Was Henry VIII England's Most Evil King?

This is the turbulent reign of that infamous Tudor monarch, Henry VIII. His spectacularly complicated love life, break with Rome, political executions and ruthless pursuit of power. Today we examine his rule and the many unfortunate people who crossed his path, and ask whether his actions make him England’s most evil monarch. To investigate whether Henry VIII truly deserves the title, we're joined by Kate Williams, author of 'Regina: A New History of Women and Power'. Produced by James Hickmann and Mariana Des Forges, and edited by Dougal Patmore. We need your help! Let us know what you want from Dan Snow's History Hit by filling in our anonymous survey here: https://forms.gle/PvgayWLkWGjYT4St6 Dan Snow's History Hit is now available on YouTube! Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcast Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Dan Snow's History Hit is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  You know the caricature, the hulking figure, stood with legs akimbo, the ultimate power pose, a man whose appetites seemed endless. He fractured the church, he executed his enemies, he executed his friends, he executed many of his wives. He was a user, an abuser, a murderous, narcissistic despot. And yet, for some reason, we're all still sort of obsessed with King Henry VIII. Is it because he was particularly charismatic? Did he drag England out of the Middle Ages? Did he lay the foundations for a powerful royal navy? Which I approve of.

• 2:22Speaker 00

  Could you say that he launched England, Britain's global golden age and helped to forge the modern state? Well, we're going to talk about it. Do we excuse the terrible things he did to the women in his life and to all the people that opposed him? And why do we do it, if so? Joining us to dig into the cult of personality that is Henry VIII is the historian, the author, the broadcaster, the great friend of this podcast, Professor Kate Williams, whose most recent book is Regina, A New History of Women and Power. Why do we love to hate King Henry VIII? Right now on Dan Snow's History Hit.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  Kate Williams, good to see you.

• 3:09Speaker 04

  Good to see you, Dan.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  It's the big one, isn't it?

• 3:11Speaker 04

  It's the big one.

• 3:12Speaker 00

  Why do, what is it with, why is this, why are we obsessed with Henry VIII still? What, the man's a megalomaniac, he's a murderer, what's going on here?

• 3:20Speaker 04

  He's a megalomaniac, he's a, one might say, a sexual terrorist. He executes lots of people called Catherine, my namesake. I mean, you know, it says in Holland's Chronicles that he executes 72,000. I think most historians think it's more around the 20,000 mark, but that's quite a lot when Bloody Mary gets called Bloody Mary for executing nearly 300. So, yeah, why do we love Henry VIII so much? Mr. Bombastic, as Shaggy would say.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  Is he, do we love to hate him? What's, is it, are we drawn to the, there is a feral charisma there. In fact, okay, well, let's, let's break it down. Let's talk about, he was glam, I mean, we forget, really, he was a very glamorous prince. He was in the, in the spirit of his absolute legendary grandfather, Edward IV, who was beautiful, a phenomenal warrior. If he'd, if he'd made the most of himself, he could have really gone places, Edward IV. I always think it's disappointing. Yeah, he let himself go a bit. But so initially, it feels like kind of a Henry'sian golden age. And also, there's been this big period of instability, Wars of the Roses, his dad's not super glamorous, Henry VII still, but he comes to the throne, it feels like we're

• 4:30Speaker 00

  back, we're back in the stability, there's peace. And then there's a handsome young prince, is that what it's about?

• 4:36Speaker 04

  He's handsome, he's 17, he's pure glamour, he marries Catherine of Amregon, which is seen as such a great alliance, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  Rock star.

• 4:47Speaker 04

  Rock star. He'd been betrothed to her niece, Queen Joanna's daughter, but the niece was too young to get married, and Henry wants to be married, he wants to be on there, he wants to have this huge coronation, gigantic coronation. It's the last joint coronation between Catherine and Henry until we get to James I. So really, this is a huge moment. But you know what's interesting about Henry is that for so long, he was overlooked, for so long, he was the spare, destined for an ecclesiastical career. I mean, I suppose he did have an ecclesiastical career.

• 5:20Speaker 00

  He did have a big impact on religion.

• 5:21Speaker 04

  Yes, he did, he did. And, and was rather excluded because he was the spare. Arthur was the heir, Henry was the spare, a bit overlooked. Some historians say he was too cosseted by the women who brought him up around him and made him a bit too used to women saying yes all the time. And it's when he becomes the heir after Arthur's death, that transforms his life. And what I do find interesting is that Henry VII, as you say, not Mr. Glamour, bans jousting. He does not want the future Henry VIII doing any jousting. And it's all.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  Is that health and safety concerns?

• 5:58Speaker 04

  Health and safety.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  Or is it that he doesn't want them hanging with that crowd?

• 6:00Speaker 04

  Health and safety, well, I think probably both, those dodgy jousting boys. He doesn't want his son jousting, it's too dangerous. He's already lost Arthur, there are two girls, but there were, there were seven births to Henry and Elizabeth of York, but there were, now we have three children remaining, Margaret, Henry, Mary. So we don't want a woman on the throne, we've already seen what happens when you have a weak person on the throne with Henry VI, the Wars of the Roses, no, no, no. So.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  So everyone's worried about sliding back into the Wars of the Roses.

• 6:29Speaker 04

  Everyone's terrified. I think that's the thing we have to remember about the Tudors, isn't it? That they are, they come so quick after the Wars of the Roses. People are terrified of this insurrection, the endless battles, poor old places like St. Albans get you to the neck. The people of St. Albans and the various shopkeepers of the country want to get on with their lives and they don't want the Wars of the Roses. So you want this strong monarchy. So you have the, have the Tudors, a very dodgy, I mean, I am Welsh, I can say this, but a very dodgy Welsh claim, I mean, Welsh are somewhat excluded in polite society, and here they are, this Welsh claim coming through Catherine of Walwa. Henry VII has used and abused Catherine of Walwa's body in Westminster Abbey, left

• 7:11Speaker 04

  it open to the elements, and everyone can see it because I think he wants to disavow his debt to Catherine of Walwa. And later on, this is the best thing, not the best thing, it's a very bad thing, but much later on, Samuel Pepys decides it's his birthday, his 36th birthday, so he's going to go and kiss the Queen. So he goes and gives a great big kiss to Catherine of Walwa in Westminster Abbey. So the poor woman is used and abused by goodness knows how many people like Pepys. And I think part of that is Henry VII disavowing his link to Catherine of Walwa and Owen Tudor, but yet claiming he's the man who won on the battlefield, the great, the great king who's allied, the Tudor rose, York and Lancaster are bonded together, and he's got to have this son who takes the throne.

