Portrait of Queen Elizabeth around the time of the Armada. 

Collectanea satis copiosa

For about two years, a team of scholars and royal agents gathered together and studied manuscripts that would provide evidence to buttress Henry’s claims that his annulment of marriage to Katherine was justified and that his matrimonial case ought to be determined in England rather than Rome.

The manuscripts, which included English and Latin chronicles, Anglo-Saxon laws, Roman law and conciliar decrees, were taken from monasteries and deposited in the Royal Library. They fed into a manuscript compilation called the ‘Collectanea satis copiosa’ (The Sufficiently Abundant Collections) that was presented to Henry in the summer of 1530. 

The Collectanea argued that the Church of England was an autonomous province of the Catholic Church and that Henry had both secular imperium and spiritual supremacy in England. In other words, it was the King, not the Pope, who exercised supreme jurisdiction within his realm. 

It is not surprising that Henry was delighted with the work and wrote approving comments all over the manuscript. Now confident that he had right on his side, he began the campaign to persuade or force his clerics to accept and recognise his imperial pretensions.

Book of Sir Thomas Wyatt

Speculation about Wyatt’s relationship with Anne Boleyn has gone on since Elizabeth’s reign, with numerous autobiographical references proposed in his writing. In fact, Wyatt refers to Anne in only four genuine poems. 

The clearest is ‘If waker care, if sudden pale colour’, written after he had fallen for Elizabeth Darell, whom he calls Phyllis: ‘If thou ask whom, sure since I did refrain Brunet that set my wealth in such a roar The unfeigned cheer of Phyllis hath the place That Brunet had: she hath and ever shall.’ That Anne was Brunet is clear because the correction shows that Wyatt originally wrote ‘Her that did set our country in a roar’. 

This does indicate that he had been one of Anne’s suitors. The other genuine poems suggest that on Wyatt’s side his feelings went beyond the flirtatious game of courtly love but were not reciprocated by Anne. Already married but separated from his wife, Wyatt had nothing to offer.

Edward VI’s diary

Edward VI reveals here that he and his sister Elizabeth learnt of their father Henry VIII’s death from his uncle Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, at Elizabeth’s Enfield residence on 30 January 1547. 

Although he writes that it caused great grief in London, he reveals nothing of his personal feelings. He describes the Privy Council’s choice of Edward Seymour as Protector and Governor of the King’s Person and mentions how his father’s officers broke their staffs of office and threw them into Henry’s grave at his burial. 

Edward may have been prompted to write his ‘diary’ by one of his tutors. It begins with a description of his childhood until 1547. For the years 1547 to 1549 the ‘diary’ is a chronicle of past events that mostly refers to Edward in the third person. From March 1550 until November 1552, when it ends, it is more like a diary, with entries for individual days.

Sir Thomas More writing on the coronation of Henry VIII

‘Heaven smiles, earth rejoices; all is milk and honey and nectar,’ wrote William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, to Erasmus upon Henry VIII’s accession. Though affairs did not turn out as hoped, the accession was seen as bringing opportunities for a younger humanist generation that had been excluded from royal benefaction in the later part of the reign of Henry’s father, Henry VII.

Erasmus’s close friend Thomas More was one of those who welcomed the accession. More composed a ‘coronation suite’ of Latin poems for presentation to the new King in the form of this manuscript presentation copy. The decoration incorporates the Tudor rose, the pomegranate of Granada, the fleur-de-lis and the Beaufort portcullis badge. The poems were later republished in print, as an addendum to the 1518 Froben edition of Utopia.

Beaufort Book of Hours

This Book of Hours, inherited by Henry’s grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, contains a calendar of Church festivals and saints’ days which Lady Margaret turned into a chronicle of the important political and dynastic events in the foundation of Tudor power – including Henry’s own birth. 

The calendar follows Roman usage and Henry’s birth is entered under ‘IV Kalendae Julii’ 1491. But the entry also shows Henry’s comparative dynastic insignificance at the time. For Henry’s elder brother Arthur, Lady Margaret is scrupulously accurate, giving the exact time and place of birth: on 20 September 1486 ‘in the morning afore one of the clock after midnight was born Prince Arthur at Winchester’; likewise for his elder sister, Margaret, born ‘at Westminster at night after the ninth hour a quarter’ on 28 November 1489. 

In contrast, she merely notes the date of Henry’s birth and, indeed, seems to enter the latter over a correction. After all, second sons did not rank very highly in the scheme of things!

‘Tabula librorum de histories antiquitatum’

Drawn up in the summer of 1528, when the sweating sickness was raging, this list gives the titles of almost 100 books in religious houses in Lincolnshire that might pertain to Henry’s ‘Great Matter’ (divorce). Those books that were to be transported to the Royal Library were marked with a cross. 

More revealingly, there is a note beside a list of three titles from the Gilbertine priory of St Catherine in Lincoln in Henry’s own hand to the effect that all of the books or at least the older of them were worthy of examination (uel omnes uelantiquior istorum). 

It is clear that Henry was closely involved in the search for evidence, overseeing what was going on and determining what might be most useful to him. 

The majority of the manuscripts that were singled out – there were 37 in all – survive in the modern Royal Library, including one from the Lincoln Gilbertines, a glossed copy of books of the Old Testament, misattributed to the medieval theologian William de Montibus, carrying the Westminster Inventory Number, No. 503.

Coronation of Henry VIII with notes by Henry

On acceding to the throne, monarchs were crowned in a magnificent and elaborate ceremony in which the new king swore to defend the Church. Here the unmistakable hand of Henry has made several significant revisions to the oath. 

Instead of swearing to maintain the rights and liberties of ‘holy churche’, he would swear to maintain those of ‘the holy church of England’, adding the crucial qualification, ‘nott preuto hys Iurysdyction and dignite ryall’. Walter Ullmann, a historian of medieval political thought, argued that these revisions anticipated the break with Rome. 

However, there is nothing to confirm that this altered version of the oath was used in 1509, nor at the coronation of his son, Edward VI, in 1547. It is most likely that the revisions were made at the same time as the break with Rome, in the 1530s, and were taken no further. Nonetheless, they remain highly revealing about how Henry saw his Royal Supremacy over the Church.

Anne Boleyn’s Book of Hours

Henry and the court regularly attended Mass in the royal chapel, sometimes more than once a day. 

The King often used the time before the consecration to transact business but this manuscript shows him using a book of prayers to send a flirtatious message to Anne Boleyn instead. He wrote in French: ‘If you remember my love in your prayers as strongly as I adore you, I shall hardly be forgotten, for I am yours. Henry R. forever.’ Presenting himself as lovesick, he wrote his note on a page depicting the man of sorrows. 

Anne replied with a couplet in English: ‘By daily proof you shall me find To be to you both loving and kind.’ And, with deliberate enticement, she chose to write her message below a miniature of the Annunciation, the angel telling the Virgin Mary that she would have a son.