All language subtitles for Royal History_s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley 1of3 The Reformation.srt - ave(2)

Royal history is at the heart of our
national identity.

We think of it as the definitive truth
about our past.

Kings and queens,

dates and facts,

all consigned to a past that's
unchanging and fixed.

But it's not like that at all.

History is a chorus of voices,

each of them shouting out its own
version of the story.

And very often it's the loudest voices
that get heard most clearly.

In this series, I'm lifting the lid on
three of royal history's

great nation-building stories.

The Spanish Armada.

Elizabeth I's naval triumph is still
celebrated

as a founding moment of the British
Empire.

But was it really the decisive victory
we've been led to believe?

Queen Anne helped create Great
Britain.

She's remembered as a disastrous
monarch,

but did her liberal enemies destroy
her reputation?

And in this episode - Henry VIII's
Reformation,

a religious schism that broke
England's ties with Europe

and delivered absolute power to the
king.

But it's often told as a bawdy royal
soap opera.

- Henry VIII, what a guy.

Got on bended knee and declared,

"My darling Anne, I will love you for
the rest of...your life."

- LAUGHTER RIPPLES

- Cheeky, cheeky.

- In lots of versions of the story,

the Reformation almost seems like a
side product

of Henry's love life, a consequence of
his desire for a divorce from

Catherine of Aragon, so that he could
marry Anne Boleyn.

But has this focus on Henry's love
life blinded us to the wider

political impact of the Reformation
that's still playing out

on the streets of Brexit Britain
today?

- I think the Reformation reinforced
the sense that Britain is separate,

and I think that's where your
scepticism

has its deep roots in the Reformation.

- So what's the real story of the
Reformation -

lust and the obsessive desire for an
heir,

or a political earthquake that shapes
the nation to this day?

It seems we just can't decide.

And maybe that's because many of the
stories told

about the Reformation have been spun
from myths, fabrications

and some of royal history's biggest
fibs.

The story of the English Reformation
begins on Halloween 1517,

when the monk Martin Luther nailed a
document to the door of a church

in Wittenberg, north-east Germany,
attacking the Roman Catholic Church.

Luther believed that the Catholic
Church was corrupt.

He thought that the clergy had tricked
people into thinking

they could buy their way into heaven

by paying priests to say masses to
wash their sins away.

He believed that faith, not money, was
what got you redemption.

Luther's protest in Wittenberg is
often seen as THE decisive act

that inspired Henry VIII's break with
Rome.

But this founding moment may well be
the first fib in the story.

Like all the best stories, it's
probably been hammed up a bit

and it's doubtful that this scene with
the church door

ever took place.

Luther has left us no fewer than 120
volumes of writing,

about all different aspects of his
life,

including a really bad case of
constipation,

which he thinks was given to him by
the devil.

But nowhere in any of this does he
mention

nailing anything to any doors.

However Luther's message was first
delivered,

it quickly spread and unleashed a
religious and political

revolution across Europe.

But when it came to the attention of
Henry VIII,

it left him cold.

Over the centuries, Henry has
sometimes been claimed

as one of history's great Protestants.

But when Luther's revolutionary
message started to arrive in London,

Henry was dead against it.

After reading Luther's tract, Henry
fired off an angry response.

It was called the Defence of the Seven
Sacraments.

SHE CHUCKLES And he didn't hold back.

Henry said that Luther was "a venomous
serpent",

"a pernicious plague", an "infernal
wolf".

He said he had an infected soul, and
he also called him

a "detestable trumpeter of pride,
calumnies and schism."

So Henry wasn't particularly promising
material

as a convert to Protestantism.

And in fact, he never would become a
Protestant.

He would remain a Catholic until the
day he died.

Henry's attack on Luther so delighted
Pope Leo X

that he rewarded Henry with a title -
Defender of the Faith.

But Henry's love-in with the Pope
wouldn't last long.

Soon, he himself would be branded a
heretic.

So what went wrong?

According to the popular version of
the story,

it was a seductive 21-year-old

who'd lure Henry away from his
Catholic faith.

Anne Boleyn arrived at Henry's court
as lady-in-waiting

to Catherine of Aragon in 1522.

By 1527, Anne had completely turned
the king's head.

And the story of how Henry dumped his
old wife

in favour of the younger, sexier model
has formed the plot line

of royal bonk busters ever since.

From the early days of silent cinema
to more recent TV dramas,

directors, too, have delighted in
casting

the demure and devoutly Catholic
Catherine

against the sexy Protestant pin-up,
Anne.

16th century artists also portrayed
her as a great beauty.

But the truth is, no-one really knows
what Anne looked like,

because this small medallion is the
only surviving portrait

known to have been made during her
lifetime.

And this has meant that Anne's image
has become a sort of battle ground.

She shifts shape according to who's
telling her story.

Only one thing is absolutely certain,

Anne was much more than just a pretty
face.

Anne Boleyn arrived at Henry's court
fired up with radical ideas.

She grew up here at Hever Castle in
Kent,

the daughter of Lady Elizabeth Howard

and an ambitious diplomat,

Thomas Boleyn.

Thomas secured his younger daughter a
coveted position

as maid of honour in the French court.

And it was there that Anne was
introduced to the new ideas

that were transforming Europe.

- During those years,

she came in contact with evangelical
Protestants,

people who were rethinking old
verities,

who were coming up with new ways of
approaching everything,

including faith.

