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00:19There are ghosts in this place.
00:22You don't notice them right away.
00:25At first glance, Benham Priory in Norfolk
00:28looks much like any other English country church.
00:30Plain and simple. Limestone, limewash.
00:34Nothing fancy, really.
00:37But then you look around and realise something else is going on here.
00:42That grandiose timber vaulted roof.
00:45Those multi-storey arcades.
00:47Aren't they all just a bit too big for a parish church?
00:51And then you start to fill in the gaps.
00:53And bit by bit, a lost world remakes itself.
00:59A world of monks and masses.
01:02Of colour and plain song.
01:03A world of brilliant images.
01:06The world of Catholic England.
01:12For centuries, this didn't sound strained.
01:16Catholic England was just another way of saying Christian England, really.
01:20And then, in a generation, it stopped being a truism and started being treason.
01:26A world of Catholic England.
01:31Images of the Virgin, the apostles and the saints, once cherished and glorified,
01:36were now mocked and vandalised.
01:42Here at Binham, the saints on the rude screen were expunged, painted over with verses from an English Bible.
01:57Today, they're restored.
01:59But the world over which they once presided is dead and gone.
02:08We can't bring back the lost world of Binham's painted saints, whole and alive again.
02:14But just because the death of that world was so shocking, so utterly improbable,
02:20and because the Reformation and the wars of religion it triggered cut so deep a mark on the body of
02:26our country,
02:27we need to try and reassemble the fragments of that world as best we can.
02:33Only then can we hope to answer one of the most poignant questions in our history.
02:39Whatever did happen to Catholic England?
02:42...
02:57...
02:58Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
03:03Oh, oh, oh, oh.
03:36Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
04:13Oh, oh, oh.
05:01Oh, oh, oh.
05:18Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
05:20The Tudors were regular and devout pilgrims.
05:23Henry VIII, early in his reign, walked barefoot to the shrine,
05:27offering a necklace of rubies and dedicating a giant candle
05:31in thanks for the birth of his son, Henry, in 1511.
05:36Prince Henry died within weeks,
05:39but the king's candle continued to burn at the shrine for many years to come.
05:55What a strange world this Catholic England was.
05:58The urge for renewal and reform side by side
06:01with the ancient, the hallowed and the occasionally fraudulent.
06:05But it seems that all apparent contradictions
06:07could be accommodated under the capacious skirts
06:10of the Catholic Mother Church.
06:15And what a mother she was.
06:21Come to Holy Trinity Church at Long Melford in Suffolk
06:25and you'll see just what I mean.
06:30This magnificent building was paid for with Suffolk wool money.
06:34However, what you see today
06:35are just the bare bones of what it was supposed to be.
06:42But we know what Long Melford in its splendour was really like
06:46thanks to an account left by Roger Martin,
06:49who'd been a church warden here
06:50in the reign of England's last Catholic ruler, Queen Mary.
06:58Writing in the very different times of Queen Elizabeth,
07:01Roger Martin, with a mixture of pride and regret,
07:05set out to tell future generations
07:07exactly what they were missing.
07:12At the back of the high altar,
07:15there was a goodly mount
07:16carved very artificially
07:19with the story of Christ's passion,
07:21all being fair, gilt and lively
07:24and beautifully set forth.
07:27And at the north end of the same altar,
07:30there was a goodly gilt tabernacle
07:32reaching up to the roof of the chancel
07:35in which there was one fair, large, gilt image
07:38of the Holy Trinity
07:40besides other fine images.
07:43Holy Trinity
08:12and
08:12do
08:13But Martin's church was more than just a building.
08:16He describes a living world of processions and festivals,
08:21ceremonies and rituals involving a whole community.
08:35Above all this presided the management,
08:39without whom none of it made sense.
08:41The priests, guardians of the mystery
08:44at the heart of traditional Christian belief.
08:49Every time the priests celebrated communion,
08:52Christ crucified would be there in flesh and blood.
09:02The priest was the indispensable man
09:06and there was no getting to heaven but through his hands.
09:14But elsewhere, other hands were hard at work.
09:18The miracle-working priest was about to be challenged
09:21by the word of God itself,
09:23translated into English and printed in black and white.
09:30Handwritten English Bibles have been in circulation
09:33since the days of the Lollards,
09:35that Protestant heresy that flourished briefly in the early 1400s.
09:40But manuscripts represented hard labour and cost pounds to buy.
09:46A printed New Testament, on the other hand, could be mass-produced
09:50and sold for a tenth of the price.
09:54The idea of a Bible in English, cheap and freely available to anyone who could read,
10:00put the fear of God into the authorities.
10:05William Tyndale, an ordained priest,
10:08was the first to take on the dangerous task of translating, publishing and printing
10:13an English version of the New Testament.
10:17Tyndale is a recognisable historical type,
10:21austere, steely, unswerving, even a little fanatical,
10:26and disarmingly clear in his own convictions.
10:29It was not possible, he wrote, to establish the lay people in any truth,
10:34except the scriptures were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue.
10:43In 1524, Tyndale fled London from mainland Europe,
10:48ending up in Worms in Germany,
10:50a city which had recently been made safely Protestant
10:53by its allegiance to the new radical doctrines of Martin Luther.
10:58Tyndale's English New Testament was completed there by January 1526,
11:03and within weeks, copies were on sale in London.
11:13What followed was an English version of the Inquisition.
11:29Denunciations, arrests, book burnings, show trials.
