The Inventor of England

[Music] hello and welcome to another question and answer session on david starkey talks and can i just say how deeply impressive the questions are so many of them touch big issues of nationhood and identity at the same time bring them back to now and to personal experience i don't mean my truth and your truth i mean the reality of lived experience the reality of the present in other words exactly the kind of dialogue between past and present and indeed future that i'm trying to establish with david starkey talk so wonderful that we're all actually on the same wavelength i want to begin with a particularly interesting question it's very long it's complicated i'll have to summarize it and indeed i'm going to take more than one session to answer it it comes from carl d i think i've got that right k-a-l-d-e of manchester and it's a question really about the relationship between if you like the celtic fringe the celtic nations so-called of scotland ireland and wales and england and the notion of britishness and its relationship with religion culture begins with a series of statements which are absolutely true he summarize it with the open sentence why does henry viii he asks reject his welsh heritage then he goes on and he describes the welshness or partial welshness of henry tudor and he was of course born at pembroke castle the the name that's the name that he gets from his grandfather is thoroughly welsh uh the welsh were the the tudors were a welsh prince dynasty that were that there were a lot of them um it he goes once as i said bored at pembroke castle um he uh henry then of course is driven into exile in brittany uh which speaks a version of gaelic ii and it may very well be that henry spoke um was able to speak in both welsh gaelic and boston gaelic um the fact is not absolutely known but it's very possible he's an excellent linguist in fact he is multilingual um multilingual a good latinist a good spoken latin excellent spoken french in fact it's probably his first language all those years that he spends in brittany which is of course a french-speaking court and finally english perhaps as a bit of an afterthought we'll talk about the extent to which henry henry vii that is to say sees himself as english at all obviously king of england but how far does he see himself as english but back to the business of welsh so um born at pembroke castle a family of welsh descent though remember only his enemies ever call him tudor richard iii who calls him tudor kings of england do not have surnames um even the idea of plantagenet is well iffy so that welshness the welshness which it expresses itself politically because when he eventually returns uh indeed to launch the campaign which culminates in his victory at bosworth he lands at milford haven he draws on consciously welsh connections he assembles an army which has a significant welsh welsh an element and when of course he actually takes the throne he has a welsh guard most of the human of the god or at least a very high proportion of the human of the god this this famous bodyguard which he creates at the beginning of his reign are welsh and they commemorate saint david's day the king gives a donation to his guards on saint david's day the business of of the leak and and all the rest of it again naming naming of of his son his eldest son named arthur the the the figure of the matter of britain the supposed original british king and so on and the again uh things like rouge dragon red dragon one of the perseverance of of arms one of the members of the college of arms uh one of the junior heralds again echoes of welsh the the standard one of the standards that bosworth the the welsh dragon so lots and lots of invocations of welshness and clearly taking it i think fairly seriously there have been arguments about how far we should take the naming of arthur seriously they largely depend on the fact that the the whole business of the arthurian legend isn't played at all seriously with indeed it's barely played with at all in the extremely elaborate series of pageants which are put on uh for the marriage of arthur to catherine of aragon in november 1501 well there is a very good reason for that if you think about it the last model of a marriage you would want it would have been that of arthur and guinevere famously of course um uh usurped by lancelot and so on so if you if you want an epithelium a celebration of marriage you do not turn to king arthur he has many other qualities but the seriousness of the idea of arthur of the round table of uh of of um if you like the matter of britain i think is absolutely certain it was a conscious decision often had to be a conscious decision to name your eldest son arthur and as i pointed out before and it's done not simply as you know a question of oh suck your thumb what name shall we give him at the font it's an extraordinarily deliberate enterprise because arthur is christened way way out of the way in winchester why is he christened in winchester because winchester by this point was actually thought and this again raises the issue of welshness winchester is now identified the old anglo-saxon anglo-saxon capital is now identified as the uh as as the original camelot this is in the extraordinary reworking the the version of the arthurian myth which is most prominent in the end of the 15th century england thomas mallory is mort arthur where again i've talked about this a little bit before and i've written about it extensively you can see the place names the mythic place names remember the arthurian legend is invented in france is no doubt about it the the place names uh of of of the legend these these mysterious places shallot and and and camelot or whatever are progressively identified with real english places winchester being identified with with camelot because of course in winchester there hangs what was thought to be the round table the round table actually put together by edward iii but witnessed by by by hendra the seventh and consciously invoked when he takes his eldest son his firstborn uh the little boy arthur when he takes him there of course he's he's actually inside