Treasonous Magic in the Courts of Henry VI and Henry VIII
by Erzebet Barthold
This essay was originally written as an assignment for credit toward the Certificate of Higher Education through the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education.
Despite its seemingly marginalised place in society and ecclesiastical prohibitions against it, illicit magic was cited as evidence of treason during the reigns of Henry VI and Henry VIII, particularly when the accused were of noble rank. The definition of magic used here follows Kelly in that it encompasses any attempt to control or foresee events through ‘occult powers or by supernatural agency’,[1] and especially by communication with spirits—in other words, necromancy or nigromancy as it was known in the late medieval period. First defined in the Latin West in the seventh century by Isidore of Seville, necromancers ‘are those by whose incantations the dead, brought back to life, seem to prophesy, and to answer what is asked…’.[2] Kieckhefer describes how necromancy appeared to flourish within the late medieval clerical underworld;[3] Boudet describes this underworld as ‘an underground and informal network’[4] which can be seen to influence the highest echelons of society. Stanmore takes this argument further: not only were magicians not practicing in isolation, neither were they operating completely underground; rather they were part of a commercial network of which there was ‘a broad cultural knowledge’.[5] In England, magic itself was not a secular crime until 1542; prior to that it fell under ecclesiastical jurisdiction, with necromancy, along with heresy, taken especially seriously.[6] At the same time prophecy, which was linked to magic by intent, was also made a crime by Henry VIII’s government. This essay shows how the use of treasonous magic was not only a reaction to heightened instability, but also a cause of it, indicating its status as what Boudet calls a ‘central function in the exercise of power’[7] in the medieval courts of Henry VI and VIII.
The 1441 trial of Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, second wife of Humphrey Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, is often cited as an example of accusations of magic being used for political manipulation. Humphrey was an interesting character: on one hand opposed to the terms of peace with France,[8] on the other one of England’s first Humanists,[9] and, crucially, he was Henry VI’s uncle and by then heir apparent. Eleanor’s son, should she bear one, would have been second in line to the throne. Eleanor did, by her own admission, utilise the services of the cunning-woman Margery Jourdemayne, ‘the Witch of Eye Next Westminster’, as well as the astrologers Thomas Southwell and Roger Bolingbroke. Margery had already been brought before the ecclesiastical court on charges of sorcery; evidence suggests she supplied fertility potions and aphrodisiacs to the noblewomen.[10] Southwell and Bolingbroke were learned clerics: Southwell a canon in Westminster and Bolingbroke the head of an Oxford college who was known as ‘one of the most renowned in all the world in astronomy and the magical art’.[11] Astrology was not a crime, nor was it technically considered magic in this period, although according to Young, astrologers could easily fall under suspicion because of the information they could glean from their charts.[12] Ralley also notes the association of astrology with necromancy, and the long tradition of identifying astrologers as ‘secret necromancers’.[13]
The late 1430s and early 1440s were dangerous years for those who held or attempted to grasp power; they were marked by factionalism at court between supporters of Beaufort and Suffolk, economic instability, and precarious negotiations with France with whom England had been in conflict for over one hundred years. Henry himself had only assumed his majority in 1437, though what power he held as king was questionable. It is easy to understand why Eleanor queried Southwell and Bolingbroke about the lifespan of Henry VI, but it was only because of this instability that Eleanor dared to act so boldly. The horoscope they cast indicated that Henry would soon suffer a serious illness; when word of this reached the court, Henry’s ministers obtained a second opinion from an anonymous astrologer,[14] which suggests the initial reading was taken seriously. Jones argues that the ferocity of the ensuing trials and their outcomes was ‘encouraged by Humphrey’s enemies’[15] who sought to remove him from court. There appears to be some merit to this: according to Petrina, the enmity between Humphrey and Beaufort was ‘one of the most important and lasting elements of English policy during Henry VI’s minority’,[16] but she further argues that Humphrey had removed himself from politics in November 1440,[17] unlike Ralley who claims that Humphrey lost influence because of the incident.[18] One thing seems certain: the allegations of treasonable necromancy created a scandal that effectively destroyed one of the most important men in the political sphere of Henry VI’s minority and early majority and a powerful voice of dissent in the peace negotiations with France was silenced.