• 7:55Speaker 04

  So Henry VIII, as a young prince, is rather wrapped in cotton wool, well, Tudor cotton wool.

• 8:02Speaker 00

  And it's been 100 years since a reasonably grown up male heir has succeeded his father on the throne. So there's, and there's been a civil war in the means, so, so this is an, so everyone's quite excited for this. Henry VII dies, this young prince takes over, and everyone thinks, this is kind of normal service resumed, this is good.

• 8:21Speaker 04

  Everyone is thrilled, everyone is delighted with Henry on the throne. He has everything, he's got riches, he's got power, he's got this alliance with Spain. It seems as if he's the great prince. And Henry, well, all kings do this, but Henry really drinks his own Kool-Aid, doesn't he? Henry believes his own myth, he believes he's the greatest, and he thinks, ha ha, now what I'm going to do is I'm going to rule France, that's what I'm going to do, I'm going to rule Scotland, I'm going to rule France. So his vision is of himself as the most powerful prince in Europe. I always think it's interesting that he even thinks he could be Holy Roman Emperor at one point. I mean, it's a bit of a change in life, isn't it?

• 9:03Speaker 04

  You think you can be Holy Roman Emperor and then you break out from the church.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, exactly. And he, the man who would be defender of the faith. But anyway, so, so he is, but he is physically impressive. I mean, it's not just the, we are told, aren't we, that he was every inch the kind of prince of Renaissance prince?

• 9:22Speaker 04

  Everyone says that princesses are gorgeous, and everyone says that princes are handsome, but I do think Henry was handsome. He was handsome, he was fit, he'd been a great athlete in his youth, I would argue a greater athlete than a scholar. He's perhaps someone at school who would be heading up the ruggers team, but not really doing so well in his maths exam. And Henry is so, you know, he's really, I mean, he's brilliant at presenting himself. All the Tudors know how, as Napoleon put it, to throw glitter in men's eyes, to distract them and dazzle them with monarchy. This is what the Tudors specialize in. And Henry himself specializes in these grand celebrations at court and also public ones,

• 10:06Speaker 04

  public processions, which Elizabeth I is a brilliant inheritor of. When we look at her coronation, the final triumphal arch through Henry and Elizabeth of York and Anne Boleyn, and then Elizabeth, all together. It's this myth-making, this myth-weaving, and the use of tableau and spectacle. Henry is brilliant at it and creates this young, fun, international-looking court.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  And then he has a son, and there's a new Prince of Wales, and there's more celebrations and then.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  Seven weeks later, the little prince of Wales dies.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  That's sad.

• 10:42Speaker 04

  It is sad. It is sad. They'd even celebrated it with a joust. So Henry put the jousts on.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  Huge party.

• 10:47Speaker 04

  The jousts, everything happens and the poor little boy dies. And it is a tragedy. It's so tragic what happens to Henry and Catherine because in every way, she was the perfect consort. People loved her. She was seen as really devoted. She was seen as really pious. And I think out of all of his wives, she was the only one he did truly respect. He did truly see her as a great queen and a great consort. Yes, I think he respected Amber Lynn in different ways and yes, Catherine Parr, but certainly with Catherine of Aragon, she was the perfect consort. She's regent for him. She goes bonkers on James of Scotland, sends James of Scotland's

• 11:30Speaker 04

  blooded coat to Henry while he's fighting the first of his three totally hopeless wars with France. I mean, they are totally hopeless.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  Well, let's come to that because so if we have established why Henry is superficially quite attractive as a young king, it's a reasonably good time for England. It seems like normal service has been resumed. You've got a sort of magnificent glittering king and indeed royal family, the makings of a royal family on the throne. And then let's come on to the fact that actually the reality behind that, which is that, as you say, he uses that kind of capital and just embarks on the stupidest set of wars of France, doesn't he? He's got money in his treasury. He's got youth on his side. He's got a reasonably united political class the first time in a long time. And he just goes and sets fire to it all by trying to replicate the successes, if you like, or certainly the endeavors of

• 12:22Speaker 00

  his ancestors. His Plantagenet four bears, Ebba the Third, the Black Prince, Henry the Fifth, and he invades France. He tries to press this claim to, or he tries to restart the Hundred Years' War almost, doesn't he?

• 12:35Speaker 04

  Yes. I mean, the thought that you could ever get England's possessions in France back, I mean, that's just not going to happen. And, you know, I love it. They're like, oh, everyone, we've got Boulogne now. Oh, great. It's marvelous. Well done. Well done, chaps. And obviously, he is sending young men to their deaths. It is serious. But at the same time, we just think, Henry, this is a disaster. And, you know, I really feel that, Dan, you are, you are the military expert if you think there is nothing salvageable in these hopeless wars.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  Well, there is nothing salvageable in these hopeless wars because England at this point is not to conquer France. And secondly, Henry VIII has not seemingly noticed that there is one of the great revolutions of world history happening, which is the Atlantic World's opening up. Christopher Columbus has been to the New World. John Cabot has been to the New World. He's been to Newfoundland, very nice place. And Henry is investing all his time and energy trying to refight medieval battles in France. What are you doing?

• 13:28Speaker 04

  I just want Normandy.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  Yes. What are you thinking? Look west, young man.