his mother the the the birth is deliberately engineered in winchester it's an extraordinary thing to do it's a long journey the weather is bad and elizabeth of york is notoriously tender and sensitive during pregnancy there is a purpose in doing it this isn't an accidental staging post on a honor progress it is a deliberate attempt the boy is taken there to be born and to be christened it's extraordinary story so henry does indeed take the welshness the the matter of britain and the seventh that is does take it very seriously which then raises the question let's put it the other way around and indeed what is completely missing out i don't think you mentioned it once called it in your question england henry is king of england henry vii but how far does he see himself as being english remember he'd had virtually no experience of england he is forced into exile as as as as a young as an early teenager all his formative years are spent in brittany or in french in france his first language the court of britain is french speaking is a great french one of the great semi-independent french duchess that was being reabsorbed into the french monarchy at this point um he his first language his french his entire familiarity with political institutions is french not english and i think he i think this is the the key to understanding so much about henry henry vii he doesn't see himself as being particularly english i don't think he feels very much sympathy for his english subjects his famous report by the spanish ambassador that he wished to rule the english in the french faction and if you look at the kind of government that he sets up and particularly towards the end of the reign the use of figures like kempsum and dudley the enormous development of the crown lambs the private finances as they're managed through the king's personal chamber this is a profoundly personal form of government it's one that in many ways stands aside from the parliamentary tradition from from the traditions of the institutions of government as they've been forged in the high middle ages and of course conspicuously stands aside from the english warrior tradition of kingship in the struggle with france so perhaps what we're looking at with henry vii is the monarch who sees himself in a different tradition as part of a francophone tradition as it's a kind of almost using a word that is is is a difficult and i think improper one but it it makes a point neatly sees himself as a kind of international figure we know from the comments of people like polly or virgil but he's very fond of foreigners he his personal library is largely in french the magnificent collection of books that he builds up at richmond they're bought their luxury editions mainly of printed works but printed works designed to look like manuscripts and very very heavily illuminated and so on printed on parchment but they're all almost all in french now henry viii the question is why did henry viii reject his welsh heritage well i think you can produce a one-word answer to begin with though the answer needs heavy elaboration which you know knowing me you're going to get henry sees himself unlike his father he sees himself as english and he had fundamentally an english upbringing and an english experience and remember he sees himself at least as much as yorkist as he does as lancastrian or tudor it's henry henry viii for the first time who regularly uses the double badge the red and white badge signifying the descent from from both the famous houses of of york and lancaster he is the first to use the the tudor rose because he is the first person to be descended from both sides which is why edmund hall writes his great chronicle with the reign of henry viii as its climax because he unites the the warring roses so henry i think does see himself very differently of course his upbringing is so completely different completely different from that extraordinary internationalism the peripatetic quality of the wandering around of his father's life i mean remember again when henry invade when henry vii invades england in 1485 it's done with the backing of the french court it's done with french ships it's done with french money it's done largely with french troops and it's the french troops with their mastery of the pike that undoubtedly i think win the victory or at least save him from defeat when there's a famous charge of richard and his mounted knights down ambient hill it's the fact that the french are trained soldiers they're trained in the new methods of pike warfare so they can kneel down they can hold up those huge 20-foot pikes and the magnificent chivalry uh the royal chivalry of late medieval england crashed to defeat uh upon them so that that profound frenchness of experience and again look at arthur arthur again pointed out correctly by calde is brought up largely in ludlow in the borderlands of wales on the on the on the welsh border and in lands that belong to the house of mortimer that was absorbed into the house of york following again the model of the eldest son edward prince edward the eldest son of edward iv so arthur too has this this this upbringing which which takes him into the into the world of of the welsh borders and of welshness henry doesn't henry viii is brought up in england in the first not in the english court but in houses that are on the periphery of the english court like el hilton palace the the secondary house to to the great royal palace of greenwich and again the profound influence of his mother of elizabeth of york over his early upbringing um and the i'm sure her absolute again entirely within the world of england though of course an england which also recognizes its debt to france and particularly two french henry henry viii is taught french by a native french speaker and is very proud of the fact and as we all know his love letters to anne boleyn are in french but this doesn't stop that profound sense i think of englishness so very different sort of upbringing very different attitude and uh underlying it a form of self-identity if you like now that i think is a is a given but then this whole series of complex issues which