This degree project is a study investigating how the historiography of king Henry VIII of England has changed between 1887-1995. The aim of the study was to gain insight into how the historiography of Henry VIII and the most important aspects of his reign were viewed at different periods of the 19th and 20th centuries and how it has changed over that period. To achieve this aim, Karlsson’s and Zander’s theory about the uses of history was used along with a qualitative method of analysis. The results show that a change did occur in the historiography around Henry VIII at the beginning of the 20th century when the traditional Whig-school of writing history was surpassed by the modernist school of writing. Henry VIII went from being represented as a great ruler with his peoples’ best at heart to a flawed individual whose decisions were often motivated by selfish reasons. Overall, the historiography of Henry VIII has changed from glorifying the king’s personality to showing a more factual picture of the king and the advisors at his court.

Il s'agit ici d'analyser les relations entre l'Angleterre d' Henri VIII et l'Espagne de Charles Quint de 1526 à 1540. Cettepériode correspond aux dernières années du « valimiento » du cardinal Wolsey, et à la durée de celui de Thomas Cromwell. L'année 1526 constitue un réel tournant dans les relations des deux monarques. Cette époque est marquée par le divorce du souverain insulaire avec Catherine d'Aragon, la tante de l'empereur, par la ruine totale du royaume de Hongrie suite à la défaite du roi Louis II face aux Turcs, et à la menace que cela implique pour les territoires de Charles Quint. Au cours de cette période, nombreux sont les royaumes européens qui décident de briser leur allégeance au pape (Suède, Angleterre et Danemark). La situation des royaumes scandinaves intéresse Henri VIII qui cherche à s’en emparer au détriment des intérêts de l’empereur et de sa famille. Il semble intéressant d'étudier les influences et l'impact de la mise en place de l'Ecclesia anglicana, instaurée par le roi, Thomas Cromwell et par Thomas Cranmer sur les relations avec l'Espagne (diplomatie, religion et commerce). Cette étude donne lieu à une analyse approfondie des manoeuvres politiques de la part du roi d'Angleterre avec les royaumes de France, Suède, Danemark, Hongrie et Pologne pour contourner la domination de Charles Quint sur la scène européenne. L'Angleterre maintiendra certains contacts avec les réformateurs suisses et la Ligue de Smalkalde pour tenter de s'émanciper du pouvoir impérial et de l'influence du Saint-Siège. Dans un premier temps, Henri VIII cherchera à aligner ses intérêts sur ceux de la France, pour mieux contrer les manoeuvres de déstabilisation politique et d’intimidation de Charles Quint, un monarque très pragmatique. Cela impliquera une forte volonté d'ingérence politique de la part de l'Espagne et de l'empereur pour avoir une mainmise sur les affairesdu royaume. Marie, la fille du roi d'Angleterre et de sa première épouse Catherine d'Aragon incarnera cet espoir. C'est pourquoi,l’empereur soutient les mouvements rebelles d'Irlande et du nord de l'Angleterre lors du Pèlerinage de la Grâce, mais veille à ne pastrop s'impliquer afin de garantir de futures alliances avec Henri VIII. Enfin, nous étudierons la perception que les Anglais avaientdes Espagnols et vice versa / This is to analyze the relations between the England of Henry VIII and the Spain of Charles V from 1526 to 1540. Thisperiod corresponds to the last years of the "valimiento" of Cardinal Wolsey, and the duration of that from Thomas Cromwell. 1526 is a real turning point in the relations between the two monarchs. This era is marked by the divorce of the island ruler with Catherine of Aragon, the aunt of the emperor ; by the total ruin of the Kingdom of Hungary following the defeat of King Louis II against the Turks, and the threat that this implies for the territories of Charles V. During this period, many European kingdoms decided to break their allegiance to the pope (Sweden, England and Denmark). The situation of the Scandinavian kingdoms interested Henry VIII who sought to seize it at the expense of the interests of the emperor and his family. It seems interesting to study the influences and impact of the establishment of the Ecclesia Anglicana ; promoted by the King, Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer ; on relations with Spain (diplomacy, religion and trade). This study gives rise to a detailed analysis of the political maneuvers on the part of the King of England with the kingdoms of France, Sweden, Denmark, Hungary and Poland to circumvent the domination of Charles V on the European scene. England will maintain certain contacts with the Swiss reformers and the Smalkalde League in an attempt to emancipate itself from the imperial power and influence of the Holy See. At first, Henry VIII will seek to align his interests with those of France, to better counter the maneuvers of political destabilization and intimidation of Charles V, a very pragmatic monarch. This will imply a strong will of political interference on the part of Spain and the emperor to have a stranglehold on the affairs of the kingdom. Mary, the daughter of the King of England and his first wife Catherine of Aragon will embody this hope. Therefore, the emperor supports the rebel movements of Ireland and northern England during the Pilgrimage of Grace, but be careful not to get tooinvolved in order to guarantee future alliances with Henry VIII. Finally, we will study the perception that the English had ofSpaniards and vice versa.

