HENRY VIII History in an Hour
Simon Court
Contents
Introduction
The ‘Virtuous Prince’
Jousting and the Heraldic Past
The King of England and of France
The Field of Cloth of Gold
The ‘King’s Great Matter’
The Break with Rome
‘The Goggle-eyed Whore’: Anne Boleyn
A King is Born
The Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries
The ‘Fat Flanders Mare’: Anne of Cleves
The Gruesome End of Thomas Cromwell
The ‘Lewd and Naughty’ Catherine Howard
Death and Succession
Personality as Political Policy
Henry Tudor: Psychological Post-mortem
Appendix 1: Key Players
Appendix 2: Timeline
Copyright
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About the Publisher
The life of Henry VIII was extraordinarily rich and eventful, starting with high hopes but ending, as he himself would have seen it, in abject personal and therefore political failure, with the premature death of his only son and heir, Edward VI. We have been invited to view Henry’s life and personality as, in effect, a tragic ‘game of two halves’: the first starring the idealistic, athletic and ‘virtuous prince’; the second embarrassed by the bloated, disillusioned tyrant who had been corrupted by events which were largely outside his control. And though it may be expected that his personality therefore fundamentally altered for the worse, it is evident that the characteristics which comprised this complex, yet essentially coherent, man were present throughout his life, and the decisions he made. For, possibly more than any other English monarch before or after him, Henry VIII defined every aspect of political life during his reign: indeed we can say that his personality became political policy.
Henry was, to all outward appearances and certainly as portrayed by the court artist Hans Holbein, the perfect model of a successful king. Tall, well built and intelligent, he commanded the stage of his court.
Yet who was the real man those portraits depict, with his fleshy yet mean-lipped face? We will trace the diplomatic ambitions of the young prince, inspired by the ‘Arthurian myth’ of the English monarch and his empire, and desiring to emulate the military triumphs of Henry V to become King of France as well as England; and the consequences of his continued failure to produce a legitimate male heir, leading eventually to the permanent ‘break with Rome’ and the Roman Catholic faith. We will also see how his underlying insecurity led to an excessive attachment to his advisers who, once rejected, were brutally abandoned and often beheaded for their betrayals (whether real or imagined). We shall discover a man whose violence, self-righteousness and ruthlessness were certainly consistent with a severe egoist, and perhaps even – some have suggested – with a psychopath.
Prince Henry was never meant to be king. Born on 28 June 1491 at Greenwich Palace, he was the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, the first son being Arthur, Prince of Wales. Henry received a first-rate classical and theological education from private tutors, and became fluent in Latin and French. He was also taught to play a number of musical instruments and later composed music (although the long-held belief that he wrote ‘Green Sleeves’ is probably false). In 1501, Arthur, aged 15, was married to Catherine of Aragon, almost 16 years old, the youngest surviving child of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile. But disaster struck within a year when Arthur, who was not of robust health, died of pneumonia. Their marriage was probably never consummated.
This tragedy propelled the young Henry, who was only 10 years old, firmly into the spotlight, as the sole male heir to the Tudor dynasty. His father protected him from performing many duties or making public appearances, and he must have been relieved when his second son grew into a fit, athletic young man, standing head and shoulders above his contemporaries. Henry became a skilled horseman, jouster, tennis player and dancer, and possessed great skill in archery and hurling the javelin. By 1508 he was to be seen at Richmond practising tilting for many hours.
Henry VII died on 21 April 1509, and the young Henry, aged 17, became king. In deference to his parents’ wishes, he immediately announced that he would marry Catherine of Aragon and, in spite of their six-year age difference, they initially made a happy couple. Catherine conceived within a few weeks of their marriage but, in what proved to be an ominous portent, she was delivered of a stillborn girl. Within four months, however, Catherine had conceived again, this time giving birth on New Year’s Day 1511 to a boy, named Henry.
The nation rejoiced at the news, and the king celebrated by jousting under the name of Coeur Loyale (‘loyal heart’) and laying his trophies at his lady’s feet, as befitting a gallant knight.
Catherine of Aragon watching Henry VIII of England joust, College of Arms, early sixteenth century
Yet tragedy struck again seven weeks later when the baby Henry died. Catherine, a devout Catholic, retreated into her devotions; Henry, after a bout of self-doubt and self-pity, turned his energies towards war against France. He knew that the best way for a young ruler to establish his international power and prestige was through warfare, so it was natural for him to pick on one of the two traditional enemies of the English, namely the Scots or the French. But behind this public foreign policy lay a set of deeply held personal beliefs about what it was to be a ruler of men.
Jousting and the Heraldic Past
Henry’s love of jousting was not just the enjoyment of the sport; it was an expression of his fundamental belief in the moral virtues of chivalry as personified in the medieval knight. Henry was steeped in the chivalric tradition, believing that it was the duty of every nobleman to display prowess in the joust. Jousting evolved from the practices of medieval battle, where ransoms were sought, and serious injuries inflicted, but by the fifteenth century this had become the tournament in which knights competed for honour and the favour of a lady.
These combats were governed by the strictest rules of engagement and often involved artificial castles, ships or woodland grottos. The nuptials of Arthur and Catherine had been celebrated with such a tournament, and the young