• 13:32Speaker 04

  Look west.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  So, okay, so that is kind of, that's catastrophic. He burns through money. He burns through prestige. He burns through, like, he actually, he sort of shows England what it is, which is a lot less powerful.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  A lot less powerful than it was once, this tiny tin pot country. Catherine of Aragon really, I mean, she's the youngest princess of Isabella of Castile. It's not particularly marvelous what she gets as a solution. You know, Catherine of Aragon, I really do feel, you know, when Henry VII, when Elizabeth of York died, he actually thought he might marry Catherine of Aragon.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  Himself, really?

• 14:06Speaker 04

  Yes. He thought he might marry her. And Isabella of Castile, Catherine's mother, said, oh, no, that's disgusting to the ear. I mean, goodness knows, she married various of her children to various similar men. She said, no. But if only Catherine of Aragon had married Henry VII and been Henry VIII's stepmother, she would have had a much better life, I'd say. But instead, she gets Henry VIII, who her parents have always wanted her to marry, and he is this iconic figure. But he gets that, as you say, with money, with power. He squanders it in war. And also, he has zero interest in the details of administration. And this is how various men, pretty much who are all called Thomas, if all of his wives

• 14:48Speaker 04

  are called Catherine, all of his advisors, we've got Thomas Cranmer, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas More, Thomas Wolsey, the Thomases gain the power. And Thomas Wolsey, who has already been serving Henry VII, is someone who survives and becomes very significant in Henry VIII's reign because Henry doesn't want the minutiae and Wolsey takes on the minutiae.

• 15:10Speaker 00

  Henry VIII's greatest military victory, probably won for him by his wife.

• 15:15Speaker 04

  That's a good point.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  So while he's off in France, wasting time and money, the Scots invade England. And tell me, I mean, to what extent is his wife really involved in that, in the defence of the realm at that point?

• 15:26Speaker 04

  Well, actually Catherine is ruthless. She commands immediately that Scots men, Scots people living in England must lose their property because you will be potential spies. And she sends the army out. And there is this cataclysmic battle at Flodden. I mean, cataclysmic. And James himself, the king, is dead. So Catherine.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  The King of Scotland's killed on the battlefield.

• 15:48Speaker 04

  King of Scotland. James IV is actually killed. And this is Henry's nephew and he's killed. And Catherine of Aragon, well, she gets the blooded coat of James, poor guy, can't he get buried in his coat? She gets a blooded coat and sends that to Henry as a triumph. So she is triumphant. But then she miscarries the pregnancy that she'd been bearing. So that's the tragic thing for Catherine. It doesn't matter. You've been a great consort, devoted, pious, a war leader, a regent, but all you are judged by is whether or not you can have that son.

• 16:23Speaker 00

  We hold that thought. But what we should do at a different time is the untimely and strange deaths of the Stuart kings of Scotland. That would be a great podcast.

• 16:30Speaker 04

  It would be very strange. Fell off a horse. Oh, here we go, another one.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  Blown up by a cannon. Okay, so.

• 16:36Speaker 04

  So strange.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  So, and these miscarriages, then are we now getting towards the beginnings of this epic psychodrama of the Henryian reign, which is of course, his desire for a son and his married life?

• 16:51Speaker 04

  His married life. So Mary is born in 1516, a very healthy little girl, Princess Mary, future Mary the First, a very healthy little girl. And Henry thinks she's marvelous initially. He's delighted by her. She's very clever. She's shown off to the ambassadors. And she is betrothed to the Dauphin of France at some point, various marriage deals. But she's a girl. And no matter how much Catherine of Aragon, who's seen her mother be this queen of Spain, a great queen, and obviously been very cruel to the Jews and to the Muslims of Spain, but been deemed by many as a great queen, Catherine thinks, well, Mary can rule. But to Henry, that's going back to the chaos of the Wars of the Roses. And he is the ultimate

• 17:33Speaker 04

  alpha male. He's obsessed with his own masculinity. I mean, we might say Henry has been, Henry's high on a cocktail of toxic masculinity.

• 17:43Speaker 00

  Radicalized by the manosphere.

• 17:45Speaker 04

  The manosphere, the jousting sphere, the joustosphere. And this is what Henry is. He's proving himself, I think partly because he was an ignored spare all those years until Arthur died. And we don't know what he dies of. Maybe he dies of sweating sickness. But you know what? I've been looking into this. Some researchers think that sweating sickness was, they think it was the hantavirus.

• 18:07Speaker 00

  No.

• 18:08Speaker 04

  They do. They do. That born hantavirus, that that is what the sweating sickness may very well have been.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  It's all coming round again.

• 18:17Speaker 04

  It's always coming round again. And we know how brutal the sweating sickness is. So very interesting question. But, but I think Henry, well, Henry really felt the fact that he was an excluded heir. And now he's taking a psychodrama revenge on his father and making himself into this grand, great prince, except his wars are hopeless and he doesn't want to be bothered with government. So he leaves it all in the hands of people called Thomas.

• 18:41Speaker 00

  So Kate, we're trying to wrestle with this question. Why are we still quite drawn to him? So we talked about his military failure early in his reign, but alongside an element of being a kind of majestic embodiment of the kingly ideal. We are also interested in him, are we? Because important things in government happen on his watch? The birth of the Royal Navy, the sophistication of the bureaucracy, the kind of beginnings of a, I don't know, might you say a modern state? Does he deserve any credit for that, do you think? Or is that his clever ministers who are doing that because he's too busy off doing other things?

• 19:16Speaker 04

  We do see the birth of a much more modern taxation system, start to see a centralized bureaucracy. But a large amount of the reason for that is of course, because of, as we'll talk about, Henry's break from Rome, we see a separation of canon law from day to day law, that increasingly the law is what is made by the English courts. The church courts don't have the same jurisdiction. So we are becoming a secular country. And the tax collection is something that does become more efficient and centralized. Of course, the first two people that Henry executes are his father's rather successful tax collectors.

• 19:55Speaker 00

  Who were doing their jobs.