- What were these, perhaps,
contentious new religious ideas

that Anne was picking up in France?

- A key one is the source of
authority.

So when you're making decisions about
religious matters,

who do you look to as the authority on
that matter,

whether it's the Bible, scripture,
which is what these evangelicals

were arguing, or whether you turn to
the wisdom of the Church?

And followers of Luther said that,
actually, the Church was flawed,

that the Pope was fallible.

- Do you think Henry would have taken
these ideas about the authority

of the Pope to heart if it hadn't been
for Anne?

- I think Anne's pivotal because we
know that Henry hates Luther.

Anne obviously had a real hold on his
heart and so could introduce

ideas to him that other people
couldn't possibly say.

- And is this something that's been
downplayed by the people

who see her as just a sexpot?

- I think that comes down to pretty
misogynistic ways

of seeing Henry VIII's wives in the
past, actually.

And it's much easier if you can, sort
of, boil them down

to being a bit of skirt and not really
anything more.

And, actually, with Anne we do have
something more.

She is somebody who makes a massive
difference

in terms of English history.

We could argue that Henry VIII would
not have broken

with the Roman Catholic Church if it
weren't for Anne's influence.

- At this time, the Protestant scholar
William Tyndale was marked out

as a heretic for wanting to translate
the Bible into English.

But Anne had one of his books smuggled
into England from France,

and she risked putting it right under
the king's nose.

It was called The Obedience of a
Christian Man,

and Anne went about this in a very
clever way.

She marked up a passage in Tyndale's
book where he implied that kings

had lost their power to the Church.

"Kings", Tindale says,

"they are but shadows, vain names and
things idle,

"having nothing to do in the world

"but when our Holy Father needeth
their help."

Tyndale was provoking the monarchs of
Christendom

to reject papal authority.

And the idea that he could be king of
an autonomous nation

appealed to Henry.

He's supposed to have said,

"Well, this is a book for me and all
kings to read."

And this little interaction shows her
beginning to persuade him

that maybe not all radical Protestants
are bad,

and that maybe breaking with Rome
could be good.

Anne was winning Henry round to some
Protestant ideas.

And she refused to sleep with the king
until

he'd made her his new queen.

But there were many obstacles in her
way.

Henry was still married and his wife
had many supporters at court.

Chief amongst these was Eustace
Chapuys,

the Spanish ambassador to Emperor
Charles V,

the standard bearer for Catholicism
across Europe.

Eustace Chapuys was devoted to Charles
V,

who just happened to be the nephew of
Catherine of Aragon.

Chapuys really loved Catherine of
Aragon.

It was said that he venerated her like
a saint,

and, partly as a result of this, he
really hated Anne Boleyn.

In his letters to Charles V,

Chapuys describes Anne as more
Lutheran than Luther,

and he slut shamed her.

He called her "the concubine" and "the
whore."

And Chapuys really set up this image
of Anne

that does survive to this day, as the
wicked, evil seductress,

as the original other woman.

Anne's genuine intelligence and sense
of political strategy

just don't fit into this soap opera
version of the story.

By 1527, the king's desperate desire
for a male heir

had become known as The King's Great
Matter.

After nine years of marriage,
Catherine had produced six children,

but all had died, apart from a
daughter - Mary.

Henry wanted a son to continue the
Tudor dynasty,

and he was now convinced that Anne
Boleyn could deliver.

It was time to come up with some fibs

to help him get rid of Catherine.

In 1527, Henry asked Pope Clement VII

to annul his marriage.

It seems that Henry had suddenly woken
up to the fact that Catherine

had previously been married to his
older brother, Arthur.

And this, according to the Bible, was
a bad thing.

The Book of Leviticus said that

if a man shall marry his brother's
wife,

it is an unclean thing.

And Henry now argued that this
uncleanliness was the reason

that Catherine had never produced a
healthy baby boy.

Their marriage, he now said, had been
blighted from the start

in the eyes of God.

But Henry's manipulation of biblical
quotations failed to impress.

The Pope refused to annul his marriage

and his wife refused to go quietly.

Henry had hopes that with the offer of
a generous settlement,

Catherine would give way gracefully
and go off to a nunnery,

but no, she wasn't having that.

We've made vows, she said, they cannot
be undone.

As a Roman Catholic himself, Henry
would have understood this,

but he was determined to get his
divorce.

And thanks to Anne, Henry no longer
saw the need to kowtow to the Pope.

And there was somebody else close to
Henry

who was manipulating facts to persuade
the king

that breaking with Rome could lead to
unexpected rewards.

In 1533, Thomas Cromwell became
Henry's chief minister.

Unlike Henry, he was a radical
Protestant who saw Luther

as a progressive force.

An ally of Anne Boleyn, he saw The
King's Great Matter

as an opportunity to advance the
Protestant cause.

So Cromwell began to weave some expert
political propaganda.

He assured Henry that there was a way
to get him his divorce,

improve his finances

and enhance his political power.

It would just take two acts of
parliament.

The first was drafted in 1533.

This is the real, actual Act in
Restraint of Appeals.

And because this act banned appealing
to the Pope

in ecclesiastical matters, it meant
that Catherine was now banned

from appealing to the Pope in her and
Henry's great matter.

From this point onwards, it would be
parliament, not the Pope,

it would be London, not Rome, that
would be the final authority

on the constitutional affairs of
England.

