King Henry VIII once confessed to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey that "writing is to me somewhat tedious and painful," and his scanty literary remains testify to this aversion: a handful of seemingly crude poems and song lyrics produced during the first decade of his reign; assorted diplomatic letters; several short love letters to Anne Boleyn in English and French; the Assertio Septem Sacramentorum (1521; translated as The Defense of the Seven Sacraments, 1687), a theological polemic written in answer to Martin Luther's On the Babylonian Captivity (1520); and a short preface to a 1543 book setting forth the official religion. There were also one or two works that were never completed and are now lost, such as a tragedy on Boleyn and a book justifying his divorce. Nevertheless, Henry VIII's centrality to the development of sixteenth-century English literature cannot be doubted.

First, his patronage of humanists contributed to the adoption of the humanist...