• 19:57Speaker 04

  So, yes, exactly. You know, the hardworking HMRC reps answering the phone on the HMRC phone lines and get executed for it, just doing their job. And Henry does preside over this radical change in the state, partly due to the break from Rome, but partly due to modernization. He does build up the navy and does create huge dockyards and a much more shipyards. I mean, he does create a much more modernized country. I mean, partly it's because he's so wildly competitive with everyone else in the whole wide world. But I think also, we wouldn't be as fascinated by Henry if it wasn't for the King's Great Matter.

• 20:36Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 20:36Speaker 04

  If it wasn't for the divorce. We would, I think, see him as the ultimate blink king or the bombastic setup, the field of the cloth of gold, where they finish it off with a dragon on a wagon, a great dragon flew through the sky apparently with fire coming out of its mouth after, you know, Henry's Portal Palace. It was, I think the Portal Palace and the Field of the Cloth of Gold for Henry took 6,000 men to put it up. And it was 12,000 square yards. And it was a brick sort of foundation with cloth over it, painted to look like a palace. I mean, unbelievable expenditure on a diplomatic summit. You know, we watch a diplomatic summit now and think, my goodness, they're eating a lot of salmon sandwiches. Nothing compared to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. So Henry goes big and

• 21:20Speaker 04

  he goes big on everything. And I think that's one fact that we might not find something we'd like in a modern day leader, but we find it fascinating in terms of his sort of gigantic, go big or go home. That's what he does. But I think that despite everything that happens in his reign, without the King's Great Matter, without the Six Wives, as Six the Musical tells us, that's the story that we'll never forget.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  Well, we're going to talk about the Great Matter after this. Don't go away, folks. More Kate Williams coming up.

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• 24:47Speaker 00

  So Kate, we have talked about Henry as a glamorous prince. We've talked a little bit about the changes in government in the state that's going on, some of these more modern innovations, the fact that everything was larger than life. He was a showman. But you think the reason that we remain drawn to him, you know, lots of young people, that's almost the first king of England that they would name, strangely. You think it's because of his extraordinary drama of his wives, of his six wives?

• 25:16Speaker 04

  I think you're right, Dan. Ask people to name a king of England, and apart from the current one, people would say Henry VIII. That is the one people remember. Divorced, beheaded, died, ETC. It's the one that's inscribed. It's the one we talk about. He is the bombastic, the biggest, the greatest. Henry VIII is the biggest character in the royal pantomime you could ever imagine. Like you say, he's a showman. He is a showman. He's the ultimate circus showman. He comes out and he leads the circus, but also he creates the biggest show, the biggest show in the 16th century, I might argue. And it's not the Field of the Cloth of Gold. It's not any one of his celebrations or parties or dances at court. It's the King's Great Matter.

• 26:00Speaker 04

  And it's when the king sees the limits of his authority. Because when you're a king like Henry, you believe that nothing, nothing can stop you. And even when he keeps losing against France, he's like, we haven't lost everyone. We've won. Oh, yes. But with the King's Great Matter, it's about so many things. It's about what is the consort? What is the queen? How, how much power does she have? Can she just be set aside? But it's also the king coming up against the limits of his power. And that, I think we find that fascinating as humans. How far can we go until we are stopped?

• 26:37Speaker 00

  Well, he's stopped by nature on one level because he can't produce a son with his wife Catherine.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  Has an illegitimate son with Elizabeth Blout in 1519.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  And that must boost his morale because he's quite, he's quite a good-looking kid. He does well, he grows well.

• 26:52Speaker 04

  I mean, you know, the question of how many mistresses Henry has is a constant debate. Did he have a lot? Did he not have many? But certainly that moment that he has his illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, is a big boost to him because he's thinking, well, I can do it. It must be her. And, and when Catherine, Catherine turns 40 and it conveniently intersects with a moment when Henry is struck by the dart of love.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:22Speaker 04

  Struck. Now, the French Wars, as we talked about, the collapse of poor old Cardinal Wolsey, who I do love him, he loves a contract, Cardinal Wolsey. He makes these wonderful contracts of peace, these peace summits of 20 people and everyone gets together and then, then they all fall apart. So the end of the French alliance, which was sort of sealed and created at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

• 27:43Speaker 00

  Quite short-lived.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  Yes, very short-lived. Cardinal Wolsey is very sad, but that also has the effect that Anne Boleyn comes back from France because Anne Boleyn is in France, serving the French queen. She was at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. She was there. Henry would have seen her there, but he obviously wasn't struck by any darts at that point. So Anne Boleyn comes back in 1522 because it's not appropriate that a woman can serve the French queen when, when her country's at war. So she comes back, she becomes lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon in 1522. And then in around 1525, Henry falls in love.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  Decides he's madly enough.

• 28:24Speaker 04

  She's the one. He's got to have her. And Anne says, no.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Smart move.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  It's interesting, isn't it? Because Anne, what's she going to do at this point? Her sister has been Henry's mistress, Mary Boleyn has been Henry's mistress, and Anne is under pressure. She doesn't want to be Henry VIII's mistress. She wants to make a good marriage. That's what she's at court for. She'd hoped to marry a great aristocrat. That had been blocked. Cardinal Wolsey, she blames for it. And I think Anne's vision was of herself, well, marrying a great aristocrat and then busying herself with the Tudor equivalent of the school run and the, the school bake sale. That's what she wanted to do with her life, chatting, chatting with the other four-wheel driver mums. And that's what she wanted. Instead, she gets dragged into this great drama when the king decides she's the only one he can have. And he is sexually harassing her. There's no way around it. I mean, he's sexually harassing her.

• 29:16Speaker 04

  He's pressing her. Everyone's pressing her, not just her family, but everyone's saying, just make the king happy. But she knows that everyone's going to laugh at her. The whole court is going to laugh at her and set her aside. So Anne resists. She goes to Hevercastle when there's an outbreak of the sweating sickness. She goes to Hevercastle and that's where we have some of the letters that Henry writes to Anne, offering her a buck that he hunted and think on it. And I really am fascinated by this jewel that Anne sends to Henry of a damsel being rocked around in a boat. Now, Henry thinks this is a sexual invitation. He thinks, oh, you know, oh, that's you being rocked around in a boat of my love. But I would think, I think she's saying, you know, I'm going to drown here. I'm, I'm going to drown here.

