Was Henry VIII England's Most Evil King?

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0:32This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Ah, fall. That cozy season where we swap the swimwear for sweaters and sunnies for scarves. But before the Halloween decorations are put away or Thanksgiving table has been set, there's already holly jolly music playing in the grocery store, reminding you that the year is coming to a close. Time to kick end of year into high gear. When you use Apple Card with Apple Pay, you earn 2 % daily cash back on all purchases, including food, decorations, gifts, and more. Get a head start on your end of year purchases. Apply for your Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone today and start using it right away with Apple Pay.

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2:18That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. 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?

3:09Which I approve of. 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.

3:56Kate Williams, good to see you. Good to see you, Dan. It's the big one, isn't it? It's the big one. What is it? Why are we obsessed with Henry VIII still? The man's a megalomaniac. He's a murderer. What's going on here? 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 Hollinshed'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?

4:33Mr. Bombastic, as Shaggy would say. Do we love to hate him? what's what is it 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 uh he was glad i mean we forget really he was a very glamorous prince he was in the in the spirit of his absolute legendary grandfather with the fourth uh who was beautiful a phenomenal warrior uh if he'd if he'd made the most of himself he could have really gone places ever before i always think it's a bit disappointing yeah he let himself go a bit but so so initially it feels like kind of henry'sian golden age and also there's been this big period of instability wars the roses his dad's not super glamorous and he's everything still but he comes to the throne it feels like we're back we're back in the stability there's peace and then there's a handsome young prince is that what it's about he's handsome he's 17 he's pure glamour he marries Catherine of Aragon which is seen as such a great alliance the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella rock star rock star he he'd been uh 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 the first 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 he did have a big impact 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 Is that health and safety concerns?

6:47Health and safety Or is it he doesn't want them hanging with that crowd? 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 seven birthed to Henry and Elizabeth of York. But 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 at the Wars of the Roses. So everyone's worried about sliding back into the Wars of the Roses. Everyone's terrified.

7:19I think that's the thing we have to remember about the Tudors, isn't it? that 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 it 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 Tudors, a very dodgy, I mean I am Welsh so I can say this, but a very dodgy Welsh claim. I mean, the people in Welsh are somewhat excluded in polite society. And here they are, this Welsh claim coming through Catherine of Valois.

7:56Henry VII has used and abused Catherine of Valois' body in Westminster Abbey, left it open to the elements. And everyone can see it because I think he wants to disavow his debt to Catherine of Valois. And later on, this is the best thing. It's 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 Valois in Westminster Abbey. So the poor woman is used and abused by goodness knows how many people like peeps. And I think part of that is Henry VII disavowing his link to Catherine of Valois and Owen Tudor, but yet claiming he's the man who won on the battlefield, 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.

8:44So Henry VIII, as a young prince, is rather wrapped in cotton wool, well, Tudor cotton wool. And it's been 100 years since a reasonably grown-up male heir has succeeded his father on the throne. So there's been a civil war in the meantime. So everyone's quite excited for this. Henry VII dies. This young prince takes over. Everyone thinks, this is kind of normal service resumed. This is good. 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.

9:40So 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? You think you can be Holy Roman Emperor and then you break out from the church. Yeah, well, exactly. And he, the man who would be defender of the faith. But anyway, so he is physically impressive. I mean, it's not just the cool... We are told, aren't we, that he was every inch the kind of prince of the Renaissance prince. Everyone says that princesses are gorgeous and everyone says that princes are handsome, but I do think Henry was handsome.

10:17He 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, 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.

11:07It'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. And then he has a son and there's a new Prince of Wales and there's more celebrations. Seven weeks later, the little Prince of Wales dies. It is sad. It is sad. They'd even celebrated it with the joust. So Henry put the jousts on, 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.

11:52She 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 Anne Boleyn 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 bloodied coat to Henry while he's fighting the first of his three totally hopeless wars with France. I mean, they are totally hopeless. Well, let's come to that. So if we have established why Henry is superficially quite attractive as a young king, it's a reasonably good time for England.

12:37It 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 endeavours of his ancestors.

13:12His plantagenet forebears, Ebbe III, the Black Prince, Henry V, and he invades France. he tries to press this claim to, he probably tries to restart the Hundred Years' War almost, doesn't he? 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 marvellous. 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, And you are the military expert if you think there is nothing salvageable in these hopeless wars.

13:55Well, there is nothing salvageable in these hopeless wars because England at this point is not going 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? I just want Norman to do. What do you think? Look, West young man. Look West.