11:35Those who recanted were forced to carry before them faggots of wood,
11:40symbols of the bonfire that would consume them if they ever lapsed again.
11:47And in 1530, symbolism gave way to gruesome reality,
11:51when a priest named Thomas Hitton confessed to smuggling in a New Testament.
11:56Condemned as a heretic, he was burned at Maidstone on the 23rd of February.
12:01The Reformation had claimed its first victim.
12:10And cheering all this on from the sidelines was the king, Henry VIII,
12:15dutiful son of the church, whose candle at Walsingham had been burning brightly for nearly 20 years.
12:25In the winter of 1530, as the fire was lit under the unfortunate Hitton,
12:31there was no reason to think that anything would ever change.
12:35To understand why it did, you have to understand something about Henry,
12:39the man who, without ever really meaning to, turned Catholic England into a Protestant nation.
13:10The Reformation
13:11Well, for a start, he was never supposed to be king.
13:13But when his older brother Arthur died, Henry, aged 11, became heir apparent.
13:20He also acquired his brother's wife, the Spanish Catherine of Aragon.
13:25The marriage alliance between Spain and England was just too important to be allowed to lapse.
13:32In 1509, King Henry VII died, and his 17-year-old son came into his own.
13:43The young king was a spectacular sight. You could practically smell the testosterone.
13:49Any way and anywhere he could flash that burly energy, he did.
13:53In the saddle, on the dance floor, or here on the tennis court, where a besotted courtier
13:58rose of the king's skin, glowing through the fabric of his finely woven shirt.
14:06Then there was the famous breezy charm, dispensed like the English weather, in sunny periods,
14:12alternating with cloudy spells and sudden bursts of heavy thunder.
14:16The charm was of the rib-poking, back-slapping, punch-in-the-belly-arm-round-the-shoulders kind,
14:21which, depending on the mood of the month, could betoken either sudden promotion or imminent arrest.
14:28Henry wallowed in the praise, droolingly lavished on him by courtiers and ambassadors.
14:35Henry the gallant, Henry the handsome, Henry the clever, Henry the superstar.
14:39The only king to have his own personal band hired to go touring with him,
14:44and featuring young Henry himself as lead singer-songwriter.
14:54Egged on by the Pope, who dangled before him the title of Defender of the Faith,
15:00Henry was determined to make a splashy debut on the European scene.
15:04He tried to get his Spanish father-in-law, King Ferdinand, to come in on joint ventures
15:09against their mutual enemy, King Louis of France.
15:12But when it came to snake-pick politics, Ferdinand was a real pro.
15:17Shamelessly exploiting Henry's lust for glory, but failing to deliver on the promised armies.
15:25Henry pushed on without him, and in the summer of 1513,
15:29talked up a skirmish with French knights into a major victory called the Battle of the Spurs.
15:38Meanwhile, back home, Queen Catherine and her councillors
15:42managed a military victory of major importance at Flodden Field.
15:46which left the King of the Scots, James IV, and a dozen Scottish earls dead on the battlefield.
15:55But behind all this activity at home and abroad, keeping the armies supplied,
16:01negotiating the treaties, channelling the King's energies,
16:04was one of the greatest organisational brains of the age.
16:08Archbishop of York, soon to be Chancellor of England, Thomas Wolsey.
16:14Let's face it, if we could find one, we could all use a Wolsey, a Jeeves with an attitude.
16:20Someone who comes to work every day and says,
16:23what would be your pleasure, Majesty? And then goes off and does it. Oh, the occasional document will
16:28come sliding across the desk for signature, but nothing really to interrupt a hard day's hunt.
16:35Wolsey was a consummate manager, attentive to detail in both matters and men.
16:41Someone who could stroke Parliament when that was necessary, and who could bang heads together,
16:46even very aristocratic heads, when that was called for. He was a master manipulator of patronage,
16:53of honours, of bribes, and of threats. In other words, he was a psychologist in a cardinal's hat.
17:03Wolsey also understood the relationship between display and power.
17:11He used it for his own ends here at Hampton Court, but he also used it for the King,
17:17acting as impresario for one of the greatest shows in his career, The Field of the Cloth of Gold.
17:28The meeting in 1520 between Henry and the young French King, Francis I, was supposed to be a
17:35demonstration of heartfelt amity, and a pointed message to the recently elected Holy Roman Emperor,
17:42Charles V, that old enemies could, if needs be, become friends. But it came to war anyway,
17:49not with weapons, but something much more deadly, style.
17:58In the greatest transportation exercise seen since the campaigns of Edward III, Wolsey shipped over
18:04the entire ruling class of England, earls, bishops, knights of the Shire, 5,000 men, including,
18:12in a display of unconvincing humility, the cardinal himself on muleback, dressed in crimson
18:18velvet. Music played, wine ran red and white from fountains, a great deal of heron got eaten.
18:28The two kings spent hours trying on glamorous outfits that could be worn only once. They
18:34wrestled not only with knotty problems of state, but with each other, the nimbler Francis at one
18:40point throwing Henry on his back. No doubt he laughed, no doubt he hated it.
18:48Somewhere in the middle of all this overdress melee was a young English woman, a lady in waiting to
18:54Claude, the wife of the French king. This was the woman who would bring Wolsey's immense house of power
19:01crashing down in ruins, and with it, inconceivably, the power of the Roman church in England.
19:08Her name was Anne Boleyn.