• 30:01Speaker 04

  Have mercy on me. But of course he doesn't have mercy on her. And Henry presses and presses. And so early in 1527, there's a meeting because the king has now realized, he's realized that he shouldn't have married Catherine. After all, it was against the word of the Bible. So shouldn't marry your brother's wife. And then Catherine is told that she could go quietly and live where she wants. And she says, no. And this is the beginning of the King's Great Matter, which will drag on and on and be the news of all Europe. All Europe becomes obsessed by the King's Great Matter. And over and over again, Henry is thwarted.

• 30:44Speaker 00

  Is in the end, Henry breaks with Rome, which people, it means that he says that England is no longer under the spiritual authority of the Pope. We are going to break away, we're going to establish our own Church Anglicism. Is that another reason you think traditionally people have been quite drawn to Henry? Because particularly when Britain, there was lots, you know, almost total religious observance in Britain, people are very proud of Anglicanism, of England and Britain's journey, separate from the Catholic powers of the continent. Do you think in the 19th century, 18th, 19th century, people were quite proud of Henry VIII for that reason, that kind of boosted his reputation?

• 31:21Speaker 04

  I think you're absolutely right, Dan. I think the Victorians are fascinated by the Tudors, fascinated by the glory of the Tudors. They see the early, they see the beginnings of the imperial.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  Naval expansion.

• 31:34Speaker 04

  Exactly, in Henry. Now, they're ambiguous about Elizabeth's gloriada, because she doesn't do that thing that women should do, is have a child, but they do love to see her as the great heroine. And I think, as you say, so much of that is rooted in this real love for Anglicanism, which, thanks to Henry and thanks to Elizabeth, is something of a fudge, isn't it? We can say it looks Catholic with the crucifixions, with the candles, with the interiors. It doesn't look what Calvin would have wanted, a stripped down, bare room, but it has the English common prayer, it has the English services, it has the idea of the communion rather than the mass. But Henry's so resistant to that at times, he gets crosser and crosser.

• 32:18Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  Near the end of his reign, he's like, I'm sorry, no, no, no, no, we are staying Catholic. And so we have the ultimate, and I'm scrolling forward a bit, we have the ultimate irony that when Henry's dying, Cranmer, the pretty much very sympathetic Protestant Archbishop is sent to hear Henry's confession, except poor old Henry can't speak, so just clasps Cranmer's hand. But I think Henry is a Catholic, it's almost like he is riding a tiger. He gets on this tiger, saying, okay, everyone, I'm going to behead and I'm going to get all the money. And suddenly he finds this religious sentiment is exploding past him, he can't control it. So he can't control his wives, because no matter how much he tries to silence them, cancel every image of Amberlin or Catherine Howard, because he never wants any mention

• 33:04Speaker 04

  of them, yet their voices have reverberated more powerfully through history. But he also can't control religion. When we think of the great poem, Ozymandias, that Shelley's poem, isn't it, you know, look on my works, you mighty in despair, and it's just a crumbled ruin. There's so much of that in Henry VIII. He's the ultimate irony. Yes, he lays down the empire and he lays down the church, which the Victorians thought was the best, best ever church, best, best, and must be imposed on the entire world. Yes, thank you very much. But also, he sees the limits of his power.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  That's so interesting. So his religious settlement, such it was, his sort of fudge, but anyway, subsequent generations came to admire that very much. But his, yeah, so he goes, he marries Amberlin eventually.

• 33:47Speaker 04

  He marries Amberlin early in 1533.

• 33:49Speaker 00

  Truly sends, sends his former wife, divorces former wife, sends her off to the countryside.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  Off she goes, yes, I'm never going to see you again, dies of neglect, dies of neglect in 1536.

• 33:58Speaker 00

  Yes, because he's married to Amberlin, she has a series of, well, there's miscarriages, she has a daughter, she has another daughter.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  Henry marries Amberlin in 1533, early January, at York Place, which was Cardinal Walz's house, and they take it and it becomes Whitehall Palace, that now covered by our wonderful government buildings. Actually, the cockfighting pit, the cabinet office, is on the position that was Henry VIII cockfighting pit, which I think is rather fitting. And then in September, in early September, Anne gives birth to a little girl, Elizabeth. That's not what everyone expected. Everyone expected a prince. Anne had this coronation ceremony, this special coronation ceremony, when she was crowned with the monarch's crown, to really imply that they were crowning this baby in her belly. And Henry, you know, he's not devastated by the birth of a girl, because it's a good

• 34:49Speaker 04

  start, but what happens is the same story that he had with Catherine. Obstetric tragedies, stillbirths, miscarriages, and in early 1536, Anne miscarries on the same day that Catherine of Aragon was buried. And the ambassador who hates Anne said, she is miscarried of her saviour. And our friend Stan Lipscomb's written that marvelous book, 1536, hasn't she, about how this changes Henry's life? He has this fatal jousting accident, Catherine of Aragon dies, and this is the year which Amberlin will not see the end of.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  So she gives birth, people suggest it was a boy, it would have been a boy, had it lived to full term. Henry VIII is in a catastrophic jousting accident, almost dies, and with.

• 35:37Speaker 04

  Henry VII did tell him, Henry VII told him.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  Don't joust, lass.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, and he's getting a bit old by now, you know. Yeah, exactly.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  And he had probably lifelong consequences of that.

• 35:47Speaker 04

  This wound in his leg, he gets his, he was concussed for a period, and then he gets this very bad wound in his leg, and.

• 35:55Speaker 00

  It doesn't heal.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  And it doesn't heal, partly because they don't really believe in closing it, they think it's good to be open to the elements. And it separates and gets worse and worse. And when he's older and can barely move, there's gout and he's got boils and it's a separating wound. So that wound will torment him for the rest of his life.

• 36:13Speaker 00

  And leads him to put on lots of, he does less physical exercise afterwards, so he puts on the weight.

