ABSTRACT
Henry VIII’s defences of the south and south-east coast represent a programme of fortification which can only be compared with Edward I’s North Welsh castles. Later than 1547, the Tudor programme of defences petered out among forts of acute bastioned or tenaille trace both generally weak and entirely un-medieval. The objections to including Henry VIII’s strongholds in a catalogue and discussion of castles appear to be twofold: on the grounds of function or of structure; but in neither case at all convincing. Henry VIII’s earlier work was mainly in the north, and much of it has been destroyed. The emergency at the end of Henry VIII’s reign was concerned with the Reformation, or rather with the Henrician Schism in which it began. The better-known Act of Supremacy in the succeeding year, under which Henry VIII became Head of the Church of England, simply added insult to injury, but at least it left no doubt of the challenge to Rome.
