​
​Henry VIII, the Reign - Holinshed's Articles

​By Mark Holinshed

​Seasons Greetings from Henry VIII

– But No One Paid a Blind Bit of Notice

Henry in Parliament

On Christmas Eve 1546 Henry VIII made a speech in Parliament, it was a rare event – he was no orator – and it was to be his last.

Most of those assembled would rather have been at home ready to spend the anniversary of Christ’s birth with their loved ones. The roads were wet, muddy and probably frozen. The days were short, and many would spend Christmas day and beyond in the saddle.
​
But the king wanted to say his piece, within little more than a year Henry would be dead.

He began with love and thanks – thanks for the approval into law by Parliament of the Chantries Bill. Like the monasteries, chantries had been an important part of religious life in England for centuries, and may be defined thus;

“Chantry is the term for the establishment of an institutional chapel on private land or within a greater church, where a priest would celebrate Mass. The same term is also used for the endowment itself. The word derives from the Latin cantaria, meaning 'licence to sing mass'.

Chantries were often established in the medieval period by a wealthy person, who gave funds (often rents on land) to pay for a priest to say prayers or sing masses in a chantry chapel (or at an altar in an existing church), often for the perpetual spiritual benefit of a family member. A foundation charter usually laid down conditions for ensuring the exact and proper use of the endowment throughout the years to come.
​
Many chantries were set up across the country in the 13th and 14th centuries.”
​
Hungerford Chantries 

The act to which the king gave thanks defined chantries as representing misapplied funds and misappropriated lands. The Act provided that all chantries and their properties would thenceforth belong to the King for as long as he should live.

It was a divisive piece of legislation and drove deeper the divisions in the kingdom between those who followed the Catholic creed and those of the newly formed Protestant doctrine.
​
The funds were for the furtherance of the war against France from which the Seymour faction of the government intended to benefit by keeping the French out of Scotland and away from Mary Queen of Scots. It was the foundation of a strategy that developed into the so-called Rough Wooing to force an alliance that would have had the future boy king of England, Edward Seymour married to the Queen of Scotland, and so unite the two kingdoms.

The Greetings

​The following is an extract;

“These thanks for your loving admonition, and good counsel, first remembered, I eftsoons thank you again, because that you, considering our great charges ,not for our [majestic plural] pleasure, but for your defence, not for our gain, but to our great cost, which we have lately sustained, as well in defence against our and your enemies, as for the conquest of that fortress, which was to this realm most displeasant and noisome, and shall be, by God's grace, hereafter to our nation most profitable and pleasant, have freely, of your own mind, granted to us a certain subsidy, here in an act specified, which verily we take in good part, regarding more your kindness than the profit thereof, as he that setteth more by your loving hearts, than by your substance. Besides this hearty kindness, I cannot a little rejoice, when I consider the perfect trust and sure confidence which you have put in me, as men having undoubted hope and unfeigned belief in my good doings, and just proceedings; for that you, without my desire, or request, have committed to mine order and disposition all chantries, colleges, hospitals, and other places specified in a certain act; firmly trusting, that I will order them to the glory of God, and the profit of our commonwealth…
​
…Now sithence I find such kindness on your part, towards me, I cannot choose but love and favour you, affirming, that no prince in the world more favureth his subjects, than I do you; nor any subjects or commons more love and obey their sovereign lord, than I perceive you do me, for whose defence my treasure shall not be hidden, nor, if necessity require, shall my person be unadventured.

‘To Catholic opinion, the problem set by these legal confiscations ... [was] the disappearance of a large clerical society from their midst, the silencing of masses, the rupture of both visible and spiritual ties, which over so many centuries have linked rude provincial man with a great world of the Fate.’ 

---

​Historian A.G. Dickens take on it was;

‘To Catholic opinion, the problem set by these legal confiscations ... [was] the disappearance of a large clerical society from their midst, the silencing of masses, the rupture of both visible and spiritual ties, which over so many centuries have linked rude provincial man with a great world of the Fate.’ 

​If he wanted to inflame the religious discord in his kingdom, surely this new legislation was as good a way as any of doing just that. None the less, Henry, having delivered the honey coated beginning to his oration then continued to give what might be considered a reprimand over the divisions that had arisen in society. It includes a threat.

‘...an unprofitable servant, and an untrue officer’

​​“Yet, although I with you, and you with me, be in this perfect love and concord, this friendly amity cannot continue, except you, my lords temporal, and you my lords spiritual, and you my loving subjects, study and take pains to amend one thing, which is surely amiss, and far out of order, to the which I most heartily require you; which is, that charity and concord is not among you, but discord and dissension beareth rule, in every place.

St. Paul saith to the Corinthians, in the thirteenth chapter, charity is gentle, charity is not envious, charity is not proud, and so forth, in the said chapter.

