The Special Case of Royal Private Prayer: Henry VIII and Richard II

Advice texts describe praying for, with, or as though a prince as both an act of grace and as an art of the courtier. Elizabeth I and James VI and I developed strongly differentiated profiles in private prayer. The queen published her addresses to God, addressing him as her fellow sovereign and as her superior. By contrast, the king never published what he said to God, only what God said to him, in the exclusive advisory consultations held in his conscience. Elizabeth joined her people in petitioning God to discern and do his will, James told his people what God’s will was. Prayers written for and about monarchs attempted to manage them within these approaches. Shakespeare’s Henry VIII explores political manoeuvres in prayer, and royal strategies to frustrate these; Richard II shows that grace can drain away from a royal prayer, leaving it theatrical.