Henry VIII's Conscience and Contradictions

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Henry VIII's Conscience and Contradictions"

Podcast: Not Just the Tudors
Host: Professor Suzannah Lipscomb
Release Date: April 7, 2025

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Introduction

In the episode titled "Henry VIII's Conscience and Contradictions," Professor Suzannah Lipscomb delves deep into the complex and often contradictory nature of King Henry VIII's role in the English Reformation. Moving beyond the traditional narrative that paints Henry solely as a Protestant reformer, Lipscomb presents a nuanced analysis that highlights his intricate relationship with both Catholicism and emerging Protestant ideas.

Henry VIII's Role in the Reformation

Professor Lipscomb begins by revisiting the dramatic events of July 1540, where three Catholics were hanged as traitors and three Protestants were burned as heretics at Smithfield, London. This event underscores the "complex and nuanced" nature of the Reformation under Henry VIII, challenging the simplistic view of England's shift to Protestantism.

"In England, the central fulcrum and defining principle of the series of changes we think of as the Reformation seems to have been an overarching commitment to this principle of royal supremacy."
— Professor Suzannah Lipscomb [06:15]

The Shift from Papal Authority to Royal Supremacy

A significant theme explored is Henry's transformation from a monarch who initially deferred to the Pope, as evidenced in his "assertio septum Sacramentorum," to one who elevated his own authority above the papacy. This shift is symbolized through various forms of iconography and legislative actions that reinforced his position as the supreme head of the Church of England.

"Henry grew convinced of his unique position as God's anointed deputy on earth, the supreme head of the Church in England, and he believed in his right to prescribe what his subjects should believe."
— Professor Suzannah Lipscomb [06:15]

Henry's Religious Policies and Iconography

Lipscomb discusses how Henry modeled himself after Old Testament kings like David and Abraham, commissioning tapestries and artworks that depicted him in a divine mandate to reform religious practices. These artistic representations were not mere decorations but strategic tools to propagate his religious authority and vision.

"In Henry's own special idiosyncratic religious position, reform, albeit reform that diminished the Church and amplified his supremacy, coupled with more or less Catholic theology, just not Roman Catholic theology, this is the position that his will reflects."
— Professor Suzannah Lipscomb [29:44]

The Complexity of Henry's Theology

Henry VIII's theological stance is portrayed as a "rag bag of emotional preferences," blending elements of Catholicism and Protestantism without fully embracing either. This eclectic approach, termed Henricianism, reflects his personal convictions and political maneuvers rather than adherence to a defined religious doctrine.

"Henry's religious beliefs have been described by Dermot McCulloch as a rag bag of emotional preferences."
— Professor Suzannah Lipscomb [10:12]

The Last Months and Henry's Final Will

The episode delves into the final months of Henry VIII's reign, examining his last will and testament as a critical document that encapsulates his religious beliefs. Contrary to some historians' interpretations, Lipscomb argues that Henry remained fundamentally Catholic, evidenced by his references to the Virgin Mary and the saints.

"The language of the will leaves us with no sense of a man about to press further into Protestant reform."
— Professor Suzannah Lipscomb [24:02]

Lipscomb also addresses the contradictory events leading up to Henry's death, such as the brief diplomatic engagement with the Pope and his simultaneous declarations against the Catholic practices, suggesting that these actions were more reflective of his complex character than a genuine shift towards Protestantism.

"He was never a Protestant. He dies a little bit with some of the ideas, but he has a sort of visceral loathing of some of the most central Protestant contentions."
— Dr. Lucy Wooding [29:23]

Conclusion and Historical Interpretations

Professor Lipscomb concludes by emphasizing the unique nature of the English Reformation under Henry VIII, which defies conventional continental classifications. The episode highlights how Henry's policies created an environment of "nightmarish quality," where rapid and often contradictory religious changes left subjects uncertain and fearful.

"The English Reformation, perhaps, like many things, English was peculiar. It almost can't be understood in continental terms and using later vocabulary."
— Professor Suzannah Lipscomb [32:29]

Lipscomb recommends further reading, particularly Peter Marshall's Heretics and Believers, for those interested in a deeper exploration of the 16th-century Reformation.

