Wolf Hall TV series

[7_Sorrows]

Sorry, it couldn’t been a photograph but must have been a drawing or painting.

I’m glad someone brought up Cromwell’s ambition. I thought about that when Cromwell put on Cardinal Wolsey’s ring.

I wonder about this court. It seems that people just showed up. I am confused by this as wouldn’t the king be highly guarded but the series makes it look like people just walked into this great hall and the king just strolled in and talk to those he chose.

Yes. He had someone do a small porttait of her to get an image of her.

I am enjoying the show immensely. I like the actor who plays Cromwell. I sort of see him as someone who is a manipulator, and quietly watches all and hears all that goes on in the king’s court. I like the actor playing the king as well.

 

[Tarpeian_Rock]

I watched the first episode, but couldn’t get past the richly-costumed anti-Catholicism. I read that the woman who wrote the book “Wolf Hall” was described as a “militant lapsed Catholic,” and it shows – with dialog studded with such lines as “There’s no pope in the Bible,” a statement that goes unrefuted. It was like “Masterpiece” was being funded by Chick Publications. Perhaps I’m too tied to the “Man for All Seasons” version of events, but watching the gentle, sensitive, conflicted Cromwell was just too much a departure from what history has told us really happened.

 

[7_Sorrows]

I watched the first episode, but couldn’t get past the richly-costumed anti-Catholicism. I read that the woman who wrote the book “Wolf Hall” was described as a “militant lapsed Catholic,” and it shows – with dialog studded with such lines as “There’s no pope in the Bible,” a statement that goes unrefuted. It was like “Masterpiece” was being funded by Chick Publications. Perhaps I’m too tied to the “Man for All Seasons” version of events, but watching the gentle, sensitive, conflicted Cromwell was just too much a departure from what history has told us really happened.

You missed last night’s episode when one of the characters gave his colorful opinion of Luther!!! He said it in Latin and there were English subtitles. It was quite graphic

This is a story of the protestant reformation and protestant means they were protesting so it should be expected that they will be making anti-catholic comments. It is history. My faith is strong enough to see this as entertainment.

 

[gam197]

You missed last night’s episode when one of the characters gave his colorful opinion of Luther!!! He said it in Latin and there were English subtitles. It was quite graphic

This is a story of the protestant reformation and protestant means they were protesting so it should be expected that they will be making anti-catholic comments. It is history. My faith is strong enough to see this as entertainment.

That was Thomas More who called Luther a name.He says in in latin and then Cromwell calls him on it.

Here is the family line to Oliver Cromwell, better known for his atrocities.

Cromwell had two sisters: the elder, Katherine, married Morgan Williams, a Welsh lawyer; the younger, Elizabeth, married a farmer, William Wellyfed. Katherine and Morgan’s son Richard was employed in his uncle’s service and changed his name to Cromwell. Richard’s great-grandson was Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector

I can understand why Cardinal Wolsey is not liked. He is taking part in having the monasteries dissolved. Most of this land and money went to the king.

In the mid-1520s, Cromwell assisted in the dissolution of nearly thirty (30) monasteries to raise funds for Wolsey to found The King’s School, Ipswich (1528), and Cardinal College, in Oxford (1529)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cromwell

 

[gam197]

I watched the first episode, but couldn’t get past the richly-costumed anti-Catholicism. I read that the woman who wrote the book “Wolf Hall” was described as a “militant lapsed Catholic,” and it shows – with dialog studded with such lines as “There’s no pope in the Bible,” a statement that goes unrefuted. It was like “Masterpiece” was being funded by Chick Publications. Perhaps I’m too tied to the “Man for All Seasons” version of events, but watching the gentle, sensitive, conflicted Cromwell was just too much a departure from what history has told us really happened.

Thanks for pointing out how they project Cromwell as gentle, sensitive, conflicted. I see how they are promoting this as a major protestant piece. I feel like I am watching a documentary on the life of Margaret Sanger. Not sure if I will make it through the next 4 episodes but really want to understand this period in history.Or maybe I am just attracted to all the beautiful costumes in that period of history:shrug:.