By this time, Anne had succumbed to
Henry's advances

and in January 1533, before the act
had even been passed,

Anne discovered she was pregnant.

To make sure a potential baby boy was
legitimate,

they quickly got married.

Henry, who was still married to
Catherine, was now a bigamist.

The Pope expelled him from the
Catholic Church.

This guaranteed that Henry would burn
in hell for eternity.

But Henry didn't seem to mind too much

because, with Cromwell busy drafting
his revolutionary acts,

Henry seemed to feel that his powers
were limitless.

A year later, Cromwell produced a
second bill -

The Act of Supremacy.

This made Henry the supreme head of a
new Church of England,

and severed all ties with Rome.

But how could he possibly justify this
massive break with Rome?

Well, the first clue comes in the very
first line

of The Act in Restraint of Appeals,

where we begin to see Cromwell
emerging

as one of history's biggest fibbers.

It says, "By diverse and sundry old
authentic

"histories and chronicles,

"it is manifestly declared and
expressed that this realm

"of England is an Empire...

"..governed by one Supreme Head

"and King having the dignity and royal
estate

"of the imperial Crown."

What he's saying here is that Henry
rules an empire.

He is an emperor, as kings of England
have been for centuries,

and emperors are beholden to nobody,
certainly not to the Pope.

But where did this whole idea of
empire come from?

Who was Cromwell kidding?

The truth is that Henry had no empire
beyond the British Isles,

apart from a precarious foothold in
Calais,

that was increasingly expensive to
defend from the French.

But Cromwell wasn't about to let facts
like these

get in the way of his master plan.

To justify the passage of power from
Rome to London,

he manipulated English history.

This is the 12th century book that
Cromwell used as his source

and his justification.

It's The History of the Kings of
Britain

by a Welsh monk called Geoffrey of
Monmouth.

And in it he takes the story of the
kings of Britain right back

to one of Britain's best loved
legends,

King Arthur and the Knights of the
Round Table.

But this is really pseudo history.

It's more like a collection of fairy
stories.

But these fairy stories were the
diverse and sundry

old authentic histories and chronicles
Cromwell was relying upon

for his claim that England really was
an empire.

The idea that the Reformation could
bolster his image as an emperor,

descended from the mighty King Arthur,

was especially appealing to Henry.

Henry had always fancied himself as a
16th century King Arthur.

So he was quite happy to go along with
a bit of colourful

myth-making from back in the mists of
time,

especially if it got him what he
wanted.

Henry had an extraordinary gift for
believing most sincerely

in things which just happened to be to
his advantage.

Cromwell's revolutionary acts gave
Henry the power he craved,

but they also left him isolated.

Rejecting Rome wasn't only a religious
matter.

The Pope also had diplomatic and
economic powers.

He even had approval on international
trade deals.

And, by rejecting the Lutheran cause,

Henry was also driving a wedge between
England

and the rest of Protestant Europe.

Adrian, do you think there's a
connection between

people today talking negatively about
Europe

and those acts that Henry and Cromwell
set up

saying, "England is exceptional, it
stands alone.

"It's an empire entirely
self-contained"?

- Oh, undoubtedly. I think this idea
that when you're an island,

you are naturally disconnected from
the Continent and you are,

you know, very special and your fate
and destiny lie elsewhere.

Clearly, that is what, you know, the
Reformation and I think,

you know, people having this sort of
discourse today have in common.

Really, I think, what those two acts
do is they essentially say

there's only one source of legitimacy,

and that is now the nation represented
by the monarch.

And that really changes the
relationship hugely

to other countries, to the papacy, to
institutions, you know,

across the world, because you're
essentially saying

the individual has rights, you know,
his or her individual rights,

plus the state essentially guarantees
them

and nothing mediates that relationship
any more.

- By 1536, Henry had absolute power
over both nation and the Church.

But, after three years of marriage to
Anne,

Henry still had no male heir, only a
daughter - Elizabeth.

So Henry now ordered his fixer, Thomas
Cromwell, to find a solution.

Operating in Henry's court was
notoriously a dangerous affair.

You had to stay a step ahead of your
enemies

and keep your allies close.

But although Anne was super smart, her
strong character

and radical views hadn't endeared her
to everybody.

And it would be her former ally,
Thomas Cromwell, who produced

the damaging evidence that would
eventually bring her down.

In May 1536, Anne was brought to the
Tower of London

to be tried on charges of adultery,
incest

and conspiracy to kill the king.

Cromwell had witnesses tortured to
help create a dodgy dossier

against her, which would seal her
reputation as a wanton woman.

- We have from Anne's trial the
indictment,

and there's a list of five men with
whom she's accused of adultery.

She's also accused of incest

because one of those five men is her
brother.

And, crucially, she's accused of
conspiring the king's death.

- Do you think that Anne did anything,
anything wrong,

anything that we can blame for her
downfall?

- Well, I don't think that she
committed the adultery

and the incest that she was accused
of.

But I do think she did the conspiring
the king's death,

if we understand that to be talking
about the king's death.

Because there's a moment with a man
called Henry Norris,

who's one of the king's best friends,
where she said to him,

"You look for dead men's shoes, for if
aught came to the king but good

"you would look to have me."

In other words, she's saying,

you want to marry me when my husband's
dead, don't you?

And under the 1534 Treasons Act,

if you think of the king's death in
words,

you are committing treason.

- Suzie, why do you think that
Cromwell,

who used to be Anne's ally and
supporter, turned against her

and produced his dossier of evidence?