Notable Quotes

• "Henry's elevation of the authority figure of the Pope... illustrates a tendency to inflated conceptions of authority and to legalism."
  — Professor Suzannah Lipscomb [05:48]

• "Henry consistently described himself as Catholic and his primary purpose under God. His purpose was, as he had declared in January 1536, that his flock should be fed and nourished with wholesome and godly doctrine..."
  — Professor Suzannah Lipscomb [09:42]

• "He was never a Protestant. He dies a little bit with some of the ideas, but he has a sort of visceral loathing of some of the most central Protestant contentions."
  — Dr. Lucy Wooding [29:23]

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Final Thoughts

"Henry VIII's Conscience and Contradictions" offers a comprehensive examination of one of history's most enigmatic monarchs. Professor Suzannah Lipscomb skillfully navigates through Bernard's arguments, Lucia Wooding's insights, and various historical interpretations to present a balanced and thorough understanding of Henry VIII's religious and political maneuvers. This episode is essential listening for history enthusiasts seeking to unravel the complexities of the English Reformation and the man at its helm.

Transcript

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit With a historyhit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own recent two part series A World Torn, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash. Subscribe.

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Amberlynn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. In the last episode, we began with the incredible and gruesome sight of three Catholics hanged as traitors and three Protestants burned as heretics at Smithfield in London on the same day in July 1540. We considered what this might mean for what we had imagined happened in Henry VIII's Reformation, the idea that England became a Protestant country, and we learned that it was considerably more complex and nuanced than that. We examined the changes that occurred in the English church under Henry from 1536 to the steps towards limited reform until 1538, and the period of reaction after that, and then we saw that even that was too simplistic and that reform and counter reform measures were at times muddled together. So today we're going to try and explain what exactly was going on and the only way to proceed is to think again about Henry's role in all this. Could the fits and starts of Reformation policy be explained by positing the King's driving role in the Reformation? How much was the Reformation a product of the conscience of the king? This is what has been argued by George W Bernard, among others, and it's worthy of our consideration. Henry's elevation of the authority figure of the Pope in his assertio septum Sacramentorum and his original deference to the Pope and to the law over the divorce issue illustrates a tendency to inflated conceptions of authority and to legalism. In the early 1530s, it seems this elevated sense of authority was being transferred from the Pope to to a recognition of his own responsibility and authority as King to govern the Church in his country. So while he was pious, this piety appears to become linked primarily to a concept of himself as first under God. In England, the central fulcrum and defining principle of the series of changes we think of as the Reformation seems to have been an overarching commitment to this principle of royal supremacy. He Henry grew convinced of his unique position as God's anointed deputy on earth, the supreme head of the Church in England, and he believed in his right to prescribe what his subjects should believe. As time went on, Henry modelled himself more and more on the example of the Old Testament kings and prophets, David, Josiah and Abraham, as seen in his commissioning of a set of 10 priceless tapestries from the Brussels workshop of Wilhelm de Campanier in the 1540s, which still hang at Hampton Court. Or he's depicted in his slaughter as David. All you need to do is put a papal tiara on Goliath and the iconography leaves nothing to the imagination. These were rulers who had a close relationship with God and a divine mandate to reform religious abuses and to rescue their people from idolatry and superstition. In the Whitehall mural of 1537, originally painted on a wall in the privy chamber at Whitehall palace, but now, after the palace was incinerated in 1698, preserved for us in small late 17th century copies by Remedius van Lemput, Henry may be the dominant figure. But at the centre is a stone plinth on which Henry's achievements are described by comparison to those of his father.

[Unknown Speaker]

In Latin, the Son born indeed for greater things, removed the unworthy from their altars and replaced them by upright men. The arrogance of the popes has yielded to unerring virtue. And while Henry VIII holds the sceptre in his hand, religion is restored. And during his reign, the doctrines of God have begun to be held in his honour.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

