SO GREAT A PRINCE

In 1509 King Henry VII died and his son succeeded to the throne as Henry VIII. The year stands as a crossroads between two very different kings and between equally different worlds, sitting in the long 16th century of the Tudor age with its Protestants, playwrights and printing presses, it seems comfortably settled between the bloodshed and chaos of the Wars of the Roses, and the bloated tyranny of Henry VIII's later reign. These early years of his reign have been overlooked by historians. When he came to the throne, the country was Catholic, part of the 'universal' Church of Rome. By the end of his reign England had cut itself adrift and Henry had made himself Supreme Head of the Church in England allowing no Pope to serve as intermediary between himself and God. In 1509, translating the Bible into English was heresy, a crime against God, but by 1547 when Henry VIII died, there was an English Bible in every church, by Royal Command. The political players who dominated the scene in 1509 may not be as famous as Thomas Cromwell, Anne Boleyn and Thomas More, but they are every bit as fascinating and complex and deserve equal attention. We meet Thomasine Percyvale, a Cornish servant who had risen to become a London gentlewoman and tailor keeping servants in her own right; the coroner John Rastell who fled Coventry to establish himself in the perilous trade of printing to spread his ideals of education and justice; William Green who wanted more that his father's Lincolnshire drudgery of labour and whose love of learning was already evident in grammar school, and immigrants like Katalina of Motril and John Blanke. Through the eyes of those who lived through it, we can experience the wealth of the London streets that were vibrant, vivid and exciting and which fluttered with cloth-of-gold to welcome a new king, the shrines of Canterbury Cathedral groaning under the weight of precious stones, and vast pageants playing out the ideals and fears of communities across the country, a world of peace and danger, prosperity and plague, soon to be swept away during the reign of its new young king. It is still more than two decades away from the English Reformation, and ancient traditions persist - boy bishops, pilgrimages, Corpus Christi pageants. Lauren Johnson connects everyday life with the thrust of great political events in this excellent history. 330pp, paperback, eight pages of colour plates.