Hi, I'm Peter Adamson from the University of the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the LMU and Munich and the Philosophy Department at Keynes College London, online at historyoflossavy.net.

Today's episode will be an interview about the reformations in England and Scotland with Darwin McCulloch, who is a meritorious professor of the history of the Church at the University of Oxford.

Hi professor. Hello. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

Pleasure. I guess that many people, when they think about the reformations in England and Scotland, or at least the reformation in England, suppose that it happened because, I mean, not to put to find a point on it, Henry VIII wanted to get a divorce and the Pope wouldn't let him.

But presumably it's a little bit more complicated than that. So what kind of reformation did Henry actually want? Henry wanted a reformation of which he was the head. And in no sense, should you think of that as a Protestant reformation. Henry wasn't a Protestant, he was Henry.

And as you say, the quarrel was about whether he could marry a second wife or in his eyes, a first wife. And the problem was that the Pope would not allow that.

So in the end, he broke with Rome. Now that could be thought of as a reformation, but other kings had done something rather similar.

What turned it into a reformation where the driving forces of other people, particularly his new chief minister, a man called Thomas Cromwell, and also the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom Henry had appointed to get this annulment of his first marriage, Thomas Cranmer.

So between them, they discreetly pushed forward something you really can call a reformation in the 1530s.

And that took off with its own momentum, quite apart from the king, who remained utterly unpredictable, a curious mix-up of Catholicism and humanism, you might say, very little Protestantism.

And in fact, at the beginning, he was actually quite opposed to Luther, right?

Yes, Luther and Henry VIII did not get on at all because Henry VIII, before he'd quarrel with Pope, defended traditional Catholicism, really rather effectively.

Luther was furious and wrote a furious reply. The king hated that. So they never had much of a relationship.

Other figures who became Lutherans did appeal to Henry. The great Philip Malacheton, for instance, whom Henry tried to get to England.

But the English reformation really never went down a Lutheran path. Its roots were going to be elsewhere.

The way you just described that, it sounds like a fairly top-down phenomenon. So you've got the king, you've got the archbishop, so on.

But presumably, what they're doing is interacting in some way with more bottom-up forces, like sentiment for reformation in the country at large.

Yes, England was unique in that it had a powerful movement against the official church for a century and a half before the Protestant reformation.

It's called Lollady, and it emerged here in Oxford, where I taught in the late 14th century with an Oxford Don called John Wickliffe.

And this movement called Lollady was suppressed by the official church in the late 15th century, but never eliminated.

And so there was a movement within the country of dissent against the official church.

And so the official reformation, which he emerged, falteringly, during the 1530s, could interact with this other force.

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