Where It All Goes Down
The Reign of King Henry VIII (1509-1547)
It all started out well enough. When King Henry VIII ascended the throne, and he was actually popular. He was smart, good at sports, tall, and even a patron of the arts. Henry VIII's early rule was marked by his easy charisma and by general peace.
Then there was the second part of his rule. When Henry became obsessed with getting a male heir, everything took a left turn. He became insecure, fearful, lustful, suspicious, harsh, and so gluttonous that it led to his early death. Unfortunately for Tom, it's this second half of Henry's reign that he's born into.
Money Troubles
Remember all those really fancy parties that the king was having? With hundreds of servants, decked-out boats, and enough moolah that the king could just toss into the crowd like it was nothing, those must have been super expensive parties, right?
Well, they were. And Henry didn't actually have the money to afford all of these luxuries. While his father, King Henry VII, left Henry VIII a huge fortune, it was all squandered by the end of Henry VIII's reign.
Mark Twain probably expects the reader to be pretty well acquainted with English history. When we read all those descriptions of sumptuous parties, we should probably keep in mind that these parties are pretty much bankrupting the king. It makes everything even worse to think that Henry was spending money he didn't have while people were starving in the streets.
Bloody Henry
Of all the Tudors, Henry VIII might win the prize for most bloodthirsty. Even though his successor was called Bloody Mary, she only killed 300 people during her reign, while Henry VIII is thought to have killed over 70,000 people, including two of his own wives. No wonder people called his time on the throne the reign of blood.
Twain takes special pains to let us know just how terrible it was to live during Henry VIII's reign. We meet people who are ordered to be boiled alive just because a witch predicted they would kill someone; we meet women and children who are to be hanged for selling themselves to the devil; and we meet old men who have their ears chopped off because they were begging to feed their children. If that's not cruel and inhumane, we're not sure what is.
We're pretty sure that Mark Twain plays up this aspect of Henry VIII's reign in order to contrast it with Edward VI's comparatively peaceful time on the throne. It really makes Edward and Tom seem like heroes when we realize how they saved the people of England from such terrible laws and punishments.
The Protestant Reformation
King Henry VIII is probably best known by history students for killing and divorcing his wives. You know the song: "Divorced, beheaded, and died. Divorced, beheaded, survived!" This guy was having celebrity marriages before celebrities even existed.
Anyway, Henry VIII was only able to get a divorce at all because of the Protestant Reformation. You see, when Henry asked the Pope to divorce him from his first wife, it didn't go so well. So Henry, being the kind of guy he was, decided to take things into his own hands. He changed the religion of the entire country from Catholic to Protestant.
That wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't illegal not to be a part of the newly formed Church of England. That meant that Catholics and any other kinds of Protestants could be sentenced to death. All just because this guy wanted a divorce.
Another big impact the Protestant Reformation had on England was the dissolution of the monasteries. You might remember Father Andrew, who was living in the slums with Tom and his family because the king had closed his churches. At least he took it well, we guess. The hermit, on the other hand, is not too happy about the closing of his monastery. He says:
"Yes, I am an archangel; a mere archangel!—I that might have been pope! It is verily true. I was told it from heaven in a dream, twenty years ago; ah, yes, I was to be pope!—and I should have been pope, for Heaven had said it—but the king dissolved my religious house, and I, poor obscure unfriended monk, was cast homeless upon the world, robbed of my mighty destiny!" Here he began to mumble again, and beat his forehead in futile rage, with his fist, now and then articulating a venomous curse, and now and then a pathetic, "Wherefore I am naught but an archangel—I that should have been pope!" (20.15)
The, the hermit has flipped out because King Henry VIII tossed him out of his home and his only profession. No wonder this dude wants to get revenge.
Priests like the hermit and Father Andrew were not the only ones affected by the closing of the monasteries. It turns out that monasteries were pretty much the only source of help poor people had during this time period. When the monasteries closed, poor people had to turn to the streets and beg for alms. Oh, and let's remind you that it was illegal to beg in the streets. Basically, these were up a creek without a paddle.
With all of these things together, it's no wonder that everyone is pretty excited to have a new ruler. All Edward has to do in order for people to love him is not kill thousands of people and make tons of enemies. And he manages to do that pretty well.
London Bridge and the Slums of London
Yes, it's that London Bridge... only it's not falling down yet. A large chunk of The Prince and the Pauper takes place on or around London Bridge. But it's not exactly a bridge in the way that you might think of it today.
Instead, imagine a bridge with tall buildings and apartments stacked together as if they were Tetris pieces. Then fill all those rooms until they're overflowing. It would look something like this. That's Tom's London Bridge.
And Tom didn't even live on London Bridge—he wasn't that lucky. No, he lived in Offal Court, a pretty sad place to live: "The streets were very narrow, and crooked, and dirty, especially in the part where Tom Canty lived, which was not far from London Bridge. The houses were of wood, with the second story projecting over the first, and the third sticking its elbows out beyond the second. The higher the houses grew, the broader they grew." (2.1) Yup, Offal Court is a step down even from London Bridge.
Twain is setting up a contrast not just between a prince and a pauper but between rich and poor in general. While the royals and nobles are living in luxury, people in Tom's neighborhood and on London Bridge are living in basically inhumane conditions. The contrast between the two areas only reminds us how messed up the system is in England, and how unfair it is to poor people like Tom and his family.