Les pages Agreg-Ink consacrées à Henry VIII

The main protagonists of the English Reformation (a summary)

 

Royalty	Catholics	Reformers
Edward VI Elizabeth I Jane Grey Henry VIII Mary I Katherine Parr	Sir Thomas More Reginald Pole Thomas Wolsey	Anne Askew Robert Barnes Thomas Cranmer Thomas Cromwell Hugh Latimer Matthew Parker William Tyndale

 

Biographical elements

Henry VIII of England on Wikipedia (with a lot of links... invaluable)

From the BBC Radio 4 History site: Henry VIII (1491-1547)

A Brief biography of Henry VIII from Britannia (America's gatesway to the British Isles)

The Life and Works of Henry VIII

A good summary of Henry VIII's life and role in religion and politics (online from the Catholic Encyclopaedia...)

Henry VII, the first Anglican King

The Tudor History

 

Henry VIII and his wives

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The religious background of the English Reformation

General sites:

The History of the English Reformation (BBC Radio 4 site) by Professor Andrew Pettegree: "Despite the zeal of religious reformers in Europe, England was slow to question the established Church. During the reign of Henry VIII, however,the tide turned in favour of Protestantism, and by the 1600s the new Church held sway over the old. How did all this come about?"

A Reformation Timeline on "The Friends of William Tyndale" site

The English Reformation Online (from "Projet Albion")

February 11, 1531: Henry VIII of England is recognized as the Supreme Head of the Church of England

A quick guide to reformation

Henry VIII's Key Reasons for the Reformation

Henry VIII and his Church by Richard Rex

English Reformation: sources and links

Reformation on the "Learning site"

Reformation on the "Anglican timeline" site

The Religious Changes under Henry VIII and Edward VI by Rev. James MacCaffrey (1914)

 

Primary sources:

The Act of Supremacy

The thirty-nine Articles

An Exposition of the thirty-nine articles on the "Anglican Teaching" site

Henry VIII's Speech to the Parliament (24 December 1545)

 

Main protagonists:

John Wyclif's Life and Work from the Catholic Encyclopedia

John Wyclif: a Medieval Church Reformer

The Lollards, followers of John Wyclif

The Works of a Lollard Preacher (Anne Hudson, Ed.): a review (.pdf file)

The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards (on the Geoffrey Chaucer Page)

The Life and Works of John Colet (1467-1519): Colet was a keen Reformer, who disapproved of priestly confession, and of the celibacy of the clergy. He was a powerful force in the England of his day, and helped materially to overcome the medieval conditions still common in England, and to introduce the humanist movement. Among his works are: Absoliaissimus de octo orationis partium constructione libellus (Antwerp, 1530), Rudimenta Grammatices (London, 1539), Daily Devotions, Monition to a Godly Life, Epistolae ad Erasmum, and commentaries on different parts of the Bible" (from: The History of the English Bible).

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Reformation in the making

General sites

Henry VIII and Religion: The Religious Policy of King Henry VIII by Jeff Hobbs (on the Britannia site).

Timeline of the Henrician Reformation (1536-1547) on "activehistory.co.uk"

Reformation: the Key Events of the 16th Century (from Henry VIII to the death of Elizabeth I) by BBC Radio 4

The End of Monasteries (BBC Radio 4)

The Suppression of Glastonbury Abbey (1539) from "Medieval Sourcebook": Letter of the Vistors Sent to Examine the Abbot of Glastonbury to Thomas Cromwell

Dissent, Doubt, and Spiritual Violence in the Reformation: an overview from the Norton Anthology of English Literature site

"Evangelicals and the Early English Reformation" (.pdf file) by Alec Ryrie (University of Birmingham) published by Cambridge Univesity Press (2003): a new appraisal of the English Reformation and of the role of its main protagonists

Main protagonists

The Protestants

From John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, the Martyrdom of Anne Askew ("In the 1540s, Henry VIII sought to return the English church to a doctrinally Catholic position, and Protestants were subjected to persecution. The outspoken Protestant Anne Askew was convicted of heresy for her denial of transubstantiation; she was called in for questioning in 1545; the next year, she was tortured and burned at the stake.")
The First Examination of Anne Askew and The Death of Anne Askew.

