Okay, let's play a word association game. If
I say Henry VIII, what is the very first image
that pops into your head? It's the Holbein portrait.
It has to be. Exactly. That stance. Hands on
his hips, legs wide apart, massive padded shoulders.
He looks like a linebacker in velvet. Right.
And usually, in the popular imagination, he's
holding a giant turkey leg. Which we should probably
clarify right off the bat. He is never actually
holding in any contemporary painting. That's
a complete invention. Really? Never. Never is
a total invention of, you know, later caricatures
in Hollywood movies. Yeah. But it sticks because
it fits the vibe, doesn't it? The glutton, the
excess. Right. The obese, tyrannical glutton
who treated marriage like a sport. And then,
of course, there's the rhyme. We all learn it
in school. Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced,
beheaded, survived. It's catchy. It's memorable.
It is, but it feels like we've reduced one of
the most consequential figures in European history
to, well, a cartoon villain and a nursery rhyme.
And that is exactly why we're doing this deep
dive today. Because that caricature, it isn't
just incomplete, it's actively misleading. It
blinds us to the actual tragedy and, dare I say,
the brilliance of the man. That's a strong word,
brilliance. I think it applies. Because the Henry
who died in 1547, that immobile, paranoid wreck,
was not the Henry who took the throne. Not even
close. That was the biggest hook for me when
I was going through the source material you sent
over. The contrast is just, it's jarring. You
have this young, athletic, intellectual golden
prince, and then 40 years later you have the
tyrant. And the journey between those two points
isn't just about getting fat and chopping off
heads. It's about a man who fundamentally broke
the mold of the English monarchy. It is. So today
we are going to move beyond the divorced, beheaded,
died rhyme. We're drawing from historical records,
biographical details, and some really fascinating
medical analysis to understand the why. Why the
obsession with an heir? Why break the entire
religious structure of the country? And the big
question, was he always a monster or was he made
into one? So let's unpack this. And I think we
have to start way, way back. Because the most
surprising thing for me was learning that Henry
VIII wasn't even supposed to be the main character
in this story. That's absolutely right. He was
the spare. Born in 1491 at Greenwich Palace,
he was the second son of Henry VII. The spare
to the heir. The heir was his older brother,
Arthur. And in the logic of royal families, especially
a new dynasty like the Tudors, who are still
feeling a bit insecure, the heir gets everything.
Arthur was sent off to Wales to learn governance,
to sit on councils, to learn the exacting art
of kingship. He was being groomed for the job
from day one. And the spare. What was Henry's
path supposed to be? The spare gets a backup
plan. Usually for a second son, that meant a
high -ranking career in the church. There is
a very real alternate timeline where we could
have had Henry VIII, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Can you imagine the theological debates would
have been... To say the least. But because he
was the spare, his upbringing was radically different.
While Arthur was out in the real world, Henry
was kept at home, strictly supervised. Very sheltered,
primarily by his mother, Elizabeth of York, and
his grandmother, the formidable Margaret Beaufort.
He wasn't paraded in public. He wasn't given
his own household to run. He was kept in a gilded
cage. So he's kept away from the public eye,
but he's not uneducated. Far from it. This is
where we really have to dismantle that mindless
thug myth. Henry was a genuine intellectual.
Because he was being prepped for the church.
Exactly. His education was top tier. He was fluent
in Latin and French, and he spoke some Italian.
He was friends with the great humanist thinkers
of the day, like Erasmus and Thomas More. He
wasn't just literate. He was a scholar. He wrote
theological treatises. And the music. I feel
like people kind of know he was musical, but
I didn't realize the extent of it until I read
through these notes. He played the lute, the
organ, the virginals. And he composed. Pastime
with Good Company is his most famous work. You
can still listen to it today. And it was a genuine
hit at the Tudor court. What's it about? It's
a song about hunting, dancing, and keeping good
company. It's basically his manifesto for life
as a young man. It's full of energy and joy.
But... And I hate to be the bearer of bad news
for our listeners who love a good romantic legend.