- Well, ultimately, Cromwell is doing
what Henry tells him to do.

And Henry has told him,

look, there are these charges against
Anne, look into them.

And Cromwell finds the dirt.

- Anne was found guilty on all
charges.

But, as the case against her was based
on fibs,

her guilt seems both morally and
legally dubious.

This has given Anne her lasting appeal
as a martyr.

And she still has a starring role in
the tours of the Tower of London.

- The year was 1536.

Swordsman walked towards the Queen of
England.

He called out, "Boy, bring me my
sword."

That got the queen's attention enough
to look up.

The neck was there for the taking.

In one motion, the swordsman bent
down, picked up the sword,

and the head was off.

- Barely 24 hours had passed before
Henry became engaged

to his third wife, Jane Seymour.

A year later, she gave birth to his
long awaited son - Edward.

Henry now had a male heir to secure
the Tudor dynasty

and this helped build England's
autonomy as a nation state.

But by this time, Henry was in
financial trouble.

He'd frittered away his father's
inheritance on grand palaces

and luxuries, and he'd spent huge sums
on battles with France.

The king was broke, but Cromwell had a
way of helping him

to fill his coffers.

Cromwell said that the Church owned
nearly a third

of all the land in England, and this
was true.

Cromwell said that the Church was
richer than the king was,

and this was true, too.

But Cromwell claimed that the clergy
were syphoning off these huge sums

of money to Rome, where the Pope was
spending them

on all kinds of excesses, and this was
less true.

This was Cromwell spinning his story
in order to get his own way.

Once again, Cromwell was using Henry's
personal problems

to further his own Protestant agenda.

History remembers the next stage of
the Reformation

as just an act of religious vandalism.

In fact, it was also a far-reaching
political reform.

Henry's fixer had the monasteries in
his sights.

Cromwell hated these Catholic
institutions.

He felt they were centres of
homosexuality, of depravity,

of superstition and corruption.

This would be a radical transfer of
wealth and power

from church to state.

Cromwell was setting out to destroy
the web of religious communities

across England that provided work,
education

and welfare for local people.

He now sent the king's men all over
the country,

knocking on the doors of monasteries
and nunneries to find evidence

to blacken their reputation.

This process was politely known

as the visitation of the monasteries.

Actually, it involved interrogation
and terror.

The findings were placed before
parliament

in the Compendium Competorum,

which means the compendium of true
facts.

And in this we discover the nuns at
Grace Dieu

were accused of superstition, of
holding in reverence

the girdle and parts of the tunic of
St Francis,

which was thought to be helpful to
women in labour.

Then at the monastery of Garendon,

whoa, this is bad, they had discovered
five sodomites.

But, given Cornwell's economic agenda
for the dissolution

of the monasteries, how much of this
compendium of true facts

is reliable and how much is fiction?

Is there any evidence for actual
financial wrongdoing

on behalf of the monasteries?

Were they really sending all this cash
to Rome?

- Well, I suppose like any
institution,

there's some mismanagement.

There's some abbots and priors who
aren't behaving

as they're entirely supposed to be.

But the idea that the monasteries are
sending huge sums

of money to Rome is absolutely a
fantasy.

Erm...

as after the Reformation,

the English Crown takes much more
money out of the Church

than the popes were ever able to do.

- Now, these people examining the
monasteries,

they seem very keen on superstition,
that excites them.

They like a good bit of superstition
to catch.

What does that mean exactly?

- I think this is an area where the
monasteries are vulnerable.

Many of them have large collections of
relics.

And of course, kind of by definition,
these relics,

which have been there for a very long
time, are difficult to verify

or prove that they genuinely are the
bone of this or that saint.

But the visitor's clearly have a brief
to try and make

these things sound like forms of
fraud.

- And what about this emphasis on the
sex lives of the clergy?

It's like Mary Whitehouse. It's very
prurient, isn't it?

- It is, and I suppose it works as
propaganda

because it fits with some of the
cliches.

You know, the lecherous monk or friar

is a well-known literary type in the
Middle Ages.

One of the things that the compendium
produces

is very long lists of sodomites.
- Yes.

- That seems to be the kind of
headline sin

that is being highlighted.

But in fact, when one drills down into
that a little bit,

many of these so-called sodomites, it
appears,

are sodomites per voluntarias
polluciones,

a rather, sort of, roundabout Latin
phrase,

"through voluntary pollution". In
other words, masturbation.

- Sodomy's a very large catchall term.

- Sodomy is a very large catchall
term.

And, in fact, it's not nearly as
endemic or widespread

as the Compendium Compertorum is
trying to pretend, or to spin

the material in such a way that it
looks as if the monasteries

are these kind of cesspits of vice.

- Using this dubious evidence,

Cromwell unleashed a four-year
campaign of destruction.

By 1540, 800 religious houses had been
dissolved,

along with their hospitals, schools
and provision for poor people.

Some were sold off to wealthy
landowners who supported the king.

Others, like Tintern Abbey, were
deliberately left in ruins

as a reminder that the Church was
being cleaned up

and absorbed into the state.

Now, if you were to read your standard
Victorian history textbook,

it would suggest that the Reformation
was a good thing

in very basic terms.

But would you say something was lost
here, something important?

- The great promise was to liberate
the individual

from a corrupt Catholic Church,

you know, from a sort of overbearing
papacy that would tell

you how to live your life and control
your every movement,

to essentially a more personal
relation between the individual

and God, no longer mediated by the
Church.