In the second episode, they bring up the fact that the cardinal was whipping himself and how barbaric that was.

I was totally shocked when they said in another piece on PBS on Cromwell that there would be no United States of America without Cromwell.

Wikipedia says he helped decentralize government and bring in parliamentary-type government.

 

[gam197]

Reading the reviews on Amazon on “Bringing up Bodies” it said that

" Ridiculous that this is a required summer reading for teens in the Montgomery County School system."

When they start making these books required reading in the public schools. now I have a real problem with these books.

 

[7_Sorrows]

That was Thomas More who called Luther a name.He says in in latin and then Cromwell calls him on it.

Here is the family line to Oliver Cromwell, better known for his atrocities.

I can understand why Cardinal Wolsey is not liked. He is taking part in having the monasteries dissolved. Most of this land and money went to the king.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cromwell

That was Thomas Moore who said that?! So you did watch the episode last night? You realize it wasn’t just in England anti-catholic comments were being said. The protestant reformation was underway. It was a movement taking hold quickly. If the king had not needed an annulment and an heir he might have remained a strong Catholic king and England a Catholic country. The temptation was too great for Henry to become the head of his own church, be able to marry Anne, take the wealth from the monasteries. The rest of his life could not have been a happy one - multiple marriages, 2 wives beheaded (I think that is right), his health issues. He sold his soul in a way.

 

[gam197]

That was Thomas Moore who said that?! So you did watch the episode last night? You realize it wasn’t just in England anti-catholic comments were being said. The protestant reformation was underway. It was a movement taking hold quickly. If the king had not needed an annulment and an heir he might have remained a strong Catholic king and England a Catholic country. The temptation was too great for Henry to become the head of his own church, be able to marry Anne, take the wealth from the monasteries. The rest of his life could not have been a happy one - multiple marriages, 2 wives beheaded (I think that is right), his health issues. He sold his soul in a way.

When the King dies, he is shown clutching his rosary (or it looks like a rosary)…

Yes I did watch it. I am not sure about the rest but I am curious about Thomas Cranmer. I know he plays a major part in the reformation,

The Tudor line was ended. Mary had no children, neither did Elizabeth and Edward died early. Mary Queen of Scots had only one live child, James.

The battle for the throne and religion went on a long time. It wasn’t until the 1701 Succession Act where no catholic was allowed to sit on the throne even though it was their rightful place in history that the story ends,

 

[7_Sorrows]

When the King dies, he is shown clutching his rosary (or it looks like a rosary)…

Yes I did watch it. I am not sure about the rest but I am curious about Thomas Cranmer. I know he plays a major part in the reformation,

The Tudor line was ended. Mary had no children, neither did Elizabeth and Edward died early. Mary Queen of Scots had only one live child, James.

The battle for the throne and religion went on a long time. It wasn’t until the 1701 Succession Act where no catholic was allowed to sit on the throne even though it was their rightful place in history that the story ends,

I saw the program on PBS that showed him clutching his Rosary. I also was shocked at their connection between Thomas Cromwell and the United States. I felt that was giving Mr. Cromwell a little too much credit!!

Thomas Cranmer wrote The Book of Common Prayer which was the Church of England’s equivalent to the Roman Missal. Every Anglican and Episcopalian grew up with The Book of Common Prayer.

King Henry VIII would not be happy with the current Church of England.
Tudor history is fascinating to me so it is hard for me not to watch these shows dealing with this period in English history.

 

[Cailte]

This is a story of the protestant reformation and protestant means they were protesting so it should be expected that they will be making anti-catholic comments. It is history. My faith is strong enough to see this as entertainment.

No, it is not certainly not ‘history’. It is fiction with a strong bias. You must be aware of that or you will be duped by the propaganda.

