England's first Protestant foreign policy initiative, an alliance with
German Protestants, is shown to have been a significant influence on the
Henrician Reformation.
England's first Protestant foreign policy venture took place under Henry
VIII, who in the wake of the break with Rome pursued diplomatic contacts
with the League of Schmalkalden, the German Protestant alliance. This
venture was supported by evangelically-inclined counsellors such as
Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer, while religiously conservative
figures such as Cuthbert Tunstall, John Stokesley and Stephen Gardiner
sought to limit such contacts. The king's own involvement reflected
these opposed reactions: he was interested in the Germans as alliance
partners and as a consultative source in establishing the theology of
his own Church, but at the same time he was reluctant to accept all the
religious innovations proposed by the Germans and their English
advocates.
This study breaks new ground in presenting religious ideology, rather
than secular diplomacy, as the motivation behind
Anglo-Schmalkaldicnegotiations. Relations between England and the League
exerted a considerable influence on the development of the king's
theology in the second half of the reign, and hence affected the
redirection of religious policy in 1538, thepassing of the Act of Six
Articles, the marriage of Henry to Anne of Cleves and the fall of Thomas
Cromwell. The examination of the development of Henry's religious
thinking is set in the wider context of the foreign policy imperatives
of the German Protestants, the ministerial priorities of Thomas Cromwell
and factional politics at the court of Henry VIII.
RORY McENTEGART is Academic Director of American College Dublin.