I think in reality what happened is
that the Reformation

really subordinated the individual to
the national state

and also increasingly to the economy.

That is to say, Henry really
concentrated wealth in the hands

of the landed gentry, and he
centralised power.

And that meant that the individual was
actually stripped

of all sorts of support.

The monasteries were a huge source of
support for individuals,

and when they were dissolved by Henry,
it basically meant that

all sorts of things like education,

what we would now call social
services,

essentially, you know, were no longer
there

to support people where they lived.

So power moved to London, wealth moved
to the landed gentry,

and lots of individuals were basically
without support.

- Protestant propagandists would have
us believe

that the Reformation was widely
welcomed.

But the destruction of the monasteries
was met with resistance,

especially in the north of England.

Thousands marched on London in angry
protest

against Cromwell's radical reforms,

that were overturning centuries of
belief and a whole way of life.

Though it's not surprising that
Cromwell's legacy

as a progressive Protestant hero

has taken quite a battering over the
years.

Some historians have described him as
a brute, a thug

responsible for this, for ruins.

One of the great acts of vandalism in
the story of our nation.

But is this really fair?

Diarmaid, where has this idea of
Cromwell the terrible thug

come from? Is it Catholic propaganda?

- Well, it certainly is Catholic
propaganda,

because they were part of an old
world,

and his Reformation was determined to
destroy that old world.

He is actually carrying out the king's
policy

of breaking with the Pope, breaking
with Rome,

but was also doing things off his own
bat.

He had his own policies, which weren't
quite King Henry VIII's.

- Now, this is intriguing.

What was Cromwell's real agenda then?

- A very radical Protestant
Reformation,

more radical than that of Martin
Luther in Germany.

He wanted to do something with what
Henry had done,

which was break with Rome, push the
Protestant Reformation.

He pushed an English Bible when the
king didn't want it.

He's an impressive man.

This is someone who has got a very
determined agenda

to change and reform this country, to
make it better.

- You're on his side.
- I'm on his side because I think he
had a sense

of social justice, reform.

I can see that he's also, in many
ways, a thug.

But anyone in politics at the time was
a thug.

Alongside that, though, there is this
idealism,

this determination to get things done.

- As part of his national reforms,
Cromwell tabled the Vagabond Act.

This required every community to fund
a system

of state poor relief, to replace the
Church's charity.

- The Vagabond Act was an attempt to
start

the very first national system of
relieving the poor.

Now, in Thomas Cromwell's eyes,

the Church wasn't the organisation to
do it, it was the king.

It was this new independent kingdom of
England,

the Church of England under the king.

And so, this is an attempt to solve a
problem

by parliamentary legislation.

- I suppose, that's a new and exciting
and radical thing to do.

But I find there's something quite
scary about Cromwell.

He appears to be a zealot, and a very
clever and successful,

and almost frighteningly efficient
zealot.

- I'm sure you're right.

But someone's got to think about these
things.

His king didn't have the time or the
inclination

to sort problems out.

Cromwell was there to sort things out,
and he did.

- We often think of Henry and Cromwell
as a reforming team.

But, while Cromwell was a true
believer,

Henry was still resisting any move
towards Luther's ideas.

So what exactly were his people
supposed to believe?

How should they pray? How should they
live?

Henry attempted to clarify things with
another Act of Parliament.

This is the Act of the Six Articles of
1539,

also known as an Act for the
Abolishing of Diversity in Opinions,

which sounds rather like the thought
police.

In this one, Henry sets out his own,
rather singular, version

of Anglo-Catholic doctrine.

The things listed here include a
belief in celibacy for the clergy,

a belief in confession and in
communion.

And, actually, people were left
feeling even more confused

because these things were really
ancient Roman Catholic rituals

and beliefs, and very far distant from
the radical, new

Protestant direction of Henry's
closest advisers.

The gulf between Cromwell's belief in
the Lutheran revolution

and Henry's Anglo-Catholicism

kept on growing.

Finally, Henry turned on his fixer.

In June 1540, Thomas Cromwell was
taken to the Tower

charged with heresy and treason.

The story usually goes that Cromwell
fell

because of his role in Henry's
disastrous fourth marriage

to Anne of Cleves, the one he didn't
fancy,

and therefore divorced.

But there's more to it than that.

Cromwell's trial records show that he
was also in trouble

for failing to enforce Henry's Six
Articles.

For years, Cromwell had managed Henry,

but finally, in his enthusiasm for
religious reform, he'd gone too far.

And Henry could be ruthless if you
questioned his authority.

Cromwell was executed without trial.

He was buried alongside the Protestant
ally he'd betrayed -

Anne Boleyn.

As Protestant ideas continued to
spread across England,

Henry's Anglo-Catholicism became more
entrenched.

His last will and testament stipulated
that twice daily masses

be said by his tomb in perpetuity.

Henry VIII, always remembered as the
great reformer,

would remain Catholic for eternity.

But his surviving children -

zealous Edward,

who was raised entirely in the
Protestant faith,

Roman Catholic Mary,

and Anglo-Catholic Elizabeth

were all named by Henry as his heirs.

The truth is that Henry's hedging of
all of his bets

would plunge England into turmoil
after his death.

This is the moment the story of the
Reformation starts to be told

and retold to suit the needs of each
successive

Protestant and Catholic monarch.

