The Yew Tree Chronicles Part 7 The Reformation and Henry Eighth

THE REFORMATION

On May 19th 1536 I was just standing around twiddling my twigs when I became very aware of some agitated chatter taking place in my midst. I listened in. Not you understand, because I am a nosey so and so. No, not at all. It was because I just knew to the end of my roots that something important was afoot and as Tisbury’s premier tree it was incumbent upon me to know exactly what was going on at all times.

The group of men gathered in their peculiar attire of the time, all ruffs and saggy woolly hose, were discussing some terrible news that had finally reached Tisbury, hence their distress. The Queen was dead. Not only was she dead her husband, King Henry VIII had her put to her death by means of a sword disengaging her head from her neck. What the Holly tree!.. I gasped to myself. The King has had his own wife felled like a rotting Oak? I was shaken to my inner bark. What sort of man does that to his own wife?! Queen Anne Boleyn was dead and the turbulence their marriage had kicked off was only just getting started.

I wept. Well no, I didn’t, let’s be honest, I can’t weep, but I metaphorically wept for all that had happened in order to justify this brutally terminated marriage and what the implications would be for my poor Tisbury folk. For all my superiority in the looks department, bottomless wisdom, and endless experience in the strange ways of man I couldn’t see what more changes this might bring. Could our dashing King be a little unstable? If a firebrand like Anne Boleyn ended up on the block, what more turmoil was coming over the hill. Well it didn’t take long to find out.

Three years later the Abbey in Shaftesbury, the first religious house for women ever established in England, was closed down by order of the King. The nuns were booted out on their collective ear. The land and villages owned by the Abbey were disbursed amongst the King’s go-getting courtiers. A certain Sir Thomas Arundell one of the beneficiaries of the great Shaftesbury Abbey give-away acquired much of Tisbury and its surrounding villages for his services to the West Country and his reputation as a brilliant officer of the court. That, and perhaps the fact he was married to the King’s, by then, fourth wife’s sister.

He wasn’t alone. Another beneficiary was a certain Lawrence Hyde of Hatch House. He very successfully climbed the greasy pole of Tudor advancement whilst siring six sons and four daughters with his wife Anne Sibell. Hyde was related to several powerful families, and he would pass on his DNA as the great grandfather of two English Queens: Queen Mary II, and Queen Anne. Of course he still keeps me company, seeing as he is buried here in my graveyard and I hear there’s a shiny brass picture of him and his wife and ten children inside the church. 

Changing religious worship rituals was not news to me.  Have I told you how if you go back far enough the locals used to worship a certain Yew tree? I think I have mentioned it. But the changes to my dear old St John’s church here seemed somewhat brutal. All the lovely fancy bits were stripped out alongside any priest that refused the new liturgy. And everyone was encouraged to take up the new forms of worship with enticing offers like turn your back on Rome or burn on a pyre. Most Tisburgers went to church as usual and became Protestants but many  didn’t seem to take to this new modern church with quite the same enthusiasm as everyone else. Particularly over the valley in Wardour, people felt protected under the staunchly Catholic Lord Arundell, whether secretly or openly, they carried on practicing the Church of Rome mass. What verve!

Next time the Elizabethan era is upon us.