We have to issue a correction on Greensleeves.
I know. I know. It breaks people's hearts. Everyone
thinks he wrote Greensleeves for Anne Boleyn
to woo her. It's a great story. But not true.
But not true. Music historians are quite clear
on this. The style of composition in Greensleeves
is Italian, and that specific style didn't actually
reach England until well after Henry had died.
So definitely not him. Okay, so. He didn't write
Greensleeves, but he's smart, he's musical, and
physically. The sources say he was beast. He
was over six feet tall, which was enormous for
the time average height was much, much shorter.
He was a powerhouse athlete. He excelled at jousting,
which requires immense core strength and horse
riding skill. It's like being a Formula One driver
and a linebacker at the same time. Good analogy.
He loved hunting, and he was obsessed with real
tennis. Which is different from the tennis we
watch at Wimbledon, right? Very different. It's
played indoors, you play off the walls, it's
incredibly strategic and fast -paced. It's called
the Sport of Kings for a reason, so you have
this complete package. Okay, so this is the young
Henry, and then everything changes. The turning
point. His brother Arthur dies suddenly at age
15 in 1502, and Henry is thrust into the role
of Prince of Wales at age 10. The spare becomes
the heir. And he wasn't trained for it. He wasn't,
not in the practical sense. And when he finally
takes the throne at age 17... England isn't getting
a tyrant. They are getting a superhero. It must
have felt like a massive relief. His father,
Henry VII, was this miserly, dour accountant
king who checked the ledgers every night. He
was respected but not loved. He pulled the country
out of debt. But he did it by being incredibly
severe and unpopular. And then here comes this
17 -year -old. handsome, athletic superstar who
just wants to throw parties and jousts. It was
a chaotic release of energy. The court went from
a library to a fraternity house almost overnight.
And the first thing the superstar does is make
a very romantic, very specific choice. He marries
his brother's widow, Catherine of Aragon. This
is one of those relationships that gets completely
overshadowed by how it ended. But looking at
the early years, the sources say their marriage
was actually... unusually good. It was a love
match. You have to remember, Catherine was the
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.
She was royalty to her core, arguably more royal
than Henry himself at that point. So marrying
her was a huge political win. A massive coup
for England. But it required a special permission,
a papal dispensation. Because technically under
church law, marrying your brother's wife was
a no -no. Right. It was considered affinity,
too close a relation. Leviticus in the Bible
forbids it. But Catherine swore her marriage
to Arthur was never consummated, so the pope
granted the dispensation, saying, we'll make
an exception. And you should keep that piece
of paper in mind because it becomes the most
important document in English history later on.
It really does. So in 1509, they are crowned
together. Lavish ceremony. They are young, beautiful,
and in love. Catherine wrote to her father that
their time was spent in continuous festival.
It sounds like a fairy tale. It was. But then
the tragedy starts creeping in. And it is relentless.
If you look at the timeline of their reproductive
history, it's just... It's heartbreaking. It's
a litany of stillbirths and infant deaths, one
after another. So tough to read about. Exactly.
They did have a son, Henry, Duke of Cornwall,
born on New Year's Day, 1511. You can imagine
the relief. There were massive celebrations,
a tournament at Westminster. Finally, the heir.
And the baby lived only 52 days. That is absolutely
devastating. And out of all those pregnancies,
only one child survives infancy. A girl. Mary.
Just Mary. And while Henry loved Mary, he doted
on her when she was young. A daughter was not
what he needed. Why not? I mean, why was a female
ruler so unthinkable? You have to understand
the political context. The Tudor dynasty was
brand new. Henry's father had taken the throne
by conquest, ending the Wars of the Roses. Which
were decades of civil war. Decades. And it was
all caused by a disputed succession. The last
time England had tried to have a ruling queen,
Matilda, it led to a brutal civil war called
the Anarchy. So Henry's fear of not having a
son isn't just vanity or sexism. It's a fear
of the country falling back into a bloodbath.
