The relationship between Church and Crown in medieval England was symbiotic. The king's unique status as the anointed of God was enacted at the coronation through – and only possibly through – the agency of the Church. The very symbols of kingship, the coronation regalia, tied the two together through their association with a sainted king and were kept and guarded not by the king but by the Church, in Westminster Abbey. But equally, the Church depended on the Crown and enjoyed its privileges and wealth only so long as it continued to have the king’s goodwill. As the events of the 1530s were to show, without that it was powerless.

The Church was central to the life of the court and no great royal event was complete without a magnificent religious service. On such occasions the high altar would be set with gold or silver-gilt and jewelled crosses, candlesticks and ‘images’ (silver busts or figures of saints). The performance of the liturgy required chalices, paxes, censers and so on, and the clergy wore vestments of embroidered cloth of gold. Bishops and abbots processed in jewelled mitres with golden croziers; further magnificence would be provided by altar frontals and cloth of gold draped over the desks of the king and queen. At a less public level, life at court was marked out by a daily round of masses and other offices performed by the Chapel Royal, and the king himself would often hear more than one mass a day.

This chapter looks at some of the most spectacular church services of the early part of the reign, their importance in contributing to the perception and self-perception of the king, and the spectacular religious plate that he had at his disposal. It also considers the centrality of Henry’s relationship with the pope until matters matrimonial changed that for good.

Church and Crown

There was another, more practical, link between the Church and the Crown, in that the Church had traditionally provided many of the king’s leading councillors. The Church had long been a powerful magnet for brilliant minds and a promising ecclesiastical career could lead to a place on the king's council.