I shall read that tonight, ferval - after I've had several Wolf Hall glasses of you-know-what.  

I hope I'll get to grips with Derrida before I die, but alas, I doubt that I will. I still think he overcomplicated everything (well, he was French). It's really quite simple: we see the world - or we read the history - not as it is or was, but as we are.

Isn't anyone interested in why Oliver Cromwell was a Tudor then?

Is he the guy with the chainmail scarf and bass guitar hopping round in the background?

Jasper Tudor, Henry VII's uncle supposedly had two illegitimate daughters, Helen and Joan. Joan married William ap Yevan (son of Yevan Williams and Margaret Kemoys) and their son, Morgan Williams, married Katherine Cromwell, Thomas Cromwell's elder sister. Oliver Cromwell was a fourth generation descendent of Katherine Cromwell and Morgan Williams - the family having adopted the surname Cromwell after the illustrious uncle Thomas.

Well done, MM.

While others have been searching YouTube for silly videos, you have done some useful research.

Oliver Cromwell, that great republican, was also therefore a descendent of the French Valois kings since Jasper Tudor was the son of Owen Tudor and Catherine of Valois, a daughter of Charles VI of France. Mind you King Charles was completely barking so they might have played down that family connection.

Wasn't he the one who thought he was made of glass and that he might shatter into pieces at any time?

John Skelton, the brilliant poet who was tutor to the young Prince Henry, once unkindly described Wolsey as being "of greasy genealogy".

Same could be said of Oliver!

Temp, Halsall's area of study is frankly beyond me, all those Merovingians and so forth, but his wider ideas I like as well as his acerbic style and cussed stance on lots of stuff. I must read his book on Arthur some time but I find that my age increases, my concentration span declines in reverse proportion and it's so much easier just to slump in front of the box with a nice glass of something.

Temperance wrote:

Wasn't he the one who thought he was made of glass and that he might shatter into pieces at any time?

Indeed it was ... he wasn't known as Charles le Fou (the mad) for nothing, and it fairly clearly ran in the family: Charles' mother Joan of Bourbon was mentally unstable as was Joan's brother Louis, and so was their father Peter I of Bourbon, and his father Louis I of Bourbon. And of course Charles VI's grandson, Henry VI of England, also suffered periods of insanity too.

Debbie Harry's tribute to Charles le Fou:

Is it just me, helped by the cheapo Marks and Spencer Cava Prestige, or is this a work of genius - writing, acting and direction? I am left utterly gobsmacked at what I have just watched.

The torygraph agrees anyway. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-reviews/11375604/Wolf-Hall-episode-2-review-bbc.html
I must say I do too, and the photography is mesmerising; the scene where the candles are snuffed out, one by one, was breathtaking and the faces are lit as if by Cara-bloody-vaggio. I'm even warming to Damian L and forgetting Brady. (I was so glad to find out that he really was dead.) How does Rylance do it? How can an apparently expressionless face express so much?

Not everyone is impressed, though, ferval. I enjoy reading the posts after Telegraph articles. Here are a couple.



I like history and have enjoyed all Starkey's work on the Tudors and Stuarts but I'm really struggling with this. I find it all quite boring. The camera work seems amateurish (but not in an absorbing way like The Office or Bourne trilogy), yes it lacks music (I like music!), and More looks distractingly like Kenneth Connor. Am I the only one that thinks this?

And just who do you think you are, Master Cromwell?



Another poster has been particularly struck by the quality of all those 16th century grassy bits:

Who used to mow the lawns in those days?

Good question. Was it a combination of scythe and sheep?

PS I hate that Stephen Gardiner. I always have done. So did the Duchess of Suffolk:

Noted for her wit, sharp tongue, and devotion to learning, by the last years of Henry VIII's reign the Duchess of Suffolk was also an outspoken advocate of the English Reformation. She became a close friend of Henry's last queen, Catherine Parr, particularly after the Duke died in 1545, and was a strong influence on the Queen's religious beliefs. In 1546, as the Queen's religious views grew controversial, the King ordered the Queen's arrest, though his wife managed to cajole him into cancelling this. The Duchess of Suffolk once gave a banquet and during a party game afterwards named Bishop Gardiner as the man she loved least. She named her pet spaniel "Gardiner", provoking much amusement when she called her dog to heel. Several years later when Gardiner was imprisoned during the reign of King Edward VI, she is quoted as saying, "It was merry with the lambs when the wolf was shut up."

Temps - sort this for me. I found a site with info on Henry's childhood but wonder if the content is shaky. It says he was being prepared for high office in the church... Archbishop of Canterbury... is that likely? That he was greatly favoured by gran Margaret Beaufort.... which would explain a lot, that he went to his brother's wedding in the same coach as Catherine of Aragon and there after enjoyed the 2 weeks of feasting and having a dance or two; he was ten at the time. Is this creative history? If so the web is still as  dangerous a place for research as it was when I decided only to use books with cross references.

Yes, it's true: Henry VII wanted his second son to enter the Church. Henry VII believed in "keeping the Church on your side." Nice irony in that, of course.

Granny Beaufort controlled everyone: how much she actually loved anyone apart from Henry père is hard to say. I think she favoured Arthur. Henry fils was probably greatly in awe of her. I always thought that when he (allegedly) made his unkind comment about Catherine of Aragon being "the old harridan" that he had his nan in mind.