19:18So much saccharine drivel has been written on the subject of Anne Boleyn. So many Hollywood movies made,
19:25so many bodice buster romances produced, that us serious historians are supposed to avert our gaze from the
19:33tragic soap opera of her life, and concentrate on meaty stuff, like the social and political origins
19:40of the Reformation, or the Tudor revolution in government. But try as we might, we keep coming back
19:47time and again to the subject of Anne, because on close inspection, it turns out that she was,
19:53after all, historical prime cause number one.
19:59At the time of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, Anne would have been a teenager. She had been
20:05away
20:05from England off and on since the age of 12, when her well-connected diplomat father, Thomas, arranged
20:11for her to become maid of honour to Margaret of Austria, at one of her many courts. This one here,
20:24Margaret was recognised as the world authority on courtly love, that theatrical form of aristocratic
20:31flirtation around which a whole culture had grown up. Desire endlessly deferred, sexual passion
20:39transfigured into pure selfless love, troubadours, masks, silk handkerchiefs, a lot of sighing. That was
20:47a theory anyway, while underneath the stage-managed surface, the old basic instincts seethed away.
20:58Anne returned to England in 1522, a sophisticated, accomplished, ambitious young woman with a mind of her own.
21:12Anne Boleyn entered the glittering, dangerous world of the Tudor court in her twenties.
21:18Physically, she was no raving beauty, despite the long black hair and dark eyes. But she knew how to
21:27exploit her natural vivaciousness to play the game of courtly love for all it was worth.
21:35One of the first of all was a man every bit as sophisticated as she was, Thomas Wyatt, the
21:43epitome of the Renaissance courtier, a soldier, a diplomat, and above all, a poet. His poems are
21:51heavy with the conventional lover's size. But in those apparently inspired by Anne, the size come from
21:58the heart. Wyatt, unhappily married, realised he stood no chance with her. And in one of his famous poems,
22:07compares himself to a hunter, vainly chasing a deer.
22:15Unable to divorce his wife, all that Wyatt could offer Anne was that she should become his mistress. Not good
22:23enough for an ambitious girl on the make. And beside, there was another reason why Wyatt would never
22:29catch his hind, as his poem goes on to explain. And graven with diamonds, in letters plain, there is
22:37written her fair neck round about. Nolly me tangere, for Caesar's I am, and wild for to hold, though I
22:46seem tame.
22:48Nolly me tangere, do not touch. For Caesar, otherwise known as Henry VIII, had already committed himself
22:56to the chase. And the king, as we know, was an inexhaustible hunter.
23:03Henry really had to work hard to get Anne, harder than at any time in his life. The man who,
23:10as Wolsey could testify,
23:11hated writing letters, wrote umpteen in his attempts to woo her. She represented everything Catherine of
23:19Aragon was not. Ten years younger, merry rather than pious, spirited rather than gravely deferential.
23:27Anne opened the way to sexual bliss, domestic happiness, and perhaps more important than any of
23:33these, the possibility of a son and heir.
23:39The estrangement between Catherine and Henry went back as far as 1511, and the death of their son,
23:45Henry, who despite the offerings made at Walsingham, lived only a few weeks.
23:51Catherine had gone on to produce a daughter, Mary, born in 1516. But Henry began to recoil from his
23:59queen. After more than 20 years, Henry had no legitimate male heir and no prospect of one.
24:07By the time that Anne came on the scene, Henry was convinced that his marriage to Catherine had
24:12been divinely cursed. The king was an assiduous reader of scripture, and there must have been a
24:19sharp intake of breath every time he read Leviticus chapter 20, verse 21, in which God himself tells
24:26Moses, if a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing. They shall be childless.
24:36Driven by his fear of dynastic extinction and his passion for Anne, who, as usual, refused to become
24:42his mistress, Henry seized on divorce as the answer to all of his problems.
24:49Henry wanted a papal annulment of the marriage on grounds of incest. But the Pope couldn't oblige,
24:56for in May 1527, the armies of the Emperor Charles V sacked Rome and made Pope Clement a virtual
25:03prisoner. And Charles, who was Queen Catherine's nephew, wouldn't allow an annulment while he was in control.
25:12Wolsey was the first to be dragged under by this crisis. Henry had no use for a Mr Fix-It
25:17who couldn't
25:18fix it. And Wolsey was quickly got rid of, ostensibly for fraud and corruption. Within a year,
25:25he was dead, charges of high treason still hanging over his head.
25:31It was Anne herself who, at some point in 1530, steered the whole problem in a radically new direction.
25:38She put, literally into Henry's hands, a little book that to her seemed not only fundamentally true,
25:44but also, given present circumstances, extremely useful. It was by the arch-propagandist William
25:51Tyndale, and it was called On the Obedience of a Christian Man and How Christian Rulers Ought to Govern.
26:00Like all Tyndale's work, it was a pungent read. One king, one law is God's ordinance in every
26:07realm, he wrote. In other words, the writ of the Bishop of Rome did not run in England.
26:16But Anne wasn't finished yet. With a typical mixture of conviction and self-interest,
26:21she got a think tank of theologians, including Thomas Cramer,
26:25to come up with documents from the history of the early church proving royal supremacy.
26:33The more he learned about his supreme power, the better Henry liked it. It may have begun as a
26:39tactic in political intimidation, but now the royal supremacy seemed, on its own merits, a self-evident
26:46truth. You can almost hear him clapping his hand to his head and exclaiming,
26:51how could I have been so dull as to have missed this?
