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Guy John Alexander - Henry VIII: the quest for fame

Here you can read online Guy John Alexander - Henry VIII: the quest for fame full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. City: Great Britain, year: 2014, publisher: Penguin Books Ltd;Allen Lane, genre: Non-fiction. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

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Guy John Alexander Henry VIII: the quest for fame

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Shaping a life -- The popes loyal son -- A man of conscience -- Arbiter of Christendom -- A second Solomon -- Epilogue.;Charismatic, insatiable, and cruel, Henry VIII was, as John Guy shows, a king who became mesmerized by his own legend--and in the process destroyed and remade England. Said to be a pillager of the commonwealth, this most instantly recognizable of kings remains a figure of extreme contradictions: magnificent and vengeful; a devout traditionalist who oversaw a cataclysmic rupture with the church in Rome; a talented, towering figure who nevertheless could not bear to meet peoples eyes when he talked to them. In this revealing new account, John Guy looks behind the mask into Henrys mind to explore how he understood the world and his place in it--from his isolated upbringing and the blazing glory of his accession, to his desperate quest for fame and an heir and the terrifying paranoia of his last, agonizing, 54-inch-waisted years. -- Amazon.com

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Contents John Guy HENRY VIII The Quest for Fame - photo 1
Contents John Guy HENRY VIII The Quest for Fame - photo 2
Contents
John Guy
HENRY VIII
The Quest for Fame
Henry VIII the quest for fame - image 3
Henry VIII the quest for fame - image 4
ALLEN LANE

UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
India | New Zealand | South Africa

Allen Lane is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

Henry VIII the quest for fame - image 5

First published 2014

Copyright John Guy, 2014

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover design by Pentagram
Jacket art by Peter Blake

ISBN: 978-0-141-97713-3

Henry VIII the quest for fame - image 6
THE BEGINNING

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Penguin Monarchs

THE HOUSES OF WESSEX AND DENMARK

AthelstanTom Holland
Aethelred the UnreadyRichard Abels
CnutRyan Lavelle
Edward the ConfessorJames Campbell

THE HOUSES OF NORMANDY, BLOIS AND ANJOU

William IMarc Morris
William IIJohn Gillingham
Henry IEdmund King
StephenCarl Watkins
Henry IIRichard Barber
Richard IThomas Asbridge
JohnNicholas Vincent

THE HOUSE OF PLANTAGENET

Henry IIIStephen Church
Edward IAndy King
Edward IIChristopher Given-Wilson
Edward IIIJonathan Sumption
Richard IILaura Ashe

THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK

Henry IVCatherine Nall
Henry VAnne Curry
Henry VIJames Ross
Edward IVA. J. Pollard
Edward VThomas Penn
Richard IIIRosemary Horrox

THE HOUSE OF TUDOR

Henry VIISean Cunningham
Henry VIIIJohn Guy
Edward VIStephen Alford
Mary IJohn Edwards
Elizabeth IHelen Castor

THE HOUSE OF STUART

James IThomas Cogswell
Charles IMark Kishlansky
[CromwellDavid Horspool]
Charles IIClare Jackson
James IIDavid Womersley
William III & Mary IIJonathan Keates
AnneRichard Hewlings

THE HOUSE OF HANOVER

George ITim Blanning
George IINorman Davies
George IIIAmanda Foreman
George IVStella Tillyard
William IVRoger Knight
VictoriaJane Ridley

THE HOUSES OF SAXE-COBURG & GOTHA AND WINDSOR

Edward VIIRichard Davenport-Hines
George VDavid Cannadine
Edward VIIIPiers Brendon
George VIPhilip Ziegler
Elizabeth IIDouglas Hurd
Introduction

Few monarchs have divided opinion more than Henry VIII. Inevitably so, because besides doing more than any other English king to reshape the countrys institutions and identity in roughly the form they survive today, he was also a wilful destroyer. For those who opposed his attacks on the Church and hefty demands of taxation, he was a vindictive tyrant who associated might with right and value with lustre. He was, said John Hale, a priest of Isleworth in Middlesex, to be called a great tyrant rather than a king. Allowed his day in court by Henry before being sent to the gallows on a charge of high treason, Hale was determined to put his views on the record. Since the realm of England was first a realm, he insisted, was there never in it so great a robber and pillager of the commonwealth read of nor heard of as is our king.

Others have strenuously disagreed. For perhaps a majority of his subjects, Henry was everything a king should be. Capable of the best as well as the worst, he exuded magnificence, both personally and through his spectacular palaces and art collections. His children revered and adored him. Faced with disobedience from her own privy councillors, his daughter Mary, who as the countrys first queen regnant sometimes found it an uphill struggle to establish her authority even with her closest supporters, declared that

Not surprisingly, criticisms of Henrys policies were linked to attacks on his private life. Comparing him to the infamous classical tyrant King Dionysius of Syracuse, Sir Thomas Elyot wrote:

He was a man of quick and subtle wit, but therewith he was wonderful sensual, unstable and wandering in sundry affections. Delighting sometime in voluptuous pleasures, another time in gathering of great treasure and riches, oftentimes resolved into a beastly rage and vengeable cruelty. About the public weal of his country always remiss, in his own desires studious and diligent.

But while Henry had six wives and several mistresses, he was, by the standards of his royal contemporaries, sexually restrained. And although two of his wives were executed and two divorced, it can be argued that dynastic security made such casualties necessary. Whereas those on the wrong side of Henry saw him as a tyrant ruled by his sexual passions, others (especially nobles and property owners keen to profit from the spoils of the annihilation of the abbeys) saw him as providing the essential stability that kept the country free of the civil wars that had plagued the fifteenth century or the wars of religion that would bring anarchy to France and the Netherlands later in the century.

Rather than attempt to vindicate the views of either side of the debate in this short reassessment, I will seek to look behind the mask into Henrys mind and explain how he himself understood events. How far did those of his childhood and adolescence make their indelible mark? What led him to shape his policies and choose his wives and ministers? Was he a ruler with genuine principles or deeply held convictions or simply an unscrupulous pragmatist? Was he devout and therefore sincere in demanding the massive changes and destruction wreaked upon the Church and the monasteries? What impelled him to attempt to become a commanding presence on the European stage, with all its immense costs, human and material? In particular, did his cruel streak come only latterly with age, disappointment and ill-health, or was it always there?

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