Rather than one instance taking precedence, the reign of Henry VIII is littered with examples of magic being used to exercise or gain influence within the court. In this period political instability was caused by a monarch who dominated* his court; his desire for a male heir caused England to break from Rome, with Henry VIII asserting himself as the head of the new English Church. Cases of treasonous magic can be seen throughout his reign as power ebbed and flowed around him. Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, was found guilty of treasonous sorcery in 1521. Stafford himself did not use magic; he allegedly consulted Nicholas Hopkins, a Carthusian monk who ‘pretended to a gift of prophecy’[19] concerning his possible succession to the crown. With echoes of the political machinations surrounding Eleanor’s case, Harris argues that Stafford’s only real crime was his descent from Edward III,[20] although Wooding claims his attitude most likely did not help his cause.[21] For Stafford, execution was inevitable. In contrast, in 1532 William Neville did use magic, although his attempt to make a cloak of invisibility[22] was not why he was arrested. Neville, a second son, was by all accounts eager to seize the power then held by his eldest brother who had become the third Baron Latimer in 1530, but his questions about his own potential ascent eventually led to a prediction of the king’s death by one of the cunning men Neville had hired.[23] Alerted to this activity by Neville’s chaplain and a servant, Thomas Cromwell had the parties involved arrested. Neville, claiming to never have intended ‘by art of magic or otherwise’,[24] to injure King Henry VIII, faced no penalty for his crime of treason in the secular courts, and was instead later awarded minor offices.[25] It can be argued that these examples had no counter-effect in the political sphere and were, from the view of the crown, mere annoyances. The same cannot be said for the case of Elizabeth Barton, also known as the Nun of Kent, who prophesied the death of Henry VIII should he proceed with his marriage to Anne Boleyn.
Barton has the honour of being the first to publicly speak out against Henry VIII’s religious policies and his authority as Supreme Head of the Church of England.[26] In 1534 she was executed for treason, not because she had personally wished the king ill, but because her words were taken by Cromwell as ‘compassing or imagining’ the death of the king[27] as per the 1352 Statute of Treasons, and likely to create conflict between the king and his subjects. As a result, Parliament revised the Statute of Treason to protect the king’s policies as well as the king himself.[28] Prophecy was not precisely magic. It had a long history in the Catholic Church and played a part in the formation of English Protestantism too.[29] Yet, the two could be conflated, with some prophecies having magical elements, i.e., elements which reveal a desire to ‘change the structure of reality’[30] as Barton’s prophecies evidently did. As Cressy states, the 1352 Statute appeared to relate to ‘an overt act’[31] such as open rebellion, whereas the 1534 revision did not although it could be argued that protection from rebellion was one of several reasons it was revised. It is in the revised statute itself that magic and prophecy are combined: treason was to ‘by words or writing, or by craft’ wish ill to the king.[32] Following this, in 1542 magic itself was criminalised in what is known as the Witchcraft Act, although Klaassen and Wright argue that the word ‘witchcraft’ is misleading as the act had more to do with treasure-hunting magic and the ‘disquiet’ magic in general caused in the realm.[33] Prophecy was also criminalised in 1542, in an act designed to suppress the English tradition of allegorical prophecies drawn from the personal devices of powerful political figures, which, according to Young, could be a dangerous popular pursuit.[34] This appears to relate directly to the potential foment caused by Barton’s prophecies and shows how magic remained a central concern in Henry VIII’s reign.
According to van Patten, the instances of magic and prophecy recorded during Henry VIII’s rulership allude to an inherent instability ‘at the margin’[35] of politics, but also that magic and prophecy indicate political instability at the heart of government, which seems to support the idea of magic’s central function in the court. During the medieval period, magic and prophecy seemed to thrive in times of upheaval, and as Jones says, ‘appeared to possess considerable political value’.[36] The reigns of Henry VI and VIII were marked by tremendous turbulence, and so it is not surprising to find evidence of magic’s value as a political tool during the reigns of these very different kings. The incidents described here were not peripheral; they concerned the core of the kings’ rule, whether it be his ability to rule as in the case of Henry VI or the way he ruled as with Henry VIII. Van Patten further states that there is an argument to be made that astrology, necromancy, and prophecy were only used as ‘means to political ends’.[37] This seems to be a cynical view that does not take into account the humanity of those accused of treason. It is likely that Eleanor genuinely wanted to give Humphrey a son and heir, and Barton, a nun and therefore assumedly a devout Catholic, had what in hindsight appears to have been entirely reasonable concerns about the future of her faith.* However, there is ample evidence to show that magic was entwined with politics, and that it had the power to compel political change.