26:59Not surprisingly then, around the summer of 1530, the telling word imperial begins to show up
27:06regularly in Henry's own remarks. Emperors, of course, acknowledge no superior on earth.
27:14Henry's ego, never exactly a modest part of his personality, now began to balloon to imperial
27:21proportions, and it got the palaces to house it too, 50 of them, before his reign was done. Some
27:28of the greatest and grandest have been Wolses, most notably Hampton Court, which now became the stage
27:35for the swaggering theatre of court life.
27:42Nothing measures the imperial scale of Henry's court better than the size of the space needed
27:49to feed its gut. Here at the kitchens at Hampton Court, 230 people were employed servicing another
27:57thousand who every day were entitled to eat at the king's expense. Three vast larders for the meat
28:05alone, a specially designed wet larder for holding fish, supplied by water drawn from the fountains
28:11outside. Spiceries, fruiteries, six immense fireplaces, three gargantuan cellars capable of holding
28:19the 300 casks of wine and the 600,000 gallons of ale downed each year by this court. And that
28:28the centre
28:29of it all, though carefully protected in the privy chamber from undue exhibition, was England's new
28:35Caesar, the king, at forty, colossal, autocratic, bestriding the realm with all the godlike power and
28:43authority of the Roman Caesars. And now, inevitably, the church, with its allegiance to Rome, found
28:54itself on the wrong side of a nasty argument. How they must have shivered at the Archbishop of
29:00Canterbury's palace in Lambeth when they heard Henry say of his bishops,
29:14The threat was clear, and the capitulation inevitable. It came in the spring of 1532,
29:21with the so-called submission of the clergy, which conceded all of Henry's demands. From now on,
29:27the laws of the church would be governed by the will of a king, and the king's will was clear.
29:34Divorce
29:34from Catherine, marriage to Anne, Princess Mary to be declared a bastard, recognition for the unborn
29:41child that by the spring of 1533 was already swelling Anne's belly. Anne was duly crowned at
29:50Westminster Abbey in May by a new Archbishop of Canterbury, the obliging Thomas Cranmer.
30:05So, a Reformation of sorts, but not yet the Protestant Reformation. The English church may
30:11have broken from Rome, but no core doctrines had been touched. The real presence of Christ in the
30:17Mass was preserved, priests were still expected to be celibate, prayers in the Bible were still in
30:23Latin. The beautiful stained glass at Fairford Church in Gloucester offended no official doctrines.
30:31And so things might have remained, but they didn't. And to understand why, we need now to look at one
30:37of the most extraordinary working partnerships in all of British history. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer
30:43and Thomas Cromwell, Wolsey's former enforcer and now Secretary of State.
30:51So here they are then, the Tudor odd couple on the frontispiece of an English Bible.
30:59You take away any one of them and the Reformation wouldn't have happened, or at least it wouldn't have
31:03happened in the way it did. Because they were like two pillars, theological on the left and the
31:09political on the right, with the king triumphant in the middle. Their agenda was always more radical
31:17than the king's. Cromwell's Protestantism was the product of the kind of anti-establishment
31:23killer instinct you might expect from the Putney Cleverdick out to make a name for himself.
31:29Cranmer's convictions were more profound and thoughtful, but he too had strong personal reasons
31:35to side with the reformers. Shortly before he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury,
31:40Cranmer had secretly married a German woman, Margareta,
31:44thereby committing himself to one of Luther's most shocking innovations.
31:51Cranmer, like Cromwell, was devoted to the Renaissance idea of a strong prince in a strong
31:58Christian state. The people were going to be given their Bible from on high, authorized,
32:05and no other version was going to be tolerated. And this picture of an orderly, even authoritarian,
32:11Church of England is exactly what you see on the frontispiece of this great Bible officially
32:17commissioned by Thomas Cromwell and published in 1539.
32:26Thomas Cromwell is probably the least sentimental Englishman ever to run the country. He understood
32:33with the clarity that Henry could never quite manage that it would not be enough for the break
32:38with Rome to be proclaimed and then expect everyone to fall into line. He was anticipating a fight,
32:44and he was prepared to fight hard.
32:50Cromwell knew that sooner or later the pope would throw his big gun into the battle,
32:55excommunication. And if the king was to win the war, he'd better fight back with something more or
33:01less novel in the language of politics, namely patriotism. The country had to be aroused to a new
33:07sense of its sovereignty, its potency, demonized Rome as the foreigner, the alien, the enemy.
33:18To this engine of chauvinist propaganda, Cromwell added the necessary machinery of coercion.
33:25An oath had to be sworn, recognizing the royal supremacy, the legitimacy of the heirs of the king and
33:32Queen Anne, and the bastardization of the Lady Mary. Insulting the new queen was treason, calling the king
33:41a schismatic or a heretic was treason. For the first time in English law, it was a crime just to
33:47say things.
33:51Cromwell managed to turn England into a frightened, snivelling, jumpy place, where denunciation was a
33:58sanctimonious duty, and countless petty little scores got settled by people who were protesting that they
34:05were just doing the right thing.
34:14Nowhere in Cromwell's strong-arm regime did his shot troops seem to enjoy their work more thoroughly
34:20than in the visitations to the monasteries, done with lightning speed during the course of 1535 and early 1536.
34:31The uprooting of nearly 10,000 monks and nuns, the destruction of an entire ancient way of life,
34:38had little to do with reforming zeal.
