Mind-Munitions

104 Propaganda in the Age of Gunpowder and Printing
fighting out their old rivalry at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, ominous
storm clouds were forming as Henry’s wife, Catherine of Aragon,
failed to produce an heir for the dynasty Henry’s father had fought
so hard to create and which he had done so much to consolidate.
Henry’s propaganda efforts at home, aided by Cardinal Wolsey,
served to pave the way for public acceptance of the forthcoming
break with Rome. With Francis the prisoner of Charles, Wolsey
tried to whip up popular support for war against France. One of
his officials informed him that in Norwich he had ‘appointed fires
to be made in every town in the Shire on Sunday night, and in every
town discreet persons to declare to the people the great overthrow
of the French king, and to do the most they can to encourage them
to this invasion this summer’.
The war did not materialize. Nor did a son for Henry, and
Wolsey’s successor, Thomas Cromwell, had to follow through the
break with Rome precipitated by the king’s divorce from Catherine
and his marriage to Anne Boleyn. During the build-up to the
divorce, Henry had launched a pamphlet debate arguing the merits
of his case, although the reformist publications of William Tyndale
had in many respects already paved the way, despite the counterefforts
of Sir Thomas More.
The Act of Supremacy (1534), which placed Henry at the head
of the Church in England, led to a massive intensification of the
propaganda struggle. The task Henry gave Cromwell was enormous:
to change a thousand years of English thinking. If one
remembers the deep-rooted influence the Catholic Church had
been able to exercise upon the medieval mind in helping to explain
people’s relationship with their environment, this task becomes
even more enormous. Perhaps, thanks to the arrival of printing, it
was just possible. Luther had, after all, recently demonstrated that
the influence of the Church upon European society could be challenged
with some success and printing was regarded by contemporaries
as a major instrument of change. When, therefore,
Henry’s proven concern with dynastic consolidation threatened to
clash with the authority of the Pope it was perhaps inevitable for
him to turn to propaganda as a means of persuading his subjects
that a thousand years of history could be overturned, that he was
right and the Pope was wrong.
Cromwell proved to be more than equal to the task. Foxe
described him as ‘This valiant soldier and captain of Christ… by