And it is is not just anti-Catholic comments that are involved here - there are phony invented conversations that are completely fabricated to appear that the Catholic Chruch was in dire need of reform and that the monastery system was corrupt and depraved. None of this is historically correct.

The portrait of More is the most egregious. More educated his daughters in an age when women were not educated - yet he is depicted as a misogynist. A total lie.

You will not learn truth from this series if that is what you are thinking. It’s fiction and propaganda.

 

[gam197]

I saw the program on PBS that showed him clutching his Rosary. I also was shocked at their connection between Thomas Cromwell and the United States. I felt that was giving Mr. Cromwell a little too much credit!!

Thomas Cranmer wrote The Book of Common Prayer which was the Church of England’s equivalent to the Roman Missal. Every Anglican and Episcopalian grew up with The Book of Common Prayer.

King Henry VIII would not be happy with the current Church of England.
Tudor history is fascinating to me so it is hard for me not to watch these shows dealing with this period in English history.

Britain claims only 8% who are catholic while Germany claims 31%. Switzerland claims 38% catholics, the Netherlands claims 31% and Scotland claims 16% catholics.

These countries were all countries where the reformation took a strong hold yet Britain(largest) along with the Scandinavian countries seem to be hit the hardest.

The viewer audience dropped 25% after the first episode maybe due to the biased presentation.

 

[7_Sorrows]

Britain claims only 8% who are catholic while Germany claims 31%. Switzerland claims 38% catholics, the Netherlands claims 31% and Scotland claims 16% catholics.

These countries were all countries where the reformation took a strong hold yet Britain(largest) along with the Scandinavian countries seem to be hit the hardest.

The viewer audience dropped 25% after the first episode maybe due to the biased presentation.

I am not sure if any other countries suppressed Catholicism like they did in England and I don’t know how long Catholics were not allowed to practice their faith in England.
Maybe people are tired of programs on King Henry VIII.
There was the series over several years on Showtime called The Tudors that covered the king’s marriages and his annulment problem and the protestant reformation pretty thoroughly.
It is history mixed with fiction and some may find Cromwell a boring character to base a novel around. I am not sure how many episodes are left.

 

[gam197]

I am not sure if any other countries suppressed Catholicism like they did in England and I don’t know how long Catholics were not allowed to practice their faith in England.
Maybe people are tired of programs on King Henry VIII.
There was the series over several years on Showtime called The Tudors that covered the king’s marriages and his annulment problem and the protestant reformation pretty thoroughly.
It is history mixed with fiction and some may find Cromwell a boring character to base a novel around. I am not sure how many episodes are left.

I think there maybe 4 left in this series. I did not see the last series on the Tudors or read the reviews.

The reason the catholic faith was suppressed had something to do with the battle over control of the monarch. Initially the selling of the 30 monasteries was about money and land but also it was probably about destroying faith.

Cardinal Wolsey working with Thomas More suppressed any material from the reformation coming into England according to wikipedia. I believe. I wonder how true this is? We do see in the first episode when the Tisdale bible comes to Cromwell wrapped up in paper?

In the US, we have approximately 70 million who claim some kind of English heritage mainly living in the South. We also know that about 35% of Mormons claim English heritage. In the census of 1790, 75% of the 3.9 million people were English.

You raise an important question. If King Henry had been allowed to have his annulment, would this have saved England and how would the course of history been changed?

The Kennedys were allowed an annulment. I am thinking of Joseph Kennedy Jr. and the bitter battle with his wife over the annulment.

This was the King so was it more or less a battle over who ruled supreme, the Church or the King. I do not know.We saw a bit of this in the 11 or 12 century with Thomas Becket. Were other annulments allowed at the time?

 

[Cailte]

I am not sure if any other countries suppressed Catholicism like they did in England and I don’t know how long Catholics were not allowed to practice their faith in England.

Catholics were suppressed by a series of "Penal Laws’ that applied to England and also to Ireland [which was under British control] where the population was 90% Catholic. Under British law Catholics couldn’t vote until almost the year 1800 - and no Catholic was allowed to sit in Parliament or participate in any way in Parliament until 1829.