The title page of the Great Bible of 1539, which was to be put in every parish for his subjects to see, is a stunning visual representation of Henry's supremacy, powerfully depicting the king first under God and speaking the words of David as handing out the truth of the Gospel to his ministers and his people. In addition, in his annotations of his psalter of the 1540s, Henry singled out Phineas, an Old Testament judge who rescued Israel from idolatry by the destruction of superstitious shrines and sacred images promoting force worship. A letter that Henry sent to his bishops in 1537 stressed the obedience that his subjects owed their prince and the need to expel any idolatry and superstition among those committed by us to your cure. This conveys Henry's strong sense of kingly responsibility for the cure or care of his people and explains his fierce reaction to the pilgrimage of grace rebels who rejected precisely that. Henry appears to become truly and genuinely convinced of the error of the Pope's assumption of spiritual power that should rest in the hands of a prince. It may have been an evangelical principle, but in Henry's hands it got a certain narcissistic twist. You can see this in a picture in the Royal collection. It shows the Pope sprawled on the floor, papal balls strewn in front of him. Women named avarice and hypocrisy lie either side of him, and four haloed men pick up stones with which to stone him. And the stones are called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The message is Scripture in the right hands, defeats the Pope. And we know this picture hung in Henry VIII's long gallery at Hampton Court. Another key feature of his religious policy was a preoccupation with unity and concord in his kingdom. We've already seen that the 10 articles promised to establish Christian quietness and unity and to avoid contention. In July 1536, Henry ordered that for a year no one was to preach for or against purgatory, saint worship, clerical marriage, justification by grace through faith, pilgrimage or miracles, the controversial issues that divided men in those days. A particularly striking occasion was his Christmas speech of 1545 to Parliament, what Dermot McCulloch has called the pioneer Christmas broadcast. It was an impassioned and eloquent speech lamenting the religious divisions in his kingdom. Henry complained about those too stiff in their old mumpsimus or those too attached to unreformed Roman practices, and others too busy and curious in their new. The new the novel, the evangelical, and reduced himself to tears as he pleaded for unity in his realm. Few of his audience, according to William Peter could refrain from weeping too. The role that Henry had conceived for himself was one that showed a commitment to reform and renewal in the Church while insisting on unity and the essential truths of the Catholic faith. For Henry consistently described himself as Catholic and his primary purpose under God. His purpose was, as he had declared in January 1536, that his flock should.

[Unknown Speaker]

Be fed and nourished with wholesome and godly doctrine, and not seduced with the filthy and corrupt abominations of the Bishop of Rome were his disciples and adherents. Nor yet, by the setting forth of novelties and the continual inculcation of things not necessary, brought and led to unquietness of mind and doubt of conscience.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Although the royal supremacy and an obsession with unity were the guiding themes of the Reformation, religious policy nevertheless showed some curious fits and starts, suggesting Henry's conscience prescribed an individual and eclectic form of religion. Henry was radical on some issues monasticism, religious imagery and vernacular scripture, while conservative on others, the Mass, clerical celibacy and justification by grace through faith alone. His personal theology of salvation does not fit with any of the later confessional identities. Catholicism after the Council of Trent, Lutheranism or Calvinism. We might put Henricianism right in the middle of them all. This unusual mixture of doctrines. Henry's religious beliefs have been described by Dermot McCulloch as a rag bag of emotional preferences. Yet George Bernard counters that there was some logic in the positions that the hemorrhician Church upheld. Henry shows a concern with behavior. He could not accept the central evangelical belief in justification by grace through faith alone because he suspected it might encourage people to sin. While his gradual disillusionment with the doctrine of purgatory may be because it similarly permitted people an escape from the consequences of their sin. It's also possible that his thinking on this was informed by his apparently lifelong antagonism towards Luther. One chief concern was with clerical power. As we've seen, the sacraments of confirmation, extreme unction and priestly ordination were relegated because Henry feared fueling clerical power and status, which might threaten his own position. He also feared that allowing priests to marry would raise the possibility of them creating family dynasties of clergy who could challenge the King's power. The English Bible was allowed and then restricted for the same reason. The order of 1538, to put an English Bible in every parish and the apparent restrictions on who could read it imposed in 1543, suggest that the king first emphasised scriptural access to encourage the obedience of his subjects to his newly defined royal supremacy. But he wanted the Scriptures to be reverenced. And very soon afterwards, he seems to have grown concerned that this new policy actually encouraged dissension. He complained in 1545, that most precious.

[Unknown Speaker]

Jewel, the Word of God, is disputed, rhymed, sung and jangled in every ale house and Tavern.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Here's Dr. Lucy Wooding.