And yes, young Henry seems to have had a bigger role in the Royal Wedding of November 14th 1501 than the groom himself. Henry had escorted the young bride throughout her grand entry into the city of London two days before the actual event, and he led the bride all the way through the west doors of St. Paul's and along the elevated walkway to the wedding platform. He also led her back outside. David Starkey commented that Henry's role as escort apparently ceased only at the door of the bridal chamber!

Henry was only ten years old at the time - amazing performance from so young a lad. He continued showing off at the wedding festivities - at one banquet he danced so much he got too hot and "suddenly cast off his gown" and "danced in his jacket" with his sister. Not usual behaviour, but everyone applauded him as he leapt about. Presumably even Granny B.

Got to dash now!

Hilary Mantel is often very funny - I'm glad that's coming out in the BBC production.

I've just re-read Wolf Hall and I'm on Bring Up the Bodies again. This has just made me laugh. Cromwell has been talking with Jane Seymour and her sister, the newly widowed Bess, Lady Oughtred, née Seymour:

" 'But Master Cromwell,' Bess says, 'it cannot always be acts of Parliament and dispatches to ambassadors and revenues and Wales and monks and pirates and traitorous devices and Bibles and oaths and trusts and wards and leases and the price of wool and whether we should pray for the dead. There must sometimes be other topics.'

He is struck by her overview of his situation. It is as if she has understood his life. He is taken by an impulse to clasp her hand and ask her to marry him: even if they did not get on in bed, she seems to have a gift for précis that eludes most of his clerks."

The Catholic bishops are having a massive huff with Hilary about her presentation of Thomas More. Quite right, too.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2935693/Inaccurate-anti-Catholic-Bishops-tear-Wolf-Hall-claiming-paints-twisted-picture-English-saint-Thomas-More.html


Some nice, fair comments (as you would expect) from Diarmaid MacCulloch in this article, and - oh joy! - he is working on a biography of Cromwell.


http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/jan/18/wolf-hall-thomas-more-man-honour-fanatic-hilary-mantel


For Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of church history at Oxford University and a great fan of Cromwell over More, there is no denying the appeal of More’s mind. “I have seen some of the new series and More comes across as a desiccated fanatic. Well, that would be one take. It is true he has always been a controversial character partly because he became such a plaster saint, seen as unassailable in the Catholic church,” said MacCulloch. “But like Cromwell he was a complicated humanist, as well as a great stylist and the author of the wonderful Utopia. For More, I think, the whole of the late 1520s became resolved into a life and death struggle for his world. We all have our priorities and for him a united Christendom overrode his concern with mercy or with pity.”

MacCulloch admits he takes much of his understanding of the relationship between More and Cromwell from the late eminent Tudor scholar Sir Geoffrey Elton, once his doctoral supervisor at Cambridge. Elton, who wrote about Cromwell had a low opinion of More. “Elton was a little partisan perhaps, but I do find Hilary’s version compelling.” The professor, who is working on his own biography of Cromwell, is happy for popular historical fiction to engage with Tudor history. “It is not a battle between fiction and history. It is a conversation. I regard Hilary as an ally, not a threat. She has created a powerful parallel universe and historians and novelists each bring their own perspective.”

Diarmaid MacCulloch wrote:

 Elton was a little partisan perhaps...

PS I didn't know they had Thomas More's hairshirt at Fastbuck Abbey. Why have I not been told? Must go and have a look - if I'm allowed, that is.

I know I do go on a bit about Thomas More. Will give just one last link then will shut up and retire for a bit.

I found this interesting, especially the paragraph about the huge numbers of heretics More burnt - six in all.

Lord, Henry disposed of six in one day - 30th July 1540 - two days after Cromwell bit the dust. The executions were fair and nicely balanced - three Papists and three heretics.


http://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2012/05/thomas-more-was-not-unnaturally-fond-of-torturing-heretics.html

More.........suffered martyrdom for the Catholic faith rather than acquiescing to Henry VIII's assertion of power over the Church in England.

Or might it be construed that he went to the block rather than suffer an eternity in Hell? In other words, were some religious martyrdoms the ultimate act of self interest rather than only noble self sacrifice in the name of God? Might the block or the stake have been a kind of medieval Dignitas to avoid future pain?

We had a thread on Thomas More, ferval (either here or on the old BBC site) ages ago, and I suggested that both More and Fisher (the latter was in the final stages probably of liver cancer when he was carried to the scaffold) were sick men who longed for death - assisted suicide courtesy of the Tudor regime was how I put it.

More wrote to his daughter in 1535:

I do nobody harm, I say none harm, I thinke none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live. Bolt used that in his play, but had him say it to Cromwell.

But it's just too easy to dismiss More as a rabid - possibly suicidal -  fanatic. He loathed absolutism in all its forms - he was all for curtailing the power of the Pope, for God's sake! Loads of stuff on tinternet on More the conciliarist, but that's all conveniently forgotten these days.


Conciliarism was a reform movement in the 14th-, 15th- and 16th-century Catholic Church which held that supreme authority in the Church resided with an Ecumenical council, apart from, or even against, the pope.


More was the real Parliamentarian, not Cromwell. He knew Henry was a bad b*stard, and he had the guts to stand up to him. Cromwell - thanks to Elton - is now the good guy, father of English democracy -    - but absolutism was in his blood too - see Oliver Cromwell, whose great grandfather was Thomas Cromwell's nephew, Richard Williams aka Richard Cromwell.

