Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII by Robert Hutchinson Page A
Authors: Robert Hutchinson
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Marquis of Exeter, Henry Lord Montague, Sir Edward Neville and Princess Mary’s old governess, Margaret Pole,
Countess of Salisbury, were all arrested. The first three were executed on 9 December at Tower Hill. The sixty-seven-year-old countess was imprisoned in the Tower and eventually was led to the scaffold on 27 May 1541. She refused to lay her head on the block saying, ‘So should traitors do [but] I am none neither.’ The executioner was a ham-fisted, inexperienced youth who limply told her that this was ‘the fashion’. He repeatedly hacked her grey-haired head and shoulders before he could bloodily finish the job. Montague’s heir Henry disappeared within the Tower and died some time after September 1542. Exeter’s twelve-year-old son Edward was held there until Mary ascended the throne in 1553 when he was eventually freed.
On 30 May 1536, Henry married Jane Seymour, one of Anne’s ladies in another secret wedding, this time in the Queen’s Closet at Westminster.
At two o’clock in the morning of Friday 12 October 1537, Henry’s elusive dream of a male heir was at last transformed into happy reality. After a harrowing thirty hours in labour, Jane Seymour gave birth to a boy, named Edward, at Hampton Court. But she died twelve days later, aged twenty-eight, probably from puerperal fever and septicaemia.
Analysis of Henry’s symptoms and the changes in his appearance as shown in portraits, suggests that from the late 1530s Henry probably suffered from Cushing’s syndrome, a rare endocrine abnormality that causes gross obesity in the body’s trunk and increased fat around the neck, as well as weakening of the bones and diabetes. In some cases – and Henry was possibly one – the condition turns the victim into a paranoid psychotic. In his last years he could barely walk and was carried around his palaces in a kind of sedan chair, called ‘the king’s tram’.
The king had three more wives – Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and the matronly Katherine Parr – but by then was probably incapable of procreating.
Henry died speechless, alone and friendless in the great carved walnut bed within his secret apartments in Westminster Palace at around two o’clock in the morning of Friday 28 January 1547.
As with his father, his death was kept a close secret for three days with road blocks set up around London and England was sealed off from Europe by closure of the ports.
The king’s legitimate male heir, nine-year-old Edward, was proclaimed king on 31 January, as the cannon boomed out their salutes from the ramparts of the Tower and from ships moored on the Thames.
The Tudor dynasty had been secured – for the moment anyway.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Henry VIII is England’s most famous monarch. The king’s turbulent life, the traumas of his six marriages and his ruthless, despotic actions combine to provide the most compelling drama that any fiction author could hope, in their wildest dreams, to write.
His victims, Wolsey, Fisher, More and the Boleyns, weave their way through the narrative, entering and exiting like actors on the stage of Henry’s court before the denouement of their disgrace or violent end in this most vivid of tragedies. In this king’s story, historical fact is stranger than fiction.
Henry VIII has always aroused the strongest emotions. In the eighteenth century, for example, Jonathan Swift, the Irish satirist – and author of Gulliver’s Travels – noted in the margin of one of his books his own vitriolic verdict on ‘Bluff King Hal’:
I wish he had been flayed, his skin stuffed and hanged upon a gibbet. His bulky guts and flesh left to be devoured by birds and beasts for a warning to his successors for ever. Amen.
This book analyses the motives and needs that drove Henry both in his private life and in his policies directed towards his own people and his brother kings abroad.
Much of his personality traits and likes and dislikes were inherited from his father Henry VII
Countess of Salisbury, were all arrested. The first three were executed on 9 December at Tower Hill. The sixty-seven-year-old countess was imprisoned in the Tower and eventually was led to the scaffold on 27 May 1541. She refused to lay her head on the block saying, ‘So should traitors do [but] I am none neither.’ The executioner was a ham-fisted, inexperienced youth who limply told her that this was ‘the fashion’. He repeatedly hacked her grey-haired head and shoulders before he could bloodily finish the job. Montague’s heir Henry disappeared within the Tower and died some time after September 1542. Exeter’s twelve-year-old son Edward was held there until Mary ascended the throne in 1553 when he was eventually freed.
On 30 May 1536, Henry married Jane Seymour, one of Anne’s ladies in another secret wedding, this time in the Queen’s Closet at Westminster.
At two o’clock in the morning of Friday 12 October 1537, Henry’s elusive dream of a male heir was at last transformed into happy reality. After a harrowing thirty hours in labour, Jane Seymour gave birth to a boy, named Edward, at Hampton Court. But she died twelve days later, aged twenty-eight, probably from puerperal fever and septicaemia.
Analysis of Henry’s symptoms and the changes in his appearance as shown in portraits, suggests that from the late 1530s Henry probably suffered from Cushing’s syndrome, a rare endocrine abnormality that causes gross obesity in the body’s trunk and increased fat around the neck, as well as weakening of the bones and diabetes. In some cases – and Henry was possibly one – the condition turns the victim into a paranoid psychotic. In his last years he could barely walk and was carried around his palaces in a kind of sedan chair, called ‘the king’s tram’.
The king had three more wives – Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and the matronly Katherine Parr – but by then was probably incapable of procreating.
Henry died speechless, alone and friendless in the great carved walnut bed within his secret apartments in Westminster Palace at around two o’clock in the morning of Friday 28 January 1547.
As with his father, his death was kept a close secret for three days with road blocks set up around London and England was sealed off from Europe by closure of the ports.
The king’s legitimate male heir, nine-year-old Edward, was proclaimed king on 31 January, as the cannon boomed out their salutes from the ramparts of the Tower and from ships moored on the Thames.
The Tudor dynasty had been secured – for the moment anyway.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Henry VIII is England’s most famous monarch. The king’s turbulent life, the traumas of his six marriages and his ruthless, despotic actions combine to provide the most compelling drama that any fiction author could hope, in their wildest dreams, to write.
His victims, Wolsey, Fisher, More and the Boleyns, weave their way through the narrative, entering and exiting like actors on the stage of Henry’s court before the denouement of their disgrace or violent end in this most vivid of tragedies. In this king’s story, historical fact is stranger than fiction.
Henry VIII has always aroused the strongest emotions. In the eighteenth century, for example, Jonathan Swift, the Irish satirist – and author of Gulliver’s Travels – noted in the margin of one of his books his own vitriolic verdict on ‘Bluff King Hal’:
I wish he had been flayed, his skin stuffed and hanged upon a gibbet. His bulky guts and flesh left to be devoured by birds and beasts for a warning to his successors for ever. Amen.
This book analyses the motives and needs that drove Henry both in his private life and in his policies directed towards his own people and his brother kings abroad.
Much of his personality traits and likes and dislikes were inherited from his father Henry VII
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