put themselves on top of that because what i would also want to say is i emphasized about the monarchy of henry vii as being an intensely personal monarchy a monarchy which in fact in some ways it's almost like again dangerous language a kind of quasi-mafia dictatorship the the the king rules to a very large extent through his personal followers the the so-called bastard feudal following the people who where in fact it's the badge of the red rose at this point under henry vii um and and and the king if you like it's phrase i've always used ruling as the biggest bastard feudal lord of them all somewhat outside as i said the english tradition viewing english law not so much as a means of governing as a means of screwing money out of people famously through empsim and dudley so that odd intensely personal semi-detached monarchy of hendra the seventh henry i don't think rules like that henry again to begin with that's conscious return to a broad-based political settlement the reintegration of the surviving members of the house of york uh into uh into friendship with the king into amity with the king into being members of the court and of course the return to war war national war against france so i think right from the beginning there's a strong element in henry viii's kingship which is a consciously national kingship so you have an intensely personal monarchy of henry vii a national kingship of henry viii well a national kingship has to be an english kingship what does that mean because clearly that notion i would argue shifts changes develops metastasizes in some ways in the course of the rain because that notion of being english collides with the two great movements of the early 16th century which so powerfully color the reign of henry viii the renaissance on the one hand and the reformation on the other there's two movements both of which have if you like the same founding idea the so-called ad fontes the going back to the sources the going back to uh in the renaissance to the sources of first of latin classical literature the literature of rome and then as it gets more sophisticated and advanced to the original text of greek literature as well and the the the reformation again that similar ad fontes that going back to the actual sources of the bible stepping behind the uh the translation by jerome the latin translation of the vulgate on which so much of the apparatus of the late medieval church was based and going back to the greek with erasmus and eventually to the to the hebrew to the other complex of languages which had originally formed the very complex text of the bible now that those two developments raise absolutely profound questions about the question of england so if you like what i would say culture is you are asking throughout this the question of britain of where britain where britishness i think the big question of the reign of henry viii is entirely different it is the question of england well eventually when i come to the second or maybe even the third part of my uh interchange and my answer to your very long complex and very important question we will look at that matter of britain and the relationship of the matter of england to the matter of britain but let's for the rest of this particular answer this particular talk let's focus on the question of england and the problems created for it by the ideas of the renaissance and of the reformation you can see it right at the beginning of henry's reign with two of the most famous books which emerged from this period both of them by sir thomas moore of course who is a member of henry's most inner circle and known henry as a boy had been involved in his education in the choice particularly of his teachers uh of of latin uh once it's clear that he is going to become that once it's clear that he is actually heir after the death of his elder brother arthur and getting rid of the rather old-fashioned figure of of of skeleton um his original tutor and his replacement by sophisticated uh latinus uh heavily colored by the new approaches to the language of of erasmus himself and more than in this this this you know part of this extraordinary close-knit circle around henry and moore's again close friendship and involvement with erasmus who spent a lot of time in england in these years at the end of henry vii reign and the beginning of henry viii moore writes these two extraordinarily important books the history of richard iii and utopia we don't normally think of them together we should think of them together i argue strongly in the my essay in this book um the renaissance in national context edited by the last late roy porter and miklos tish um my essay on england in this develops most of the ideas which i'm now going to talk about as i said this this this matter of england so what we don't think normally the history of richard iii and of um and of uh utopia as being at all closely connected one of course a utopia is this fantasy of the perfect society the nowhere society utopia the other is the history of richard iii um well i think the two relate absolutely to a single question is there a moral value in english society you see what why is more even asking that question well of course it was the fundamental issue raised by particularly the literature of rome the classical literature of rome the classical literature especially of cicero the idea of the republic of rome and the values of romanness the idea of citizenship of the duty of the citizen to serve the state the republic to participate in politics to be to dedicate his life to the service of the political community because it had moral value indeed it was from the society that that that you derived your moral values well of course there's a fundamental question isn't there that was that was rome but then rome fell rome fell in 410 at exactly the moment that it had become christian not exactly 50 odd years later and that presented a great great problem to the leading christian of the day um said augustine the bishop of hippo who really shapes we can all see this now it really shapes the history of the western church of western christianity at least as much as jesus himself