34:45When you look at Cromwell's flying squads up close and in action, you don't really get the
34:50impression of a bunch of men who thought of themselves as renovators, wreckers more likely.
34:56For one thing, they seemed to enjoy their work a bit too much.
34:59I laid unto him a concealment of treason,
35:03wrote one of Cromwell's hitmen to his chief, about a prior he had at his mercy.
35:08I called him heinous traitor, in the worst terms I could devise,
35:13and him all the time kneeling and making intercession unto me,
35:18not to utter to you the premises of his undoing.
35:22Such were the pleasures of reform.
35:27The property bonanza that followed the dissolution of the monasteries
35:31was on a scale no other English revolution ever approached.
35:36Abbeys like this one at Laycock were offered at bargain basement prices,
35:40and loyalty to the new order secured with bricks and mortar.
35:45The former residents were soon forgotten,
35:47or reduced to delectable family legends of headless nuns and spectral monks.
36:13The next chapter of the story
36:14Let's call the next chapter of the story
36:16Circa Regna Tonat.
36:18Around the throne the thunder roars.
36:24Thomas Wyatt used the line in a poem written in a cell in the Tower of London,
36:30after he'd just witnessed the execution of five innocent men.
36:34A few days later, an innocent woman would also die.
36:38As you probably know, she was Anne Boleyn.
36:41And as you can probably guess, the author of this bloody drama was Thomas Cromwell.
36:51It wasn't the birth in 1533 of a baby girl, Elizabeth, that did for Anne.
36:57Henry was disappointed, but he didn't turn against his new wife.
37:02No, he laid his hand on the baby's head, recognizing her as his legitimate daughter,
37:08and hoped for better luck next time.
37:11Eighteen months later, Anne was pregnant again.
37:15At the beginning of January 1536, more good news.
37:20Catherine of Aragon was dead.
37:22Henry was relieved.
37:24God be praised, he said, that we are free from all suspicion of war.
37:32Maybe it was at this point that the cogs and wheels of Cromwell's mind started to whirl.
37:39For Cromwell had decided to engineer a reconciliation between Henry and the Emperor Charles V.
37:45With the Emperor's Aunt Catherine now safely dead, the timing was perfect, except for one thing.
37:52Anne.
37:53For the price of peace would doubtless include the re-legitimizing of Lady Mary.
37:59And to this, Anne would never agree.
38:02Therefore, so Cromwell reasoned, Anne must go.
38:08On the 29th of January, Anne miscarried.
38:12Had the baby lived, it would have been a boy.
38:15The disaster seems to have reawakened Henry's darkest fears.
38:20I see now that God will never give me a male heir, he told Anne.
38:24To one of his intimates, he hinted that Anne had seduced him through witchcraft.
38:31Anne was defenseless.
38:33Cromwell moved against her with breathtaking speed and ferocity.
38:37From the decision to act, taken around Easter time, 1536, to the first arrests, took just two weeks.
38:45Anne was doomed.
38:50What Cromwell now cooked up was a thing of pure devilry.
38:55A finely measured brew.
38:57One part paranoia, one part pornography.
39:00Moments of dalliance, nothing really untoward in a Renaissance court.
39:05A handkerchief dropped at a Mayday tilt, not belonging to the king,
39:09a dance taken with a young man, also not the king, a blow and kiss, a giggle.
39:15All these were twisted by Cromwell into a carnival of unholy, traitorous sex.
39:24The Queen, it seems, had had sex with just about everyone.
39:28She'd had sex with her court musician.
39:31She'd had sex with the groom of the stool, the most important courtier in the privy chamber.
39:36She'd had sex with the king's tennis partner, presumably between sets.
39:40She'd even had sex with her own brother.
39:43She had presided like some possessed Messalina over this diabolical orgy of treason,
39:50even perhaps conspiring to pass off the poison fruit of all its copulation as the royal heir.
40:00It was the confession of her musician, Mark Smeaton, extracted under torture,
40:06that supplied the fig leaf of legality for Cromwell's judicial murders.
40:11It was enough to send all five of Anne's so-called lovers to the block.
40:15Thomas Wyatt, swept up in a wave of arrests but spared prosecution,
40:20saw them die, peering through a grating of his cell in the bell tower.
40:27The bell tower showed me such a sight that in my head sticks day and night.
40:33That did I learn out the great, for all favour, glory or might,
40:38that yet, circa, regna, tonnate.
40:47Two days later, it was Anne's turn.
40:51As a special privilege, an expert swordsman had been brought over from France to do the job.
40:56I heard say, the executioner is very good, Anne told the constable of the tower,
41:02and I have a little neck.
41:04And then she put her hands round her throat and burst out laughing.
41:20When news of Anne's execution reached Dover,
41:24it was said that candles in the town's church spontaneously ignited.
41:31For the vast majority of the country, which, despite the break with Rome,
41:35still regarded itself as Catholic,
41:38her death seemed like a long-overdue judgment
41:41on those they called heretics and tuppany bookmen.
41:53Cromwell, meanwhile, stepped up his assault on the old religion
41:57with a series of fierce injunctions,
42:00enforcing royal supremacy and crushing the cult of saints and shrines.
42:07The Beckett Shrine in Canterbury, the richest in the land,
42:10was vandalised and ransacked.
42:14The following year, 1537,
42:17Henry, with a new wife, Jane Seymour,
42:20celebrated the long-for arrival of a son, Edward.