14:21So, okay, so that, 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 for what it is, which is a lot less powerful. A lot less powerful that it was once this tiny tin pot country. Catherine of Aragon really, I mean, she's the youngest princess of Isabella of Castillo. It's not particularly marvellous what she gets as a, 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 a Catherine of Aragon.

14:54Himself, really. 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.

15:30And this is how various men pretty much were all called Thomas. If all of his wives are called Catherine, all of his advisors, we've got Thomas Cramner, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Moore, Thomas Wolsey, the Thomases gain the power and Thomas Wolsey who's 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 Henry VIII's greatest military victory probably won for him by his wife that's a good point 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 the defence of the realm at that point?

16:14Well, 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... The king of Scotland is killed on the battlefield. The flower of mobility. 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.

17:12We 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. It would be very strange. Fell off a horse, oh here we go another one. Blown up by a cannon. So strange. And these miscarriages then are we now getting towards the beginnings of this epic psychodrama of the Henrichian reign, which is, of course, his desire for a son and his married life. His married life. So Mary is born in 1516, a very healthy little girl, Princess Mary, future Mary I, a very healthy little girl. And Henry thinks she's marvellous initially.

17:51He'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 be 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 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.

18:32Radicalised by the manosphere. The manosphere, the jousting sphere, the jouster sphere. 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. No. They do. They do. That rat-born Hantavirus, that that is what the sweating sickness may very well have been. It's all coming around again. It's all coming around again. And we know how brutal the sweating sickness is.

19:09So very interesting question. But I think 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. 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 earlier 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?

19:46Because 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? We do see the birth of a much more modern taxation system. We start to see a centralised 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.

20:26The 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 centralised. Of course, the first two people that Henry executes are his father's rather successful tax collectors. Who are doing their jobs. 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 modernisation. He does build up the Navy and does create huge dockyards and much more shipyards.

21:08I 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. If it wasn't for the divorce. We would, I think, see him as the ultimate blinking 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 Henry's portal palace. It was, I think, the portal palace in the field of the cloth of gold for Henry took 6 ,000 men to put it up and it was 12 ,000 square yards.

21:51It 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 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.

22:35Well, we're going to talk about the great matter after this. Don't go away, folks. More Kate Williams coming up. This episode is brought to you by TikTok. I never thought about the history of coffee. Yeah, make it. Yeah, drink it. Nothing more to it. Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the 1700s would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it. I love that sort of discovery. A detail, but suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialised. Now I wonder what all baffle historians about us. Mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially it has a handle.

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24:19Get a head start on your end-of-year purchases. Apply for your Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone today and start using it right away with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City Branch, terms and more at AppleCard.com. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life.

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25:54So 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 that they the first king of england that they would name strangely you think it's because of his extraordinary drama of of his wives of his six wives i think you're right dan ask people to name a king of england and apart from the current one people would say henry the eighth that is the one people remember divorce beheaded died etc it's the one that's inscribed but it's the one we talk about.

26:37He 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. 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.

27:18And 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 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? Well, he's stopped by nature on one level because he can't produce a son with his wife Catherine. Has an illegitimate son with Elizabeth Blout in 1519. That must boost his morale because he's quite a good looking kid.

27:58He does well. He grows well. I mean, 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 when Catherine turns 40 and it conveniently intersects with a moment when Henry is struck by the dart of love. He's 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 they all fall apart.

28:46So the end of the French alliance, which was sealed and created at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Quite short-lived. Yes, very short-lived. Cardinal Walsh 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 her country's at war. So she comes back. She becomes lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon in 1522.

29:25And then in around 1525, Henry falls in love. Decides that he's madly enough. She's the one. He's got to have her. And Anne says no. Smart move. It's interesting, isn't it? Because Anne, what is 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 school bake sale.

30:06That's what she wanted to do with her life, 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. 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 Hever castle when there's an outbreak of the sweating sickness she goes to heva castle 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'm really 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 think i think she's saying you know i'm going to drown here.

31:07I'm going to drown here. 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 realised, he's realised 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 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.

31:48And over and over again, Henry is thwarted. 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, Anglicanism. Is that another reason you think traditionally people have been quite drawn to Henry? Because particularly when Britain, there was 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 and 19th century, people were quite proud of Henry for that reason?

32:27Did that kind of boost his reputation? 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 Victorian project in Henry. Now, they're ambiguous about Elizabeth as Gloriana 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 is rooted in this real love for Anglicanism, which, thanks to Henry and thanks to Elizabeth, is something of a fudge, isn't it?

33:05We 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. 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 Cramner'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 Anne Boleyn or Catherine Howard because he never wants any mention of them, yet their voices have reverberated more powerfully through history.

