Domestic Reforms

Cromwell’s decade, the 1530s, was the only period of the reign during which a coherent body of policies was purposefully carried through. Cromwell’s work greatly enlarged Henry’s power, especially by transferring to the crown the wealth of the monasteries, dissolved in 1536–40, and new clerical taxes; but it also, more explicitly than ever, subjected the king to the law and to the legislative supremacy of Parliament. Since Henry knew how to work with parliaments, the immediate effect was to make him appear more dominant than ever and to give to his reign a spurious air of autocracy—spurious because in fact the rule of law remained to control the sovereign’s mere will. The appearance of autocracy was misleadingly emphasized by the fact that all revolutions have their victims. As heads rolled, the king’s earlier reputation as a champion of light and learning was permanently buried under his enduring fame as a man of blood. Old friends such as More, refusing to accept the new order, fell before the onslaught, as did some 50 other men caught by the treason laws. Between 1538 and 1541 the families of Pole and Courtenay were destroyed by the axe for treasons linked with efforts abroad to reverse the course of events in England but mainly because they could claim royal blood and represented a dynastic danger to the unprolific Tudor line.

The king now embarked on the series of matrimonial adventures that made him appear both a monster and a laughingstock. He soon tired of Anne, who failed to produce a male heir; in 1536 she was executed, with other members of the court, for alleged treasonable adultery. Catherine of Aragon, rejected but unbowed, had died a little earlier. Henry immediately married Jane Seymour, who bore him his son Edward but died in childbirth (1537). The next three years were filled with attempts to replace her, and the bride chosen was Anne, sister of the duke of Cleves, a pawn in Cromwell’s policy for a northern European alliance against dangers from France and the Emperor. But Henry hated the first sight of her and at once demanded his freedom, an end achieved by a quick divorce.