The New World (Complete Edition). Winston Churchill

Deeply religious, Henry regularly listened to sermons lasting between one and two hours, and wrote more than one theological treatise of a high standard. He was accustomed to hear five Masses on Church days, and three on other days, served the priest at Mass himself, was never deprived of holy bread and holy water on Sunday, and always did penance on Good Friday. His zeal in theological controversy earned him from the Pope the title of “Defender of the Faith”. An indefatigable worker, he digested a mass of dispatches, memoranda, and plans each day without the help of his secretary. He wrote verses and composed music. Profoundly secretive in public business, he chose as his advisers men for the most part of the meanest origin: Thomas Wolsey, the son of a poor and rascally butcher of Ipswich, whose name appears on the borough records for selling meat unfit for human consumption; Thomas Cromwell, a small attorney; Thomas Cranmer, an obscure lecturer in divinity. Like his father he distrusted the hereditary nobility, preferring the discreet counsel of men without a wide circle of friends.

      Early in his reign he declared, “I will not allow anyone to have it in his power to govern me.” As time passed his wilfulness hardened and his temper worsened. His rages were terrible to behold. There was no noble head in the country, he once said, “but he would make it fly”, if his will were crossed. Many heads were indeed to fly in his thirty-eight years on the throne. This enormous man was the nightmare of his advisers. Once a scheme was fixed in his mind he could seldom be turned from it; resistance only made him more stubborn; and, once embarked, he always tended to go too far unless restrained. Although he prided himself on his tolerance of any expression of opinion by his advisers, however outspoken, it was usually unwise to continue to oppose him after he had made up his mind. “His Highness”, as Sir Thomas More put it to Wolsey, “esteemeth nothing in counsel more perilous than one to persevere in the maintenance of his advice because he hath once given it.” The only secret of managing him, both Wolsey and Cromwell disclosed after they had fallen, was to see that dangerous ideas were not permitted to reach him. But arrangements of this sort could not be complete. His habit was to talk to all classes—barbers, huntsmen, his “yeoman cook to the King’s mouth”—and particularly anyone, however humble, connected with the sea, to ferret out opinions, and ride off on hunting expeditions which sometimes lasted for weeks. He showed himself everywhere. Each summer he went on progress through the country, keeping close to the mass of his subjects, whom he understood so well.

      Almost his first act, six weeks after the death of his father in 1509, was to marry his brother Arthur’s widow, Princess Catherine of Aragon. He was aged eighteen and she was five years and five months older. She had made great efforts to fascinate him, and succeeded so well that while Ferdinand and Henry VII had made plans for the match long beforehand, and had obtained from the Pope a dispensation for a marriage within the degrees of affinity prohibited by the Church, there can be no doubt that Henry was eager to complete the proceedings. Catherine was at Henry’s side during the first twenty-two years of his reign, while England was becoming a force in European affairs, perilous for foreign rulers to ignore. Until she reached the age of thirty-eight she remained, apart from three or four short lapses, the mistress of his affections, restrained his follies, and in her narrow way helped to guide public affairs between the intervals of her numerous confinements. Henry settled down to married life very quickly, in spite of a series of misfortunes which would have daunted a less robust character. The Queen’s first baby was born dead, just after Henry’s nineteenth birthday; another died soon after birth a year later. In all there were to be five such disappointments.

      The King continued the standing alliance with his father-in-law, Ferdinand of Aragon, which had brought honour and wealth to England. He supported the Pope, and was sent the Golden Rose, the highest distinction which could be conferred on any Christian prince. He deliberated with his father’s grave counsellors—William Warham, Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury; Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester; Thomas Ruthal, Bishop of Durham and royal Secretary—and under their guidance pursued for a short time the policy which his father had always favoured—isolation, provided that France continued to pay tribute. But Henry was on the edge of the vortex of Europe’s new politics. Should he plunge in? The richest cities of Europe had changed hands many times during the last few years, paying tribute on each occasion. Frontiers were altering almost from month to month. Ferdinand of Aragon, Catherine’s father, had conquered the Kingdom of Naples, and the two French border provinces of Cerdagne and Roussillon. Other princes had done nearly as well. Amid the alluring vistas of conquest which opened up before Henry his father’s aged counsellors remained obstinately men of peace. Henry VII had only once sent English levies abroad, preferring to hire mercenaries who fought alongside foreign armies. Henry VIII now determined that this policy should be reversed.

