Erickson Carolly - Great Harry, The Extravagant Life of Henry The VIII

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

Contemporary poems and songs quoted as chapter openings are taken from John Stevens, ed., Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court, 11, 21, 249, 391, 3%, 416, 418, 419; Thomas Percy, ed., Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, I, 107, 180, 181, 271, 296, 298, 305; II, 61, 139, 222, 244, 270, 273; III, 147, \79,27\,2S9,322',Lyricsfrom Elizabethan Songbooks, 207; The Portable Elizabethan Reader, 658; William Chappell, Old English Popular Music, 25-26, 61, 74, 76-77; Tucker Brooke and Matthias A. Shaaber, eds.. The Renaissance, 498; Roy Strong, Tudor and Jacobean Portraits, endpapers; Joseph Hall, ed.. The Poems of Laurence Minot, 110; Kenneth Muir, Life and Letters of Sir Thomas Wyatt, 32; Edward Arber, ed.. An English Garner: Tudor Tracts, 1532-1588, 27; John Stevens, ed.. Music at the Court of Henry VIII, 50, Antiquarian Repertory, III, 263; William Thomas, The Pilgrim, 1; Walter C. Richardson, Mary Tudor: The White Queen, xiv; Edward Lowinsky, "A Music Book for Anne Boleyn," in Florilegium Historiale: Essays Presented to Wallace K. Ferguson, ed. J. G. Rowe and W. H. Stockdale, 181; and G. R. Elton, Policy and Police, 137, citing a "vagrant singer" who wandered the Norfolk countryside "with a crowd and a fiddle."

ILLUSTRATION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reproduce the illustrations specified:

Bibliotheque de Mejanes, Aix-en-Provence: 1

By courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster: 2, 4, 5

National Portrait Gallery, London: 3, 8, 16, 17, 18, 27

Bibliotheque municipale d'Arras, Recueil de portraits: 6

From the Woburn Abbey Collection, by kind permission of the Marquess of Tavistock, and the

Trustees of the Bedford Estates: 7 Metropolitan Museum of Art: 9, 20 Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge; reproduced by permission of the Syndics of

the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge: 10 By gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen; copyright reserved: 11, 12, 14, 15 BBC Hulton Picture Library: 13 Copyright The Frick Collection, New York: 19 Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien: 21, 26 Musee du Louvre: 22, 23 Alte Pinakothek, Munchen: 25

By courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of London: 24 Staatiiche Graphische Sammlung, Munchen: 28

Descendants

EDWARD III

EdrT>und D. of York

Richard =" Anne Mortinr>er

E of Cam bridge

dr of E. of March

HENRY VI

I Edward (o.i.p.1471)

D. of Somerset

I Margaret Beaufort = Edmund Tudor E of Richmond

Richard D of York

EDWARD IV

George

D of Clarence

' 1

HENRY VII Elizabeth EDWARD V Richard Catherine - Wm. Courtenay Edward Margaret = Sir Richard Pole

(m. 1483) D. of York

(m.1483)

E. of Devonshire E. of Countess of

Warwick Salisbury I (ex.1499) (ex.1541)

Henry Marquis of Exeter (ex, 1538)

I

Edward Courtenay (d. 1556)

I

Henry Pole Lord Montague (ex. 1538)

Afthur (d 1502)

I

HENRY VIII

I 1 1

MARY ELIZABETH EDWARD VI

I

James IV Margaret = Archibald

of Scots I I 6th E. of Angus

James V Margaret = Matthew

4th E. of Lennox

Mary == Henry Charles

I Lord Darnley

JAMES I

(VI of Scotland)

Arbella Stewart

of Edward III

Thomas of Woodstock D. of Gloucester

Anne = Edmond

E. of Stafford

1 1 1

RICHARD III Elizabeth = John de la Pole Margaret (3rd wife of

(0.5.P 1485)

E. of Suffolk

Charles the Bold, D. of Burgundy)

Humphrey

D. of Buckingham

Humphrey

Henry (ex. 1483)

John Edmund Richard

(d. 1487) E. of Suffolk (d. 1525) (ex. 1513)

I I

Edward Anne = George Hastings

D. of Buckingham E. of Huntingdon

{ex.1521)

I

Reginald Cardinal Pole (d. 1558)

Geoffrey

Ursula = Henry

Lord Stafford

Mary = Charles Brandon I D. of Suffolk

~r^

Frances = Henry Grey I D. of Suffolk (ex. 1554)

Eleanor = E. of Cumberland

I 1 1

Jane Catherine = Edward Seymour Mary Margaret Clifford = Henry Stanley

(ex.1554) E. of Hertford 4th E. of Derby

(son of the Protector)

d. - died

m. murdered

ex. - executed

o.i.p. died without issue {obin sine prole)

Preface

There is a story that in the reign of Bloody Mary, when hundreds of Protestants were being burned for their beHefs, the corpse of Henry VIII was torn from its resting place at Windsor and, by the queen's orders, thrown into the flames and burned to ashes. That Mary Tudor should have taken such bitter and final revenge against her father says much about the passions Henry aroused in others. From his family, his courtiers, his subjects he called forth both staunch affection and undying hatred. Yet an even stronger feeling overshadowed these: a feeling of astounded awe. For Henry Tudor was, as one who knew him wrote, "undoubtedly the rarest man that lived in his time."

Even more than his exalted rank, his towering height, powerful physique and extraordinary handsomeness set Henry apart from his contemporaries. A phenomenal athlete, he seemed to draw on superhuman energies as he outrode, outdanced and outfought friends and rivals both in England and abroad. These physical gifts were balanced by unfailing warmth and charm, chivalrous delicacy of feeling, and perceptive mental endowments that enabled Henry to share fully in the intellectual life of the humanists at his court and to win their respect.

Beyond these personal attributes Henry possessed the indefinable quality of majesty, the ensorceling aura of kingly command and fatherly authority that overawed his subjects and gave his enemies pause.

Midway in his reign darker qualities of mind emerged in Henry, growing stronger as he was continuously thwarted in his aims and in the end eclipsing his attractive nature. The radiant hero of the Battle of the Spurs became the troubled, anxious mler of the mid-1520s, harried in mind by the fear of divine vengeance, then the fearsome murderous king of the 1530s whose wrath was fatal to those about him. The Catholic Church puts at fifty the number of martyrs whose deaths he brought about by execution or starvation. Several wives, at least a dozen blood relatives and a

similar number of onetime counselors and friends lengthened the list of victims.

By the 1540s, as Henry entered his fifties, he had become a monstrous figure to his peoplean inhuman tyrant of mythic proportions whose valor and integrity had dissolved under the corroding influence of adultery, sacrilege and blood lust. In actuality Henry was by this time an aging colossus plagued by agonizing pains in his legs, soured by domestic misfortunes and overburdened by governmental labors. The inner compass that had guided him to overturn the old order of English societyto break away from the Roman church, destroy the monasteries, and undertake the reshaping of religious beliefhad misled him, and he suffered in consequence.