• 36:18Speaker 04

  He ends up with a 54 inch waist and has to be transported on mechanical transporters. So it is perhaps not the most appealing. So Catherine of Aragon gets this young, handsome, super, you know, the male model of Europe, and Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr get this.

• 36:36Speaker 00

  The last one.

• 36:37Speaker 04

  Rather large man.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  So Amberlin, he casts aside Amberlin.

• 36:40Speaker 04

  He casts aside Amberlin, she's executed on the 19th of May, 1536, a totally trumped up charge. I mean, it's totally a political assassination, it's all a setup. I mean, even her enemies say, oh, I don't, this is a setup. She has clashed with him over many things. She's clashed with him over the dissolution of the monasteries. She wants the money from the monasteries to go to charitable causes. He and Cromwell want it to go to our coffers, we want that money. And she clashes with him on many religious issues. Anne, I think we can say, people debate this, but I think the evidence seems very clear, she is a religious reformer, she does believe in religious reform, and that Henry does not. Henry just wants to get a divorce, he's not.

• 37:19Speaker 00

  And get his hands on the cash.

• 37:21Speaker 04

  Yes, he wants, that's right, he wants the cash and he wants the divorce. He doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't want to give up on transubstantiation, he just wants to stay with the mass and all the comforting things he remembers. I think he doesn't really care about religion, he just wants it to look like it always did. He's a bit of a trad, a bit of a trad man. And Anne is executed, set up, and on the day after Anne's little political assassination, he gets betrothed to wife number three, her lady-in-waiting, that's Jane Seymour.

• 37:48Speaker 00

  So he's married his first wife's lady-in-waiting, now he's married his second wife's lady-in-waiting.

• 37:52Speaker 04

  So yes, Henry sees his wife's ladies-in-waiting as a dating pool.

• 37:58Speaker 00

  Tragically, his next wife dies whilst giving him the son he yearned for so desperately.

• 38:06Speaker 04

  Yes, she gives birth in 1537 to little Edward, to the future Edward VI, but dies, you know, not a short period later from some kind of infection, I think, after giving birth, a hemorrhage. So Jane dies and he has the son, and Henry's got everything he ever wanted. And yes, he's a bit sad about Jane, but not really, she's served her purpose, you know, what a lucky girl, she's given me a son, marvellous. So you might think at this point that Henry will settle down into saying to himself, I've got the son.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  At what point, I mean, killing Amberlin is extreme, but at what point does other people start going, this guy has got a crazy personal life? I mean, at what stage? Because it's not uncommon for kings to marry more than one person, people died, and marriages were annulled, you look at Eleanor of Aquitaine. At what time, at what point do contemporaries go, this is out of control?

• 38:58Speaker 04

  I think it's around Amberlin, because you're right, she could have been annulled, sent off to a nunnery, we still have some nunnaries sent off to a nunnery.

• 39:05Speaker 00

  He didn't need to kill her.

• 39:06Speaker 04

  She could have been sent overseas, she could have been sent to the nunnaries that remain. I mean, that would have been possible, but Henry just wants her out of the way. He wants to make an example of her, and he treats her like any other man who's tried to resist him. He executes him, including, of course, you know, quite a few of his friends, he executes for consorting with Amberlin, when it's all totally made up, there's no way, there's no way that the dates don't even fit with how it would have occurred. But Henry just goes on this rampage, and you know, many say that, many say that it's Cromwell, not Henry, but it's Henry pulling the strings. Henry can stop it any time he wants. And indeed, when Anne is executed, she is looking behind her, and perhaps she's looking

• 39:50Speaker 04

  for that last minute reprieve, because she can't imagine that you could kill a queen, you can't imagine that she's not even been queen three years, he said he loved her more than anything. So why is he executing her? And by this point, people are shocked, but the marriage with Jane Seymour, the birth of a son, seems to settle things down. But then, you know, women don't want to marry Henry. Mary Queen of Scots' mother, Mary of Guise, has been considered as a possible wife for Henry VIII, and she's said, she's got two possibilities, marry James the Fifth of Scotland or marry Henry VIII. And Scotland, the French think, has such a bad climate that it kills French people. French people die when they turn up there. And she's also seen as rough and ready and always drinking, and the Scots are always

• 40:35Speaker 04

  drinking. But Mary of Guise prefers James of Scotland to Henry VIII. She says, I don't think I want to marry him, I haven't got the right sort of neck. So it's actually.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  So he's getting a reputation.

• 40:45Speaker 04

  He's getting a reputation for executing his wives, and that's very clever of Mary of Gees. She knows that it could happen again.

• 40:50Speaker 00

  Very smart.

• 40:51Speaker 04

  She's a, she's a tough cookie. Cardinal Wolsey's been executed, he's executed for not getting the divorce. Then Thomas Cromwell takes over and he'll later be executed. Henry is such an agent of chaos in terms of executing his friends, his advisers, anyone who's close to him, that people are so terrified of it turning on them. There's a lot said, isn't there, about how Amberlin was unpopular at court? And yes, I don't think she's the person to be baking Tudor cupcakes for the entire court. But, you know, even if people liked her, they have to turn against her because if they don't, they could get dragged into it. So Henry is so all-powerful that people are just terrified of him. And the farce continues, the Anne of Cleves.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  He marries Anne of Cleves, gets divorced almost immediately.

• 41:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, marries Anne of Cleves, he thinks, well, I'm going to surprise her, I'm going to surprise her in disguise because I'm so kingly, she'll recognise me. And poor Anne of Cleves, who is this weird, weird person? I don't know who you are. Bad start, bad start. And Cromwell has to go for that one. And then he marries Catherine Howard, Amberlin's cousin.

• 41:53Speaker 00

  Another lady in waiting.