[Dr. Lucy Wooding]

There's been a lot of debate about this, and the more skeptical view would say, oh, he just picks up the bits that he likes to look at and puts them together into this rather kind of messy configuration. Other people would argue that, no, there is some consistency. I think that his devotion to the Bible is important. He's already interested in it. There's a proclamation of 1530 where he talks about having a proper Catholic English Bible and none of these sort of misleading translations by Lutherans like Tyndale. And of course, the Bible rescues him from the dilemma of his first marriage by saying, you know, it wasn't your fault, you didn't realize, but it's there in the book of Leviticus. You should not have married your brother's widow. This is his explanation for why all those babies kept dying. And you can see how it makes psychological sense to him. And ever after. I think his devotion to the Word of God is very kind of consistent thread through some otherwise quite bumpy years. That said, like a lot of people at the time, it's not clear to me that he actually read that much of the Bible. This is what people do with Bibles historically. They dip in and they find the bit that suits them, the bit that supports their case, and this is the bit that they champion. Even Luther was a very patchy advocate of Scripture. There were bits that he felt very positively about and other bits that he rejected. Henry's not unusual in this, but I think when the pilgrimage of grace has broken out and he talks about the need for more Bibles in the north of England with the kind of slightly naive hope that if you give people Bibles, they will draw from them the need for obedience to their king. You can get a lot of things out of the Bible, but that's not necessarily the most obvious takeaway. But the model of Old Testament kingship is clearly something he finds inspiring. And the iconography of the second Half of his reign, he's constantly depicted as King David or King Solomon. And that gives sort of measure of consistency to his policies in that these Old Testament kings ruled as religious figures as well as secular rulers. They were very keen on banishing idolatry. The smashing of images in the Old Testament is mirrored, I think, in Henry's quite vicious campaign against the use of images, particularly images that had some kind of miraculous power attributed to them. And he brings in the first official English Bible in 1539. These things all connect together.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Or to put it another way, Henry VIII's faith appears to have been neither consummately Catholic nor nor palpably Protestant. Henrietianism seems to have been a kind of theologically sincere attempt at a middle way. In the summer before Henry's death, there were, however, two incidents that suggested that Henry was perhaps rethinking his church's precarious, idiosyncratic balance between Catholicism and Protestantism. But the two events argue for different conclusions. The first is something noticed by only a few historians. This was that in late July 1546, for the first time in over a dozen years, an envoy from the Pope Guarani Bottano arrived in England and was granted an audience with the king. Did this mean that Henry was considering a rapprochement with Rome? The meeting seemed promising, but two months later, Bettano was given his marching orders. The second contradictory event occurred only a few weeks later. While entertaining Claude d'ambo, the Admiral of France, in August, Henry, casually leaning one arm on the shoulder of his Archbishop Cranmer and his other on d'ambo, remarked that France and England, newly allied, had decided to banish the Bishop of Rome from France and to change the Mass in both realms into a communion. Was he thoroughly and firmly resolved in that behalf, as Archbishop Thomas Cramer would contend a few years later? Or as one historian has put it, was it a typical trick of Henry's throwing a hand grenade into the assembled company to see what reaction it would provoke?

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[Holly Fry]

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

In a painting by an unknown artist from the 1570s entitled King Edward VI and the Pope, we see Henry VIII on his deathbed pointing to his son, thereby nominating his successor, who is attended by a council that includes Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, later Duke of Somerset. Under Edward's feet, the Pope has been felled by a book that declares the word of the Lord endureth forever. And in the top right of the picture, as if through a window, we can see violent iconoclasts at work, pulling down images against a backdrop of ruin and destruction. The message of this later propaganda is Henry intended the radical Protestantism of Edward VI's reign. This was also the line taken by John Fox in his book of Martyrs, His Acts and Monuments. And following him, some historians have argued that Henry was indeed intending further reform in the twilight of his life. Together with his bold remark to Dan Beau, this school of historians point to Henry's choice of executors, and specifically to the exclusion of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, both conservative in their religious beliefs, to suggest that Henry was deliberately tilting the composition of his son's Regency Council to leave a body dominated by evangelicals who would advance the cause of Protestantism after his death. They add that the tutors appointed by Henry to teach Edward, Dr. Richard Cox and Sir John Cheek, would both emerge as vehement Protestants during Edward's reign, and that Henry must therefore have chosen them in foreknowledge of the spiritual influence they would have exerted on his son. Henry, it is argued, must have been converted at the end of his life and must have been lining up a Protestant triumph. Now, in response, other historians have established that in the 1540s the men appointed to be Edward's tutors, Cox and Cheek, were not known Protestants but were rather Erasmian humanists. They were chosen because they were leading intellectuals and, if anything, moderate in religion. Cox was one of two men nominated as indifferent hearers in the public religious debate between Bishop Gardiner and the Protestant Robert Barnes in March 1540, one of our six martyrs. They may have later become Protestants, but there's no way that Henry would have known this when he appointed them to instruct his heir, and little should therefore be read into it. In addition, Henry's remark to Dambo and Cranmer seemed so outrageous a suggestion and so completely at odds with happily burning Anne Askew and others a few months earlier for believing precisely the same thing, that we must surely regard it as a piece of playful and preposterous banter. But more substantially, I want to quash the idea that Henry was growing in evangelicalism in his last months on two grounds. In my explainer on the death of Henry viii, I demonstrated that the evidence for the existence of an evangelical faction before the last couple of days of Henry's life is slim, and that the exclusion of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, from the Regency Council, to Roll during his son's minority was a result of their own pigheadedness and wrongdoing. In practice, there seems to have been little religious motivation in Henry's decision to oust Gardiner and Norfolk. It seems fairly evident that the real problem with both Gardiner and Norfolk was character, obstinacy and overweening pride. My second point concerns the contents of Henry VIII's last will and testament, which was, I believe, exactly as Henry intended it to be. For, as we have seen, Henry was an inveterate corrector of theological texts. If he had spotted any error in the religious pronouncements of his will when it was read to him a month before he died, it's hard to believe that he would not have altered it as such. His last will and testament is a fascinating snapshot of his precise position on the Geiger counter of religious belief in the 16th century, telling us where, on the dial between Roman Catholicism and radical Protestantism, Henry actually fell in the last month of his life. Let us turn finally, then, to a quick textual analysis of the will itself. Its opening words are in the name.