Behold then what love and charity is amongst you, when the one calleth the other heretic and anabaptist, and he calleth him again, papist, hypocrite, and pharisee.

Be these tokens of charity amongst you? Are these the signs of fraternal love between you? No, no. I assure you, that this lack of charity amongst yourselves will be the hindrance and assuaging of the fervent love between us, as I said before, except this wound be salved, and clearly made whole.

I must needs judge the fault and occasion of this discord to be partly by the negligence of you, the fathers, and preachers of the spirituality. For, if I know a man which liveth in adultery, I must judge him a lecherous and carnal person; if I see a man boast, and brag himself, I cannot but deem him a proud man. I see and hear daily, that you of the clergy preach one against another, teach, one contrary to another, inveigh one against another, without charity or discretion.

Some be too stiff in their old mumpsimus, other be too busy and curious in their new sumpsimus. Thus, all men almost be in variety and discord, and few or none do preach, truly and sincerely, the word of God, according as they ought to do.

Shall I now judge you charitable persons doing this? No, no; I cannot so do.
​
Alas! how can the poor souls live in concord, when you, preachers, sow amongst them, in your sermons, debate and discord?

Of you they look for light, and you bring them to darkness. Amend these crimes, I exhort you, and set forth God's word, both by true preaching, and good example-giving, or else I, whom God hath appointed his vicar, and high minister here, will see these divisions extinct, and these enormities corrected, according to my very duty, or else I am an unprofitable servant, and an untrue officer.

Although (as I say) the spiritual men be in some fault that charity is not kept amongst you, yet you of the temporality be not clean and unspotted of malice and envy; for you rail on bishops, speak slanderously of priests, and rebuke and taunt preachers; both contrary to good order and christian fraternity.

If you know surely that a bishop or preacher erreth, or teacheth perverse doctrine, come and declare it to some of our counsel, or to us, to whom is committed, by God, the authority to reform and order such causes and behaviours, and be not judges yourselves of your own fantastical opinions, and vain expositions; for in such high causes you may lightly err.

And, although you be permitted to read holy scripture, and to have the word of God in your mother tongue, you must understand, that it is licensed you so to do, only to inform your own conscience, and to instruct your children and family, and not to dispute, and make scripture a railing and a taunting stock against priests and preachers, as many light persons do.

I am very sorry to know and hear how unreverently that most precious jewel, the word of God, is disputed, rhymed, sung, and jangled in every alehouse and tavern, contrary to the true meaning and doctrine of the same; and yet I am even as much sorry that the readers of the same follow it, in doing, so faintly and coldly.

For of this I am sure, that charity was never so faint amongst you, and virtuous and godly living was never less used, nor was God himself, amongst christians, never less reverenced, honoured, or served.

Therefore, as I said before, be in charity one with another, like brother and brother; love, dread, and serve God (to the which I, as your supreme head, and sovereign lord, exhort and require you); and then I doubt not, but that love and league, which I spoke of in the beginning, shall never be dissolved or broken between us.
​
And, as touching the laws which be now made and concluded, I exhort you, the makers, to be as diligent in putting them into execution, as you were in making and furthering the same, or else your labour shall be in vain, and your commonwealth nothing relieved.”

A reprimand or a lamentation?

Perhaps a lamentation from a man who during his reign who had seen a kingdom that his father and grandmother had restored after decades of war and strife, again at odds with its self.

Were these the words of a man who had singularly failed ‘according to my very duty’, who, long before the twilight of his reign, was ‘an unprofitable servant, and an untrue officer’, pushed, cajoled and outwitted by a train of ambitious Machiavellian politicians?

It is reputed that some members, as they listened, wept. Be it  pity, sadness, mirth ​or some other emotion is not clear. What should be clear, however, is that when Henry VIII tried his hand at leadership, no one paid a blind bit of notice.

Within a year of the speech the leader of the conservative faction at court, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and his son Henry Earl of Suffolk, were thrown into the Tower and sentenced to death. The conservatives, at Smithfield, were burning Protestants at the stake. There were physical punch-ups during council meetings. Henry even signed an arrest warrant for the incarceration of his wife Catherine Parr, who was accused of heresy. When the arresting officers arrived, he turned coat and backed the other side. The Scots still favoured a matrimonial union with France, rather than agree to Henry VIII’s son marrying Mary Queen of Scots – the year following was all but civil war, it was mayhem.
​
Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547. Extraneous books have been written about his will, his determination for the future governance of the kingdom. In short, no book required, his paperwork was ripped up and binned. Instead, Edward Seymour assumed kingship on behalf of young Edward VI, the will was irrelevant, because when Henry VIII tried his hand at leadership, no one paid a blind bit of notice.

---