Also under the Penal Laws - which lasted for hundreds of years- no Catholic was allowed to own property and no Catholic was allowed to inherit any property. Catholic marriages were not recognized by law and Catholic burials had to be done covertly. In Ireland the Catholic church had all its buildings removed from them so that the Mass had to be celebrated on makeshift Mass Rocks in fields with someone designated as a look-out for fear of the authorities coming to arrest the participants. Bishops were ordered out of the country. This went onto into the late 18th century, hundreds of years after the "Reformation’.

British society was - and remains in many ways - a very anti-Catholic society. When they look back at their own history they frequently justify their anti-Catholicism by the use of phony history [like Wolf Hall] or the use of ant-Catholic propaganda to denigrate the Church and misrepresent the historic facts; as is done in this series.

 

[gam197]

I was looking for when anti-catholic started in England how long it has lasted.I believe it it still there today.

The suppression seems to me to have started with the closing down of all the monasteries and the confiscation of their land.

Thomas Cromwell is a heretic and he has the king’s ear and Wolsey’s ear.

Anti-Catholicism among many of the English was grounded in the fear that the pope sought to reimpose not just religio-spiritual authority over England but also secular power in alliance with arch-enemy France or Spain. In 1570, Pope Pius V sought to depose Queen Elizabeth with the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, which declared her a heretic and purported to dissolve the duty of all Elizabeth’s subjects of their allegiance to her.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Catholicism_in_the_United_Kingdom

Where did this idea that France and Spain would rule England come from? Was it from the Invasion of the Spanish Armada? Was it something manufactured by the reformation? Queen Catherine of Aragon was from Spain but was English on her maternal side.

 

[gam197]

Catholics were suppressed by a series of "Penal Laws’ that applied to England and also to Ireland [which was under British control] where the population was 90% Catholic. Under British law Catholics couldn’t vote until almost the year 1800 - and no Catholic was allowed to sit in Parliament or participate in any way in Parliament until 1829.

Also under the Penal Laws - which lasted for hundreds of years- no Catholic was allowed to own property and no Catholic was allowed to inherit any property. Catholic marriages were not recognized by law and Catholic burials had to be done covertly. In Ireland the Catholic church had all its buildings removed from them so that the Mass had to be celebrated on makeshift Mass Rocks in fields with someone designated as a look-out for fear of the authorities coming to arrest the participants. Bishops were ordered out of the country. This went onto into the late 18th century, hundreds of years after the "Reformation’.

British society was - and remains in many ways - a very anti-Catholic society. When they look back at their own history they frequently justify their anti-Catholicism by the use of phony history [like Wolf Hall] or the use of ant-Catholic propaganda to denigrate the Church and misrepresent the historic facts; as is done in this series.

Thanks for that history.

Saw this on EWTN

Catholics. Shortly after, from 1574 onwards, priests from the newly founded seminaries overseas—at Douai and Rome and in Spain—began to arrive in EnglanThe activities of this new generation of priests alarmed the government and the result was that severe laws against Catholics, the “penal laws”, were soon enacted. An Act of Parliament of 1581 made reconciliation to the Catholic Church treason

ewtn.com/library/CHISTORY/PENALAWS.HTM

 

[Cailte]

I was looking for when anti-catholic started in England how long it has lasted.I believe it it still there today.

.

I think I have answered that in my above post.

 

[Cailte]

Thanks for that history.

Saw this on EWTN

With regard to this EWTN link, this again is a very ‘English’ view of history. i.e that there were legitimate ‘reasons’ for the suppression of Catholics and it was not just an empty power and revenue grab, which is nearer the truth. Elizabeth from the start of her reign was determined to suppress Catholicism. She was quite clear about that and her supporters were clear [she needed support to ascend the throne] that she was going to undo anything that Queen Mary had done in a restorative way for Catholics. It didn’t take the presence of Jesuits to being that about as this EWTN link suggests. That’s just bad history.