The Fall of Thomas Cromwell. Thomas Cromwell was the chief minister to Henry VIII from 1532 to 1540. He supported English reformers such as Robert Barnes and Hugh Latimer, but he did not institute doctrinal changes in the Church of England. However, he did promote the use of the English Bible. He was executed on July 28, 1540 for treason and heresy.

The Catholics

The "Katharine of Aragon" Website

The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon, The Story as Told by the Imperial Ambassadors Resident at the Court of Henry VIII by J.A. Froude (1891)

A Letter of Princess Mary to Henry VIII (1536, 22 June) where she acknowledges the divorce, her illegitimacy & recognizes Henry as head of the church

Thomas Wolsey (1472-1530): a biography. Thomas Wolsey served as Cardinal, archbishop of York, lord chancellor, and leading minister to Henry VIII. In 1518, he became legate a latere, or master of the English church and exercised extraordinary power over the church in England. Many critics claimed that he abused this power for his own gains. His efforts to reform the religious orders in England and the church itself made Wolsey unpopular in many circles. His reform efforts included the founding of a new college at Oxford as well. He also attacked Lutheranism. Luther’s books were banned and those suspected of “heresy were tried and executed. In October of 1529, Henry VIII dismissed Wolsey. Henry’s motivations for the dismissal are debated, but he may have been trying to demonstrate to Clement VII, who refused to grant Henry an annulment from Catherine of Aragon, his supremacy over the church of England. Wolsey died at Leicester Abbey before he could be tried for treason.

The Fall of Thomas Wolsey (1530) by the chronicler Edward Hall

The Life of Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), considered by many to be the creator of the English Reformed Church, Thomas Cranmer was archbishop of Canterbury from 1533 to 1556 under Henry VIII and Edward VI. Under the reign of Edward VI he enacted reforms that moved the Church of England toward Protestant beliefs. He was burned at the stake under Queen Mary.

Letter of Thomas Cranmer on Henry VIII's divorce to Mr. Hawkyns the Ambassador at the Emperor's Court: In this letter Cranmer writes of the official divorce of Henry VIII from Catherine of Aragon and the coronation of Henry's next Queen, Anne Boleyn. He speaks of the legal meeting in which Catherine was informed that the King rejected the Pope's authority over the marriage and of the obvious pregnancy of Anne at her coronation ceremony. Note the tone of the last paragraph of the letter.

The Execution of Thomas Cranmer (21 March 1556), an account which was recorded by an anonymous bystander. Imprisoned by Mary I, Cranmer wrote a recantation of Protestantism, but he denied that recantation before he died.

Mary I and Thomas Cranmer

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The political background

The Protestant Reformation in Europe and in England (from Wikipedia)

The Thirty Years' war (from Wikipedia)

Reformation and Europe: "a religious split that persists to today"

The Reformation of the Church 1500-1600: a chronology

From the Anglo-Saxons to the Tudors from the site "Kings and Queens of England" (institutional)

Frontier and Power in the Early Tudor State (Steven Ellis, History Today, April 1995 )

Henry VIII's Early Foreign Policy (1509-29) by Jez Ross.
"The common view of Henry VIII's and Cardinal Wolsey's foreign policy is that it was a failure. What are the main components of this view? Firstly, that Henry VIII failed to achieve his primary goal, which was to recover the French empire which had been conquered by Henry V. Secondly, that this aim was unrealistic: Henry's high hopes were naive, given that his resources were tiny compared with those of France. Thirdly, that his foreign policy was often incoherent, thus allowing more wily operators, such as King Ferdinand of Aragon and the Emperor Maximilian, to manipulate him. In short, foreign policy under Henry and Wolsey was unaccomplished, anachronistic, naive and aimless. [...]"

Henry VIII's Big Mistake (a point of view): "When Henry VIII divorced Catherine of Aragon--the first of six unfortunate wives--he broke with the pope, anointed himself supreme head of the Church of England, and shut down England's monasteries. He may also have unwittingly delayed the industrial revolution. For one of the monasteries he closed--Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire--was apparently the site of a prototype blast furnace built about 200 years before later blast furnaces ushered in the industrial revolution."