Precisely. He believed that without a clear,
undeniable male heir, England would burn. But
in those early years, before the panic fully
set in, he distracted himself with something
else. War. He wanted to be the warrior king,
like his hero, Henry V. at Agincourt. He was
obsessed with the idea of reclaiming English
lands in France. He leads campaigns, he dumps
money into invasions, he wins the Battle of the
Spurs, which frankly was a minor skirmish where
the French cavalry ran away so fast they used
their spurs more than their swords. But the PR
machine back home spun it as a glorious triumph.
Oh, absolutely. But here's a detail I love, which
really highlights the dynamic between him and
Catherine. While Henry is off playing soldier
in France, the Scots decide to invade England.
Classic move. Wait for the king to leave, then
attack. And Henry isn't there to save the day.
So who organizes the defense of the realm? Queen
Catherine. That is so badass. She oversaw the
English forces that crushed the Scots at the
Battle of Flodden. It was a decisive victory.
The king of Scotland himself was killed on the
battlefield. So she wasn't just a passive queen.
Not at all. Catherine actually sent Henry the
bloodied coat of the Scottish king as a souvenir
while he was partying in France. It really highlights
that she was a formidable partner. She wasn't
just sitting at home doing needlepoint. And amidst
all this partying and warring, we see the rise
of the man who would essentially run the country
for Henry for years. Thomas Wolsey. Tell us about
him. Wolsey is crucial to the first half of the
reign. He was the Lord Chancellor, a cardinal,
and the son of a butcher from Ipswich who rose
to become the most powerful man in England. Oh.
Essentially, by doing the homework Henry didn't
want to do. The boring details of government.
Exactly. Henry wanted the glory, the jousts,
the music. Wolsey handled the administration,
the taxes, the legal system. And the peak of
this era of spectacle has to be the field of
the cloth of gold in 1520. The name alone just
screams excess. It sounds like the Coachella
of the 16th century. It was a diplomatic summit
with France, the first of France. But really,
it was a massive ego contest. They built temporary
palaces. There are fountains glowing with red
wine. Red wine fountains. For three weeks. Henry
brought thousands of courtiers. They covered
the temporary tents in so much gold cloth, hence
the name. It was designed to show off English
wealth and power. Did it achieve anything politically?
Almost nothing. They were at war again shortly
after. It's pure spectacle. But it marks the
end of the golden days, because as we hit the
mid -1520s, the mood shifts. We enter the era
of the great matter. The pivot. By the mid -1520s,
Catherine is in her 40s. It is becoming biologically
obvious that she's not going to provide a male
heir, and Henry is terrified. The panic sets
in, and into this atmosphere of anxiety walks
Anne Boleyn. Anne is fascinating because she
changed the rules of the game. Her sister, Mary
Boleyn, had already been Henry's mistress, so
the path was there for her. But Anne refused.
She refused to be just the side piece. Exactly.
She essentially said, I'm not going to be your
mistress. It's queen or nothing. And that refusal
drove him crazy. He becomes obsessed. We have
the love letters he wrote to her. They're desperate.
He is totally captivated by this intelligent,
fiery, ambitious woman. But he can't just divorce
Catherine. The Catholic Church doesn't do divorce.
So Henry finds a theological loophole. He goes
back to the Bible, specifically Leviticus 20
.21. It says that if a man takes his brother's
wife, it is an unclean thing and they shall be
childless. Wait, so he convinces himself that
God is punishing him for that first marriage,
that all the stillbirths and dead babies are
a sign. He truly believed his marriage was blighted
in the eyes of God. He argued that the Pope never
had the authority to grant that dispensation
back in 1509 because the Pope cannot overrule
the... Bible. It seems incredibly convenient,
though. Oh, look, God is punishing me. And the
only solution just happens to be marrying this
25 year old woman I'm obsessed with. Convenient,
yes. But Henry had a remarkable capacity for
aligning God's will with his own desires. He
convinced himself he was living in sin and that
this was a matter for his eternal soul. So what's
the problem? He just needs an annulment, not
a divorce. The problem was the pope, Clement
VII, couldn't give it to him. Why not? If the
king of England asked for a favor, usually the
pope grants it, right? Politics. At this exact
moment, Rome had been sacked by the troops of
the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. The Pope was
effectively a prisoner of Charles V. And Charles
V happened to be? Catherine of Aragon's nephew.
