Henry VIII began his reign in 1509 as a charismatic, vibrant young man. He ended it in 1547, a bloated, blood-stained monster. He had put two of his wives to death, sacked the monasteries and plundered their wealth. But Henry VIII’s reign was a turning point in English history, second only to the Norman Conquest. Henry gave us Parliament and a national Church, and most importantly, a sense of English identity.
Henry VIII came to the throne with a desire to make a name for himself. He cancelled many of his father’s debts and invited complaints against what his father had enforced. He hunted and jousted, composed and played music. He added new ships to the navy and ruled the Church with a firm hand. So, what went so wrong?
Henry’s father, Henry VII, had won the crown of England at the battle of Bosworth Field after years of civil war between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists, known as the War of the Roses. After his victory, Henry Tudor of the House of Lancaster married Elizabeth of the House of York to unite the two families and to ensure that his heirs would have the bloodline of both families. But Yorkist claimants remained, who Henry VII controlled with an unjust tight fiscal policy.
Henry VIII was born into an England that bore the scars of civil war. Mistrust, control, resentment, and deception were the lifeblood of the new Tudor court.
As the second son, Henry was not born to rule. His brother Prince Arthur was the heir; Henry was the spare. But Arthur died suddenly in April 1502. The following year Henry’s mother died in childbirth. All too aware of the fragility of his dynasty and the Yorkist claimants to the throne, Henry VII had his son bought to court, where he and Henry’s grandmother could watch over him. The freedom Prince Henry had enjoyed, growing up at Eltham Palace on the Thames with his sisters and mother, was over. The Spanish Ambassador reported: ‘Prince Henry is in complete subjection of his father and grandmother and never opens his mouth in public except to answer a question from one of them.’
In April 1509, Henry VII died. Henry was only 17. His first act was to have the men who had implemented his father’s brutal fiscal policy rounded up and imprisoned in the Tower of London, then executed. Initially, at least, the Yorkists were appeased, and the long-feared rebellion never took place. Secondly, Henry married his brother’s widow, the Spanish princess Katherine of Aragon.
Henry VIII’s apologist argue that a blow to his head in a joust in 1535 caused a personality shift. But Henry had a cold, pathological streak long before 1535.
In 1519, Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, entertained the king at Penshurst Place. Stafford was a Yorkist descendent and next in line to the throne while Henry lacked a male heir. The feast Buckingham laid on for the King cost the equivalent of £1.2 million in today’s money. The Duke’s wealth and influence unsettled the king. In May 1521, Henry had Stafford executed on trumped up charges of divination and predicting the King’s death. His real crime was his Plantagenet blood.
Buckingham was not the only Yorkist descendant to fall prey to Henry’s insecurity. In 1513, Henry had Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, executed.
In 1528, the year Cardinal Campeggio arrived in England from Rome to try the validity of the king’s marriage, Henry told his council: ‘If I find anyone – whoever he is – who speaks in unsuitable terms of his prince, there is no head so fine, but I will make it fly.’
It wasn’t just rival claimants that suffered at Henry’s hands. Most famously, how he treated his various wives gives us plenty of insight into his character. In 1524, Henry began his campaign to woo Anne Boleyn by sending her a buck he had killed. He writes in the note he sent with it: ‘I send you by this bearer a buck killed late last night by my hand, hoping that when you eat it, it will remind you of the hunter.’ He sent Anne a constant stream of letters, arguably behaving much like a modern-day stalker, after she left his court for her family home of Hever Castle, reminding her that she had not kept her promise to write to him.
In January 1533, in a private ceremony at Whitehall Palace, Henry and Anne were finally married after seven years of legal wrangling with the Pope, during which Henry had split from Rome and declared himself Supreme Head of the Church in England. He even executed his boyhood friends, Sir Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher, for refusing to accept his self-styled new role. When the Pope tried to save Fisher by making him a cardinal – the execution of a cardinal required the Pope’s consent – Henry is said to have declared that if the Pope sent Fisher a cardinal’s hat, there would be no head to put it on. On 22 June 1535, he kept his word. Fisher’s head was then boiled and set on a pole beside the heads of monks, also executed for a refusal to accept Henry’s supremacy in the Church of England, and that of Elizabeth Barton, the Maid of Kent, who had made treasonous prophecies against the King. In July the head of Sir Thomas More joined them on Traitor’s Gate at the southern end of London Bridge.
Cardinal Wolsey, Henry’s long-time minister, had also fallen from favour. He was charged with praemunire, the offence of having set a foreign power higher than the King in England. His property became forfeit to the Crown, and on 9th October he was arrested but died before Henry could have him executed.
On 2nd May 1536, Henry had Anne Boleyn arrested on charges of adultery. Her real crime, however, was failing to give the king a male heir. Tradition tells us that the King was swayed to mercy by choosing to have Anne beheaded rather than burnt at the stake. But, this theory disappears when it becomes clear that for the French executioner to reach London for the date of Anne’s beheading, Henry must have requested he set out before the trial verdict.
Henry married Jane Seymour 11 days after Anne’s execution and the following year he sacked the monasteries. If ever the saying ‘You reap what you sow’ applies, it is to the later years of Henry’s reign after Anne Boleyn’s execution. Henry suffered as everything seemed to go wrong for him. Jane Seymour died the following year. The Pilgrimage of Grace, an uprising in the north against the ransacking of the monasteries, churches, and nunneries pulled 40,000 men to its cause. As always Henry fought fire with fire, imposing martial law in the north and executing the leading rebels.
Henry’s health deteriorated. His ulcerated legs meant he couldn’t enjoy the sporting activities he had in his early reign. The King was in chronic pain. As a result, he gained a massive amount of weight.
Fearing attacks from France and Spain for the break from Rome, Henry invested in a Royal Navy. He built dockyards on the River Thames at Deptford and Woolwich close to his armouries at Greenwich. He improved the army by increasing its firepower. With Catholic France and Spain against him, Henry married the daughter of the German Duke of Cleves. But Anne of Cleves was not to Henry’s liking. The failure of the marriage bought down Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s chief minister for a decade. Henry divorced Anne and blamed Cromwell for arranging the match. Cromwell was arrested and executed on 28th July 1540.
Henry’s next marriage to Anne Boleyn’s teenage cousin Katherine Howard led to the imprisonment of the Duke of Norfolk in the Tower of London. He had arranged the match. Jane Parker, the wife of George Boleyn, was executed for aiding Queen Katherine’s adulterous affair. Katherine herself was executed on 13th February 1542.
Henry’s sixth wife Kathryn Parr was a loving stepmother to his children. She gave Henry companionship and comfort in his old age, but even she wasn’t safe from his paranoia. Kathryn was a committed reformer, and she ruled as regent while he led his troops in a final war against the French. The Catholics at court accused Kathryn of heresy, and she had to beg Henry for her life. For once, he showed mercy.
Around 72,000 people are estimated to have been executed during the reign of Henry VIII. In his later years, the King referred to ‘the prisoner in the tower, who died without justice.’ Before he died he repented for the crime committed against Anne Boleyn.