PS Thank you for at least bothering to give an intelligent reply. Given the utter crap that is being spouted elsewhere on this site, it was a relief to read your post. I shall have to say something to Parallax soon - good manners or not.

Temp wrote:

Loads of stuff on tinternet on More the conciliarist, but that's all conveniently forgotten these days.

Henry's "Assertio Septum Sacramentorum" for which he received the "Fidei Defensor" title from the pope was partly a broadside against conciliarism, interestingly enough. And More, though he later played it down to the point of denial, allowed it be rumoured initially that he had had a role in helping Henry write it (as "redactor", he said). So I have always had my doubts about More's commitment to conciliarism myself. Didn't he write once to Erasmus advising him not to prosecute too strongly the conciliarist case for fear of fuelling Lutheran objections to the papacy? Or was that something we learnt at school from an agenda that included unquestioningly More's candidacy for Catholic sainthood?

Complex man, More. I've said it before. Very hard to pin down based on his writings.

Temp, I'm so out of my depth but here goes anyway.
What then was More's motive in not acceding to big H's wishes if not for fear of those ingenious little demons and their nasty pointy sticks? He may not have been rabid nor absolutist but he was certainly pious and surely must have held to the view of Hell as his punishment for so doing and thus was prepared to face the chop, but getting on God's good side, rather than surviving and contemplating an eternity of ouches?  

What I'm trying, very clumsily, to get at is, there is a difference between accepting death altruistically over a matter of objective principle and accepting death as the lesser of two evils. In a way it makes that kind of martyrdom calculating, a cost/benefit analysis.
Och, it's too hard, trying to understand medieval beliefs - and lawyers.
And Americans!

I'm with ferval I think. Today the questions so often asked about historic people's actions are: "what was their motive, what was their big agenda, what did they really mean? Or else it's along the lines of: "why not just agree with the inquisition and just get let off?"

But people were very much different then ("the past is another country" 'an all that). Why is it so hard to accept that people of the 16th century truely did believe in their living God who, if they had remained loyal to Him even unto death would remain staunch to them afterwards? Why else did people literally "risk all"?

Thomas Cromwell comes across as a schemer who seems to be risking his life playing the dangerous game of playing the king. And we 21st century folk ask: why whould he do that, couldn't he see it was dangerous, why risk all .... so what was his real agenda? But I suggest 16th century people really lived, and died, like that ... why plan for your family's future by striving to cultivate good connections for future marriages for one's children, when the chances are 30% of them won't even see their third birthday. Why did sailors risk similar odds signing onto a merchant voyage to the Indies which, after just one 12 month voyage could see them rich for life ... or their wife widowed and destitute? Maybe because they had real faith? People seem to have had real religious convictions that they were all too often prepared to die for - often needlessly I feel, but that's me viewing it from the present.

So maybe More was not really making a huge stand, and he was not - at least not consciously - setting himself up to be a martyr ... he was just submitting to God's, and the King's, will.

I'm rather reminded of the exchange on the scaffold (from Bolt's play - I don't know how true the words are):
More: "I die the King's loyal servant, but God's first."
... and then to the headsman: "Be not afraid of your office - you send me to God".
Archbishop Cranmer:"You are very sure of that Sir Thomas".
More: "He will not refuse one who is so blythe to go to him."

Odd it is, especially for a dyed in the wool atheist such as myself, but for a 16th century person, a heart-felt faith may well have been truer and more solid than most other things in their life. Death and suffering were all around them, but when death came for one personally, if one truely believed and repented, then it was just the passage to being in His presence, and so nothing to be feared, and certainly nothing to be gambled, traded, cheated or lied about.

It rather makes most people today who profess "a faith in God", seem rather shallow. But maybe I've got it all wrong ...like ferval I'm struggling to put this into words, and put my own head into the 16th century mindset.

ferval wrote:

Temp, I'm so out of my depth but here goes anyway.
What then was More's motive in not acceding to big H's wishes if not for fear of those ingenious little demons and their nasty pointy sticks? He may not have been rabid nor absolutist but he was certainly pious and surely must have held to the view of Hell as his punishment for so doing and thus was prepared to face the chop, but getting on God's good side, rather than surviving and contemplating an eternity of ouches?  

What I'm trying, very clumsily, to get at is, there is a difference between accepting death altruistically over a matter of objective principle and accepting death as the lesser of two evils. In a way it makes that kind of martyrdom calculating, a cost/benefit analysis.
Och, it's too hard, trying to understand medieval beliefs - and lawyers.

ferval - I am terribly, terribly drunk at the moment - worse than nordmann at Christmas, so this probably won't make much sense and, no doubt, it will be deleted around 3.00am tomorrow morning.

I think Thomas More needed to keep on his own good side, not God's. Isn't that what we are all trying to do, one way or another?  Bolt put it beautifully:


NORFOLK (To the others): Does this make sense? (No reply; they look at MORE) You'll forfeit all you've got - which includes the respect of your country - for a theory?

MORE: The Apostolic Succession of the Pope is (Stops; interested) . . . Why, it's a theory, yes; you can't see it; can't touch it; it's a theory. (TO NORFOLK, very rapidly but calmly) But what matters to me is not whether it's true or not, but that I believe it to be true, or rather, not that I believe it, but that I believe it . . . I trust I make myself obscure?

NORFOLK: Perfectly.

MORE: That's good. Obscurity's what I have need of now.

That emphasis on the "I" is so important. Isn't it all about integrity? Being true to oneself? But that can be dangerous too - that I concede. Perhaps having no beliefs, nothing to cling to as one's "truth" is  the saner option. I'm sure I don't know anymore.