or indeed saint paul and what what what augustine has to do is to grapple with the problem the roman state has become christian and the roman state in the west has fallen rome the unvanquished city has opened its gates and it's been overcome by the barbarians when it was christian and it is the outstanding meditation on this that that saint augustine writes the city of god which debates this issue and the answer in the city of god is to say that the city of rome did not have moral value it was immoral that all human society here on this earth finally is without absolute moral value it has relative moral value it imposes order on the worst aspects of human corruption because again saint augustine believes in the absolute corruption of human nature because of the fall but the only perfect society the only society with independent moral value is the city of god the christian church christianity so you have this enormous challenge mounted by the combined movements of the beginning of the 16th century and they focus and they concentrate themselves in thomas more and if you look at the history of rich iii and utopia in this light you can see that each one is part of this dialogue each one is as it were a panel of adiptic the history of richard iii is the demonstration of the absolute corruption of english politics it's the equivalent of the city of rome that there can be look at the reign of richard iii the monstrousness of it there can be no moral value in this politics utopia is about an imagined society in which there really is a christian ethic and therefore it is a moral value if you like the whole thing comes round to this word reyes publica and it's translation into english at this point of common wealth or common wheel and the great point that makes the famous point that a common wheel necessarily requires things in common in other words it requires communism well it's very it will be difficult to think of a society more remote from communism or the values of communal life uh in most ways than late medieval england and tudor england so you get in then this this sense of the the the lack of the lack of if you like serious moral value in the existing commonwealth the existing values the existing institutions of late medieval england of tudor england and i think that this this this question set up by more then triggers an extraordinary dialogue going right across the 16th century and you can see everybody else who writes on the nature of society the nature of politics the nature of english institutions the nature of values and has to debate this question has to respond to the challenge put forward by more the first response and it's in many ways it's is actually the foundation of what follows it's by somebody who isn't a genius he's a bit of a plotter it's sir thomas elliott's of tuvor it's huge huge work uh in in a modern version two volume um the book of the governor and what it is it's it takes the the ideas of of uh is written written in in english but it draws very heavily on particularly cicero to offer a program of educating or re-educating the english governing class the english gentry in the sort of values of using the techniques of of of of of of the roman gentleman if you like um and and to bring home uh the the values of the new renaissance approach uh the renaissance approach to literature to politics and so on but what elliott does without quite explicitly is to argue for the moral value of england and englishness and he does it very very ingeniously he actually says that moore has mistranslated the word reyes publica republic he moore translates it as as everybody else did as the common wheel well he points out quite correctly it doesn't mean the common wheel it means the public wealth and that of course then enables him to say all this business of communism we can throw that out of the window we can instead look at england as a royal republic structured socially with an aristocracy like rome like the senatorial aristocracy structured with powerful representative institutions the english parliament very much corresponding to the roman senate a structure a very powerful structure of law english law common law being the only pattern of law in western europe that was comparable to roman law in its complexity sophistication its antiquity its its um methods of teaching uh its relationship to judicial appointments and so on you know the extraordinary development of english common law which makes it as i said a kind of partner in equal weight uh with with with the with with the doctrines of roman law the formulation of roman law in the great codifications of justinian the so-called code english law of course wasn't coded uh it wasn't wasn't the word wasn't put together on the enlightened instructions of a single emperor of a single king instead it's it's inductive it's the work of of of judicial precedent arrived at by the common decisions and common common adjudications of the profession actual debates in the ends of court called moots discussions between judges in exchequer chamber and of course the constant pattern of the accumulation of precedent recorded in the year books and and recorded uh and in each of the ends of court uh by by each generation uh recording what it had learned and passing on in turn its own knowledge in this this this extraordinary fashion so the um elliot then very much argues that that england england the english state the institutions of the english state are comparable to those of the roman republic and have value and although his translation of reyes publica as as public wheel doesn't take off this notion very very much holds now eliot's 1520s of course interestingly enough 1520s are this great moment of divide this moment 1521 henry with thomas moore at his side with john fisher at his side takes the powerful line against luther against the reformation against this other great movement of the early 16th century and writes the assertion of the seven sacraments the assert your septum sacramentorum and for six years from 1521 to 1527 you get the extremely successful english resistance to luther and to lutheranism the um the keeping out to a very