[Unknown Speaker]

Of God and of the glorious and blessed virgin Our Lady St. Mary and of all the holy company of Heaven.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Although Henry did not identify by name 10 specific saints as his father had done in his will, nor was he, as for some, in his devotion towards this most Blessed Mother ever, virgin Our Lady St. Mary, as Henry VII's will has it, this is conventional enough and markedly Catholic in style, later wills of his counsellors do not mention the Virgin Mary. Even Gardiner, who made his will in the safely Catholic reign of Mary I, on 28 January 1558, committed his soul to the infinite mercy of Almighty God, and the Virgin Mary did not get a Look in. Although Gardiner did ask for the intercession of all the company of heaven, Henry in fact mentions the Virgin Mary and the saints twice. A few pages in, he imperiously states that we do instantly require and desire the Blessed Virgin Mary, his mother, with all the holy company of heaven, continually to pray for us. In Henry's world, things were not requested but demanded, even of the Mother of God. The second indication of Henry's faith lies in his early declaration of his supremacy. He is the will states in earth.

[Unknown Speaker]

Immediately under God, the supreme head of the Church of England and Ireland.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

It's not surprising that such a central component of Henry's religious universe is mentioned up front. Then he moves on to explain his theology of salvation and justification. He states his belief in original sin, the conviction that he is, as all mankind is, mortal and born in sin. He affirms his understanding of the divinity. God, who is almighty, presides over a transitory and wretched world and provides great gifts and benefits. Henry acknowledges his unworthiness to receive these gifts. He says our self insufficient in any part to deserve or recompense the same. But three things Henry believes will free him from this wretched state. Chief among God's gifts is the offer of redemption through the person of his Son, through whose most precious body and blood, in the time of his passion, mankind can be saved and attain eternal life. But in addition, Henry notes both the importance of repenting one's old and detestable life, and twice that a person must endeavour to execute in his lifetime such good deeds and charitable works as Scripture demandeth. The greater his estate, honour and authority in this world, the greater his good works should be. Justification, then, comes from Christ's death, the believer's repentance and the performance of good works in life. Finally, Henry completes his doctrinal statement by stating that he most humbly and heartily commends and bequeaths his soul to God in the hope of everlasting life, but knows that his body, once his soul has departed, will remain but as a cadaver and so return to the vile matter it was made of, for it is but ashes, and to ashes it shall again. This is a thoroughly conservative, theologically orthodox statement of beliefs. Its conception of salvation is far from Lutheran. It's also worth noting what the will does not mention. Henry does not call God Father, as Sir Arthur Denny's testament of 1549 would do. He does not refer to Christ as Jesus, as the wills of Sir William Parr, Thomas Risley and Stephen Gardner go on to do. Nor does he repeat an oft used phrase praising the infinite mercy of God. Henry's notion of God seems not to have been personal or familial, nor indulgent, but rather a hierarchical figure with whom Henry had a contract. He makes no mention of the Holy Ghost or God's trinitarian nature, as Denny and Southampton both do. And in this, in comparison to other wills of the period, his theology is closest to Gardiner's. The language of the will leaves us with no sense of a man about to press further into Protestant reform. Pressing the tip of his nose to death's doorway also seems to have given Henry a pragmatic, Pascal's Wager style approach to the possibility of purgatory. It might well not exist, but it was less risky to assume it did. But prayers for the dead might have been omitted from the recent litany. And the monasteries, those great powerhouses of prayer for the dead, may have been closed. So hardly anyone else's soul could be prayed for. But Henry was taking no chances with his own. He left lands worth an annual revenue of £600 to the Dean and Chapter of St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle in exchange for two priests to say daily masses perpetually while the world shall endure, and four solemn obeds each year. In order that these prayers might be heard more favourably by the Almighty. Henry also decreed that alms worth a thousand marks, or £666, 13s and 4 pence, should be given to the most poor and needy people that may be found, although Henry notes that these are not just to be any riff raff common beggars, as much as may be avoided in exchange for cash, these poor people were also required to pray heartily to God for remission of our offences and the wealth of our soul at the quarterly obeds. Another ten pounds was to be given to the poor. And in addition, Henry used his will to found a body of 13 poor knights who were each to be given 12 pence every day, a total of 17 pounds, 16 shillings a year, plus their head and governor to receive three pounds, six shillings and and eight pence yearly. He charged his executors with fulfilling these conditions as they will answer before Almighty God at the dreadful day of Judgment. In short, some philanthropic impulse notwithstanding, Henry committed £1,328, 12 shillings a year to pay for his soul's progress through purgatory, a sizable investment, albeit still less than his father's legacy of £2,000 that strongly suggest that Henry had doctrinally not moved far from Roman Catholicism. He was never a Protestant. Here's Dr. Lucy Wooding again. One of the great misconceptions we have of Henry is that he found the Protestant Church in England. He's never a Protestant, is he?