42:25But 12 days later, mourned the death of his new queen.
42:32At Walsingham, the statue of the Virgin was burned.
42:36Henry's account book for that year contains the following bald statement.
42:40Payment for the king's great candle at Walsingham.
42:44Salary for the abbot, nil.
42:50But then a remarkable thing happened.
42:53The king decided enough was enough
42:56and tried to put the genie back in its bottle.
42:59An instinctive conservative,
43:01he'd been angered and alarmed by the passions
43:04that religious controversy had aroused,
43:06and he blamed the English Bible.
43:08Instead of being read quietly with silence,
43:12the Bible was now being banded about
43:14in acrimonious disputes that raged in alehouses and taverns,
43:19the exact opposite of the respectful scenes
43:22promised in Cromwell's great Bible.
43:26In 1543, a law was introduced
43:29restricting the reading of the Bible in English
43:31to churchmen, noblemen and gentry.
43:34For those ordinary people
43:36who got used to the idea of an English-speaking God,
43:39this was a real deprivation.
43:42You get an inkling of that in a brief inscription
43:45written that year by an Oxfordshire shepherd
43:47on the flyleaf of a small religious tract.
43:51It reads,
43:52I bought this book when the testament was abrogated
43:55that shepherds might not read it.
43:58I pray God amend that blindness.
44:01Written by Robert Williams,
44:03keeping sheep upon Stbury Hill.
44:12By the time Williams wrote his prayer on his hillside,
44:15the course of reform in England
44:17had suffered major setbacks.
44:20In 1540, Cromwell had fallen,
44:24tossed to the executioner
44:25after his schemes for an alliance
44:27with Europe's Lutheran princes collapsed.
44:32Unfortunately for Cromwell,
44:34the Lutheran princess, Anne of Cleves,
44:36the mail-order bride he'd arranged for Henry,
44:39had turned out to be nowhere near as cute
44:41as Hans Holbein had painted her.
44:48By then, Parliament had enacted the six articles,
44:51which, under pain of death,
44:53outlawed marriage for priests
44:55and reaffirmed the sanctity of the Mass.
45:00To the dismay of the reformers,
45:02these core Catholic beliefs
45:04turned out to be Henry's too.
45:09Henry's
45:10So Henry's final position
45:11on matters of religion was this.
45:13A national church,
45:15divorced from Rome,
45:17but remarried to the English crown.
45:19Stripped of cults and shows,
45:22but still, in essence, Catholic.
45:24All things considered,
45:26Henry was pretty satisfied
45:27with the middle way he thought he'd found.
45:29which is what we see in this massive picture
45:32from the studio of Hans Holbein.
45:34King Henry,
45:36all-powerful,
45:37all-knowing,
45:38the guardian and ruler
45:39of the temporal
45:40and the spiritual realm.
45:47The munchkins,
45:48grovelling at his feet,
45:49are the guild of barber-surgeons.
45:52They hail the king as the healer
45:54and the great physician,
45:55which is just how Henry liked to see himself
45:57in his final years.
45:59The Tudor medicine man
46:01who had laid the body of England
46:03on the operating table
46:04and cut out the cancers
46:06of potpourri and superstition.
46:08The patient was now fully recovered,
46:11the nation duly grateful,
46:12the operation a complete success.
46:18Except, of course,
46:19it wasn't,
46:20because after Henry
46:21would come Henry's children,
46:23each with their own idea
46:25of what was best
46:26for the country's health.
46:27Edward,
46:28the heir apparent,
46:30and his half-sisters,
46:31Mary and Elizabeth,
46:32both of whom
46:33were restored to the succession
46:34a few weeks
46:36before their father's death.
46:38Between them,
46:39they covered the religious spectrum
46:41from hard-line Protestant
46:42to fanatical Catholic.
46:44And the road the country
46:46took after Henry,
46:47back to a Catholic past
46:48or forwards
46:49into a Protestant future,
46:51would depend,
46:52like never before,
46:53on the lottery
46:54of births,
46:55deaths,
46:56and marriages.
47:00When Henry died in 1547,
47:03he left £600
47:05to pay for two priests
47:06to say prayers
47:07for his soul forever.
47:11You have to wonder
47:12how he apparently
47:13failed to notice
47:14that Edward
47:15had been educated
47:16by fervent Protestants
47:17who obviously
47:18had no time
47:19for such superstitious nonsense.
47:25Led by Thomas Cranmer,
47:26they saw the nine-year-old
47:28boy king
47:28as a new Josiah,
47:30the biblical king
47:31who had taken it
47:33as his mission
47:33to destroy idolatry.
47:39Now this
47:40would be the real
47:41Reformation.
47:42For just look what happened
47:44in the six years
47:45of Edward's reign,
47:46all the customs
47:47and ceremonies
47:48of the old church,
47:49the blessing of candles
47:50at Candlemas
47:51and palms
47:52on Palm Sunday
47:53were banned.
47:55Away
47:55went the religious guilds
47:57and fraternities.
47:58The cults of saints
48:00that had survived
48:01Cromwell's attacks,
48:02along with their relics
48:04and their pilgrimages,
48:05were forbidden.
48:06And images,
48:08statues,
48:09stained glass paintings
48:10were attacked
48:11with chisels
48:12and lime wash.
48:21A new book
48:22of common prayer
48:23required in all parishes
48:25for the first time
48:26brought English
48:27into the heart
48:28of the church service.
