Dynastic politics : five women of the Howard family during the reign of Henry VIII, 1509-1547
This thesis argues for the centrality of the Howard women to their family’s political fortunes by exploring key dynastic episodes, themes, and events of Henry VIII’s reign from a new female perspective. The Howards were England’s premier aristocratic dynasty during this period. However, existing narratives have prioritised the careers of the Howard men, notably the two Dukes of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey. Here, the family’s women are foregrounded. They are not considered in isolation, but discussed alongside their male relations in order to create a fuller, more complex dynastic picture than currently exists. Themes of rebellion, dynastic identity, matriarchy, patronage, treason and religion are woven through events of familial and national importance, allowing new conclusions to be drawn regarding the Howard women and the Howard narrative itself; the way that aristocratic dynasties operated; the activities of women within the political sphere; and the relationship between this family and the Henrician state. This thesis draws its conclusions from new archival research into the activities of five Howard women: Agnes Tylney (c. 1477-1545) and Elizabeth Stafford (c. 1497-1558), the wives of the 2 nd and 3 rd Dukes of Norfolk respectively; Agnes’ daughters Anne, Countess of Oxford (c. 1498-1558) and Katherine, Countess of Bridgwater (d. 1554); and Elizabeth’s daughter Mary, Duchess of Richmond (c. 1519-1557). These five women cover three generations and two concurrent branches of the Howard family across the entirety of Henry’s reign. The thesis differs from traditional gender studies by focusing on women all from one family rather than those of particular court status or geographical
Henry VIII, Rebellion and The Rule of Law
It has been traditional to regard the reaction of Henry VIII in the face of treason and rebellion as savage and extreme. Perhaps for this reason, historians for long considered it superfluous to examine in any detail what fate actually befell those who took up arms against their king. More recently, however, findings that relatively few persons were executed by Henry, despite the savagery of his reign, and that in general his bark was worse than his bite,1 have suggested that this question could profitably be pursued further. There seems, for instance, to be a significant difference between the 178 executions in the aftermath of the Lincolnshire rebellion and the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536–7 and the rather larger number for which Elizabeth was responsible following the much less dangerous Northern Rising of 1569.2 Yet how these figures were achieved and what considerations shaped and determined the extent of the government's retaliation is much less clear. Perhaps the surviving evidence will not normally admit of answers to such questions, for it was not in the government's interests to disclose that external considerations might influence the enforcement or otherwise of the law. The manifestation of this fact was therefore inconvenient, but exceptionally such disclosures might be unavoidable.
Foreign Policy in the Age of the Reformation: French Involvement in the Schmalkaldic War, 1544–1547
On 24 April 1547 the forces of the leading protestant princes in Germany were annihilated at Miihlberg by Charles V, and the political wing of protestantism received a blow from which it never entirely recovered. Events during the preceding year had moved with a startling rapidity. Diplomats had widely expected a drawn contest in the summer of 1546, while John Frederick of Saxony and Philip of Hesse had sent a series of missions to France and England to request the military aid and intervention which might tip the balance decisively against the emperor. The diplomatic experts of the Schmalkaldic League had expected France to take advantage of the emperor's difficulties in Germany. The outbreak of war there might seem to have brought to fruition decades of French efforts to cripple the emperor by embroiling him with his German subjects, and 1546 certainly saw a culmination of French diplomatic activity across the Rhine. Yet the outcome of the frenetic negotiations which accompanied the war showed, on the part of the French, a lack of decisiveness at this critical time which is not easy to explain. Four years before, a grand anti-Habsburg coalition had been the pivotal point of French foreign policy. Now, in 1546, any chances of such a coalition were frittered away in petty negotiations with the English and a marked lack of faith between the French and the Germans.