Abstract
Henry VIII was a bellicose monarch. He renewed the Hundred Years War within three years of ascending to the throne and spent much of his reign seeking to emulate the actions of his ancestors, Edward III and Henry V, by conquering lands in France. While France was the main focus of Henry’s military efforts, his wars against the Valois monarchs led to a renewal of the conflict with Scotland. In Ireland, too, Henry VIII’s reign witnessed an upsurge in campaigning, while England saw rebellion and foreign invasion. Although historians have not ignored Henry’s numerous conflicts, they have not given them as much attention as they warrant, particularly given the central place that warfare occupied in his reign. Rather, the historiography of Henry VIII’s reign – and that of Tudor England more widely – is dominated by examinations of developments in government and especially by the Reformation.
In the same way that historians have shown how the Reformation impacted on communities across England, in this excellent new book, Steven Gunn reveals the myriad of ways in which war shaped English society in the century between 1475 and 1570. After a broad introduction, which provides an overview of the numerous English military actions and the most significant developments in warfare which occurred during this period, the second chapter focuses on the dissemination of news about the monarch’s conflicts, from almanacs and official correspondence to prophecies. Chapter 3 moves on to examine how these wars impacted on towns and villages across England, the populations of which had to shoulder the burden of the monarch’s wars by providing men, weapons, provisions, or money. Gunn considers how communities responded to the new demands placed on them as a result of the changes to military organization which occurred between the reigns of Henry VII and Elizabeth I. The chapter also examines the fortification of coastal towns, showing how they responded to threats of French invasion and developments in military technology.
Chapter 4 focuses on the nobles and gentry, who remained key players in the prosecution of warfare despite their apparent demilitarization. Gunn makes clear the important role that warfare continued to play in the self-fashioning of noble identity, whether in terms of reputation or through memorialization. This chapter also provides a lucid account of the diverse and complex changes that took place to the mobilization of English armies during this period, in addition to the intersection between the military and local government. Chapter 5 considers the economic impact of warfare, including increased taxation and the effects of the devastation of the land. Henry VIII fielded the largest armies ever raised by an English king to that point, which meant that his armies needed more resources than ever before. This chapter explores the role that trade networks played in the supply of armies as well as the commercial effects of these wars.
Chapter 6 considers the experience of war, from ownership of weapons and training in how to use them, to the experience of battle itself. It shows how killing could be validated by notions of manliness, peer pressure, and propaganda, and considers the motivations which drove men to commit atrocities. In the penultimate chapter, Gunn shows how the monarch justified these wars (whether through ancestral rights or in defence of true religion) and considers how these conflicts were used to form and broadcast national identity. In the final chapter, Gunn situates the developments he discusses throughout the book within a wider European context, providing a comprehensive overview which includes not only England’s immediate neighbours but also more distant powers such as the Ottoman Empire, Russia, and Sweden. In all these chapters, Gunn displays a remarkable breadth and depth of scholarship. The book, which has its origins in the author’s Ford Lectures of 2014–2015, is based on extensive research in almost 70 archives in the United Kingdom, the United States, Belgium, and France. It is an essential volume for all those interested in Henry VIII’s reign and it will remain the key work on English warfare during this period for some time.