Oh, wow. So the Pope is thinking, if I grant
this annulment and disgrace the emperor's aunt,
the emperor might literally kill me. Precisely.
So the Pope stalls. He delays. He sends legates
to hold trials that go nowhere. This drags on
for years. And this failure is what cost Wolsey
his life. Yes. He promised Henry he could deliver
the divorce, and when he couldn't, he fell from
grace. Hard. He was arrested for treason and
died while awaiting trial. A broken man. And
this is where the history of England takes a
sharp left turn. If the Pope won't say yes, Henry
decides he doesn't need the Pope. Enter Thomas
Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer. They are the architects
of the break with Rome. They come up with a radical
idea. England is an empire. What does that mean
in this context? It means it is sovereign and
answers to no foreign power, not even the Pope
in Rome. The king is the final authority in all
matters, spiritual and temporal. The Act of Supremacy
in 1534. Henry declares himself the supreme head
of the Church of England. This is the moment
England shifts. It wasn't a reformation of doctrine
at this stage. Henry still considered himself
a good Catholic in terms of belief. It was purely
about authority. He changed the religion of the
entire country just to facilitate a marriage.
That is exactly what he did. So he gets what
he wants. He marries Anne. Catherine is cast
aside to die in loneliness. But the Anne Boleyn
years aren't exactly the fairy tale he expected,
are they? Far from it. The pressure on Anne was
immense. She had promised him a son, and when
she gives birth, it's a girl. Elizabeth. The
future Elizabeth I, which is deeply ironic considering
she becomes the greatest monarch of the dynasty,
but for Henry it must have been a punch in the
gut. It was a bitter blow. And their relationship
turned volatile very quickly. Anne was independent.
She had a temper. She was opinionated. She debated
him. Henry didn't like that in a wife. He wanted
submissiveness. And Anne was fire. And then we
get to 1536. I feel like if you're making a movie
of Henry's life, 1536 is the climax. The sources
call it the Anne's Horribilis, the horrible year.
It is the absolute turning point. Everything
changes in 1536. It starts in January. Catherine
of Aragon dies. And Henry and Anne celebrate
it. They were yellow, which some say was the
Spanish color for mourning, but mostly it was
seen as celebration. But then tragedy strikes
Henry directly. The jousting accident. Let's
deep dive into this because the research suggests
this might explain a lot about the tyrant Henry.
Yes. Henry was jousting, still doing it at age
44, which is incredible, and he was thrown from
his horse. But it wasn't just a fall. The horse,
which was also fully armored, fell on top of
him. That is thousands of pounds of crushing
weight. He was unconscious for two hours. His
courtiers thought he was dead. The news reached
a pregnant Anne Boleyn, and the shock may have
contributed to what happened next. And what's
the modern medical theory here? Modern medical
experts speculate that he likely suffered a severe
traumatic brain injury, a TBI, specifically to
the frontal lobe. And the frontal lobe controls?
Impulse control, emotional regulation, personality.
Before this accident, Henry could be cruel, but
he was generally rational and calculative. After
this, the paranoia, the mood swings, the explosive
rage, it all ramps up. He becomes a different
person. And physically, this is the end of the
athlete, right? Completely. He had a leg wound
from a previous accident that had always bothered
him, but this new fall reopened it. It ulcerated.
It never healed. It caused him chronic, agonizing
pain for the rest of his life. So he can't exercise
anymore. But he keeps eating like an athlete.
And that's where the weight gain begins. So he's
in pain. He's possibly brain damaged. And then
tragedy strikes Anne. On the very day of Catherine
of Aragon's funeral, Anne Boleyn miscarries.
And it was a male child. Harry sees this as a
sign, doesn't he? He sees it as divine judgment.
He decides that this marriage is also cursed.
He thinks, I made all these changes, I broke
the church, and God is still denying me a son.
