Year: 1969
Type: article
Abstract: NARASINGHA PROSAD SIL Sir Anthony Denny had an unusually uneventful career in the turbulent reign of Henry VIII.His life, humdrum and honest, remained unaffected by the habitual excitement and turmoil of court politics.Until recently he has thus been generally dismissed as an inconsequential figure.*One scholar even stated that Denny was not much of anything at all, except a lifelong friend of King Henry.According to her, "it is difficult to under- stand" why"Henry, goodjudgeofcharacter and admirer of ability," chose this "least able man" as a servant.^Thisstatement is of course demon- strably false.Denny simply was not, like his Elizabethan counterpart Christopher Hatton, "a mere vegetable of the court that sprang up at night and sank again at his noon."^Aservant of the King, he was also an officer of the kingdom.His activities at the Henrician court, especially in the King's privy chamber, illuminate the operations of the royal household on the one hand and the nexus between the king's servant and the state servant on the other.His intimacy with the King as a gentleman of his privy chamber gave him an importance at court equal to that of a privy councillor, even though he did not sit in the Henrician council."*Denny's career thus reveals the importance of service in the king's household, the seatof Tudor government and administration.Most important, his life illustrates that rare quality of a courtierhis almost ubiquitous popularity-in a world that was factious, conspiratorial, unprincipled, and uncharitable.« * 4: Anthony Denny was probably bom into the ancient Denny family of Chesterton, Huntingdonshire, a branch of which later settled in Hert- fordshire.^Hisgrandfather William had been a sheriff of Hertfordshire, and his father Edmund had been Henry VLF s remembrancer during 1 504- 09 and later worked as a clerk and subsequently as a baron of the exchequer under Henry VIII.The Dennys were a family of royal servants.Eventheir• An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Seminar of the Department of History, Univer- sity of Benin, on 28 January 1 98 1 . 1 thank those who made some useful comments on it and, in par- ticular.Professor Philip A. Igbafe, who chaired the session.
Source: Renaissance and Reformation
Author: Narasingha Prosad Sil
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2200490716