Guy John Alexander - Henry VIII: the quest for fame

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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

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THE HOUSES OF WESSEX AND DENMARK

THE HOUSES OF NORMANDY, BLOIS AND ANJOU

THE HOUSE OF PLANTAGENET

THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK

THE HOUSE OF TUDOR

THE HOUSE OF STUART

THE HOUSE OF HANOVER

THE HOUSES OF SAXE-COBURG & GOTHA AND WINDSOR

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?