• 41:54Speaker 04

  Another lady in waiting, Anne of Cleves lady in waiting, very young girl, could have been fifteen, sixteen when he marries her, and that's total disaster. But he has learnt from Amberlin with Catherine Howard, hasn't he, Dan? He's not going to put her on trial because everyone's going to say, well, putting a queen on trial, oh dear. And I don't think much of this evidence. And, sorry, what did you say? She was having sex behind the marmalade cupboard? Is that what you said? Because that's something about Amberlin. So Catherine Howard is not put on this public trial. She's taken and really she starts panicking. And Thomas Cramner, yeah, no, Thomas, Thomas Cramner, who's there, says, I feel so sorry for her, but still, I'm going to write down everything she says in her sort of mad deliriums. And she's just executed pretty swiftly, you know, that.

• 42:35Speaker 04

  But, I mean, basically, when we look at the, when we look at those executed in the envrons of the Tower of London, they're pretty much all at Henry's behest and his wives.

• 42:44Speaker 00

  So the, the execution sort of phase of Henry's life, so he executes two of his wives, he executes a cousin, Margaret de Pole.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  Various friends, like Henry Norris. Yes, his groom at the stool. I mean, you'd think being a groom at the stool, going to the king, going to the loo with the king would, you know, hopefully that would protect you for life, but no.

• 43:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, you've put in some work. What, what is, what is that about? Again, is this normal for the period? Do other kings in other places kill people all the time? Or have we, this, this kind of Lewis Carroll, off with their heads? That, that's, that's, we, we get that from Henry VIII, right? So was this, was, was this an unusual thing? Or was this just because he's been on the throne for a long time, he's slowly, he's slowly turning into this kind of megalomaniac? Is he just naturally psychotic? What, what's happening there?

• 43:28Speaker 04

  I guess, I think, I think Henry's executions are unique. They're so much more than before, they're so much more than after. And if it's true, I do, I do think seventy-two thousand is too much, as is cited in Holland Sheds Chronicles, but many, many men and women die under his regime. And yes, it is because they refuse to accept him as head of the Church of England. They refuse to submit to the end of papal supremacy. They refuse to submit to what they think is Protestant reform. And yes, some are caught up in the psychodramas of his wives, but some people simply are executed. And fact is, I think, I think what the fact is, that he gets away with it. Henry keeps, keeps going and no one seems to stop him.

• 44:11Speaker 00

  Do you think he tries it once or twice and thinks, good, this actually works?

• 44:13Speaker 04

  This actually works. And this is my way of squashing the aristocracy. So his father really had a method of, I think, squashing the aristocracy by appointing not middle-class men, but, but men from those kind of families, like, like Wolsey. And, you know, when, when Henry himself is two, he gets given so many accolades, so many titles, so that Henry VII doesn't have to give them to an aristocrat. So that's Henry VII's strategy. Henry VIII's strategy is, yes, you carry on giving a lot of power to people like Wolsey and Cromwell, but also he's going to execute. And, you know, I think also Henry has, Henry has, I mean, I think Henry does have an aggressive personality, but he also has the attention span of a flea. And he has this very short attention span. Nothing captures the attention span.

• 44:58Speaker 04

  It gets worse and worse as he gets older. And I think sometimes he just executes people because he's lost interest.

• 45:06Speaker 00

  He eventually, so he executes his wife Catherine Howard, he then marries the long-suffering Catherine Parr. By this stage, she's an invalid, she's nursing him.

• 45:13Speaker 04

  She has got the accolade of being the most married English queen at four marriages. She's already had two marriages and then she marries Henry VIII, doesn't really want to marry him. But it is a, I think it's quite a good partnership. She makes a real effort to befriend his children. She tries to be a stepmother to his children. Now, others have tried as well, Jane Seymour's tried as well. Catherine Howard actually was a much better stepmother than people often credit her for. So Catherine, Catherine Parr is this very educated woman, this very, you know, intelligent woman, but she also is a religious reformer. And he does consider executing her. And what she says is very clever. She says, oh, you know, I was talking to you about those modern religious ideas. I'm just trying to take your mind off your leg. I'm just trying to get you cross.

• 45:58Speaker 04

  Take your mind off your leg and then you can think about something else. And Henry says, oh, yes, thank you very much. But I think in the end, he knew that putting another queen on the block would be ridiculous and that you couldn't accuse her of adultery because she seemed so wise and mature and sensible. And, and she's been married. I mean, she'd say, well, I did have sex with other men, but they were my husbands. So I think he thinks he probably can't get away with it with her, but he certainly considers it.

• 46:26Speaker 00

  Then he dies, but, and I always think this is something quite important when we're evaluating kings and queens. Longevity is so important, like, it's, you, you tend to, surprise, surprise, the kings and queens that rule for a long time tend to be quite near the list of good sovereigns because they just, they just bed in.

• 46:40Speaker 04

  They defy, bed in, they defy an age.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  And, yeah, and you just, like, whether it's Henry II, Edward III.

• 46:45Speaker 04

  Elizabeth II.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  Elizabeth II, Victoria, you're just around for ages and everyone else, and you outlive all your opponents and all the people, you just, you're just there, you're part of the furniture.

• 46:55Speaker 04

  You get to be the nation's grandpa. I'm not sure, you get, you get to be the nation's grandpa and maybe that's what Henry was in the end.

• 47:01Speaker 00

  So Henry benefits from that.

• 47:02Speaker 04

  Henry benefits from that.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  And then there's a bit of turbulence. There's a couple of short, shorter-lived monarchs. So do people quite rapidly in the later 16th century go, oh, good King Henry's time? I mean, is, is there nostalgia for that? So do you, does he get brownie points for that?

• 47:18Speaker 04

  I think there is nostalgia for that. And certainly there is nostalgia for his fudged religious settlement, which you see Elizabeth sort of revoke, reincarnating.

• 47:27Speaker 00

  Because his daughter takes, his son takes over and he goes quite ultra Protestant, his daughter takes over, he goes back to the Catholics. So actually, you, you, if, if you're twenty years later, you think, well, at least Henry wasn't that bad, it was all sort of live and let live a bit.

