Henry VIII VIII’s preachers and propagandists appealed endlessly to the Bible, especially the Old Testament, to establish the authority of kings in general, and their authority over priests in particular. The ‘Word of God’ was invoked against the ‘human traditions’ of the Bishop of Rome. Indeed, it was in the 1530s that the description of the Bible as the ‘Word of God’ became current in English, largely because of its adoption in royal propaganda. The Word of God was regarded as a lesson in obedience: Henry’s favourite virtue (in others). As John Bale put it in King John, a play celebrating Henry’s triumph over the clergy: If Your Grace would cause God’s Word to be taught sincerely, And subdue those priests that will not preach it truly, The people should know to their prince their lawful duty.
Parish churches were instructed to obtain English Bibles in the injunctions of 1536 and again in those of 1538. But although copies had been printed abroad in 1535 and 1537, it was not until 1539 that they became easily available. For that year saw the appearance of the ‘Great Bible’, financed by Cromwell, edited by Miles Coverdale, and published by Richard Grafton and Edward Whitchurch. Several editions followed over the next few years, with a lengthy preface by Cranmer added in 1540. Royal approval for the ‘Great Bible’ was vividly symbolised by the frontispiece (sometimes mistakenly attributed to Holbein), which showed Henry VIII handing out the ‘Word of God’ to Cromwell and Cranmer for distribution to his grateful priests and people. Even as the tide of religious change reached its height, circumstances were shifting at home and abroad. At home, the relaxation of pressure against heresy in the 1530s had fostered the emergence of one heresy Henry could not abide: ‘sacramentarianism’, denial of the real presence of Christ in the sacrament of the eucharist. Abroad, the destruction of the shrine of St Thomas had shocked Catholic Europe, and an outbreak of peace between France and Spain gave the Pope the chance to excommunicate Henry anew, with fair hope of seeing the sentence executed by the newly reconciled continental powers. Henry’s response was twofold. First, he invested heavily in defence, especially coastal forts, many of which were built or rebuilt out of materials recycled from suppressed monasteries. Men were mustered for possible military service throughout the land. In summer 1539, Henry lorded it over a magnificent march-past of the mustered men of London, equipped in new uniforms of fine white cloth (at their own expense! – those who could not afford the uniform were not allowed to take part). In addition, the king put the brake on religious change, most notably by presiding, in another dramatic personal intervention, at the show trial of a sacramentarian, John
Opposite: Title page of the first edition of the ‘Great Bible’, 1539. Enthroned as God’s vicar, Henry symbolically hands out the Word of God to the spiritual and temporal hierarchies of his realm, headed respectively by Cranmer on his right and by Cromwell on his left. The preacher (bottom left) proclaims what was for Henry the Bible’s chief message: ‘Obey the prince…’, and his grateful subjects, duly enlightened, chorus ‘Long live the king’. 79