48:30To get a measure
48:31of the cultural revolution
48:33that took place,
48:34you need only come here
48:36to Hale's Church
48:37in Gloucestershire.
48:42Three years of state-sponsored
48:45iconoclasm
48:46have produced this.
48:48No more stone altar,
48:50just a user-friendly
48:52communion table.
48:58This whole arrangement
49:00is designed
49:01to abolish
49:01the distance
49:02between the priest
49:03and his flock.
49:04The screen,
49:05which had been
49:06a barrier
49:07protecting the mystery
49:08of the mass,
49:09is now just
49:10a way in
49:11to the communion,
49:12a gathering
49:13of the faithful
49:14along with
49:15their priest.
49:17As if all this
49:19wasn't shocking enough,
49:21imagine that Sunday
49:22in 1550,
49:24when for the first time
49:26the priest
49:26invited the congregation
49:27to partake
49:28of communion,
49:30using those
49:31English words
49:32never before
49:33heard in church,
49:35dearly beloved.
49:37The familiarity
49:38of this
49:38must have made
49:39many of them
49:40squirm,
49:41rather like
49:42these days
49:42hearing a trendy
49:43vicar
49:44insist,
49:45call me Bob.
49:48This radical
49:49transformation
49:50wouldn't have
49:51been possible
49:51without the
49:52active support
49:53of Edward.
49:54While Edward
49:55led the Protestant
49:56state,
49:57resistance
49:58came close
49:59to home,
49:59as he recalls
50:01in his diary.
50:03The Lady Mary,
50:04my sister,
50:05came to me
50:06at Westminster,
50:07where after
50:08salutations,
50:08she was called
50:09of my council
50:10into a chamber,
50:11where it was
50:12declared how long
50:13I had suffered
50:14her mass.
50:14She answered
50:16that her soul
50:17was God's
50:17and her faith
50:18she would not
50:19change,
50:20nor would she
50:20dissemble
50:21her opinion
50:22with contrary
50:22doings.
50:25Edward's
50:25Chronicle
50:26records one
50:27of several
50:27run-ins
50:28that he and
50:28his counsellors
50:29had with Mary.
50:30The mass
50:31had been outlawed
50:32since the Act
50:32of Uniformity
50:33in 1549,
50:35but Mary
50:35ignored the ban.
50:37Indeed,
50:38she increased
50:39her attendance
50:39to two,
50:40even three
50:41times a day.
50:43She may have
50:44had a martyr
50:44complex a mile
50:46wide,
50:46but Catholic
50:47Mary knew
50:48her challenge
50:49was simply
50:49to bide her
50:50time,
50:51to wait
50:52for Edward
50:52to die,
50:53preferably
50:53childless.
50:55And sure
50:55enough,
50:56in 1553,
50:57this is just
50:59what happened.
51:00England.
51:06And so
51:07England's
51:07first female
51:08ruler since
51:09Queen Matilda
51:10ascended the
51:11throne with
51:11just two
51:12aims in
51:12mind,
51:13to return
51:14England to
51:14its obedience
51:15to Rome
51:16and to produce
51:17a Catholic
51:17male heir
51:18who would
51:19keep it
51:19that way.
51:21Mary's
51:22first aim
51:22was achieved
51:23with amazingly
51:24little resistance
51:24after it was
51:25made clear
51:26that all
51:27those rolling
51:27acres
51:28and all
51:28that real
51:29estate
51:29sold off
51:30during the
51:30dissolution
51:31of the
51:31monasteries
51:32would not
51:32be restored
51:33to the
51:33church.
51:36In 1554,
51:37both houses
51:38of Parliament,
51:39contrite as
51:40naughty children,
51:42knelt and
51:43asked forgiveness
51:43from the Pope's
51:44legate,
51:45Cardinal Poole,
51:46for all the
51:47anti-papal
51:47legislation passed
51:49since the
51:491530s.
51:52orders went
51:53out for the
51:54repainting of
51:54churches,
51:55the carving
51:56of roods,
51:57the restoration
51:57of the
51:58Latin Mass.
52:00Heretical
52:01England had
52:02been received
52:02back into
52:03the fold,
52:04had been
52:04forgiven
52:05by Mother
52:06Rome.
52:11But all
52:12this would
52:12be,
52:13literally,
52:13fruitless if
52:15Mary was
52:15unable to
52:16produce a
52:16good Roman
52:17Catholic
52:17heir.
52:19Her
52:20choice of
52:20husband was
52:21Philip II
52:22of Spain.
52:23To Mary,
52:24of course,
52:24this union
52:25had special
52:26personal meaning,
52:27the vindication
52:28of her long-dead
52:29Spanish mother,
52:31Catherine of
52:31Aragon.
52:32If a
52:33Spanish-Catholic
52:34marriage had
52:34been right for
52:35England then,
52:36then it should
52:36be right for
52:37England now.
52:39But that was
52:3950 years ago.
52:41Much had
52:42been done
52:42that could
52:43not now
52:43be undone.
52:50a Catholic
52:51marriage now
52:51was not
52:52something that
52:53could be
52:53taken for
52:54granted.
52:57It now
52:58seemed a
52:58bad match.
52:59It seemed
52:59a foreign
53:00idea.
53:01The Queen
53:02is a Spaniard
53:03at heart,
53:03it was said,
53:04and loves
53:05another realm
53:06better than
53:06this.