This dissertation analyses the life and writings of the Tudor clergyman and bestselling author Thomas Becon (1512-1567) as well as communities of production, patronage and pious readership that occasioned, supported and first received his books. Not only does it illuminate new aspects of his life, such as his remorse over his recantation at Paul’s Cross in 1543 and the fact that he was considered for the bishopric of Chester in 1559, but also it provides an account of his extraordinary literary output. Between the early 1540s and the late 1560s, he composed or translated at least 56 works, which by the 1630s had been printed in 126 known editions. He was thus the most widely published vernacular devotional author in England until the later decades of the sixteenth-century. Despite his influence in early modern England, Becon has received little scholarly attention. When his works are studied, they are simply mined for quotations, rather than contextualised and considered in their own right. This dissertation attempts to redress this imbalance by embedding Becon within the communities and contexts that produced and consumed his books. It argues that, as a prolific and highly influential member of the ‘middle management’ of the English Reformation, his life and writings offer a unique and valuable perspective on the propagation, enforcement and reception of religious change in sixteenth-century England. This dissertation not only reconstructs and reconsiders his biography and literary output, but also it shows the contributions that such study makes to broader historical and literary understandings of early modern England, particularly in light of the post-revisionist project, which has focused upon the processes of negotiation, accommodation and resistance that shaped the English Reformation. By illuminating the career of one significant, but largely overlooked reformer, it furnishes new evidence and interpretations for understanding early modern England.

Writers and historians from earlier centuries imagined Anne Boleyn as a villain; a forward and evil woman intent on destroying Henry VII and his image. Modern accounts have been more accommodating, offering that she was misunderstood due to the constraints of the times. In an attempt to discover the historical Anne, I will be comparing and contrasting how she has been perceived in fiction and non-fiction literature, and will examine how the perception of Anne has shifted through time.

In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation generated multiple reform movements and political transformations in Europe. Within this general period of reform, political and cultural changes from the Tudor era (1485-1603) created a separate English Reformation. The English Reformation evolved from the different agendas of the early Tudor monarchs and occurred in two distinct waves: an initial, more moderate Henrician Reformation and a later, more complete Edwardian Reformation. Henry VIII and Edward VI's attempts to redefine monarchy through a new State and Church identity drove English church reform during this period, giving these religious shifts distinct political roots. Cultural artifacts were prominent indicators of these differing political goals, and Henry VIII and Edward VI adjusted and removed images and texts according to their propaganda methods. These royal manipulations of culture are well-documented, but historians have overlooked important components in the communication process. Lay responses to imagery changes ranging from compliance to rebellion demonstrate the complex relationship of images, monarchy, and reform. Examining images' function as propaganda with questions of intent, reception, and comprehension in royal communication is imperative for assessing the impact of royal messages on Tudor culture. Analyzing Tudor art as a form of political communication that disseminated idealized political representation reveals a strong visual discourse between the King and the English people. Images held key powers within royal discourse to create and disseminate propaganda of a kingship.

A number of recent successful authorship studies have relied on a statistical analysis of language features based on function words. However, stylometry has not been extensively applied to Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic questions. To determine the effectiveness of such an approach in this field, language features are studied in twenty-four plays by Shakespeare and eight by Fletcher. The goal is to develop procedures that might be used to determine the authorship of individual scenes in The Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII. Homonyms, spelling variants and contracted forms in old-spelling dramatic texts present problems for a computer analysis. A program that uses a system of pre-edit codes and replacement /expansion lists was developed to prepare versions of the texts in which all forms of common words can be recognized automatically. To evaluate some procedures for determining authorship developed by A. Q. Morton and his colleagues, occurrences of 30 common collocations and 5 proportional pairs are analyzed in the texts. Within-author variation for these features is greater than had been found in previous studies. Univariate chi-square tests are shown to be of limited usefulness because of the statistical distribution of these textual features and correlation between pairs of features. The best of the collocations do not discriminate as well as most of the individual words from which they are composed. Turning to the rate of occurrence of individual words and groups of words, distinctiveness ratios and t-tests are used to select variables that best discriminate between Shakespeare and Fletcher. Variation due to date of composition and genre within the Shakespeare texts is examined. A multivariate and distributionfree discriminant analysis procedure (using kernel estimation) is introduced. The classifiers based on the best marker words and the kernel method are not greatly affected by characterization and perform well for samples as short as 500 words. When the final procedure is used to assign the 459 scenes of known authorship (containing at least 500 words)almost 112 95% are assigned to the correct author. Only two scenes are incorrectly classified, and 4.8% of the scenes cannot be assigned to either author by the procedure. When applied to individual scenes of at least 500 words in The Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII, the procedure indicates that both plays are collaborations and generally supports the usual division. However, the marker words in a number of scenes often attributed to Fletcher are very much closer to Shakespeare's pattern of use. These scenes include TNK IV.iii and H8 I.iii, IV.i-ii and V.iv.

