When Henry VIII acceded to the throne of
England in 1509, he embodied the fond hopes of his people. He sought
to distinguish himself as a monarch in a European theater that
was still very medieval in its forms and characters. When Henry
died in 1547, he left to his son, the boy-king Edward VI, a bitter,
bloodstained realm increasingly torn by religious strife. By that
time, England was gaining new prominence as a constitutional monarchy
in an altered European theater freshly divided by the Protestant
Reformation and by the wars between France and the Holy Roman Empire
of Charles V–a Europe which was in the first throes of its political
and cultural modernity.
Henry VIII's reign, in some respects, marks England's
transition from a medieval to a modern nation. This is particularly
evident in the political changes resulting from Henry's policies
during and after his break with the Roman Catholic Church. This
break represented England's maturity into a wholly independent,
sovereign nation-state. Also, though Parliament's significance
was overshadowed at the time by Henry's domineering personality,
the break with Rome was crucial for the establishment of England's
constitutional monarchy. Henry's revolutionary claims – among them
that he was the Supreme Head on Earth of the Church of England
– needed the support of Parliament to become a political reality. Henry
received this support, laying down constitutional foundations that
set England apart from monarchies such as France and Spain, which
tended more toward royal absolutism.
The unique political situation of Henry's England made
his country's religious reformation similarly unique. Perhaps unwittingly,
Henry catalyzed a reformation of religious doctrine with his schism
from Rome. Like the great majority of his traditionally pious subjects,
Henry remained committed to a doctrinal orthodoxy very much in
line with the teachings of the outlawed Roman Church. It was the
political and legal domination of the Papacy he expelled from England
by naming himself Supreme Head of the Church. It was never his
intention to expel orthodox teachings on matters such as Transubstantiation.
Henry's violent persecutions of Protestants testifies as much.
At the same time, Henry's policies, secured a bright future for
Protestantism in England, though the Church establishment would
remain very traditional in form.
Outside England, the Reformation took a much more visibly partisan
shape with the arrival of Martin Luther's dramatic reform movement
in 1519 and the subsequent splintering of northern Europe into
a confused battleground for religious warfare. During the decades
of Henry's reign, England's relations with the various European
powers were likewise confused. In the early 1520s, Henry was a
staunch opponent of Lutheranism as well as an opponent of French
encroachments on Papal lands in Italy. In those years, he fought
alongside the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Charles, the young
Habsburg nephew of Catherine of Aragon, had inherited the crowns
of Spain, Austria, and Burgundy along with his 1519 election to
the imperial seat by the German princes and other magnates. This
situation greatly tipped the scales of the European balance of power,
and while Henry was quick to ally himself with Charles against
France in 1522, he reversed this alliance entirely in 1528 to fight
alongside the French King Francois I against an imperial power
which rejected Henry's desires to divorce Queen Catherine. After
the English break with Rome had established its irreversible course,
Henry switched his foreign policy once again near the end of his
reign, invading France in 1544 after forming another alliance with
Charles V, who was also occupied with fitful struggles against the
Lutheran princes of his German domains.
Amidst these major political and religious changes, Henry's England
saw significant social and economic changes, such as the weakening
of old feudal institutions under the slow but sure strengthening
of a national government in London. The break-up of the Catholic
Church's vast landholdings had the effect of strengthening the
landed aristocracy and binding up its fortunes more closely with
the fate of the national government. Henry also oversaw during his
reign increased efforts to enclose public lands along with increased
taxation to finance his wars in Europe, policies which often turned
commoners' opinions against the Crown. Early sixteenth-century
England also saw a gradual expansion of the merchant classes, forecasting
the burgeoning of the middle class and town life which would characterize
a later era in England.
Medieval legal and social institutions throughout the
realm were overwhelmingly stabile and persistent. Henry's England
was in a great period of transition, but the protection of the
English common law heritage, a formally orthodox Church establishment,
and a centuries-old spirit of national independence is a less conspicuous but
very crucial aspect of the story.