Episode 3 tomorrow. Perhaps Hilary will enlighten us.

God, I'm going to feel awful tomorrow.

Good post, Meles Meles.

I many times tried to understand medieval people from my 20th century perspective and also tried to transpose myself in the thinking world of one particular historical era.

Kind regards and with esteem, Paul.

Temperance,

Antigone de Jean Anouilh?
http://www.sparknotes.com/drama/antigone/summary.html
http://www.sparknotes.com/drama/antigone/context.html


Kind regards and with esteem, Paul.

I had never thought of comparing Thomas More and Antigone, Paul - but yes, I see your point. Interesting.

I'm trying to recover from my unwise attempts yesterday at cognitive dissonance tension reduction - i.e. drinking far too much during and after a heated discussion which unfortunately turned very nasty. I feel awful at the moment - God's punishment (joke) - so there will be little or no rabbiting from me today (huge sighs of relief all round  - that's a very weak smiley, by the way).

But I hope I'll return when I feel a bit better. I do want to examine the idea that the past is always a foreign country. Is it? Don't people stay pretty much the same - even where "religion" is concerned? That probably sounds like an utterly mad thing to say, but I think I can dig out some evidence  - from Shakespeare, from Marlowe, from Sir William Maitland ("God is a bogle of the nursery" he is supposed to have declared) to support my view.

But not today.

David Lowenthal's 1985 book "The Past is a Foreign Country" explored this relationship with history. He reckoned it hadn't always been so and that it was only in recent centuries that what was increasingly being seen as intellectual progress necessitated a view that ancient motives became unintelligible to modern minds. Ironically though and appropriately for this thread, the first to express this view were our friends the humanists (cue Thomas More again) who hankered for a time when they reckoned general intellect most closely paralleled in character the leaps and bounds that they were making themselves;

“The disjunction of the past from the present became significantly apparent only during the Renaissance, when rapport with antiquity made humanists exaggerate the unlikeness of more recent medieval times…and feel poignantly their remoteness from ancient Rome.”

In other words the foreignness of the past applied more to the recent past than the classical age - immediately inherited memory was that which was most suspect, not necessarily its older manifestations.

The humanist argument was that there were three forms of memory - private, public and arcane. Private memory, based on individuals' own experiences or those which could be related to contemporaries and how these were then immediately interpreted, seemed to be of universal character and therefore unchanged in essence over history. Only the exact stimulus might be said to have changed - the response was more or less the same. Arcane memory, that which is known and assumed remembered but hidden or uncomfortable to contemplate was equally uniform in character over time as those human sensibilities that prompted such voluntary absence of contemplation were themselves essentially unchanged over generations. It was public memory, that which is generally believed to have happened by the majority at any given time, which proved itself most volatile. Public memory deserved the same intellectual disdain as any other presumption, and especially presumptions which led one to become estranged from the truth rather than shed light on that truth.

The humanists reckoned they were forging links with ancient memories when they explored their world intellectually - the phrase "there is nothing new under the sun" became a popular epithet amongst them for that reason. Public memory - history itself - could safely be distrusted, especially if it prompted one to believe that "everything" was novel by virtue alone of it being recent.

So I reckon More would have agreed with you pointing out the lack of universality in Hartley's famous quotation. The past - he might have said - is both a foreign country at times and at others a country in which one still dwells, though maybe merely lacking a suitable map to navigate it as successfully or as instinctively as its one-time occupants.

Just a bit of a rabbit this morning, then will scoot back down my burrow.

I've found someone who hates More even more than Hilary Mantel. Here's James Wood ( "a lapsed Christian" ) - superb bit of writing this - his essay on More from his  "The Broken Estate":


https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/w/wood-estate.html


PS Last night's episode was superb, of course, but dare I say that I felt just the tiniest bit of irritation at times?  Rylance's Cromwell is just too sexy - everyone seems to be falling for him. Is he taking over from Richard III as the ultimate bad boy we all love? Even Anne Boleyn, for God's sake!!??

PPS Loved More correcting Meg's translation - "occupation" not "employment". He's such a superb mix of Grand Inquisitor and snotty Oxford don.

Until last night's episode, I had never heard of this woman;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Barton

(don't think I'm  giving anything away by posting this link, it's fairly obvious what is going to happen to anyone who goes around saying the king is cursed)

Rylance's Cromwell is just too sexy - everyone seems to be falling for him

I'm struggling a bit with that too, Temp, though it's possibly that damn portrait which makes it so difficult to understand the attraction. Rylance, oh yes, but TC a la Holbein, hmmmm.
I've been mulling it over in the light of nordmann's last post and also wondering if the dialogue, which is superb but, by being so contemporary, removes much of the 'other country' aspect. The private and arcane memories feel authentic but the distance from then until now in public memory has been mightily compressed and, in my opinion, understimated.
When it deals with religious matters it makes it feel that these are issues of almost detached intellectual and political import rather than matters of (eternal) life and death and so tends to leaves the modern viewer here thinking, "Very interesting but worth dying for?" I say 'here' advisedly, were I in Jordan I might think very differently. The court of Tzar Putin comes to mind as well.

