Henry VIII
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Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509,
before he was eighteen years old. He had originally been the
second son in his family, and had been educated to become a
churchman. He was better versed in academics and the arts than
the average prince of his time. He was noted for his
musicianship, learning, poetry and athletic prowess. He was
considered extremely handsome, was over six feet tall and
slender, and had golden hair.
Click for a link to some of Henry's poetry.
Click for a link to some of Henry's music.
When Henry came to the throne, he was the
possessor of one of the largest fortunes in Europe, accumulated
by his father, Henry VII. He was far more interested in
renovating the court and surrounding himself with scholars and
artists, leaving much of the governing of England to Thomas
Wolsey. He married his first wife, Catherine of Aragon after his
father's death, and before he was crowned. It is notable that he
had no material reason to marry Catherine. She had briefly been
his brother, Arthur's wife, and her dowry had long been absorbed
into the royal treasury. She lived in poverty at Henry 's court,
and was in the process of returning to Spain when Henry VII died
and the new king, Henry VIII, took her as his bride.
Henry and Catherine had only one child who
survived infancy, Princess Mary. It was his lack of a male heir
that led Henry to decide to put Catherine aside. At the time, a
woman inheriting the throne of England would bring it to whatever
man she married as her dowry. Henry couldn't bear the idea of
England being ruled as a territory of another country by Mary's
future husband.
More about
Catharine of Aragon.
After Henry failed to have his marriage to
Catherine annulled by the Pope, he declared himself Supreme Head
of the Church in England. His marriage to Catherine was annulled,
and she was eventually sent into retirement in the country. The Act of Supremacy was
drawn up, to which all loyal British subjects were to swear.
Catherine and Princess Mary refused, as did Sir Thomas More.
Henry, desperate for an heir, and in love
with Anne Boleyn, a maid of honour to Catherine, began to have
his subjects who refused to swear to the Act of Supremacy put to
death. Though Catherine and Mary were threatened with execution,
they were spared, though Thomas More, Bishop Fisher and many
other people lost their lives when they refused to denounce their
loyalty to the Pope.
The date of Henry's marriage to Anne is
uncertain, but they were married in early 1533. She gave birth to
Princess Elizabeth in September of that year. Successive
pregnancies failed to produce the son that Henry wanted
desperately. Anne was accused of adultery and incest, treasonous
crimes in a King's consort, and was executed in 1536.
More about Anne
Boleyn.
Catherine of Aragon had died during
Henry's three year marriage to Anne, so he found himself
unmarried and without a male heir at forty-five, after more than
twenty years of marriage to two different women. During his
troubled marriage to Anne, his eye had fallen on yet another maid
of honour in service to the Queen, Jane Seymour.
Jane was a quiet young woman who seemed to
be a calming influence on Henry, who had become increasingly
erratic and brutal over time. Unfortunately, their marriage was
short lived, as she died of puerperal fever in 1537, shortly
after giving birth to Henry's long desired son, who would become
Edward VI. Henry seems to have truly mourned Jane, and remained
unmarried for three years after her death.
More about
Jane Seymour.
In 1540, Henry entered an arranged
marriage with Anna of Cleves. Now the Supreme Head of the Church
of England, it was expedient for Henry to cement diplomatic ties
with the Lutheran Germanic states.
Anna's appearance, when she arrived in
England, was a disappointment to Henry. He had the marriage
dissolved almost immediately, but Anna drove a hard bargain in
accepting an annulment. She was presented with several
properties, including Richmond Palace, she retained
"visitation rights" with Edward, Elizabeth and the now
grown Princess Mary, and she was styled Henry's "most
beloved sister".
More about Anna
of Cleves.
Now suffering from poor health, including
gross obesity, a leg ulcer that refused to heal, and sporadic
attacks of "dropsy" or edema, Henry entered old age.
During his brief marriage to Anna, his eye had fallen on one of
her maids of honour (Henry had quite a taste for maids of
honour), Katherine Howard.
Katherine was between sixteen and nineteen
when she married Henry. Orphaned at an early age, she had led a
largely unsupervised and unchaste life up until the time she
caught the eye of the King. Her past indiscretions caught up with
her after she and Henry were married and were compounded by an
affair she had after becoming Queen. She was executed in 1542.
More about
Katherine Howard.
In seriously declining health, Henry knew
he was likely to die and leave Edward to inherit as a minor. A
boy king was in danger of becoming a puppet at the hands of his
Protectorate. Henry kept his courtiers on tenterhooks through the
final years of his reign as he continually revised his will,
which he kept secret until the last.
Katherine Parr was a serious woman who had
twice before been married to ailing old men. She was well
acquainted with the rigors of nursing an elderly sick husband.
She was also a Protestant, and entertained Henry with theological
discussions. She befriended his estranged daughters and reunited
his family. She managed to survive her unpredictable husband.
More about
Katherine Parr.
Henry VIII died in 1547, after months of
illness. He left one legitimate heir, Edward VI, a frail child of
nine. Henry's daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, long declared
illegitimate, posed serious threats to the throne of their
brother. England had ceased to be a Catholic country with
allegiance to Rome during Henry's reign, though it was torn
between Catholic and Protestant factions during the reigns of
Edward and then Mary I.
