scholar; Elton, G. R., ‘Thomas Cromwell's decline and fall’, Cambridge Historical Journal, X (1951), 150–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Ives, E. W., ‘Faction at the court of Henry VIII: the fall of Anne Boleyn’, History, LVII (1972), 186–7 (hereafter ‘Ives 1972’)Google Scholar.

28 Warnicke 1989, p. 299, repeats the misunderstanding in Warnicke, 1985/2, pp. 13–14, about Bryan's change of face in May 1536. This arises from a failure to realize that Bryan was interrogated twice in 1536 – once at the time of Anne's fall and again on the question of Mary's title, apparently in the summer. The deposition of the abbot of Woburn makes it quite clear that the ‘marvellous peremptory summons’ to Bryan was at the time of Anne's fall, that Cromwell found nothing incriminating (‘nothing in me’) and that Bryan was then allowed access to Henry (BL, Cott. MS Cleo. E iv, fos. 109v–110; Ives 1986, p. 372). Bryan's deposition on Mary's title is undated (the date 14 June given in Warnicke 1985/2, p. 14, refers to the deposition of Antony Browne.

29 Cf. the preference of G.W.Bernard, ‘Politics and government in Tudor England’, Historical Journal, XXXI (1988), 159 ff.Google Scholar, for questions rather than attempting answers.

30 The suggestion that factions were not a ‘generic form of human social and political organisation’ (Ives 1986/2, pp. 5–12) but formed in response to perceived vacillations in royal favour (e.g. above n. 25) is inadequate because it implies that Tudor politics were without stability or ideas (see above, n. 24). But coalitions or ‘grand factions’ could be responses to perceived royal attitudes (Ives 1972, pp. 175, 179–81).

31 Cf. the naïve scenario advanced in Gwyn, P., The king's cardinal (1990)Google Scholar, of a minister advanced on merit by a wise sovereign and accepted on both counts by nobles and courtiers.

32 But it does not follow that miscarriage was proof of either. A good deal of the evidence is post Henrician and/or continental.

33 Note that the trial caused discussion of the king's sexual potency (Ives 1986/1, p. 238).

34 Cat. S.P. Span., 1536–38, pp. 17–18, 39–40; L. & P. x. 429, 282. That 3 March is the correct date is evident by the contents of the letter (cf. ibid. X. 410).

35 Ives 1972, p. 171. Warnicke 1989, p. 222, understands this ‘to mean that although he was not guilty of the crimes for which he was to die he had committed offences for which he did deserve death’, but see the comment on Rochford at n. 40 below.

36 ‘Brereton farewell, as one that least I knew.

Great was thy love with divers as I hear,

But common voice doth not so sore thee rue

As other twain that doth before appear;

[Norris and Weston]

But yet no doubt but thy friends thee lament.’

Wyatt, , Complete poems, p. 192Google Scholar.

37 Ives 1972, p. 171.

38 Cavendish wrote 46 stanzas dealing with Anne and each of her ‘lovers’ in turn; nowhere is there any hint of homosexuality or witchcraft: The life of Cardinal Wolsey and metrical visions, ed. Singer, S. W. (1825), pp. 20–46Google Scholar; the same is true of accounts of the trials, formal and informal: Wriothesley, Charles, Chronicle, ed. Hamilton, W. D., Camden Soc., new ser. 11 (1875), 198–226Google Scholar; Ives 1986/1, pp. 364–400.

39 Ives 1986/1, pp. 391–2, especially the Portuguese translation of an Italian account, in Excerpta historica, ed. Bentley, S. (1831), p. 262Google Scholar.

40 Chapman, H. W., Lady Jane Grey (1962), p. 205Google Scholar. It is also the case that if they were innocent of the crimes alleged, Rochford etc., could only make the expected confession of sin and die ‘Christian’, by uttering generalities.

41 BL, Royal MS 20 Bxxi.

42 ‘male, three-and-a-half-months’: above n. 34; ‘three daies before Candlemas [30 Jan.]…a man chield…fiftene weekes’; Wriothesley, , Chronicle, p. 33Google Scholar; ‘February…a childe…borne dead’: Hall, Edward, The union of…York and Lancaster, ed. Ellis, H. (1809), p. 818Google Scholar.

