Great Harry and his Navy

A few days ago, a friend was arguing how anyone interested in history needed to know about the military to really understand history. It is a fair enough argument, but though many aren’t that interested in wars (mainly, myself), I still find the administration, finance and politics of navies and armies intriguing enough to write this post.

A lot is always talked about how Henry revitalised the navy and made England fit to be a naval power. We also know that Elizabeth’s success with the Armada was partly due to Henry’s interest in building a modernised navy. During his reign, plenty of money was poured into ship-building, devising naval strategies, buttressing up coastal defences and building of a navy. Henry inherited a total of just six warships when he took the throne, and he left 57 warships to his heir, along with 15 galleys or smaller ships.

It’s all about money, honey!

Since I already wrote a post on the debasement of coinage during Henry’s reign, I thought I’d look up a little about coining methods, techniques and laws regarding minting during the time. At a time when there was no paper money, and certainly no plastic money or electronic money, mints were used exclusively for making coins from different metals.

Coins were produced in Roman Britain, but an English mint was only set up around 650. The mints were held by many different individuals as businesses, but eventually, by the reign of Henry, they had all consolidated into one single mint in London. Considering that the mint was held by the king, it was just added to the royal treasury. It produced copper, silver or gold coins in the name of the King and received a portion of the metal as seigniorage. Seigniorage was a kind of royalty paid to the mint for services rendered.

Review: Mary Tudor – England’s First Queen by Linda Porter

Mary Tudor The First Queen is a biography on Mary Tudor. It looks into Mary’s life from her birth to her death and attempts to explore all facets of her life. The author, Linda Porter has tried to give her a sympathetic portrayal quite at odds with her more common ‘Bloody Mary’ image.

The style of writing is very good and flows easily from one chapter to another. The book is divided into parts each part dealing with a specific phase in Mary’s life. This makes it really easy to consult a certain thing without having to browse through the entire book.

Review: The Last Divine Office by Geoffrey Moorhouse

The Last Divine Office is a book that talks about the monastery at Durham, attached to the Durham Cathedral, from its history to its dissolution, and after. The book explores how the dissolution affected the lives of the monks, and how things changed for everyone, both within and outside the boundaries of the monastery. The book also touches on the laws passed with respect to the Dissolution of the Monasteries and goes into detail into some of the correspondence between the various actors, depicting exactly how the dissolution took place.

Pastyme With Good Companye

Henry was  noted musician in his own right. Interested in music, dancing and similar other artistic hobbies, Pastime with good company is one of his first compositions. It is believed that he wrote this song, also known as The Kynge’s Ballade, in honour of Catherine of Aragon some time after their wedding.

The Great Matter and Rome

It still amazes me how one man could be denied a divorce that was easily obtained by most nobles by means of various loopholes in the canon law. The intense corruption of the Catholic Church meant that such dispensations were easily achieved by rich and powerful nobles, but the same backfired on Henry. The Great Matter was divided in two phases, one when Henry tried to get Rome’s support for his divorce, and the next phase when he tried to get the work done in England by Englishmen. Wolsey was in charge of the first phase, and Cromwell of the second, bringing about the fall of the former and the rise of the latter.

The Royal Seven Year Itch

As a follow up to Hannah’s excellent post on Henry’s need for a son, I decided to do a couple of posts on the intricacies of Henry’s divorce, also known as the Great Matter.  But a little background first, on Henry’s perception of his relationship with Catherine, with respect to the need for a son. Even though the King remained a perfect gentleman and did his duty by the Queen (namely, sleep with her and escort her on royal occasions), the bond between them was broken long before Anne Boleyn entered the picture.