It must be the woman. And once Henry decides
you are the problem, you are in mortal danger.
Thomas Cromwell, who had been Anne's ally, sees
the wind changing and engineers her destruction.
He needs to get her out of the way. The charges
against her were insane. Completely fabricated.
Adultery with five men, including the court musician
Mark Smeaton, and most horrifically incest with
her own brother, George Boleyn. Is there any
historical evidence to support these charges?
Absolutely none. Historians are almost unanimous
that she was innocent. It was a setup to get
her out of the way so Henry could marry again.
And it worked? The legal machinery moved with
terrifying speed. She was executed in May 1536.
beheaded by a swordsman brought from France as
a final small mercy. And to show just how over
it Henry was, he marries wife number three, Jane
Seymour, ten days later. Ten days. That is cold.
Jane was the anti -Anne. She was submissive,
quiet, plain. Her motto was bound to obey and
serve. She was exactly what the battered, paranoid
Henry thought he wanted. And crucially, she gave
him the one thing he wanted host in the world.
A son. Edward VI is born in 1537. Finally, the
dynasty is secure. But the tragedy continues,
doesn't it? Jane contracts an infection -likely
peripheral fever from the birth and dies shortly
after. So Henry is devastated. Genuinely. He
always referred to her as his true wife. Probably
because she died before he had time to turn on
her. That is a very cynical but likely accurate
assessment. She remains the perfect wife because
she is frozen in time as the mother of the heir.
He commanded that he be buried next to her, and
he was. So now he has the heir. He's a widower.
And Cromwell, ever the schemer, decides it's
time for a political alliance. We need to talk
about Anne of Cleves. Ah, the Flanders mare.
This is a classic case of early modern catfishing.
Cromwell wanted an alliance with the German Protestants
to protect England against Catholic France and
Spain. He suggests Anne of Cleves. And he sends
the artist Hans Holbein to paint her. Holbein,
the best portraitist of the age. And he paints
a very flattering portrait. Henry swipes right,
basically. Basically. He agrees to the marriage
sight unseen. But then she shows up in person.
And Henry's repulse, he famously said, I like
her not. He complained about her evil smells
and claimed she wasn't a virgin because of the
looseness of her breasts. He's such a charmer.
Yeah. Just a delightful man to be married to.
It was humiliating for her. But the marriage
was never consummated. And this is where Anne
of Cleves proves she might be the smartest of
the six wives. How so? When Henry wanted out,
she didn't fight. She didn't claim it was a valid
marriage. She acquiesced immediately. She effectively
said, whatever your majesty wants, I'm happy
to be your sister instead. And what did she get
for playing along? She got the best severance
package in history. She was given the title of
the king's beloved sister, given palaces, including
Hever Castle, the Boleyn's old family home, and
lived a very comfortable, independent life in
England. She outlived all the other wives, didn't
she? And, Henry, she kept her head and her fortune.
A very smart woman. But someone had to take the
fall for the failed match. And that was Cromwell,
the man who had orchestrated the break with Rome,
the dissolution of the monasteries. He was blamed
for the Cleves disaster and executed in 1540.
Did Henry regret that? It seems he did. He actually
regretted it later, accusing his council of tricking
him into killing his most competent servant.
But by then it was too late. So now we're in
the 1540s. Henry's getting old, fat, and sick.
And what does a man in a midlife crisis do? He
marries a teenager. Catherine Howard. She was
the first cousin of Anne Boleyn. She was roughly
17. He was nearly 50. He called her his rose
without a thorn. He was completely infatuated.
Totally. Showering her with jewelry and gifts.
He deluded himself into thinking this vibrant
young woman actually loved him. This aging, obese
man with a festering leg wound. But unlike Anne
Boleyn, who was falsely accused, Catherine Howard
actually was having affairs, right? It seems
so. She was young, reckless, and married to a
decaying, smelling old man. She had a past relationship
with a man named Francis Dieramim and a current
infatuation with a courtier named Thomas Culpepper.