Whether it was for personal gain or to influence current events, magic was at the heart of the political conflicts in the courts of Henry VI and Henry VIII and was used not only by those wanting to affect political events, but also by the governments they sought to influence. Eleanor Cobham wanted to secure an heir for her husband, the Duke of Gloucester, and potentially for the realm itself; her attempt to determine what the future held for King Henry VI with the help of astrologers Bolingbroke and Southwell and her use of the services of cunning-woman Margery Jourdemayne ended disastrously for all involved, leading to a shift in the power balance of Henry VI’s court. This case stresses the link between astrology and necromancy and shows that magic was considered both accessible and useful in the power struggles in Henry VI’s court. While there was nothing particularly radical about the ideas of what constituted treasonable magic during the reign of Henry VI, during the reign of Henry VIII the definition of treason was adapted to suit Henry’s needs due to the nature of Elizabeth Barton’s prophecies. Barton spoke out against Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn and the authority he had assumed as Head of the English Church; Parliament revised the definition of treason as a result and then further changed the definition of magic itself by making it a political crime. These incidents show that treasonous magic—be it astrological necromancy or seditious prophecy—was both a reaction to political instability as well as a cause of it during the reigns of Henry VI and VIII and reveal how responses to magic were a core feature of government and in the exercise of power in these two medieval courts.
*As my assessor pointed out, some scholars view Henry VIII as being led by certain members of his court rather than dominating it, and there is debate over how much Barton was influenced by her confessor.
[1] H. A. Kelly, ‘English Kings and the Fear of Sorcery’, Mediaeval Studies, 39 (1977), 206-38 (p. 206) <https://doi.org/10.1484/J.MS.2.306831>.
[2] Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, ed. by Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) p. 182.
[3] Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, Second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 152.
[4] Jean-Patrice Boudet, ‘Magic at Court’, in The Routledge History of Medieval Magic, ed. by Sophie Page and Catherine Rider (Routledge: Oxon and New York, 2019), p. 336.
[5] T. Stanmore, ‘Magic as a Useful Category of Historical Analysis’, History, 106 (2021), 207 <https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229X.13106>.
[6] Frank Klassen and Sharon Hubbs Wright, The Magic of Rogues: Necromancers in Early Tudor England (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2021), p. 7.
[7] Boudet, ‘Magic at Court’, p. 338.
[8] Christine Carpenter, The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the constitution in England c.1437–1509 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 97.
[9] Alessandra Petrina, Cultural Politics in Fifteenth-Century England: The Case of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2004), p. 59.
[10] Anne Lawrence-Mathers and Carolina Escobar-Vargas, Magic and Medieval Society (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 12.
[11] Hilary Carey, Courting Disaster: Astrology at the English Court and University in the Later Middle Ages (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), p. 141, citing Annales Rerum Anglicarum, ed. by Joseph Stevenson, in Letters and Papers (London, 1864).
[12] Francis Young, Magic as a Political Crime in Medieval and Early Modern England (London, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2020), p. 37.
[13] Robert Ralley, ‘Stars, demons and the body in fifteenth-century England’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 41 (2010), 109–116 (p. 111, 113) <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2010.04.006>.
[14] Carey, Courting Disaster, p. 145.
[15] Jones, ‘Political Uses of Sorcery in Medieval Europe’, 683.
[16] Petrina, Cultural Politics in Fifteenth-Century England, p. 119.
[17] Ibid., p. 145.
[18] Ralley, ‘Stars, demons and the body’, 109.
[19] Delahay Gordon, A general history…, volume 1 (London: J. Burd, 1760), p. 8.
[20] Barbara Harris, ‘The Trial of the Third Duke of Buckingham-A Revisionist View’, The American Journal of Legal History, 20.1 (1976), 15–26 (p. 15) <https://doi.org/10.2307/844847>.
[21] Lucy Wooding, Henry VIII, second edition (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2015), pp. 117-18.
[22] Klassen and Wright, The Magic of Rogues, p. 25.
[23] Ibid., p. 26.
[24] Ibid., p. 47.
[25] Ibid., p. 27.
[26] Wooding, Henry VIII, p. 193.
[27] Young, Magic as a Political Crime, p. 61.
[28] Ibid., p. 62.
[29] Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 155.
[30] Jonathan K. van Patten, ‘Magic, Prophecy, and the Law of Treason in Reformation England’, The American Journal of Legal History, 27.1 (1983), 1–32 (p. 27) <https://doi.org/10.2307/844911>.
[31] David Cressy, Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre-Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 41.
[32] Young, Magic as a Political Crime, p. 62.
[33] Klassen and Wright, The Magic of Rogues, p. 9.
[34] Francis Young, Magic in Merlin’s Realm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), p. 148.
[35] van Patten, ‘Magic, Prophecy, and the Law of Treason’, 25.
[36] William R. Jones, ‘Political Uses of Sorcery in Medieval Europe’, The Historian, 34.4 (1972), 670–87 (p. 674) <http://www.jstor.org/stable/24442963> [accessed 20 Aug. 2022].
[37] Ibid., 13.
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Image shown is The Penance of Eleanor of Gloucester (1900), by Edwin Austin Abbey.
Erzebet Barthold is the Managing Director of Hadean Press Limited. She is interested in textual magic in general, and medieval fever charms in particular.
© 2023 Erzebet Barthold
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