34:16But he also can't control religion. When we think of the great poem Ozymandias, the 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 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. That's so interesting. So his religious settlement, such as it was, his sort of fudge, but anyway, subsequent generations came to admire that very much.

34:51But his, yeah, so he goes, he marries Anne Boleyn eventually. He marries Anne Boleyn early in 1533. Cruelly sends his former wife, divorces his former wife, sends her off to the countryside. Off she goes. Yes, I'm never going to see you again. Dies of neglect. Dies of neglect in 1536. Yes, because he's married to Anne Boleyn. She has a series of, well, there's miscarriages. She has a daughter. She has another daughter. Henry marries Anne Boleyn in 1533, early January, at York Place, which was Cardinal Wolves' house, and they take it and it becomes Whitehall Palace, now covered by our wonderful government buildings.

35:24Actually, the cockfighting pit, the cabinet office, is on the position that was Henry VIII's 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 start. but what happens is the same story that he had with Catherine obstetric tragedies stillbirths miscarriages and in early 1536 and 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 has written that marvellous book 1536 hasn't she about how this changes Henry's life He has this fatal jousting accident.

36:26Catherine of Aragon dies. And this is the year which Anne Boleyn will not see the end of. 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. Henry VII did tell him. Henry VII told him, don't joust, lass. Yeah, and he's getting a bit old by now. He's getting a bit old. Yeah, exactly. And he had probably lifelong consequences. This wound in his leg. He was concussed for a period and then he gets this very bad wound in his leg. And it doesn't heal. Partly because they don't really believe in closing it.

37:06I think 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. And leads him to put on lots of, he does less physical exercise afterwards, so he puts on the weight. 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 rather large man.

37:45So Anne Boleyn, he casts aside Anne Boleyn. He casts aside Anne Boleyn. And 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. And I think we can say, people debate this, but I think the evidence seems very clear that she is a religious reformer.

38:21She does believe in religious reform. And Henry does not. Henry just wants to get a divorce. He's not. And get his hands on the cash. Yes, that's right. He wants the cash and he wants the divorce. 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 political assassination he gets betrothed to wife number three her lady-in-waiting, that's Jane Seymour.

38:56So he's married his first wife's lady-in-waiting now he's married his second wife's lady-in-waiting. So yes, Henry sees his wife's ladies-in-waiting as a dating pool. Tragically, his next wife dies whilst giving him the son he yearned for so desperately. 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 served her purpose, you know. What a lucky girl.

39:35She'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. At what point, I mean, killing Anne Boleyn 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 point do contemporaries go, this is out of control? I think it's around Anne Boleyn, because you're right, she could have been annulled, sent off to a nunnery.

40:10We still have some nunneries sent off to a nunnery. He didn't need to kill that. She could have been sent overseas. She could have been sent to the nunneries 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, quite a few of his friends. He executes for consorting with Anne Boleyn 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 anytime he wants and indeed when Anne is executed she is looking behind her and perhaps she's looking 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.

41:08So 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, his 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 V of Scotland, or marry Henry VIII. And Scotland, the French thing, has such a bad climates that it kills French people. French people die when they turn up there. And he's also seen us rough and ready and always drinking and the Scots are always drinking.

41:43But 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... So he's getting a reputation. He's getting a reputation for executing his wives. And that's very clever of Mary of Guise. She knows that it could happen again. Very smart. She's a tough cookie. Cardinal Walsh has 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 advisors, anyone who's close to him, that people are so terrified of it turning on them.

42:21There's a lot said, isn't there, about how Anne Boleyn was unpopular at court. And yes, I don't think she's the person to be baking Tudor cupcakes for the entire court. But 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... He marries Anne of Cleves, gets divorced almost immediately. He marries Anne of Cleves, he thinks, oh, I'm going to surprise her. I'm going to surprise her in disguise because I'm so kingly, she'll recognise me.

42:50And 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, Anne Boleyn's cousin. Another lady in waiting. Another lady-in-waiting, Anne Cleves' lady-in-waiting, very young girl, could have been 15, 16 when he marries her. And that's a total disaster. But he has learned from Anne Boleyn 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?

43:20She was having sex behind the marmalade cupboard. Is that what you said? Because that's something about Anne Boleyn. So Catherine Howard is not put on this public trial. She's taken and really she starts panicking. And Thomas Cramner, yeah, another 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? I mean, basically, when we look at those executed in the environs of the Tower of London, they're pretty much all that Henry's behest and his wives.