53:09When Thomas
53:10Wyatt, the
53:11son of Anne
53:11Boleyn's old
53:12poetical admirer,
53:13led an army to
53:14the gates of
53:15London, he
53:15cast himself
53:16as a patriot,
53:17pledged, as
53:18he said, to
53:19the avoidance
53:20of strangers.
53:23Xenophobia
53:24was not
53:24enough to
53:25dethrone
53:25Queen Mary.
53:27Wyatt's army
53:27melted away.
53:38Ecstatic
53:39that for the
53:40first time
53:40in her lonely
53:41life she had
53:42someone she
53:43could rely on,
53:44a Spanish
53:44consort,
53:45Mary set
53:46about the
53:47zealous
53:47work of
53:48cleansing
53:48her realm
53:49of the
53:49Protestant
53:50heresy,
53:51undoing
53:52Edward's
53:52reformation
53:53as completely
53:54as she
53:54could,
53:55by fire,
53:56if that's
53:57what it
53:57took to
53:57do the
53:58job
53:58properly,
53:59and it
53:59did.
54:02In
54:03three years,
54:04220 men
54:06and 60
54:07women were
54:08burned on
54:08Mary's
54:09bonfires.
54:10Some,
54:11like
54:11Archbishop
54:12Cranmer,
54:13were high-profile
54:14victims,
54:14but most
54:15were ordinary
54:16people,
54:17cloth workers
54:18and cutlers.
54:21And it
54:22wasn't just
54:23the literate
54:23who died.
54:25Rawlins White,
54:25a fisherman,
54:26paid for his
54:27son to go to
54:28school and
54:29learn to read
54:29so the boy
54:30could then read
54:31the Bible to
54:32him each
54:32night after
54:33supper.
54:34Joan Waste
54:36of Derby,
54:36a poor blind
54:37woman,
54:38saved up for
54:39a New Testament
54:39and then paid
54:41people to read
54:42it to her.
54:47But all
54:48this was in
54:48vain, for
54:50Mary, like
54:50Edward, died
54:51childless,
54:53suffering frantically
54:54through two
54:55false pregnancies,
54:56the second a
54:58cancer of the
54:58womb.
54:59The resurrection
55:00of Catholic
55:01England was
55:02doomed.
55:03Anne Boleyn had
55:05triumphed from the
55:05grave over
55:06Catherine of
55:07Aragon, as
55:08her daughter,
55:09Elizabeth, would
55:10outlast Mary
55:11and undo
55:12all her pious
55:13hopes.
55:20Elizabeth cast
55:22herself as
55:22the healer,
55:23someone who
55:24would bring
55:24the violent
55:25pendulum swings
55:26of the religious
55:27war back to
55:28a calm and
55:29steady center,
55:30a middle way
55:31between the
55:32courses chosen
55:33by her half-brother
55:34and her half-sister.
55:41She outlawed the
55:42Mass and brought
55:43back the Book
55:44of Common Prayer,
55:45but she allowed
55:46and encouraged
55:47priests to
55:48remain celibate,
55:49and she was
55:49certainly in no
55:50hurry to abolish
55:51the Catholic
55:52calendar of
55:53saints' days.
55:57But if
55:57Elizabeth put
55:58out the fires
55:59of religious
56:00fanaticism,
56:01she lit them
56:02in the breasts
56:03of patriotic
56:04Englishmen and
56:04women, for as
56:06cautious as she
56:07was, Elizabeth
56:08couldn't help
56:09her reign being
56:09seen by many
56:10as the reinstatement
56:12of a truly
56:12English way.
56:17Under Elizabeth,
56:19Englishness was
56:19discovered,
56:20celebrated,
56:21shouted from
56:22the rooftops,
56:23and it was,
56:24above all,
56:25a Protestant
56:25Englishness.
56:27With hindsight,
56:28God must have
56:29meant this to
56:30happen all
56:30along.
56:34Now, Protestantism
56:35and patriotism
56:37were one and the
56:38same, and history
56:39you've just seen,
56:40which at the outset
56:41had nothing to do
56:42with national
56:43identity, at the
56:44end became obsessed
56:46with it.
56:47And when the Pope
56:48offered to bless
56:49anyone who would
56:50assassinate Elizabeth,
56:52that bond only
56:53became stronger.
56:54Now Catholics would
56:56be forced to choose
56:57between their church
56:58and their queen.
57:03English Catholic
57:04priests trained
57:05in foreign seminaries
57:06would be smuggled
57:07into the country
57:08and end up either
57:09dead or in hiding
57:11with Catholic families
57:12who were rich and
57:13powerful enough
57:14to protect them.
57:21So if we ask
57:22ourselves the question
57:23that we asked
57:24at the beginning
57:25of the programme,
57:26whatever happened
57:27to Catholic England,
57:29the answer is
57:30that it ended up
57:31down here
57:32in a priest hole
57:34like this one
57:35at Salston Hall
57:36outside Cambridge,
57:38the splendour
57:39of Long Melford
57:40reduced to a cloak
57:42and dagger church.
57:49For the Catholics
57:50of Elizabeth's England,
57:52the retreat of the
57:53priesthood to the
57:54country house
57:54would be a final
57:56disaster.
57:57What was once
57:58the National Church
57:59would become
58:00a faith on the run.
58:22of the
58:23people
58:23of the
58:23people
58:23who
58:23in the
58:23world
58:24of the
58:24who are
58:30in the
58:30world.
58:31God bless you.