Henry VI, Part 1 - Act 3, scene 3 | Folger Shakespeare Library

Look now, my lord, holy simplicity was well enough in its day, but its day is over. We’re at war. Just because the Emperor’s soldiers aren’t running down the street, don’t deceive yourself—this is a war and you are in the enemy camp.” The bishop is silent. He sways a little on his stool. Sniffs. “I see why Wolsey retained you. You are a ruffian and

“I call it extortion.” She turns to her daughter. “If you ask why the church is not defended, I can only tell you that there are noblemen in this land”—Suffolk, she means, Norfolk—“who have been heard to say they will pull the power of the church down, that never again will they suffer—they use the word—a churchman to grow so great as our late lega

Is he some parish clerk, the King of England? Or some child? This would not happen in France; their king keeps his churchmen under his hand. Master Tyndale says, ‘One king, one law, is God’s ordinance in every realm.’ I have read his book, The Obedience of a Christian Man. I myself have shown it to the king and marked the passages that touch on his

When the Channel Tunnel opened in 1994, the two figures chosen to represent England and France in great mock-ups were the sixteenth-century rival kings Henry VIII and Francis I.

Standing with the arms crossed, for example, was considered foolish by the Humanist Erasmus, and it is noticeable that it is exactly this posture that the king’s fool Will Somers adopts in a miniature featuring him alongside Henry VIII. The king’s own famous stance – looking straight ahead, legs apart, with his weight evenly balanced between them,