large extent of lutheran books the elaborate campaigns of propaganda the public servants this is the job of john fisher the book burnings because some did get through uh at some points in london um uh in in 1521 again and and in 1526 and thomas moore very much acting as minister of religious police in enforcing all this but then suddenly of course things turn effectively on a pins head with the extraordinary decision of henry and anne berlin to marry can i argue this point endlessly i won't go over the detail that that agreement on the 1st of january 1527 that they would marry which throws everything in the air and leads to eventually six years later the declaration of henry as supreme head on earth only under christ of the church of england now the creation in other words of a national church i would argue that this moment this this this extraordinary act of religious revolution because that's what it is is the great moment in which the sort of national monarchy of henry national as i was describing because he reverts to the usual patterns of it more or less the usual patterns of english government he fights a war a war against france that involves the cooperation of the aristocracy the the summoning of parliament which henry vii towards the end of his reign simply doesn't need to do because of the vast accumulations of wealth that he acquires via the quasi-legal operations of emsa and dudley henry goes back then to a manifestly late late medieval tradition of national kingship trying to be again a henry v who also again let this be said in his wars with france deploys really a developed idea of englishness even to the point of advocating the use of the english language a claim again at the council of constance that england is a great nation with with its its own identity its own language its own borders its blood and soil nationalism but all this takes on a completely different dimension and scale with the reformation itself with the english reformation with the reformation led from the top by the king and the king's emergence as the head of a national church now how can we see this actually at work we can see it i think because first of all you've got to re-engage with english history and you've got to re-engage with the english language the foundation of the the royal supremacy is a research program essentially in english history it is the claim it's manufactured it's doctored that england's always been different that rightfully the king of england had always been in some form or another head of the church and that the roman supremacy over the english church was a usurpation so what does this sound like this is a doctrine isn't it it's an early form of what i think becomes the fundamental basis of englishness english nationalism after the reign of henry viii it's english exceptionalism we are different we were different because we really hadn't been part of the general structures of the catholic church we were very very catholic but oh no we weren't papers so there is this reinvention of english history by a perversion by the way of the new techniques of the renaissance itself with absolutely no regard for truth and a great flourishing of false fact so that first rooting i mean uh rooting in this double o routing uh of of of of the royal supremacy in english history and that then goes again with a passionate assertion of the importance and the new importance of the english language 1532 very early in this process you get official editions of chaucer and john gower the and they really are official editions and they they're printed by the king's printer and the the the by thomas bartlett and particularly the introduction to to chaucer is fascinating it's written by brian tuke sir brian duke the treasurer of the chamber sort of at this point i suppose the equivalent of the chance with the exchequer and politically highly active and the the prefaces is signed uh there is there is a copy of of of the of the book actually noted by kuke himself that he wrote the preface whilst he was waiting for the turning of the tide at greenwich so your greenwich or your the the the river the the the the river um is is is at low tide uh it is a low tide so the river the stream of the river is flowing very powerfully um towards towards the east you want to go west so what you've got to do you've got to wait for the high tide to come which pushes against the thames the thames is titled well well beyond london and you are then able to sail your your rowers are able to take you very very quickly back towards westminster so two writes the preface at this moment outside greenwich palace at the heart of heart of tudor politics and tudor policy and what does he say he says predictably i suppose chaucer is the english homer or he's the english virgil in other words he is the founder poet of english and then he goes on to develop ideas that you've got you've got then just like latin or they're just like greek you've got to found a poet but you've also got he claims a great language you've got a great poet and you've got a great language and he claims this is extraordinary he claims an equivalence between english and latin and english and french and german and spanish remember this is to us it sounds no more than commonplace to them of course it really is heresy what we forget is chaucer virtually invents english in other words english in the 16th century the beginning of the 16th century is barely 200 years old as a recognizable literate and literary language and so here we're advancing a claim that that what is really a kind of picked in french this strange combination of what was left of anglo-saxon with an increasingly french and indeed increasingly latin vocabulary is a serious language it's it's a remarkable claim but of course you're having to make it aren't you if well the language of the english church is to be english i think this is where again all sorts of things start to come together but just park that notion so we've got the idea of an english church we've got the idea of an english people we've got the idea of an english history let's go back to those ideas that are being toyed around with uh