Also, the same site says that James I was supportive of Catholics but the gunpowder plot changed this. This also is a view that is not accurate. James I was anti-Catholic and had been raised from infancy specifically to be Protestant and support the Protestant ascendency. He engineered the Plantation of Ulster in Ireland with Protestant settlers [by armed force] and dispossessed the native Catholics. That disaster is still being played out today in Northern Ireland.

 

[gam197]

With regard to this EWTN link, this again is a very ‘English’ view of history. i.e that there were legitimate ‘reasons’ for the suppression of Catholics and it was not just an empty power and revenue grab, which is nearer the truth. Elizabeth from the start of her reign was determined to suppress Catholicism. She was quite clear about that and her supporters were clear [she needed support to ascend the throne] that she was going to undo anything that Queen Mary had done in a restorative way for Catholics. It didn’t take the presence of Jesuits to being that about as this EWTN link suggests. That’s just bad history.

Also, the same site says that James I was supportive of Catholics but the gunpowder plot changed this. This also is a view that is not accurate. James I was anti-Catholic and had been raised from infancy specifically to be Protestant and support the Protestant ascendency. He engineered the Plantation of Ulster in Ireland with Protestant settlers [by armed force] and dispossessed the native Catholics. That disaster is still being played out today in Northern Ireland.

Thank you again for helping me to understand that we in the USA get a very “English” view of history. You raised a crucial point that these “heirs” were being raised by protestants within the King’s circle

Mary was first on the throne so if it about feminism, she would have been held up. It wasn’t. Queen Elizabeth had every reason to hate the catholic faith. Her power would have been taken away. She would be seen as illegitimate The fact that her mother Anne was a commoner and about 6 months pregnant when they married didn’t help. Edward had similar reasons to hate catholics.

Parliament in 1533 declared Mary illegitimate and Elizabeth legitimate essentially removing Mary from the line of succession. The second succession act by Parliament in 1536 after the death of Anne Boleyn took Elizabeth out of the line of succession. The third succession act of 1544 after the birth of Edward put Edward first and then returned Mary, Elizabeth and any future children to the line of succession although they still were both seen as illegitimate.

Then comes King Henry’s will in 1547 (near death) giving Edward, Mary, Elizabeth, the Greys and the Suffolk succession. There were 16 executors of the will tipping in favor of the reformers. The issue of the Stuarts (catholic Mary Queen of Scots(also a Tudor) being left out of the will comes up later. Catholic Mary Queen of Scots in the niece of King Henry the VIII.

Edward dying at 15 tried to put Lady Jane Grey(great grand daughter to Henry VII) a protestant on throne who lived with Catherine Parr and new husband after King Henry death but Mary had her and her husband executed.

 

[Elizium23]

Defending St. Thomas More

Catholic bishops and fair-minded historians in England protested against the inaccurate portrayal of Sir Thomas More in the BBC miniseries based on Hilary Mantel’s historical novel Wolf Hall when it made its debut in January this year. Since Thomas Cromwell, one of King Henry VIII’s advisers, is Mantel’s hero, Thomas More must be her villain. Mantel and the BBC portray More as cruel, bigoted, fanatical, misogynistic and sado-masochistical.

Viewers of Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, whether the 1963 film or the stage play, won’t recognize the witty, intelligent family man and friend if they watch Wolf Hall during its run on PBS’ Masterpiece starting Easter Sunday, April 5, through the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 10.

Mantel writes historical fiction, so she has the artistic license to interpret historical characters in her novels.

What readers and viewers have to remember is that Mantel’s More is not the real Thomas More; her version of his character does not resemble the description contemporaries like Desiderius Erasmus have left us of a humble, loving, humorous and honest man. Bolt didn’t tell the whole story of Thomas More either, when he made him a hero of individual conscience; Bolt did at least get More’s character and personality right.