I am loving it all for what it is though, an hour of engrossing, intelligent television - even if those stark, white church interiors grate!

ferval wrote:

I've been mulling it over in the light of nordmann's last post and also wondering if the dialogue, which is superb but, by being so contemporary, removes much of the 'other country' aspect. The private and arcane memories feel authentic but the distance from then until now in public memory has been mightily compressed and, in my opinion, understimated.
When it deals with religious matters it makes it feel that these are issues of almost detached intellectual and political import rather than matters of (eternal) life and death and so tends to leaves the modern viewer here thinking, "Very interesting but worth dying for?"

But perhaps they were issues of detached intellectual import for the elite - or of interest only to the morbidly religious. Most ordinary people - then as now - probably didn't think much about religion at all - unless they were dying. They went to church because they had to. They were superstitious, not much else. They did as they were told, and most took the Oath, as required. They had no intention of dying for "faith", whatever that meant.

Those who rebelled - in Germany or in England (I'm thinking the Peasants' "Lutheran"  War, the Pilgrimage of Grace and the later Great Prayer Book Rebellion) - did so for mainly economic reasons. The latter - the Rebellion which started here in Devon in 1549 - was all about seething resentment at change: loss of identity - taxation -  and, of course, the abolition of feast and holydays; it was not really so much about how the Mass should be celebrated, or what the Mass really signified. How many English people, I wonder, really lost much sleep over things like transubstantiation? They all had far more to worry about - like keeping body and soul together, for instance.

And perhaps most of those who went to their terrible deaths were - as you suggested above, ferval - unbalanced: suicidal, or suicidally depressed, or suicidal attention-seekers, or simply suicidally stubborn. Even that simple, good, genuinely Christian soul, Little Bilney. His friends from Cambridge kept a kind of "suicide watch" on him. He was (as I think Latimer said) "too good for this world" and he wanted out. Martyrdom can be tempting.


Pride too - were these religious people really courageous martyrs, or proud men and woman mired in denial about their own motives? What was it Cromwell said last night? "More and Tyndale - mules not men - they deserve each other." Catherine of Aragon too - was she a brave woman of remarkable integrity, or a female "mule" who used religion as an excuse for vindictive pride? Hell knows no fury and all that?

Answers on a postcard please - or in the briefest of tweets.

I've always thought Mistress Quickly's words about Falstaff worrying about God were significant - that "no need for that yet".

Hostess Quickly: Nay, sure, he's not in hell: he's in Arthur's
bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom. A' made
a finer end and went away an it had been any
christom child; a' parted even just between twelve
and one, even at the turning o' the tide: for after
I saw him fumble with the sheets and play with
flowers and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew
there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as
a pen, and a' babbled of green fields. 'How now,
sir John!' quoth I. 'what, man! be o' good
cheer.' So a' cried out 'God, God, God!' three or
four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him a'
should not think of God; I hoped there was no need
to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet.

I didn't really understand nordmann's post. It's tempting to pretend I did, but I didn't.

I've been thinking about this all day, especially ferval's remarks about matters of "(eternal) life or death" - been wondering just how seriously people did take going to church and just how much real agonising over belief actually went on. Religion was all right in its place, but was excessive zeal or interest - even amongst the clergy - viewed, then as now, as being no doubt worthy, but - well - rather suspect? (I'm also thinking Holy Maids  here - every county it seemed could produce one such now and again. They certainly livened things up a bit.) Obviously the church was the centre of the village, and life pre-Reformation revolved around the great festivals, especially those linked with the land. But attitudes to belief? And was going to church mandatory? Found a couple of things:


Throughout most of the Middle Ages though, it (church attendance) wasn't mandatory at all. Mandatory church attendance is a Reformation thing - Calvin supposedly was the first to put pews/ seats into his churches in Geneva so it would be easier to spot who was there and to make it socially harder for people to get up and leave in the middle of the service. Until then - and this is difficult to envision nowadays - the naves of churches were nearly empty. There was no seating at all. Services would be going on at the main altar or in side chapels and the rest of the church would either be (a) empty, or (b) filled with people just milling around. Pilgrims might be visiting shrines, beggars would be asking for charity, townsfolk would be conducting business or just chatting with others or looking on curiously at what was going on at the altars around them - in a language they didn't speak (Latin), with the priests having their backs turned to the crowd and saying the mass softly but intently to no one in particular.

Through most of the Middle Ages, services were held by and for those who had a connection to God (priests, other religious, certain parts of the high aristocracy, etc.). The rest of the population was unimportant to the process of the mass - the conversation was between God and those who could talk to him and services were performed so that God would look kindly on the whole community. An individual's relationship with God was irrelevant, inconceivable, until the late Middle Ages (at the earliest).

I am not sure how accurate this is, but then Chaucer certainly has very few "pilgrims" who took things too seriously.

Another internet source says that archery, the tavern (?*), or simply doing nothing were alternative ways of spending Sunday - until the Elizabethan Religious Settlement of 1559 - then church attendance became mandatory - fine for disobedience was 12d.

What really surprised me was that mandatory church attendance was abandoned in 1650; the Puritans tried to reintroduce it, but gave up.

And, according to John Donne, some people simply never went to church at all:


Although church attendance was mandatory up to the year 1650 when it was abolished, the Anglican Episcopalian Church was never all embracing. There is evidence to show that the very poor, rogues, vagabonds, masterless men, and beggars did not ever attend. In some instances parish relief had to be withheld in order to get the poor to attend. Donne asked: "How few of these who make beggary an occupation from their infancy were ever within church, how few of them ever christened, or ever married?"