by um by uh by thomas more and then thomas elliott there's an another very interesting development at exactly this point of the 1530s written by my namesake um thomas snarky it's called the dialogue between lup set and pool and this is something again remarkable it's a dialogue on the government of england seeing it as an idealized and highly valuable form of government and arguing of course that again in a word that remember is being thrown around here a lot we talk about the reformation the renaissance was a rebirth the reformation a reformation well um starkey is saying that stock you know this one well this one says too that the the english structure of government the institutions and traditions and governing class of england was capable of self reform was capable of exactly what thomas moore had denied it's capable starkey says we're not perfect and there are in fact profound grieving profoundly profound things group profoundly and grievously wrong with the society of the 1530s but he is arguing that england actually has the moral strength to reform itself so you're coming up then with this idea of a great language a language great enough actually well to carry the word of god to carry the bible to carry eventually the language of the church the language of worship you're coming up with the idea of a polity that is not only not without moral value that is not only as eliot said a polity which can bear comparison with rome but is a polity a structure a set of institutions and values which is actually capable of self reform all of these ideas coming in so you see you're pushing back on that whole notion of the of of the city of god and the imperfection down here and the perfection up there and you're actually saying down here well society has its values because of course well this is inevitable isn't it if you have a church of england and you have a king who is both king of england and head of the church what you're really saying is that there is a kind of national christianity isn't it again extraordinary idea and we are used to the notion of christianity as supranational the idea of the famous phrases in paul that there is neither greek nor jew nor roman in christianity that that we are all equal in the sight of god this is a very very different view this is the view which is inevitable if you have the idea of a national church that to put it another way god actually wills you to be born english so patriotism far from being an expression as of a kind of fallen state of you know the inadequate world of pagan rome christian the inadequate world of pagan room to be transcended by the city of god this becomes very different doesn't it what you're actually saying is well you're saying god wills me to be born an englishman now that means that patriotism far from being something which a christian shouldn't practice actually is a christian obligation it then raises the question doesn't it doesn't that mean that it's also a moral obligation a christian obligation to fight for your country so you see what we mean what what i'm saying the extraordinary patterns of of the reformation of the renaissance as they play themselves out in the reign of henry viii all focus on a re-moralization of the idea of being english you give it this immensely powerful moral linguistic intellectual religious context and of course the very pressures of the time contrived to exaggerate that and to exacerbate it don't they because i made the point about english exceptionalism well of course england really is exceptional in that it's the only one of the great monarchies that breaks with rome at this point and by 1539 you have the position in which the two great continental monarchies of france and and and charles v the holy roman empire you know this gigantic super state uh of uh simply personally by charles of spain the spanish dominions in the new world the duchy of milan of the kingdom of the two sicilies of of the holy roman empire of austria of the netherlands or whatever this in other words pretty well all europe apart from france so when you get the coming together of francis the first and charles v at the uh at the treatise of nice in 1539 you get this threat of a whole europe turning against pariah england look at that isn't that the origin of the great myth the myth of england alone the myth of the armada the myth of england against napoleon the myth myth the reality the reality of england against hitler so you first play this out in the religious context of the of the of of the late 1530s the beginning of the 1540s and what henry does in response to that of course you get this enormous barrage of propaganda about being english about your duty to fight for england about about the the the the redefinition of england again when i was talking about the career of henry viii i emphasize the extraordinary fluidities of his identity somebody born in wales brought up in britain in france um and coming back to england really not i think having very much of a sense of being english or belonging to england at all what happens in the reign of henry viii particularly after the treaty of nice is that you redefine england as separate and as different we've already elevated the notion of the english language and at this point you redefine english geography as i said before it's very fluid i constantly make this point that in the middle ages england is rarely separate it is part of some kind of great cross-channel enterprise the plan the the um it's it's semi-recreation by edward iii much more effectively again in the dual monarchy the very brief dual monkey of henry v and so on what henry viii does despite all his activities in seeking to expand the pale of cali his dominions in france what henry does from 1539 onwards is to redefine england as separate as an island as distinct to turn the phrase that i've always used the channel from what it had been in the middle ages the channel in the middle ages isn't a barrier it's a means of communication so i've constantly said if you actually look at all the shifts of dynasty and whatever in the middle ages they're the result of foreign invasion because it's very easy to to