Henry's interest in culture and education had converted his court
from a medieval establishment into a center of Renaissance
culture. This cultural emphasis reached full flower during the
reign of his daughter, Elizabeth I.
Now, how do we look at Henry in our time?
True, a King who had two of his wives executed, as well as
hundreds of other people who disagreed with his policies, does
not seem particularly savory to us now. But when we look through
the filter of Henry's own time, some of his actions might seem
less despotic.
Henry's desire for a son to succeed him seems chauvinistic to us
in an age where women have proven that they can successfully
serve as heads of state. In the 1500s, women were considered
chattel, a possession of their father or husband. Had Henry's
first daughter, Mary, inherited the throne, her marriage would
have determined England's fate. If she married an Englishman, it
would have caused divisions between the peers, and civil war
could have resulted. If she had married a foreign king or prince,
England would have been ruled as a territory of that country.
This option was unacceptable to Henry, to the point where he
attempted to elevate his illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, to a
royal title, hoping that the English people might accept him as
their future King. Failing in this, and married to a woman who
was past her childbearing years, Henry found it reasonable to try
again, with an enchanting, younger woman.
Catherine of Aragon was given the option of retiring to a convent
or setting up her own household as Dowager Princess of Wales if
she would agree that her marriage to Henry was null and void. She
chose the less expedient measure of maintaining the integrity of
her marriage and her daughter's legitimacy.
As for the executions of Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and hundreds
of people who refused to swear to the Act of Supremacy, we must
remember that in Henry's time, rulers were considered absolute.
This is hard to comprehend, in our age of democracy. Dissenters
posed a threat to throne, and to England itself. Henry lived in
fear that people would rally around Catherine of Aragon or Mary,
or that Catholic nobles in the realm would form their own armies
and rise against him. The memories of The Wars of the Roses were
strong in Henry's time, and he was determined that England would
not suffer another civil war.
The executions of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard are probably
the hardest of Henry's actions for the modern mind to understand.
Under the law of the time, both these women had committed
treason. In retrospect, most of the evidence presented against
Anne Boleyn was obviously trumped up. She had been an outspoken
woman, and her marriage to Henry was never popular, particularly
among the peerage. She had powerful enemies, who waited until she
committed the "blunder" of failing to provide Henry
with his son. He had already set the precedent of putting one
wife aside. Why not another? When a jury of her peers found Anne
guilty of treason, she was sentenced to be burned at the stake.
Katherine Howard was never tried, having confessed to committing
adultery while married to the King. Henry gave her the chance to
admit to a previous marriage with her cousin, which would have
made her marriage to him non-existent, and the charges of treason
non-existent as well. Katherine refused to admit the she had
never been Queen of England.
Henry commuted both Anne and Katherine's sentences to simple
beheading, which was considered the humane execution of the time,
much like the guillotine of the French Revolution, or the lethal
injection of today.
So what happened to the young Boy King who was the Pope's
Defender of the Faith and surrounded himself with scholars and
artists? How did the Henry of 1509 turn into the irrational,
despotic, absolute ruler of his middle and later years? Many
interesting theories have been posed about this--that he suffered
the insidious dementia associated with syphilis, that progressive
insanity ran in his family, that he was incapacitated by a series
of minor strokes. One recently posed theory makes a lot of sense.
Diabetes. The
devastating effects of this disease when untreated, as it would
have been in Henry's time, can explain many of the mysteries
surrounding the Tudors. Tudors died young, with a few exceptions.
Henry originally had six brothers and sisters. Only three
survived to become adults. The others fell pray to a
"wasting" condition termed "consumption",
where the victim would progressively grow thinner and weaker,
eventually dying.
These are the symptoms of diabetic ketoacidosis, which can claim
the lives of untreated diabetics. In fact, when Henry's brother,
Arthur, was dying, he asked repeatedly for water. His thirst was
overwhelming, another diabetic symptom.
Henry and his sisters, Margaret and Mary, survived into
adulthood. Mary died as a young adult, after several pregnancies,
of the same "wasting" disease that claimed the Tudor
siblings who did not survive childhood. Margaret suffered a
series of strokes in middle and later life, and also showed signs
of progressive dementia before her death, much like Henry. Many
of Henry's symptoms, his leg ulcer, the strokes he suffered in
later life, his wild mood swings, his progressive dementia all
point toward severe uncontrolled diabetes.
This is not an apology for Henry's actions. He was a ruthless
king, who eliminated all perceived threats to his throne and to
England. His dissolution of the monasteries enriched his own
coffers. His treatment of Catherine of Aragon and his daughters
was unnecessarily harsh. But he also held the country together
through a time of cataclysmic change. He was popular with the
English until his death.
Still don't care for him, and consider him a bloodthirsty
monster, who would never be tolerated in our civilized times?
Here are a few words to ponder.
Hitler. Idi Amin. The
Tuskeegee Experiment.
Kosovo. Mengele. Columbine. Auschwitz.
Simpson. Somalia. Nanjing. Pol Pot. Matthew Shepard.
Daumer. Dachau. Gacy.
Biafra. Gangs.
Indifference.
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