This thesis explores the late-Henrican polity through the archive and perspective of William Paget, Henry VIII's secretary at the end of his reign. Paget's papers as secretary (1543-1547), that form the basis of the thesis, are an extensive, unique and relatively under-used source. From this starting-point Paget's role as secretary is explored and he is revealed as the personal servant of the king, whose natural environment was the court. As such he was an influential source of counsel and perhaps the key patronage-broker at court. In this context Paget also had a significant influence over the operation of the dry stamp at the end of the reign. Equally, Paget's role in shaping the function of the secretary and his relations with the recently formed privy council was of considerable importance, providing the template for later Tudor secretaries. Diplomacy in the uncertain world of the 1540s was one of Paget's primary concerns and his priorities can be seen as trying to provide security and stability for the realm. This is revealed not only in his 'Consultation' of August 1546 but also in his diplomacy with the French, the Schmalkaldic League and the Papacy. In this he sometimes found himself at odds with the king and leading a privy council united in a desire for peace. Politically Paget has traditionally been cast as an ambitious politique, the 'master of practices' and part of the earl of Hertford's reform party. Whilst acknowledging Paget's close relations with Hertford this thesis questions the factional interpretation of the last years of the reign and argues that the predominant concern of Paget and his fellow privy councillors was a peaceful succession in which unanimity rather than conflict was the key-note.

The intention of this thesis is to describe the process of putting together a performance of a lecture recital on the song cycle Try Me, Good King: Last words of the wives of Henry VIII by modern composer Libby Larsen, and to conduct an in depth exploration of the characters of the first five wives of King Henry VIII of England. Each wife’s character will be investigated in relation to their roles in this song cycle which draws its’ text from the final words of these five women. Each wife’s character will be investigated from three perspectives, that of history, that of Libby Larsen, my own perspective (Morgan Tingle). The ultimate result will be a solid developed character for each wife that is the culmination of my studies portrayed by myself, soprano Morgan Tingle, in the final lecture recital.

There have been many publications written about Henry VIII. It was his private life, because of which he primarily went down in history. Henry inherited the royal throne at a very young age. The Tudor dynasty ascended the English throne just for one generation. Henry's father ended the long−standing civil war. However, the fear of its continuation still remained. The most important task for the young king was to stabilize the position of the dynasty and to protect the throne against other pretenders. His whole life Henry lived in fear, that without a male heir, his family would be brought down. Catherine of Aragon became Henry's wife. There were many benefits from this union for England. The island kingdom was actively involved in continental policy. Nevertheless, Catherine was not able to give birth to an heir to England and fell into disgrace. Her nephew, Holy Roman Emperor, was the most powerfull ruler of the Christian Europe. Although he tried to prevent the annulment of their marriage by various means, he failed. Throughout his reign Charles was in a war conflict with the French king. He needed England like an ally against France even at the cost of his aunt's repudiation, which would remain without retaliation.

Uppsatsen studerar den engelska reformationen, dess huvudsakliga syfte är att visa hur forskningsområdet politisk teologi kan hjälpa elever i religion 2 eller högre på gymnasietatt inse hur historiska skeenden är användbara inom religiösa studier. Frågeställningarna och avgränsningarna ramar in projektet och binder det till Tudor-eran. Metoden som använts är en litteraturstudie. Resultatet blev ett exempel på hur Nordirlands respektive de brittiska öarnas nuvarande politiska situationer kan kopplas till Henry VIIIs skilsmässa och hur politik och religion kombinerades under Tudor-eran för att ge upphov till den anglikanska kyrkan.