Henry had set the stage for centuries
of confusion and lies.

In 1547, Henry was succeeded by his
nine-year-old son, Edward,

and a new hard line Protestant
Reformation began.

All of Henry's Catholic concessions,

including his Six Articles, were
scrapped.

The Latin Mass was replaced by the
English Book of Common Prayer,

celibate priests by married clergy.

But Edward died after just five years
on the throne.

The crown now passed to his Roman
Catholic half-sister, Mary,

who immediately reversed all of
Edward's Protestant reforms.

Latin masses were reinstated and the
Pope was declared

head of England's Roman Catholic
church once more.

Mary also restored medieval heresy
laws.

Protestants who refused to recant were
burnt alive at the stake.

Between 1555 and '57,

17 men and women from the Protestant
stronghold of Lewes

in southeast England were put to death
in this way.

The first of them was a Flemish
immigrant called Derek Carver,

he was a brewer.

He was arrested at his house because
he'd been holding

an illegal session of reading the
Bible in English.

He was tortured for eight months.

He eventually signed a confession to
heresy.

And then, when he came to be punished,

in a really nasty nod to his
profession,

they put him inside a barrel of beer

before burning him alive.

Within three years, over 300 men and
women died at the stake

across England.

Around 800 Protestants fled to Germany
and Switzerland.

And these exiles began to wage a
propaganda war against Queen Mary.

They would seal her reputation as a
bloody tyrant.

A historian called John Foxe was the
most influential of all.

This book is John Foxe's Actes and
Monuments,

usually known as Foxe's Book of
Martyrs.

It tells what happened to the people
who were persecuted

under Mary I's counter-reformation.

It's really detailed and vivid as
well.

He compiled it from trial records and
from eyewitness accounts.

And after Mary died in 1558,

this would become a key piece of
pro-Elizabethan propaganda.

The reason that a lot of people to
this day

think of Mary I as Bloody Mary

is essentially this book.

Foxe's graphic account of Bloody Mary

helped strengthen support for the
Reformation in England.

And for the Protestants who still
commemorate the Lewes Martyrs,

Foxe's book is nearly as important as
the Bible.

Since 1605, crowds have regularly
descended on Lewes to take part

in the town's notorious Bonfire Night
on November 5th.

It marks the day when the Catholic
rebel Guy Fawkes was foiled

in his attempts to blow up Parliament.

But its roots lie in the anti-Catholic
period

that immediately followed Mary's
death.

As you can see, it's quite a riotous
affair.

There's something of the medieval
carnival about it,

and the local authorities have tried
lots of times to get this stopped.

I think that's because, on one level,
it is about intolerance.

You worry what might happen to any
Catholics who might be brave enough

to show their faces here.

It's true to say that the spirit of
John Foxe is alive and well

on the streets of Lewes.

The 17 Lewes Martyrs commemorated in
Foxe's book

are represented by 17 burning crosses

proudly held by the Bonfire Boys, as
they call themselves.

They still believe that Catholic Mary
had far more blood on her hands

than her Protestant half-sister,
Elizabeth.

When Mary died childless in 1558,

Elizabeth took the throne just as
Henry had wished.

Like her father, she initially pursued
a middle way

with her state religion,

and allowed some Catholic rituals to
remain in place.

But, in 1570, this tolerance suddenly
stopped.

The Pope was encouraging Catholic
Spain to invade England

and replace Elizabeth with her
Catholic cousin,

Mary, Queen of Scots.

- 1570 is a massive game changer.

Pope Pius V excommunicates Elizabeth
I.

So, he declares her a heretic, he says
she's illegitimate

and he says she's a usurper, a
monster-like usurper.

- A monster-like usurper? That's a
brilliant phase.
- I know.

And he orders her subjects, her
Catholic subjects, to disobey her.

So what Elizabeth's Privy Council come
up with

is something that is known as the
Bloody Question.
- Sounds sinister.

- It is, it is sinister and it's a
bloody difficult question as well.

I mean, effectively it is,

if the Pope backs an invasion of
England

to restore the Catholic faith to
England,

who are you going to support?

Are you going to support the Pope or
are you going to support the Queen?

It's very tough for the Catholics
because now they've suddenly got,

really, the choice of two betrayals.

You know, you can betray the Pope and
condemn your souls to damnation

forever, or you can betray the Queen

and subject your body to all sorts of
temporal punishment.

- In the 1580s, the conflict with
Catholic Europe intensified.

England was now at war with Spain.

Every Catholic priest was seen as a
potential traitor,

secretly plotting to kill the queen.

It was the start of a dark, but often
forgotten, chapter

in Tudor history.

- For 1585, if you're a priest and
you've been ordained abroad

and you even set foot on English soil,

then you will be automatically deemed
a traitor

and you will be hanged, drawn and
quartered.

And the ordinary Catholic who puts him
up in his house,

they too will swing for it.

So some very grim things happen in
Elizabeth's reign.

This is not a golden age for the
Catholics.

- Who was driving this witch-hunt, if
you like,

against the Jesuit priests?

- There's a guy called Richard
Topcliffe,

who is a priest hunter.

He's also a torturer and a sadist,
almost certainly a rapist.

I mean, he really loved his job.

And he would go after priests,

and he would harangue them at the
gallows.

And there are even documents, there
are lists that he had

with priests' names on them,

and he would draw a little gallows
sketch

by the names of the ones he wants
executed.