• 47:39Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly. And I think Elizabeth, the ultimate evidence for that is how much Elizabeth, although Elizabeth has great loyalty to the Berlins who are left, the ones who have still survived, she does use her father's precedence as a way of creating legitimacy for herself. Most famously, of course, in the speech at Tilbury, when she says, I've, I've the, I might have the body of a weakened, feeble woman, but the heart and stomach of a king and a king of England too. Now, some people say maybe she didn't say it, but whether she did or she didn't, I think she did, whether she did or she didn't, that was what was expected of her to say. You cite Henry VIII. You don't say, I'm the granddaughter of Henry VII. You say, I'm the daughter of Henry VIII.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  So we are still, people are still obsessed with him. And we have to hold two ideas in our head at the same time, is that we find him fascinating, but he was also in many ways destructive and dreadful, narcissistic, murderous. Is that strange for a historian like you that you've, we are drawn to these people who are so objectionable?

• 48:40Speaker 04

  I mean, you've done so much work on Henry VIII yourself, Dan. You've done so much research and so much work, and particularly on his military campaigns. And, I mean, he is this Titanic figure, isn't he? He, we can't, we can't escape it.

• 48:52Speaker 00

  Can't look away.

• 48:53Speaker 04

  We can't look away.

• 48:54Speaker 00

  And it's an important period, and also he's there at an important time, isn't he? And we talked about the Atlantic world, there's, there's, there's the beginnings of, of, of the modern government of ideas, there's, there's stuff going on.

• 49:05Speaker 04

  The, the, the world is changing, it's the crucible of change, the modern state is emerging. And yes, we are fascinated by this man, this sort of terrible character. I mean, I don't think a single one of us would want him as our boss. I mean, we'd flee in terror, I mean, flee in terror, you know, you know, Zoom calls would be full of fear. But he is this person who occupies the role of king in the most excessive, wild, extravagant way. So when we think, what is a monarch? What is someone who's got ultimate power? And, yeah, what does a human do with ultimate power?

• 49:46Speaker 04

  And what does a human who's seen as, I think, quite a nicish person in his early life, this what?

• 49:52Speaker 00

  Historiarch.

• 49:53Speaker 04

  Power corrupts. And yet, what does he end with? It's the wives who he remembers. What, another thing I find really fascinating about the wives is they're all descended from Edward I and Ellen of Castile. So they're all related, it's a small world, it's a small world. And yet this man who imposes his character on an age, some people say they don't understand what his character is. You know, Dimon McCulloch writes so well on how he doesn't see what Henry does as a strategy, it's piecemeal and it's, it's reactive. And Susie, Susie Lipscomb, has such a fascinating quote she found, the courtiers who said that Henry bears the imprint of the person who most recently sat on him. Yes, I mean, I don't know how you, what one would fare, sitting on Henry VIII, but he's like a giant jelly, he just absorbs impressions.

• 50:38Speaker 04

  And I think that's, as he gets older, he, he, he throws them back. And to me, he is the ultimate cautionary tale of what happens with power because he squandered it, he abuses it, he executes, he's cruel, he's violent. And yet, people still love him, people still adore him, but he doesn't get the legacy that he wants. So he wants this giant grave, doesn't he? This giant tomb in St George's Chapel Windsor. He wants it all marble and whole thing, he steals the cataclysm from Cardinal Wolsey, it's all going to be gold and marble and there's going to be masses sung around it till the end of time. But he doesn't get it done before he dies. He's not like an Egyptian putting up a pyramid, doesn't get it done.

• 51:20Speaker 04

  And the masses are stopped after a year, and the six protectors say, yeah, sorry, no more masses. And Henry's body is lost. The, the cataclysm ends up with, with Nelson, he, he gets it in St Paul's Cathedral. Henry's body is lost really to history until some builders in George IV's reign are bumbling around under St George's Chapel and they find him down there. And George IV's doctor can't believe it, it's like, oh my goodness, there's Henry VIII. And that's why he's got that very modest plaque in St George's Chapel Windsor, because, you know, sometimes. They will say to me, but why did Henry, so many people say to me, oh, Henry the Eighth, he was humble by the end because he just put down that nice little plain plaque. No, no, no, he wanted the biggest tomb in history.

• 52:05Speaker 00

  Well, that's a monument to the fact that no matter how powerful you are in life, you cannot control events after you die.

• 52:11Speaker 04

  You can't, you can't control. And I think one of the reasons why Henry does get a lot of press is because the one thing he didn't want, a woman on the throne transforms his legacy because Elizabeth the First with Gloriana, with the portraiture, the Tudor rose, she is Henry's daughter. And I think that we wouldn't be as fascinated by Henry the Eighth if it wasn't for Elizabeth going on the throne. The one thing he turned the world upside down to avoid became his greatest legacy.

• 52:45Speaker 00

  It's the biggest irony in English and British history. Kate Williams, thank you very much for coming on the podcast, telling us that story and helping us unpack this complicated legacy of Henry the Eighth. Wherever you're listening to or watching this, please smash all the buttons, follow, like and subscribe, and make sure you send us a comment. Tell us what you want us to cover. See you next time.

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  Hey, Chris. Sorry. I'm calling to settle a bet with my husband. Okay, so is it better to deal with a clogged gutter now or wait until the weather's better?

• 54:28Speaker 06

  Mary, the time is now. The longer you wait, the more damage you can have. Your husband may have lost this bet, but repairing your gutters can save your family thousands of dollars over the lifetime of your home.

• 54:38Speaker 09

  But how much will it cost to get our gutters inspected?

• 54:41Speaker 06

  Well, husband of Mary, Leaf Filter inspection and estimates are always free for new customers. And right now, if you go to leaffilter.com/gold, you can get an additional 30% off.

• 54:51Speaker 09

  I think I won here.

• 54:54Speaker 10

  We both did. What's that site, Chris?

• 54:56Speaker 06

  That's leaffilter.com/gold. Visit today to schedule your free gutter inspection.

• 55:00Speaker 05

  See representative for warranty details. Promotion is 20% off plus a 10% senior military discount. One discount per household.

• 55:07Speaker 00

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