Henry VIII, Part Eight

Henry VIII has a lot of accomplishments under his belt, not least in initiating naval revolution and spawning religious reformation, but if he hadn’t won infamy through his litany of wives, it’s unlikely that he would hold much interest for popular culture today. His father had returned England its prestige after the Wars of the Roses, but Henry plunged the country into bankruptcy. He’d hoped to win laurels and fame on the battlefield against England’s long-time nemesis, but his campaigns came to little – and when his last campaign won territory in France, he had to sell it to keep the country afloat. By the time Henry returned to England following the Treaty of Camp, he was getting along in years and his age was beginning to tell. 

Though Henry had always been secretive and suspicious, now he was paranoid (the paranoia accelerated following Catherine Howard’s adultery). One historian notes that though Henry was ‘convinced that he controlled everyone, he was in fact readily manipulated by those who knew how to feed his suspicions and pander to his self-righteousness. Full of experience and increasingly competent in the routine of rule, he [nevertheless] lacked the comprehensive vision and large spirit that would’ve made him a great man… Policy in the hands of a sick, unhappy, violent man was not likely to be either sensible or prosperous, and so it proved.’ The king struggled to keep his realm united amidst the volatile strife between Protestants, Anglicans, and Catholics, and all the while he esteemed himself the greatest monarch of the age and demanded that everyone acknowledge it to be so. 

In the prime of youth Henry had been a model of athleticism, but now – as happens to so many of us – he was grossly obese. His waist measured fifty-four inches, and he had to be moved about with the help of machines. He was covered with painful, pus-filled boils and likely suffered from gout. Historians believe his obesity wasn’t due to any changes in his diet but a change in his level of physical activity; though Henry loved athletics, the jousting accident that spurred Anne Boleyn’s miscarriage also opened an old leg wound that refused to heal. The wound became ulcerated, preventing him from enjoying his favorite athletic pastimes. Some historians have speculated that Henry suffered from syphilis; others that he suffered scurvy; others that he had acquired type II diabetes. Some have suggested that he may have been Kell positive or suffered from McLeod syndrome, resulting in so many failed pregnancies and degenerating mental health. Other historians speculate that he suffered a traumatic brain injury in the 1536 jousting accident, which then led to a neuroendocrine cause for obesity. 

It’s been said that marriage is a young man’s burden and an old man’s comfort, and so it was with his sixth and last wife. Catherine Parr was a wealthy widow, and he married her in July 1543. Their marriage wasn’t perfect – she bought into the Protestantism gaining ground on the Continent, and they had plenty of back-and-forth arguments over the nature of true religion – but it was a marriage with which Henry could be content. Catherine helped Henry reconcile with his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, and in 1543 an Act of Parliament put them back in the line of succession after Edward, Prince of Wales. Catherine Parr was more of a mother to him than a wife, but he had finally found a measure of calm – and he’d secured the Tudor Dynasty. Thus when he died at the age of 55, he could die in relative peace: his greatest ambition, to secure an heir, had been realized.

Henry VIII and Catherine Parr

He died in the Palace of Whitehall on 28 January 1547. He was buried in a vault at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle next to Jane Seymour, the one wife he’d not fallen out with. Henry had planned an elaborate and exquisite tomb for himself, but it wasn’t completed by the time of his death, and it never would be; the sarcophagus he’d designed would later be used for Lord Nelson’s tomb in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Over a century later, Henry VIII would be joined in the vault by the late King Charles I. Though the crown now passed in solid succession to the Prince of Wales – crowned Edward VI – Henry had failed to make full arrangements for his son’s minority, which would result in a chaotic government. Edward VI would rule for just over five years; Henry’s first daughter, Mary, would rule for another five years, steering England back towards the Catholic fold; but Henry’s second daughter, Elizabeth, would retrench her father’s reforms, and her reign would be the longest – and the most glorious – of all the Tudor monarchs. 

Henry VIII is one of the most immortalized English monarchs, and perhaps for good reason. As one historian writes, ‘Henry VIII has always seemed the very embodiment of true monarchy. Even his evil deeds, never forgotten, have been somehow amalgamated into a memory of greatness. He gave his nation what it wanted: a visible symbol of its nationhood. He also had done something toward giving it a better government, a useful navy, a start on religious reform and social improvement. But he was not a great man in any sense. Although a leader in every fiber of his being, he little understood where he was leading his nation. But if he was neither statesman nor prophet, he also was neither the blood-stained monster of one tradition nor the rowdy bon vivant of another. Though cold, self-centered, ungiving, forever suspicious of the ways of the world, he could not descend to the second stereotype; despite a ruthlessness fed by self-righteousness, he never took the pleasure in killing required of the first. Simply, he never understood why the life of so well-meaning a man should have been beset by so many unmerited troubles.’