43 BL, Sloane MS 2495: ‘The Lyfe of Kinge Henrie the 8th’; Forrest, William, History of Griselda the Second, ed. Macray, M. D. (Roxburghe club, 1875)Google Scholar; Harpsfield, Nicholas, A treatise on the pretended divorce, ed. Pocock, N., Camden Soc., 2nd ser. 21 (1878)Google Scholar, and The life and death of Sir Thomas More, ed. Hitchcock, E. V. and Chambers, R. W., Early English Text Soc. 186 (1932)Google Scholar.

44 Cronica del Rey Enrico Otava de Inglaterra, ed. de Molins, Marquis (Madrid 1874), trans. Hume, M. A. S. (1889)Google Scholar; ‘Regretz que Messire Millort de Rochefort…feist sur I'escharffault’, in Ascoli, G., La Grande Bretagne devant l'opinion française (Paris, 1927), pp. 274–8Google Scholar; Thomas, William, The Pilgrim, ed. Froude, J. A. (1861)Google Scholar; ‘William Latymer's Chronickille’, ed. Dowling, M., in Camden Miscellany, XXX (Camden Soc. 4, ser. 39, 1990), 39–41Google Scholar.

45 Nicolai Sanderi de origine ac progressu schismatis anglicani liber, ed. Rishton, E. (Cologne, 1585), trans. Lewis, D. (1877)Google Scholar.

46 Warnicke, R. M., ‘Sexual heresy at the court of Henry VIII’, Historical Journal, XXX (1987), 248, n. 4Google Scholar.

47 Without a defective foetus there is no basis for crediting any undercurrent of witchcraft allegation in Anne's fall. The only reference to the occult throughout is Henry's remark (reported 29 January 1536), ‘qu'il avoit faict ce mariaige seduict et contrainct de sortileges’: Friedmann, P., Anne Boleyn (1884), II, 203Google Scholar. Sortilège usually means ‘charm’, not witchcraft. Henry's accusation was perhaps a masculine commonplace; see Richard III's claims that the marriage of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville was made ‘by Sorcerie and Wichecrafte’: Rotuli Parliamentorum (1783), VI, 241.

48 Among other errors, readers should especially note (i) the uncertain handling of religion and religious books; (ii) the perverse construction of letters, e.g. Sampson's 1527 letter (p. 62) (which refers to Katherine, not Anne), Chapuys' account of 18 April 1536 (pp. 208–10) (when protocol known to have upset Mary's supporters is interpreted as Henry using protocol to snub Anne), and Baynton's 1536 letter [p. 201]; (iii) that the hypothesis about the stealing of Henry VIII's letters to Anne [pp. 76–7] is wholly improbable (why, if they were stolen and sent to Rome, were they not cited ?); (iv) that since Henry applied in August 1527 for a dispensation to marry Anne, a letter expressing uncertainty about their relationship cannot be 1528 (p. 78), and hence the phrase ‘above one whole year struck with the dart of love’ must date his first attraction to her to 1526.

49 Thornley, I., ‘The transformation of London’, in Tudor Studies, ed. Seton-Watson, R. W. (1924), p. 287Google Scholar.

50 Haigh, C., ‘The recent historiography of the English Reformation’, in Historical Journal, XXV (1982), 995–1007CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5l Knecht, R. J., Francis I (1982), pp. 249–52Google Scholar.

52 Brigden notes the unwillingness of Londoners to inform on their neighbours.

53 Brigden sees ‘the true anticlericalism’ as ‘antisacerdotalism’ (p. 68), but that would exclude the parliamentary agitations of 1512, 1515, 1529 and 1532 and the efforts of the courts to discipline the clergy: Spelman, John, Reports, ed. Baker, J. A., Selden Soc. 94 (1978), 64–70, 326–46Google Scholar.

54 Note also that London ordinations had declined by 25 per cent before 1530 and by 80 per cent under Stokesley, , ‘a Bishop who might have kept London Catholic’ (pp. 308, 392)Google Scholar.

55 In addition to the qualifications Brigden makes at page 29; cf. scaffold speeches.