      For some time he had been watching Dean Wolsey of Lincoln, a discovery of the Marquis of Dorset, whose sons had been to Magdalen College School at Oxford when Wolsey was the master there. Dorset had liked Wolsey well enough to invite him to stay for the Christmas holidays, and had provided him with several livings. The young priest then obtained a post as chaplain to the Governor of Calais. Besides academic learning Wolsey possessed a remarkable aptitude for negotiation and finance—he had been bursar of Magdalen College and Henry VII, sensing his abilities, had taken him over from the Governor and employed him on minor official business abroad. He was promoted by Henry VIII to the Council Board in November 1509, with the office of almoner to the royal household. He was then aged thirty-six. Two years later Wolsey’s growing influence may be perceived in the decision to join the Holy League against France, for it was in the same week that Wolsey signed his first documents as an executive member of the Council. He was put in charge of preparations for the war, and his former pupil, the young Marquis of Dorset, was Commander-in-Chief. France was preoccupied with Italian adventures, and Henry planned to reconquer Bordeaux, lost sixty years before, while King Ferdinand invaded Navarre, an independent kingdom lying athwart the Pyrenees, and the Pope and the republic of Venice operated against the French armies in Italy. The year was 1512, and this was the first time since the Hundred Years War that an English army had campaigned in Europe.

      The English expedition to Gascony failed. Ferdinand took the whole of Navarre, and, according to Dr William Knight, the senior English Ambassador in Spain, showed great zeal, passing his cannon across the Pyrenees and inviting the English to join him in operations against France. But the English found that the style of warfare they had learned in the Wars of the Roses, with long-bows and ponderously armed mounted men, had become obsolete on the Continent. Both Ferdinand and the French employed professional infantry, Swiss and Austrian, who advanced at a great pace in solid squares with eighteen-foot pikes bristling in every direction. The primitive firearms of the day, known as arque buses, were too heavy and slow-firing to inflict serious damage on these fast-moving squares. Ferdinand sent a great deal of military advice to Henry, and suggested that he should use his gathered wealth to procure an overwhelming professional force of his own. But, before Henry could adopt this plan, Dorset’s army, as unaccustomed to Gascon wine as to French tactics, and ravaged by dysentery, disintegrated. The troops refused to obey their officers and boarded the transports for home. Dorset abandoned a fruitless campaign and followed them. After negotiations lasting throughout the winter of 1512–13 Ferdinand and the Venetians deserted Henry and the Pope and made peace with France. The Holy League, they concluded, although high-sounding in name, had proved futile as a political combination.

      In England the responsibility for these failures was cast on the new adviser, Wolsey. In fact it was in the hard work of administration necessitated by the war that he had first shown his abilities and immense energy. The lay members of the Council however had from the beginning opposed a war policy managed by a priest and had intrigued to get rid of him. But Henry VIII and the Pope never wavered. Pope Julius II, who had been besieged by a French force in Rome, had excommunicated the entire French army, and now grew a beard, an adornment then out of fashion, and swore he would not shave until he was revenged on the King of France. Henry, not to be outdone, also grew a beard. It was auburn, like his hair. He arranged to hire the Emperor Maximilian, with the Imperial artillery and the greater part of the Austrian army, to serve under the royal standard of England. The Emperor, we are told, was requested to spread his standard, but refused to do so, saying he would be the servant, for the campaign, of the King and St George.

      These arrangements, though costly, were brilliantly successful. Under Henry’s command, the English,