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The cultural background

Thomas More: a Biography

Essays and Articles on Sixteenth Century Renaissance English Literature (includes a comprehensive list of essays on Sir Thomas More):
- Sir Thomas More's Use of Chaucer- Francis X. Ryan
- Religious freedom in Thomas More's Utopia - Sanford Kessler
- More's Place in "No Place": The Self-Fashioning Transaction in Utopia - John Freeman
- Topical utopias: radicalizing humanism in sixteenth-century England - David Weil Baker
- 'Utopian Pluralism': A Systematic Approach to the Analysis of
- Pluralism in the Debate about Thomas More's Utopia - Peter Wenzel
- Sir Thomas More: A Man for One Season - James Wood
- Thomas More: Chapter 7: The History of King Richard III - Richard Marius
- Utopia as Mirror for a Life and Times - Richard Marius
- Sir Thomas More and the Art of Dialogue - R.I.Lakowski
- Chapter II of "Sir Thomas More and the Art of Dialogue": The History of King Richard III, R. I. Lakowski

The William Tyndale Society

The Life of William Tyndale, an English clergy who translated the bible into the English language. His endeavor was condemned by Cardinal Wolsey who issued an order for Tyndale to be seized. He was captured in Antwerp and on October 6, 1536 he was strangled and his body was burned.

William Tyndale's Preface to the 1530 Old Testament Translation

Tyndale's Polemical writings, among which The Introduction to the New Testament [Pathway into Holy Scripture] (1525), The Parable of the Wicked Mammon (1528), The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528), The Practice of Prelates (1530), An Answer to Sir Thomas More's Dialogue (1531).

Thomas More's controversy with William Tyndale

A definition of Anglicanism

 

Bibliography

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Bibliography from the SAES

La SAES signale que les volumes (texte imprimé pour les années 1976 à 2002) de Annual Bibliography of British and Irish History sont disponibles sur le site de la Royal Historical Society qui répertorie désormais toutes les publications relatives à la Grande-Bretagne et à l’Irlande à l'adresse suivante: http://www.rhs.ac.uk/bibwel.asp

General topics (European 16th century History)
Benassar, Bartholomé, Le XVIe siècle, Armand Colin, 1972.
Davies, Norman, A History of Europe, OUP, 1996
Green, V.H.H, Renaissance and Reformation. A Survey of European History between 1450 and 1660, Edward Arnold Ltd, 1952.

General topics (English history)
Bindoff, S.T., Tudor England, Penguin Books, 1962.
Guy, John, The Tudor Monarchy, Arnold, 1997.
Morris, T.A., Europe and England in the 16th Century, Routledge, 1947.
Nicholls, Mark, A history of the Modern British Isles, 1529-1603, Blackwell, 1999.
Plowden, Alison, The House of Tudor. Sutton Publishing Ltd, 1976.

English Reformation:
Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400 -c. 1580, Yale University Press, 1993 (available from the History Bookshop: "Bringing together theological, liturgical, literary and iconographic analysis with historical narrative, Duffy argues that late medieval Catholicism was neither decadent nor decayed but was a strong and vigorous tradition, and that the Reformation represented a violent rupture from a popular and theologically respectable religious system.")
Haigh, Christopher, English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors, OUP, 1993
Hughes, Philip, The Reformation in England (3 vols.), Burns & Oates Ltd, 1963.
MacCullogh, Diarmaid, The Reformation: A History
Arthur Joseph Slavin, Henry VIII and the English Reformation, publisher: Lexington, Mass., Heath [1968]Richard Rex, Henry VIII and the English Reformation (British History in Perspective S.), Palgrave Macmillan, 1993

Books available on Amazon
Henry VIII and the Reformation in England
Henry VIII and the Reformation (Lancaster Pamphlets)
Henry VIII and the Government of England
Bernard Cottret: "Henri VIII, le pouvoir par la force"
Il existe également un "Que sais-je" sur "Henry VIII et le schisme anglican" (ouvrage malheureusement épuisé et non disponible en librairie, mais qui peut être consulté en bibliothèque).

Further reading

The Reformation in Europe
Queen Elizabeth, a Biography by ES Beesly (1892)
The "English Bag" page on Henry VIII