In 1657 compulsory church attendance was restored but its ineffectiveness was evident after 1660 with the existence of de facto sects in the towns. The Anglican or state church drew its congregation for the most part from the privileged 3 percent of the population or those with incomes of more than 100 pounds per year, such as peers, bishops, baronets, knights, esquires, gentlemen, greater and lesser office holders, merchants, traders and lawyers.

Hill, Christopher, Some Intellectual Consequences of the English Revolution, Phoenix 1997

* That really surprised me - drinking on a Sunday? Were the taverns open? Again, did things tighten up post-Reformation?

The current crop of believers are steadfast in their faith  - and it such things as make me go wide eyed.
We have a Jehovah Witness friend who  - if led on by us  - told of all manner of things we did not know of their beliefs. Once, he was excommunicated until he went through the tests for many months of being totally  ignored - that included his family and by close friends with whom he sometimes worked - and to whom he had been a truly good friend when they needed one. I balled them all out for it too - especially his mother because this young man was such a super guy With his belief being total from Genesis ! and thereafter, we never argued but  his answers often hung in a telling silence because his logic spoken in our home then sounded  rather daft...... for instance that one of their number was destined for heaven ... he was chosen.. the rest would not get so far. He greatly admired my mother and our home was a refuge when all the rest shunned him. Hee has has now left that community. He said he began to have doubts; then when he should not have celbrated birthdays of his new son, it all began to unravel. I think Plymouth Bretheren also have unquestioned belief - and that many of such people would die rather than refute them. I have interrupted an interesting flow of thought in this thread but thought the correlation should be remarked.

I'm so glad you did, Priscilla: the silence around here today has been unnerving.

I'm still mulling over ideas about the difference between medieval and Reformation attitudes to belief - like you do. So much pre-Reformation "belief" was superstition (religion as magic - see link), and so much post-Reformation belief was "wordy" - an intellectual exercise. Put the two together - Lord, that way madness lies. Letting bright, even if "uneducated" working-class folk read stuff, especially the Bible, was perhaps a terrible mistake (joke). But then, perhaps letting anyone read the Bible was a terrible mistake. (Not a joke.) Look what some people have done with it. More said as much:

"When a hatter  
Will go smatter  
In a philosophy  
Or a pedlar  
Wax a medlar  
In theology…"  

Even Henry had second thoughts about the wisdom of having an English Bible in every church: in his speech to Parliament of December 1545, Henry complained that he was "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".


Poor Tyndale. Was it worth it? I wonder if he returned now, viewing the world as it is, would he still bother? Or would he - like Christ - simply weep?

Or would he - and Henry and Cromwell and More - be, like you, "wide-eyed"? I get more wide-eyed - and more wild-eyed - with every day that passes. More would probably smile sardonically and say: "I told you so."


Got a bit of evidence from link below about the common people's fondness for "magic", holy or unholy. Anything they thought would work, I suppose. Latimer and Burton said as much:

http://www.michaelshermer.com/2007/01/science-and-the-decline-of-magic/


Nevertheless, I take the historian’s long view, and compared to what people believed before the Scientific Revolution, there is much cause for optimism. Consider what people believed a mere four centuries ago, just as science began lighting candles in the dark. In 16th- and 17th-century England, for example, almost everyone believed in sorcery, werewolves, hobgoblins, witchcraft, astrology, black magic, demons, prayer, and providence. “A great many of us, when we be in trouble, or sickness, or lose anything, we run hither and thither to witches, or sorcerers, whom we call wise men … seeking aid and comfort at their hands,” noted Bishop Latimer in 1552. Saints were worshipped. Liturgical books provided rituals for blessing cattle, crops, houses, tools, ships, wells, and kilns, not to mention the sick, sterile animals, and infertile couples. In his 1621 book, Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton explained, “Sorcerers are too common; cunning men, wizards, and white witches, as they call them, in every village, which, if they be sought unto, will help almost all infirmities of body and mind.”

I am still ruefully mulling over cognitive dissonance theory. I am brilliant at it.    

PS Another message not really thought through - a jumble - but will send.

If it has been silence today, maybe it's been pensive. For my part, just a few thoughts, though not sure it'll advance the debate at all ...

Although it has been said that "the past is another country", and perhaps one also shrouded in mist, there are a couple of "facts" that bear on all this matter. Firstly, of all those asked to swear to Henry's Act of Succession, legitimising his marriage to Anne Boleyn ("the whole country"), it is surely significant that only Sir Thomas More and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, plus a few dozen monks and other minor religious objurates actually refused. Throughout the whole realm, other than Fisher, not one bishop or abbot refused the oath, neither did any of the learned professors of law or theology at the universities, neither did any city mayors, lawyers or guildsmen, and neither did any member of the nobility, not even the staunchly conservative/catholic northern lords, the Howards, Nevilles, Percys (not even young Henry Percy, still probably besotted with Anne) and neither did any members of the lower orders except perhaps a few local celebrities such as the Holy Maid of Kent, Elizabeth Barton,  (and didn't she actually take the oath in the end?). Given that, for More to have remained so objurate does rather smack or something ... though what: honesty of thought and deed; acceptance or even desire for religious martydom; legal pride; standing on his honour; ... or had he just unfortuntely painted himself into a corner?