to cross over the narrow seas and very easy to land in england because there are so many good harbors henry vii own voyage in 1485 as i've described it really is and should be seen as a french invasion similarly the landing of edward iv um uh in when when he returns to reclaim his kingdom in 1471 is very much um a low countries venture that's that's where he sails from um and he is as close in his relationships with the low countries as henry the seventh one as henry and bruges and whatever as henry vii wants to be with brittany it changes under henry what henry does to resist the threat of a joint invasion from which didn't happen but that how were they to know the threat of the joint invasion of from europe united europe united as europe would be under napoleon united again as europe would be under hitler the threat of invasion of england what he does is he it's an extraordinary exercise of both mapping and fortification of naval architecture henry has the entire coastline surveyed from the scottish border right round to milford haven where his father had landed when he was returning to england and you they they're not proper maps they're kind of not in our sense of the word not certainly not contour maps but they are remarkable perspective views of the coast and of all the great landing spots and what henry does he goes oh he's got a great map table in his private apartments at whitehall a huge slate top table on which you can both draw and array these things and the maps survive most of them survive in the ketonian collection in the british library you can see henry uh some of the places he's visited mostly hasn't but exercising an extraordinary strategic judgment in where thoughts are to be placed and the thoughts are of course the thing that that they're especially common right here around here where i'm speaking now from from the extreme southeast of kent and all around the coast here of course because this is the point at which the narrow seas are the narrowest you know hence the fact that all the immigrants are landing on dover beach well henry could see them off because he plants these extraordinary squat the the round geometric um uh thoughts modeled um on queenbra castle again of the reign of edward iii which he'd seen as a young man these extraordinary squat brutal small but very very powerful um forts which are designed as gun platforms to to so the guns can actually cover the convenient landing spots within the harbors where no ships can float in and either more or beach and the the gun platforms are designed to to to to to shoot them down so you create then a mapping which gives you an idea of england and then you literally fortify the frontier of england with stone and with cannon and then beyond that you come up with the with with with the new organization and the the he lays henry lays the foundation with the eighth laser foundation of the continuing uh institutional structure of what becomes the royal navy the heavily armed and warships like the mary rose which is rebuilt and of course probably because the excessive rebuilding uh sinks in in in when the french french invasion does take place in 1485 and the thing topples over and sinks but the mary rose is this experimental it's the first real battleship it's the first real man of war in which you bring the guns down from the upper decks and you put them in the belly of the ship which means you can have far more guns they can be far heavier they can shoot they can fire much more heavy projectiles and you can get the actual proper broad side and it would seem that it was endeavoring to deliver one of those broadsides that the the the and then maybe to talk shortly afterwards that the uh mary rose took water through again what you need if you have your guns right down there the gun ports uh which so you've got guns on retractable carriages so you can pull them back and gun ports that you can close because the the guns are so near the water line and it would appear they didn't close the gun ports and the ship goes down but nevertheless it is the first the pioneering example of the serious heavily armed battleship so you create then the sense of england as an embattled island england as an embattled island and henry as the king of this island sounds again doesn't it a little bit like utopia but it's a utopia that's not anywhere that's not nowhere it's here it's now it's england and of course it's sanctified by the prayers of the new church it's sanctified by the fact that the bible even under henry goes into english this language now elevated into a great language great enough to be a vehicle of the word of god and that i think finally is the key element of the reign of henry you have the idea of the english not simply as an exceptional people but as a people exceptional because they're a new israel they are the new people of the book those who carry god's purpose on earth it's extraordinary monstrous it has vast implications for the future of england britain and of the world and it's how this idea of englishness collides with the idea of britain and of the world and all the other issues that are raised by your question called a that i will deal with in my next q a but thank you very much for a question that raises such absolutely profound issues hello and thank you for watching david starkey talks if as i very much hope you're enjoying them why not become more actively involved and join my members club as a member you'll be able to take part in the members only weekly question and answer session suggest topics for forthcoming videos and have priority booking for my forthcoming live events and while you're at it why not have a look at the store page on my website davidstarkey.com there you can purchase t-shirts and other merchandise buy signed copies of my books and if you're feeling brave and a bit flush even arrange to take me out to lunch thank you once again for watching i look forward to hearing from you and to welcoming you to my members club [Music] you

Channel: David Starkey Talks

Views: 27,469

Keywords: David Starkey, History

Id: ci2hJOYjIUo

Length: 56min 40sec (3400 seconds)

Published: Wed May 25 2022