They were meeting in secret. And when Henry found
out... It broke him. Archbishop Cranmer left
a note for Henry in his pew at church detailing
the accusations because he was too scared to
say it to his face. I don't blame him. At first,
Henry refused to believe it. He threatened to
kill anyone lying about her. But when the evidence
came out, the sources say he broke down... crying,
and then the rage took over. She was executed
in 1542. Two queens beheaded. It's just staggering.
Which brings us to the survivor, Catherine Parr.
She sounds like a saint. She was a wealthy widow,
very intelligent, and a committed religious reformer.
She essentially became his nurse in those final
years, a companion. But her biggest contribution
was what? Reconciling the family. She brought
the children back together. She convinced Henry
to pass the Third Succession Act, which restored
his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, to the line
of succession. That is huge. Without her, we
might not have had Queen Elizabeth I. Exactly.
She stabilized the domestic situation while Henry
physically fell apart. Let's talk about that
decay. The source mentions a 54 -inch waist.
He was enormous. He had to be moved with mechanical
devices, hoists, and chairs because his legs
couldn't support his weight. He was covered in
pus -filled boils. The smell from his leg ulcer
was apparently terrible. Courtiers claimed you
could smell him coming three rooms away. And
there's a medical theory mentioned in the notes
called McLeod syndrome. I want to touch on this
because it offers a biological explanation for
all the chaos. Yes, it's a fascinating theory.
McLeod syndrome is a very rare genetic disorder
related to the Cal blood group. The theory is
that Henry was Cal positive. And what does that
mean for pregnancies? If a father is Kel -positive
and the mother is Kel -negative, the first pregnancy
is usually fine because the mother hasn't developed
antibodies yet. But for subsequent pregnancies,
the mother's immune system attacks the Kel -positive
fetus, causing late -term miscarriages or stillbirths.
That fits the pattern of his wife's reproductive
histories perfectly. Catherine of Aragon had
one healthy child first, then disaster. Anne
Boleyn had Elizabeth first, then miscarriages.
It fits perfectly. And here's the kicker. McLeod
syndrome can also cause cognitive decline, paranoia,
and muscle weakness in later life. It's speculative,
of course. We can't DNA test him. But it reframes
the narrative. It changes everything. He wasn't
cursed by God. He was fighting his own biology.
Possibly. It turns the villain into a much more
tragic figure. But while his body is ruining
itself, he's also ruining the country's finances.
Completely. He inherited a fortune from his father.
one of the richest treasuries in europe he died
leaving england nearly bankrupt where did all
the money go palaces he owned over 50 he was
a shopaholic on a grand scale he had 2 000 tapestries
but the biggest drain was war and he found a
massive source of cash to fund them the church
the dissolution of the monasteries this was cromwell's
project in the late 1530s they did a survey called
the valor ecclesiasticus to find out how much
the church owned it turned out they owned about
a quarter of the land in england so henry just
took it he seized it closed the abbeys kicked
out the monks and nuns melted down the lead from
the roofs took the gold plate and sold the land
it was cultural vandalism on a massive scale
libraries were destroyed art was lost forever
ostensibly to crush idolatry, but really to fund
the wars. And to buy loyalty. This is key. If
you sell the church lands to the nobility and
the gentry, those people now have a vested interest
in the Reformation succeeding. They don't want
the monks coming back because they'd have to
give the land back. It baked the Reformation
into the economy. But the common people weren't
happy. The monasteries were their hospitals,
their schools, their food banks. No. This led
to the pilgrimage of grace in 1536. It was a
massive uprising in the north of England, tens
of thousands of people marching to defend the
old religion. It was the biggest threat to Henry's
entire reign. And how did he handle it? With
characteristic duplicity. He couldn't defeat
them militarily. They were too strong. So he
promised them pardons. He promised to hold a
parliament in York to hear their grievances.
