I have read a lot of the history of persecution of LGBT people and one thing seems clear. Apart from a few isolated cases or periods of persecution, same sex relationships were not just tolerated, but seem to have been largely accepted as normal until the reign of Henry VIII.
Even the Bible overall is not overtly opposed to homosexuality. The few negative biblical references are vague at
best, and in most instances the subject of fierce debate and largely a matter of
interpretation. And there are even strongly help views that some key biblical relationships such as those
of David and Jonathan and Jesus and John appear to have been far more than
simply male friendships.
The persecution of homosexuality in the UK appears to have begun
in 1533 when Thomas Cromwell piloted through parliament the Buggery Act which
made the act of anal penetration of a man or a woman (buggery) or any intercourse
with an animal (bestiality) and offense punishable by hanging. However as you will see, there is no evidence
that this act was passed because of any real social issue with homosexuality or
sodomy, rather it was a political weapon in Henry VIII’s battle with the
Catholic Church.
...the offenders being hereof convicted by verdict confession or outlawry shall suffer such pains of death and losses and penalties of their good chattels debts lands tenements and hereditaments as felons do according to the Common Laws of this Realm. And that no person offending in any such offence shall be admitted to his Clergy .
The penalties made this one of the most severe punishments in
law and more importantly it was one of the few crimes for which a priest or
monk could be put to death, and this is an important when we try to understand
why Henry VIII put this law in place.
Initially this act was for one year. It was reintroduced for
another year twice before becoming a permanent law in 1541. However there are only
a handful of instances on record of anyone being charged under this act during
the next 100 years.
The first man executed for buggery (and the only execution
in Tudor times) was Walter Hungerford, who ironically was executed in 1540 on
the same day as his patron Thomas Cromwell, the architect of the act. Like Cromwell he was charged with treason and heresy
suspected of sympathising with the Pilgrimage of Grace who opposed the break
with the Catholic Church. The buggery charge was added, probably to enable the
state to seize his assets as he had been three times married and had three
children.
Nicholas Udall, cleric and headmaster of Eton College, was
charged under the Buggery Act in 1541 for sexually abusing pupils in his charge
which he admitted. However with the aid
of members of Thomas Cromwell’s household, his sentence was commuted to imprisonment
and he only served one year. He did not
return to Eton, however he did return to teaching in 1554 as headmaster of
Westminster School.
So if there is no evidence of a serious social or political issue
with buggery before this act and few people charged after it was enacted, it
begs the question WHY was it enacted in the first place?
The clue to that is in the date. In 1533 Henry VIII had a problem. For a number of years
Henry had been trying to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled on
the grounds that she had consummated her previous marriage to Henry’s older
brother Arthur before he died. Catherine
denied this and partly because her nephew, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, was
able to exert considerable influence on the Pope, all Henry’s petitions had
failed.
Catherine had been barred from court and Henry had secretly
married Anne Boleyn who was now pregnant with his child although in the eyes of
the Catholic Church, Henry was still married to Catherine. If the child was born out of wedlock it would
be barred from succession. The solution was to separate the Church of England
from Rome with Henry as the Supreme Head of the Church. Anne Boleyn gave birth
to a daughter Elizabeth in September 1533.
So what did the Buggery Act have to do with this?
The separation from Rome was not unopposed and Henry’s chief
minister Thomas Cromwell was tasked with bringing about the Reformation and Dissolution of the Monasteries . He set about introducing a ruthless programme
of legislation to establish Henry’s supremacy over the Pope in religious
matters. The primary opposition to this came
from the monasteries. In all the Catholic
Church was very powerful, owning around a third of Britain. Furthermore clerics
were almost immune from prosecution.
Two hundred years previously Philip V of France had used sodomy
laws in France to torture and execute the Knights Templar and confiscate all their
assets. With Cromwell’s programme of
legislation including the Buggery Act, Henry was able suppress opposition from
those who did not accept him as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. The Buggery Act in particular gave him power
to execute any cleric who confessed to buggery and to seize their assets. There are no official records of the use of
the Buggery Act against clerics, but there is evidence that Cromwell
investigated religious orders and found evidence of sexual impropriety which
would have provided sufficient grounds to “extract confessions”. Many monks were executed at this time.
So it will not be of any surprise to discover that in 1553
when Mary I, daughter of Catherine of Aragon ascended to the throne she
immediately repealed the Buggery Act and began the process of crushing the
protestant church, gaining the popular
title of Bloody Mary in the process.
However despite numerous attempts she failed to produce an heir to the
throne and on her death in 1558 Elizabeth 1 became queen.
The daughter of Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth had been raised a protestant.
She set about re-establishing the Church
of England as separate from the Church of Rome and in 1563 reinstated the
Buggery Act which then remained in force until 1828 when it was replaced by the Offenses Against the Person Act but the crime of buggery or sodomy remained a
capital offense until the passing of the Offenses Against the Person Act 1861. It be another hundred years before homosexuality was partially decriminalised
In the eighteenth and nineteenth century however the number
of prosecutions substantially increased and lesser offenses of attempted buggery were introduced with severe penalties including imprisonment and time
in the pillory which I will explore in separate article.
The Buggery Act 1533 was not just significant in the UK.
This period marked the start of the British Legal System as we know it and that
legal system was the foundation for future legal systems in all the commonwealth
counties in Africa, Asia Australia and North America. So to a large extent we
have Henry VIII to blame for persecution of LGBT people throughout the world.
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