- This is Harvington Hall in
Warwickshire.

Buried within its walls lie hidden
clues that reveal

just how bloody Queen Elizabeth
herself could be.

Harvington was home to the Pakington
family.

To the outside world, they appeared to
be respectable Protestants.

But Humphrey Pakington,

who remodelled medieval Harvington in
the 1580s,

was in fact a closet Catholic.

This wasn't all that unusual.

Lots of Catholic families went on
worshipping the old way

behind the closed doors of their
private chapels,

despite the risk of persecution and
execution.

As the death toll rose, though,

Pakington had to come up with more and
more ingenious ways

of keeping his secret, and of
protecting the lives

of the Catholic priests who were now
being hunted down

by Elizabeth's henchmen.

To help him provide sanctuary for
these persecuted men,

Humphrey Pakington employed a lay
Jesuit brother,

a master carpenter, Nicholas Owen.

Owen clearly had one of those brains
that works in 3D,

a bit like a computer-modelling
programme,

and he set about devising secret
hiding places for priests

all over what's already a really
baffling house.

Everything you see is designed to
trick you, to deceive the eye.

This really is a Tudor house of fibs.

Like this, for example. Looks like an
ordinary bedroom,

looks like an ordinary fireplace.
Clearly it's being used,

it's covered in soot.

Aha! Until you look closely,

and you realise that this soot of ages
is in fact black paint.

And up here there are a couple of
little footholds

so that the chimney can be used as an
escape route to the roof.

Owen always worked alone

and each priest hole he devised was
different, so it provided

no clues about the mechanisms or the
positions of the others.

And here in the library is the best
priest hole of all.

It's so well-hidden, it was only
rediscovered in the 19th century.

You think, mm, books, more book
shelves up here,

here's a ladder for getting the books.

But there's something odd about these
beams.

There's one beam.

It's on a swivel!

I think you'd suffer from
claustrophobia

if you had to spend any amount of time
in here.

Conditions inside these hiding places
were truly grim,

but countless lives were saved thanks
to Owen.

He himself wasn't so lucky.

- Nicholas Owen was eventually caught
in a raid,

in a house not far from Harvington,

and he was taken to the Tower of
London,

and he was tortured, and he died in
his cell.

But what is certain is that he never
gave up the secrets of his hides.

- Do you think that Elizabeth knew
what these sometimes

sadistic priest hunters were up to in
her name?

- Yes, yes.

I mean, she doesn't want to be seen to
be torturing, of course,

and it's officially illegal,

so that's why someone like Topcliffe
is very useful to her.

And there are, sort of, letters where
she unofficially

lets some of these priest hunters know
that she is pleased

with their good services.

- You're making her sound quite cruel.

And of course, everybody knows that it
was Mary, her half-sister,

who was the bloody one.

How would you compare the two of them?

- If we're looking at the, sort of,
bloody balance sheet,

about 300 people are burnt in Mary's
reign

in a short period of time, a few
years.

And Elizabeth's reign, it's almost 200
people for religious reasons,

but over a much longer time span.

- It's quite close in numbers, though,
isn't it?

- Well, it is quite close in numbers.

And also, you know, what's worse,
being burnt at the stake

or being strung up, cut down while
you're still alive,

have your intestines pulled out in
front of you, burnt in front of you,

and then have your head chopped off?

You know, possibly with being tortured
beforehand.

So it's, you know... It's pretty
macabre, neither is pleasant.

- And yet, she has this whole image,
doesn't she, as Good Queen Bess?

Where does that come from?

Who's doing her propaganda for her?

- Well, she had some very good
playwrights,

she had some good dramatists,

she had some excellent writers in her
reign.

And I think we have to acknowledge

that the winners write the national
story.

- This Protestant propaganda was met

with some Catholic counter-propaganda

by a priest called Nicholas Sander.

He'd escaped the heretic state of
Elizabethan England

to find sanctuary in Rome.

This book is The Rise and Growth of
the Anglican Schism

by Nicholas Sander.

It was the first widely distributed
Catholic account of the Reformation.

It's a lurid retelling of the story of
the break with Rome,

full of pride and lust and perversion.

In it, Elizabeth becomes an evil
thing,

the bastard child of Henry VIII and
Anne Boleyn,

whose unlawful coupling has opened the
floodgates

to all of this Reformation heresy.

And in Sander's version of the story,

things are even worse than that for
Elizabeth,

because she is the product of incest.

Anne Boleyn is not only Henry VIII's
wife,

she is also his daughter, according to
Sander.

And in support of his argument

he produces the evidence of what she
looks like,

which is clearly, weirdly,
incestuously monstrous.

In Sander's hands, her olive-skinned
complexion becomes sallow,

as if troubled with jaundice.

A projecting tooth under her upper lip
distorts the shape of her mouth.

On her right hand, a vestigial
fingernail growth

becomes a whole extra finger,

and a slight swelling on her neck
becomes a large wen,

or goitre, whose ugliness, Sander
claims,

she tried to hide by wearing a high
dress covering her throat.

The fact that Anne didn't wear
high-necked dresses,

she was much too elegant for that,
didn't seem to bother Sander.

He was effectively describing her as
if she were a witch.

By the time he was publishing in 1585,
Anne Boleyn was long dead,

so clearly his target was Anne's
daughter, Elizabeth.

With a mother like that, what must the
daughter be like?