[Dr. Lucy Wooding]

No, he's never a Protestant. He dies a little bit with some of the ideas, but he has a sort of visceral loathing of some of the most central Protestant contentions. He is never persuaded by this idea of salvation by faith alone. Salvation has to come through faith and works.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

In fact, the only religiously unorthodox aspect of Henry's deathbed faith was the way he left his life with a simple squeeze of Cranmer's hand, not receiving the full rights of extreme unction. Yet Henry's own 10 articles of 1536, while deeming confession and absolution by priests to be necessary, had removed extreme unction from the list of sacraments. Henry didn't end his life just as he hadn't lived it, as a Protestant or as an evangelical, nor as a Roman Catholic, but rather in his own special idiosyncratic religious position, reform, albeit reform that diminished the Church and amplified his supremacy, coupled with more or less Catholic theology, just not Roman Catholic theology, this is the position that his will reflects. This was his living and his deathbed faith. So let us come back finally to the six martyrs. The deaths of the Catholics, Richard Featherstone, Edward Powell and Thomas Abel, and the radicals Robert Barnes, William Jerome and Thomas Garrett in 1540 is symbolic of both the English Reformation under Henry as a whole and of Henry's own faith, because their deaths defined its boundaries. It was not Roman Catholicism, nor was it Protestantism. The English Reformation, perhaps, like many things, English was peculiar. It almost can't be understood in continental terms and using later vocabulary. Henry's religious policy seems to have been almost continually in flux, either as a result of his own interests and beliefs, or the influence of other strong voices. And this, historian Felicity Hill has suggested, meant that living in England in the age of Henry VIII might at times have had a nightmarish quality, as men sought to second guess the monarch's latest views. If you'd like to know more about the Henrisham Reformation, you can look at the work of all the scholars I've mentioned, but also I direct you to Peter Marshall's Heretics and Believers, a prize winning book that tells us exactly what happened in the 16th century Reformation and is a jolly good read. Thanks for listening to not just the Tudors and to my researcher Alice Smith and my producer Rob Weinberg. And do join me Professor Susannah Lipscomb. Next time for another episode of Not Just the Tudors from History Hit.

[Holly Fry]

Our Skin Tells a Story. Join me, Holly Fry, and a slate of incredible guests as we are all inspired by their journeys with psoriasis. Along with these uplifting and candid personal histories, we take a step back into the bizarre and occasionally poisonous history of our skin and how we take care of it. Whether you're looking for inspiration on your own skincare journey or are curious about the sometimes strange history of how we treat our skin, you'll find genuine, empathetic, transformative conversations here on our skin. Listen to our skin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.