And secondly, Temp, you mentioned medieval attitudes to religion: a church divorced from nearly all lay people, and a general air, not of piety but simple, even primative, superstition .... I think that is all very true. In a period where casual death, disease, suffering, ignorance and callous indifference to one's fellow man were common, and when for most people a single bad harvest could often mean starvation and the resulting death of children and older parents, if not oneself also, then who would really be interested in higher points of law, religion or a higher 'truth', even if they'd ever had access to such information. The vast majority of the population of England were still little better than indentured labourers, virtually slaving on the land just to survive ... literacy rates were low and I very much doubt if your average agriculrural labourer was au fait with the finer niceties of the Gospels, or the law. If someone asked them to swear to the King's Act, then I'm sure they just swore.

And yet, when push comes to shove, amongst the whole nation, only More and Fisher refused ... and died for their refusal.

Does anyone actually know how the 1534 Oath to the Act of Succession was administed? I'm pretty sure it wasn't actually asked - and the result recorded - for the whole population. Do any lists of oath-swearers exist in the PRO other than for specific important individuals? Indeed were any lists ever actually compiled, other than the fairly short lists of those that refused and so suffered the ultimate penalty?

My understanding is that it seems rather to have worked along the lines of universal acceptance, unless specifically refused as in the case of Thomas More. So I've always rather assumed it was a case of, for example, Thomas Howard Duke of Norfolk, just swearing an oath for himself, and then saying that he knew no-one in his household that wasn't of like mind. The same system for deans of university colleges, and abbots of monasteries etc. If one actually dissented I feel it could have been quite easy to lay low and just be sworn in along with the common herd, unless one had already made it clear that one might not agree.

But of course More was never going to be just one of the common herd and his personal oath was always going to be obligatory. Nevertheless in actively refusing the oath More was rather nailing his colours to the mast, a lesser man - or indeed maybe a greater man - might still have found a way out. Unless of course that was not what he really wished.

I seem to be going around in circles ... so I'll shut up now.

Oh, don't shut up, MM!

Elton says that "the realm as a whole was never sworn to the supremacy". It was the clergy - the bishops - and the learned men in the universities who mattered. It was not until the 1536 Act for Extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of Rome that Henry even bothered to demand that laymen acknowledge his supremacy. Thomas More - who was of course a layman - was the exception in 1534.

Even after 1536 it was really only men in positions of authority who took the formal Oath.

The rest of the realm was covered by Cromwell's Treason Act 1534 which specified that all those were guilty of high treason who:

“ do maliciously wish, will or desire by words or writing, or by craft imagine, invent, practise, or attempt any bodily harm to be done or committed to the king's most royal person, the queen's or the heirs apparent [Elizabeth], or to deprive them of any of their dignity, title or name of their royal estates, or slanderously and maliciously publish and pronounce, by express writing or words, that the king should be heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel or usurper of the crown... ”

The word 'maliciously' was added in several cases to require evil intent, and the Act meant that it was very dangerous to say anything against what the King had done. It was dodgy even to think the wrong thing!

Quite a few ordinary people were hauled up before the authorities because of this Act - including some garrulous old women. Most were let off when they claimed - in good English fashion - that their treasonable words were not malicious - just the result of too much to drink.

Interesting that, besides More and Fisher, the other men who stubbornly - or bravely, depending on your point of view - denied the supremacy were the Carthusians. They were the strictest and most austere of orders. More had considered becoming a Carthusian monk when he was young - he lived with them between 1503 and 1504.

Cognitive dissonance? Try having a bit of Caledonian antisyzygy as well, it's not even pronounceable, hence the silence as I try to make sense of my thoughts.

Don't underestimate the importance of religion to ordinary folk, it formed the landscape in which they lived their lives, structured their days and years and informed every aspect of their lives. The more insecure and hazardous life is, the more that that pernicious doctrine of the afterlife becomes important.

Didn't More try rather hard, in a very lawyerly way, to wriggle out his bind?

I'm going out now, when I have something to say that isn't just daft ramblings, I'll return.

edit - I see a new post, I will read it later and commit this mince in the meantime.

MM, I've managed to track down some numbers. Jasper Ridley, in his Henry VIII (1984), says this (on page 237):


"The oath was put to everyone in any position of authority, and to many other people all over the country. It seems unlikely that everyone over the age of fourteen was in fact required to swear, but we know that by July 1534, 7,342 persons had taken the oath, and this was certainly only a small proportion of the total number. Only a handful of persons refused to swear when the oath was put to them. Apart from Fisher and More, these included a number of Carthusian monks and Franciscan friars."


I was surprised to read the underlined bit above.


Here is the Oath:

I (state your name) do utterly testifie and declare in my Conscience, that the Kings Highnesse is the onely Supreame Governour of this Realme, and all other his Highnesse Dominions and Countries, as well in all Spirituall or Ecclesiasticall things or causes, as Temporall: And that no forraine Prince, Person, Prelate, State or Potentate, hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction, Power, Superiorities, Preeminence or Authority Ecclesiasticall or Spirituall within this Realme. And therefore, I do utterly renounce and forsake all Jurisdictions, Powers, Superiorities, or Authorities; and do promise that from henchforth I shall beare faith and true Allegiance to the Kings Highnesse, his Heires and lawfull Successors: and to my power shall assist and defend all Jurisdictions, Priviledges, Preheminences and Authorities granted or belonging to the Kings Highnesse, his Heires and Successors or united and annexed to the Imperial Crowne of the Realme: so helpe me God: and by the Contents of this Booke.

Temperance wrote:

I had never thought of comparing Thomas More and Antigone, Paul - but yes, I see your point. Interesting.

