Henry VIII and History Edited by Thomas Betteridge and Thomas S. Freeman Henry VIII and HIstory To the late Kevin Sharpe, a good friend and fine scholar, who brilliantly examined the images of Henry VIII and his royal successors. Henry VIII and History Edited by tHomas BetterIdge Oxford Brookes University, UK and tHomas s. Freeman University of Essex, UK © thomas Betteridge, thomas s. Freeman and the Contributors 2012 all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. thomas Betteridge and thomas s. Freeman have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. Published by ashgate Publishing Limited ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court east suite 420 Union road 101 Cherry street Farnham Burlington surrey, gU9 7Pt Vt 05401-4405 england Usa www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Henry VIII and history. 1. Henry VIII, King of england, 1491–1547–Public opinion–History–sources. 2. Henry VIII, King of england, 1491–1547–In literature. 3. great Britain–History–Henry VIII, 1509–1547–Historiography. I. Betteridge, thomas. II. Freeman, thomas s., 1959– 942’.052’092-dc23 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Henry VIII and history / [edited by] thomas Betteridge and thomas s. Freeman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. IsBn 978-1-4094-0015-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) – IsBn 978-0-7546-9865-4 (ebook) 1. Henry VIII, King of england, 1491–1547. 2. great Britain–History–Henry VIII, 1509– 1547–Historiography. I. Betteridge, thomas. II. Freeman, thomas s., 1959– da332.H463 2012 942.05’2092–dc23 2011052189 IsBn 9781409400158 (hbk) IsBn 9780754698654 (ebk) III Printed and bound in great Britain by the mPg Books group, UK. Contents Abbreviations vii Notes on Contributors ix Introduction All is True – Henry VIII In and Out of History 1 Thomas Betteridge and Thomas S. Freeman 1 Harry’s Peregrinations: An Italianate Defence of Henry VIII 21 Brett Foster 2 From Perfect Prince to ‘Wise and Pollitike’ King: Henry VIII in Edward Hall’s Chronicle 51 Scott Lucas 3 ‘It is perillous stryvinge withe princes’: Henry VIII in Works by Pole, Roper, and Harpsfield* 65 Carolyn Colbert 4 Hands Defiled with Blood: Henry VIII in Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ 87 Thomas S. Freeman 5 Fallen Prince and Pretender of the Faith: Henry VIII as Seen by Sander and Persons 119 Victor Houliston 6 ‘It is unpossible to draw his Picture well who hath severall countenances’: Lord Herbert of Cherbury and The Life and Reign of King Henry VIII 135 Christine Jackson 7 Henry VIII in History: Gilbert Burnet’s History of the Reformation (v. 1), 1679 151 Andrew Starkie 8 ‘Unblushing Falsehood’: The Strickland Sisters and the Domestic History of Henry VIII* 165 Judith M. Richards vi Henry VIII and History 9 Ford Madox Ford’s Fifth Queen and the Modernity of Henry VIII 179 Anthony Monta and Susannah Brietz Monta 10 The ‘Sexual Everyman’? Maxwell Anderson’s Henry VIII 195 Glenn Richardson 11 Drama King: The Portrayal of Henry VIII in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons 207 Ruth Ahnert 12 ‘Anne taught him how to be cruel’: Henry VIII in Modern Historical Fiction 223 Megan L. Hickerson 13 Booby, Baby or Classical Monster? Henry VIII in the Writings of G. R. Elton and J. J. Scarisbrick 241 Dale Hoak 14 Through the Eyes of a Fool: Henry VIII and Margaret George’s 1986 novel The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers 261 Kristen Post Walton Index 275 Abbreviations A&M [1563] John Foxe, Actes and monuments of these latter and perillous dayes (London, 1563) A&M [1570] John Foxe, The ecclesiasticall history contayning the actes and monuments (London, 1570) A&M [1576] John Foxe, The ecclesiasticall history contayning the actes and monuments (London, 1576) A&M [1583] John Foxe, Actes and monuments of matters most speciall and memorable (London, 1583) A&M [1596] John Foxe, Actes and monumementes of matters most speciall and memorable (London, 1596) BL British Library CSPD Calendar of State Papers Domestic CSPSp Calendar of State Papers Spanish Harpsfield Nicholas Harpsfield, The life and death of Sir Thomas More, ed. E. V. Hitchcock and R. W. Chambers, Early English Text Society, original series 186 (Oxford, 1932) HJ Historical Journal L&P Letters and Papers of the reign of Henry VIII, eds. J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdber and R. S. Brodie (21 vols., London, 1862–1932) ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) Roper William Roper, The lyfe of Sir Thomas More, ed. E. V. Hitchcock, Early English Text Society original series 197 (Oxford, 1935) SCJ Sixteenth Century Journal TNA The National Archive (Kew) This page has been left blank intentionally Notes on Contributors Ruth Ahnert is a lecturer in Renaissance English Literature at Queen Mary, University of London. Her interests lie at the intersection of religious history, literary form and book history. Recent publications have been focused on literature and texts associated with imprisonment, from writings produced in prison, to representations of incarceration on the early modern stage. She is currently preparing a monograph entitled The Rise of Prison Literature in the Sixteenth Century, which charts innovations in English prison literature during the Reformation. Thomas Betteridge is Professor of English Literature and Drama at Oxford Brookes University. His books include Tudor Histories of the English Reformations (1999), Literature and Politics in the English Reformation (2004) and Shakespearean Fantasy and Politics (2005). He is currently working on a study of Sir Thomas More’s writing to be published by the University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. He was project leader of the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded research project ‘Staging the Henrician Court’ and the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘Medicine, Birth and Death at the Tudor Court’. Carolyn Colbert, a former Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada doctoral fellow, completed her Ph.D. in early modern literature in 2010 at Memorial University of Newfoundland, where she currently teaches. Her forthcoming publications focus on early modern women, including Mary Tudor, the subject of her dissertation. Brett Foster has had articles and reviews published in genre, Journal of British Studies, Modern Philology, Prose Studies, Renaissance Quarterly, Sixteenth Century Journal, Shakespeare Bulletin, and in the collections The Sacred and Profane in English Renaissance Literature and Christopher Marlowe the Craftsman. He recently wrote about Henry VIII for Books & Culture, and is also an author of a book of poetry. He teaches Renaissance literature and creative writing at Wheaton College in Illinois. Thomas S. Freeman is currently Visiting Research Fellow with the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge and Lecturer at the University of Essex. He is the co-author of Religion and the Book in Early Modern England: The Making of John Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ (2011) and the co-editor of four volumes, including The Myth of Elizabeth (2003) and Mary Tudor: Old and New Perspectives (2011).