Sander's book was another attempt to
incite a coup against Elizabeth.

It became a bestseller in Catholic
Spain and France

and it encouraged these countries to
invade and liberate England

from Protestant rule.

But in 1588, Elizabeth cemented her
reputation

as the warrior Virgin Queen,

by defending England against the
Spanish Armada.

Sander's demonization of Anne Boleyn
was harder to shake,

and it still colours the contradictory
ways

we view Anne today.

- # Listen up, let me tell you a
story... #

- But now a 21st century spin on the
story of Henry and his six wives

is recasting Anne as a post-feminist
pin up.

- # What about the glories and the
disgraces? #

- In the West End musical Six,

Henry's wives compete in a talent show

to prove who suffered most at his
hands.

In the end, they decide not to define
themselves

as someone's wife.

So they go from being the six wives of
Henry VIII

to the girl band Six.

- # Ex-wives

# We're Six Whoa, whoa. #

- Here we are in the stalls at Six,
the musical.

Tell me, which wife do you find that
the audience who come here

are most interested in?

- I think Anne Boleyn. She's the one
that everybody knows about, really.

So in the show, before her number,
have a kind of pre-number,

about like introducing her as the one
you've been waiting for.

- # But then I met the king

# And soon my daddy said, you should
try and get ahead. #

- The thing that everybody knows about
Anne Boleyn is kind of

the myth surrounding her, like her
being the other woman.

This kind of calculating, manipulative
person.

There was a sort of sense of her
pre-planning and plotting

to kind of steal Henry and kind of
break the Church apart

and all that kind of stuff.

And we kind of wanted to fly in the
face of that kind of hysteria.

So she is a kind of cheeky, fun-loving

sort of party girl, really,

who just likes to have a good time,
doesn't worry too much

about the consequences of her actions.

And then when they do kind of
backfire, sort of shrugs it off

and says, "Oh, well!"

"Sorry, not sorry" is kind of her
refrain.

So, yeah, our version is very
different

to the historical narrative that
everyone knows.

- You're making a joke against
historians, aren't you?

- Yeah. Oh, completely.
- It strikes me this is quite
sophisticated.

You've got to know a bit about Tudor
history in order to get the jokes.

Do you think you're sending away a
new, more educated generation

of young historians?

- Well, I mean, I hope so.

You obviously need to know a little
bit of context, but actually,

I think, what I kind of hope people go
away from the show with

is not just a sense of them knowing
more about these specific women,

but also understanding the way in
which we've been taught history

and understood history has been very
patriarchal for a long time.

I guess, it's about how kind of
women...women's actions get

misconstrued or analysed in a
different way to men's.

So, for example, Anne Boleyn being
like calculating and manipulative,

if those qualities were in a man,
they'd potentially be

kind of being savvy, and political and
charismatic, I guess.

- Anne Boleyn's reputation will no
doubt continue to be rewritten,

and the story of Henry VIII and his
six wives

will go on pulling in the crowds.

But it shouldn't blind us to the wider
political legacy

of the Reformation, because Henry's
break with Rome

caused a lasting schism.

And now Britain is breaking away from
Europe all over again.

Adrian, what parallels do you see
between the Reformation and Brexit?

- The most striking parallel, I think,

is this idea that we are better off on
our own,

we're better off out,

and essentially national sovereignty
and the will of the people

should prevail over anything else.

So, at the time of the Reformation, it
was about the Catholic Church

being corrupt, being decadent, being
over centralised

and not really, sort of, being to our
benefit.

And now it's about the EU being
undemocratic,

potentially authoritarian and, sort
of, riding roughshod

over what people really need and want.

The Reformation reinforced the sense
that Britain is separate

rather than actually seeing Britain as
part

of a wider European continent.

And I think that's where EU scepticism
has its deep roots

in the Reformation.

- So it all happened in the 1530s.

That's when a lot of these seeds were
planted

that are still shooting up to the sky
today.

- If you're looking for the origins of
Brexit,

look no further than Henry VIII.

- Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell used
a dodgy reading of history

to spin a story about a proud and
independent nation.

One that was separate from the
Catholic world

and separate, too, from the Protestant
nations of Europe.

And this is still a powerful vision of
history,

one that sees Britain flourishing
without interference

from its European neighbours.

That view has informed

the way we've done business with
Europe ever since.

From Churchill's post-war insistence

that we were with Europe but not of
it,

to Margaret Thatcher's rejection of
the Maastricht Treaty in 1990.

- No. No. No.

- And for many, the idea of Britain as
an exceptional island nation

is as strong as ever.

For them, Henry's Reformation was the
making of this country

and can be again.

- I think, outside, we will do
incredibly well.

It's like another Reformation.

It will be the same explosion of
talent and opportunity.

- Right, Mr Duncan Smith...
- It's a new Reformation.

- The story of Henry VIII's break with
Rome

so he could get his divorce and marry
Anne Boleyn

has been entertaining us for centuries

and that's because it's a fabulous
royal soap opera.

- Brexit!
- When do we want it?
- Now!

- But now, that issue of breaking so
decisively with Europe

is once again taking centre stage,

and it's partly because of those myths
that Henry and Cromwell

started spinning in the 16th century.

They are still splitting the country
to this day.

Next time -

Elizabeth I and her navy defeat an
invincible Spanish Armada.

A valiant Virgin Queen rallies her
troops

and puts England on the map.

But how much of this ripping yarn is
true?