I'm trying to recover from my unwise attempts yesterday at cognitive dissonance tension reduction - i.e. drinking far too much during and after a heated discussion which unfortunately turned very nasty. I feel awful at the moment - God's punishment (joke) - so there will be little or no rabbiting from me today (huge sighs of relief all round  - that's a very weak smiley, by the way).

But I hope I'll return when I feel a bit better. I do want to examine the idea that the past is always a foreign country. Is it? Don't people stay pretty much the same - even where "religion" is concerned? That probably sounds like an utterly mad thing to say, but I think I can dig out some evidence  - from Shakespeare, from Marlowe, from Sir William Maitland ("God is a bogle of the nursery" he is supposed to have declared) to support my view.

But not today.

Temperance,

haven' t read the latest on "Wolf Hall" in this thread and by your mentioning of Thomas More I thought that Hillary's "Bring up the bodies" was about Thomas More and not Thomas Cromwell (not so accustomed with all those Thomas' in British history) ...so I did a whole evening research on quite another subject as the Thomas More, the Beckett, the Antigone  from Jean Anouilh and I have seen now that the Thomas More (A man for all seasons) that I have seen in Bruges from a London theatre company was from Robert Bolt. I wanted to speak about duty, task, martyrdom...but will start a new thread...although it can perhaps also be linked with this thread.
To be sure that I was now at the right end I did some quick research:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Hall
http://www.goodreads.com/series/75450-thomas-cromwell-trilogy


And excuses again for reading the last pages of the thread too quickly and without in depth interest...

Kind regards and with esteem, Paul.

I thought you were referring to Antigone's resistance to Creon, Paul. That made complete sense to me.  I'm a bit confused by your post, to be honest.

ferval wrote:

Don't underestimate the importance of religion to ordinary folk, it formed the landscape in which they lived their lives, structured their days and years and informed every aspect of their lives. The more insecure and hazardous life is, the more that that pernicious doctrine of the afterlife becomes important.

Didn't More try rather hard, in a very lawyerly way, to wriggle out his bind?

Want to respond to both bits of your post, ferval, but no time at the moment. Back tomorrow or Monday.

ferval - I'm dying to do a Philomena Cunk post on Wolf Hall. Can you imagine her talking to David Starkey?  Just no time at the moment. (That's my excuse, anyway...   )

Really must go.

Your wish is my command, madame.

                                                                           

My new expletive of choice is "The thrice shitten shroud of Lazarus".

ferval wrote:

My new expletive of choice is "The thrice shitten shroud of Lazarus".

Yes, that was a corker, wasn't it? Good old Norfolk. Even TC looked a bit startled when he came out with that one.

Actually I'd like to see Philomena C. interviewing the glamorous Suzannah Lipscomb: "Well, history girl, who are you then?" I could imagine poor Dr Suzannah L. trying to explain the import of the growing Cromwellian control of the legislature during the 1530s, and Philomena interrupting with: "I really like your hair. You must spend ages getting it done, but I expect you always read a book about the Tudors while you are waiting for your highlights to develop, don't you? Do you get all your research done at Toni and Guy's?"

P_____C______ is a new character to me (sorry for being an ignoramus). Is she from something like "Little Britain" and are her initials a joke to do with "politically correct"?

LiR, she is one of the characters in 'Charlie Brooker's Screen Wipes' on BBC 2.

Ferval, it's "beshitten" - you must get your expletives absolutely correct!

“Oh, by the thrice-beshitten shroud of Lazarus!”

Thank you Temp, that makes more sense and I would hate to show myself up with an inaccurate expletive.
Now I would like to know how come it was be-shitten thrice.

For an expletive it's a bit of a tongue twister ... the Duke of Norfolk obviously didn't have dodgey dentures.

Beshitten literally means befouled with excrement. However in the 17th century, the earliest recorded examples I could find, it was more commonly used as a euphemism for cowardice or absolute fright, the famous example being James II whose own armies in Ireland nicknamed him "James the Beshitten" (Séamus an Chaca) after his initial flight to France when deposed. Some fifty years later the publisher Edmund Curll, while explaining to a meeting of Alexander Pope's (many) enemies, how much maligned he himself had been by Pope in the poet's recently published "Homer", listed it quite unashamedly in the sense of being frightened to the point of shitting himself as one of a long list of degradations he had suffered in life, none of which were as bad as what Pope had done to him through this recent defamation;

" I have taken involuntary Purges, I have been vomited, three times have I been can'd, once was I hunted, twice was my Head broke by a Grenadier, twice was I toss'd in a Blanket; I have had Boxes on the Ear, Slaps on the Chops; I have been frighted, pump'd, kick'd, slander'd, and beshitten.—I hope Gentlemen, you are all convinc'd that this Author of Mr. Lintott's could mean nothing else but starving you, by poisoning me."
(Lintott was Pope's publisher)

What Mantel reckoned Norfolk (who otherwise seemed much more precise in his bad language) might be inferring about poor Lazarus however is a very moot point, unless of course it was that Jesus scared the shit out of him when he pulled off that particular trick of his perhaps?

Ja, ja, in German for instance: eine beschissene Arbeitgeber...
http://dictionary.reverso.net/german-english/beschissen

In Dutch for instance: 'n bescheten opdracht ( a shit mission)
In fact it is more Flemish as in "'n bescheten kommissche" (a shit  undertaking)

Kind regards, Paul.

PS. Sorry for the lowering of the standards, but it was you all who started...