You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [13]
The first, Catherine of Aragon, he quite literally inherited from his sickly unto death brother, and to say that she was not of his choosing would be an understatement. So when she had passed her childbearing years (as she was more than a bit older than Henry) and had born only a daughter, Henry quickly opted to have her replaced for the “good of succession” and undoubtedly his sex life.
Likewise the fourth marriage, to Anne of Cleves, was primarily a matter of state that evolved beyond his own control. After having shown Henry a portrait of her, Henry’s chief advisor, Thomas Cromwell, had arranged the nuptial as a means of allying England closer diplomatically with Germany. The portrait turned out to be neither recent nor accurate, and as a result Henry quickly set in motion maneuvers to disengage himself from a wife he considered to be both old and ugly.
As a result, neither failed marriage can be considered Henry’s fault or the product of poor choices on his part. The other four, however, resulted in two executions (Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard), one death in childbed (Jane Seymour), and one who outlived him (Catherine Parr), whom he might also have divorced had he lived long enough.
One might be tempted to say that though Henry was intelligent, he was also less than skilled in matters of personal choice and choice of personnel, and nowhere was this better illustrated than in his choice of Sir Thomas More as chancellor during one of England’s most turbulent times.
Thomas More (1478–1535) was a more contemplative Renaissance man than the king and no less intellectually talented. The son of a judge, he served as a page in the household of the archbishop and later went on to study at Oxford, where he excelled in the classics before moving on to the study of law, and after a short sojourn when he contemplated embracing religious monastic life, he became a barrister in 1501 and entered Parliament in 1505.
While practicing law became his day job, More still maintained contact with his scholarly side, conversing and debating with intellectual frater Desiderius Erasmus (author of the classic philosophical work In Praise of Folly, which is dedicated to More), even taking time to author various discourses and cerebral tracts such as Utopia. In addition to his scholastic profile, More also maintained a bit of the monastic side of his personality, reveling in a quasi-ascetic lifestyle despite the expansion of his and his family’s fortunes over the years.
As a politician More was fearless in his arguments with the Crown. One of his first acts in Parliament was to urge a decrease in the appropriations for Henry VII (Henry VIII’s predecessor). He did this with such vigor and vehemence that the king had More’s father imprisoned until a hefty fine was paid.
After Henry VIII achieved the throne, More was appointed undersheriff of London, where he quickly achieved a profile as a careful and fair jurist. He also served as an arbiter for disputes about the wool trade and was instrumental in quelling an uprising in London. The scholar-barrister proved truly adept at arguing out pragmatic solutions to difficult situations and, as a result, quickly caught the eye of the young king, who appointed him to his royal privy council in 1518 and knighted him in 1521.
In a court populated with pandering oafs and bombastic brutes, Henry enjoyed the scholar’s keen mind and engaged him in intellectual debate on a variety of subjects, even collaborating with him on his repudiation of the teachings of Martin Luther entitled “Defense of the Seven Sacraments.” Their debates became quite spirited and Henry elevated More to Speaker of the House of Commons in 1523 (during which tenure More initiated the concept of parliamentary free