And they believed him. They did. The rebels dispersed,
thinking they had won. And once they were gone,
Henry rounded up the leaders and executed every
last one of them. It was brutal betrayal. But
we should give credit where it's due. There is
one area where his spending actually paid off
for the future. The Navy. Yes. Henry VIII is
often called the father of the Royal Navy. When
he came to the throne, England had about seven
significant warships. He built it up to over
50. And he changed the technology, didn't he?
He shifted the paradigm. Before Henry, sea battles
were just land battles on floating platforms.
You rammed the other ship. boarded it, and fought
hand -to -hand. Henry put heavy guns on the ships.
He wanted to sink the enemy from a distance.
The birth of modern naval warfare. In many ways,
yes. The Mary Rose is the famous example, though
sadly she sank because she was top -heavy with
all those new guns. He also built those forts
along the coast. The device forts. If you go
to the south coast of England today, Deal, Walmer,
you can still see them. They are squat, rounded
forts designed to deflect cannon fire. And the
irony, they were built with stones. scavenged
from the destroyed monasteries. A literal recycling
of the old religion to defend the new kingdom.
Exactly. So we have the navy, which is a win,
but his foreign policy in his later years seems
to be a series of expensive flops. Flop is a
kind word for it. Look at Scotland in the 1540s.
He tried to force a marriage between his son
Edward and the infant Mary, Queen of Scots. They're
rough wooing. A terrible name for a terrible
policy. He sent armies to burn Edinburgh and
the borders. The idea was to bully the Scots
into the Union. Instead, it just made them hate
the English and drove them closer to their allies
in France. It achieved nothing but death and
cost. And then there's Boulogne, his last hurrah.
His final pointless invasion of France. In 1544,
he's sick, he's obese, but he leads an army personally
to capture the city of Boulogne. It costs 650
,000 pounds in astronomical sum. And what did
England get for it? They held it for a few years
and eventually it was sold back to France for
a fraction of the cost. It was a vanity project
that almost bankrupted the nation. And to pay
for all this, he did something called the Great
Debasement. This was economic vandalism. He literally
lowered the amount of silver in the coins. He
mixed in cheaper copper. The coins would wear
down and the copper would show through on the
king's nose on the portrait. People started calling
him Old Copper Nose. That's quite an insult.
It caused massive inflation and economic instability
that took decades to fix. So we're at the end,
January 1547. The tyrant is dying. He dies at
the Palace of Whitehall. And his will is this
desperate attempt to control the future from
beyond the grave. He sets up a regency council
because his heir is just a child. Edward VI takes
the throne. Edward is only nine years old. And
the irony of Henry's life, the ultimate punchline
is in the succession. How so? He spent his entire
life, broke the church, killed wives, executed
friends, and ruined the economy, all to get a
male heir. Edward rules for only six years and
dies young. And who takes over? The daughters?
Mary Morris and Elizabeth I. The two daughters
he neglected, delegitimized, and cast aside.
They become two of the most famous queens in
history. Mary briefly returns England to Catholicism.
And then Elizabeth, the daughter of the great
whore Anne Boleyn, presides over the golden age
of England. It's the ultimate cosmic joke on
Henry. He destroyed everything for a son who
was a historical footnote, while the daughter
he rejected became the legend. It really is the
ultimate failure of his grand plan. So what does
this all mean? When we look back at Henry VIII,
beyond the rhyme, beyond the turkey light we
now know isn't there, what does it take away?
I think he was a man of deep, deep contradictions.
He was a man of high culture and low brutality.
He broke the mold of Europe to get what he wanted.
He changed England's religion, its government,
and its position in the world forever. But he
was driven by fear. Fear of a disputed succession.
And that fear, combined with absolute power and
perhaps biological decline, turned the golden
prince into the tyrant. It makes you wonder.
And this is my provocative thought to end on.
If that horse hadn't fallen on him in 1536, if
he hadn't suffered that brain injury and that
chronic pain, would we be telling a different
story? Would he have remained the golden prince?
Or was the tyranny always lurking beneath the
surface, just waiting for the right trigger?
That is the great what -if of Tudor history.
One misstep by a horse and the course of a nation
changed forever. Thanks for listening to this
deep dive. We'll catch you on the next one.