Crusade Diplomacy and the Kings of England, 1461–1528

While much has been written on the later crusades and the response of the Catholic Church and continental European monarchs to the rapid and seemingly inexorable expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, one aspect has almost been entirely overlooked: the centrality of crusading and the ‘Turkish question’ to English diplomacy in this era. The central point of this thesis is to consider the use that English monarchs from Edward IV to Henry VIII made of crusading in their international diplomacy (and, to some extent, their domestic policy) in the decades leading up to Henry VIII’s ‘Great Matter’ through the use of illustrative case studies from each reign. Crusades discourse was a central feature of the diplomacy of each of these monarchs, though each king approached it somewhat differently based on the circumstances and exigencies of their reigns.

In contrast to current arguments, this thesis argues throughout that in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, crusading was neither primarily a commemorative chivalric throwback to family exploits of yore, nor yet a cynical ploy to wrest money or concessions out of a waning papacy, but rather formed a shared diplomatic framework to which the rulers and prelates of Europe subscribed, and a shared diplomatic language which they spoke in service of their wider geopolitical goals.

Chapter 1 explores the use made of the concept of crusade by the Yorkist kings, Edward IV and Richard III, showing how Edward used crusade diplomacy to gain the support of the Church for his new and uncertain reign, and ultimately to build a pan-European network of alliances in support of his various diplomatic aims. Richard attempted to gain Imperial support for his usurpation by positioning himself as a would-be crusader. Chapter 2 draws upon a range of unpublished archival material to re-evaluate what has long appeared to be the settled question of Henry VII’s foreign policy aims, highlighting his response to, inter alia, the crusade overtures of Hungary, Venice, France, and the Holy Roman Empire in 1501–02. Chapter 3 focuses on the time period immediately following the Battle of Mohács (1526), in which Henry VIII and his chancellor Cardinal Wolsey attempted to make England the arbiter of a universal peace in order to combat the Ottoman menace.

The thesis concludes that the kings of England in this era spoke the diplomatic language of crusade as well as any other European ruler, and though they necessarily approached crusading in different ways due to prevailing circumstances, these variations merely demonstrate the ongoing centrality of crusading and the ‘Turkish question’ to late medieval and early modern English diplomacy.