43:52So the execution sort of phase of Henry's life. So he executes two of his wives. He executes her cousin, Margaret de Pol. Various friends, like Henry Norris. Yes, yes. His groom with a stool. I mean, you think being a groom with a stool, going to the loo with the king would, you know, hopefully that would protect you for life, but no. Yeah, you've put in some work. 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 kind of Lewis Carroll, off with their heads, we get that from Henry VIII, right? So was this an unusual thing or was this just because he's been on the throne for a long time, he's slowly turning into this kind of megalomaniac?

44:33Is he just naturally psychotic? What's happening there? Yes, 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 think 72 ,000 is too much, as is cited in Holland Shedd's 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.

45:12And I think the fact is that he gets away with it. Henry keeps going and no one seems to stop him. Do you think he tries it once or twice and thinks, this actually works? 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 men from those kind of families like Wolsey. And, you know, 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.

45:53And I think also 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. It gets worse and worse as he gets older. And I think sometimes he just executes people because he's lost interest. He eventually executes his wife, Catherine Howard. He then marries the long-suffering Catherine Parr. By this stage, she's an invalid. She's nursing him. 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.

46:31But 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. Well, Catherine Howard actually was a much better stepbrother than people often credit her for. So Catherine Parr is this very educated woman, this very 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.

47:05I'm just trying to get you cross. Take your mind off your leg. And then you can think about something else. And Henry says, oh, yes, thank you very much. 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 seems so wise and mature and sensible. And she's been married. I mean, she'd say, well, I did have sex with other men, but they were my husband's. So I think he thinks he probably can't get away with it with her. But he certainly considers it. Then he dies. And I always think this is something quite important when we're evaluating kings and queens.

47:38Longevity is so important. 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 bed in. They bed in. They define an age. And you just, whether it's Henry II, Edward III, Elizabeth II, Victoria, you're just around for ages and everyone else, you outlive all your opponents and all the people. You're just there, you're part of the furniture. You get to be the nation's grandpa. I'm not sure, you get to be the nation's grandpa and maybe that's what Henry was in the end. So Henry benefits from that. Henry benefits from that.

48:11And then there's a bit of turbulence. There's a couple of shorter-lived monarchs. So do people quite rapidly in the later 16th century go, oh, good King Henry's time. I mean, is there nostalgia for that? Does he get brownie points for that? I think there is nostalgia for that. And certainly there is nostalgia for his fudged religious settlement, which you see Elizabeth reincarnating. Because his son takes over and he goes quite ultra-Protestant. and his daughter takes over, he goes back to the Catholics. So actually, if you're 20 years later, you think, well, at least Henry, I wasn't that bad.

48:44It was all sort of live and let live a bit. Yes, exactly. And I think Elizabeth, the ultimate evidence for that is how much Elizabeth, although Elizabeth has great loyalty to the Boleyns who are left, the ones who are 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 might have the body of a weak and 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.

49:20You cite Henry VIII. You don't say I'm the granddaughter of Henry VII. You say I'm the daughter of Henry VIII. 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 we are drawn to these people who are so objectionable? 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?

49:58We can't escape him. Can't look away. He can't look away. And it's an important period. And also he's there at an important time, isn't he? I mean, we talked about the Atlantic world. There's the beginnings of a modern government of ideas. There's stuff going on. The world is changing. It's the crucible of change. The modern state is emerging. And yes, we are fascinated by this man, this 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, 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.

50:46So when we think what is a monarch, what is someone who's got ultimate power and what does a human do with ultimate power? What is a human who's seen as I think quite a nice-ish person in his early life? The story arc. Power corrupts. And yet, what does he end with? It's the wives who he remembers. Another thing I find really fascinating about the wives is they're all descended from Edward I and Eleanor 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, Dearman McCulloch writes so well on how he doesn't see what Henry does as a strategy.

51:25It's piecemeal and it's reactive. and Susie Lipscomb has such a fascinating quote she found to the courtes 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 one would fare sitting on Henry VIII but he's like a giant jelly he just absorbs impressions and I think that's as he gets older 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.

52:06So he wants this giant grave, doesn't he? This giant tomb in St George's Chapel Windsor. He wants it all marble and he steals the catafalque from the garden of walls and 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. He doesn't get it done. And the masses are stopped after a year and the six protectors say, sorry, no more masses. And Henry's body is lost. The cattle fog ends up with Nelson. 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.

52:51And George IV 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 people say to me, why did Henry... Sometimes people say to me, oh, Henry VIII, he was humble by the end because he just put down that nice little plain plaque. No, no, no, no. He wanted the biggest tomb in history. Well, that's a monument to the fact that no matter how powerful you are in life, you cannot control events after you die. 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.

53:31Because Elizabeth I 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 VIII 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. 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 VIII. 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.

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