5 – He Was Always a Tyrant
There are those who try to defend Henry’s actions and claim he only became a tyrant after the 1536 accident. However, his conduct throughout his reign suggests he was a nasty piece of work who merely became unbearable due to mental illness later in life. His excesses were initially borne out of frustration; he was angry at the Pope for drawing out his annulment to Katherine and forced Parliament to pass a law declaring him as the head of the Church of England.
This action removed England from the Pope’s authority, and he executed anyone who got in his way including Thomas More and Cardinal Wolsey. He closed all England’s monasteries and stole their wealth which he frittered away. Henry inherited the equivalent of £375 million in today’s money when he became king in 1509. He managed to spend all of it due to his ill-conceived continental wars and his court, which was one of the most lavish of all time. He devalued England’s coinage in 1526 and again in 1539 and died in debt.
Henry executed more people than any other monarch in British history. Although matters escalated in his later years, he had people killed long before his mental illness took hold. His paranoia and ill-temper became out of control after 1536, and the Tower of London was home to countless subjects who were imprisoned on Henry’s orders. From the late 1530s onward, Henry had numerous members of the Pole and Courtenay families executed. They were apparently conspiring against him, and their royal blood meant they had a legitimate claim to the throne.
One of the bloodiest executions was of the Countess of Salisbury, Margaret de la Pole in 1541. When the 67-year-old woman was told to put her head on the chopping block, she panicked and tried to escape. She was pinned to the block, and the executioner tried to behead the unfortunate woman. Alas, he was an inexperienced executioner by all accounts, and it took him 11 strikes to finish the job.
It was in Henry’s later reign that he started to go through several wives and in 1540; he executed his old friend Thomas Cromwell. As well as executing his wife Catherine Howard in 1542, Henry had her uncle Henry executed in 1547 based on accusations from a rival family, the Seymour’s. According to John Stow, a historian of the age, Henry had around 70,000 people executed during his reign. While this is surely an exaggeration, he did murder hundreds if not thousands of people.
While Henry was always a suspicious individual, his personality changed after his 1536 accident, and he became insanely paranoid. Apparently, the severe accident rendered him speechless for 2 hours and his wife at the time, Anne Boleyn, was told the king would die. The shock of this terrible news resulted in her miscarriage. The unborn child was male, and Henry reportedly turned against her almost immediately by saying they would never have a male child. Within six months, Anne was dead.
The fall probably resulted in damage to the brain’s frontal lobe which explains the personality change. Researchers believe he could have suffered from McLeod Syndrome which is a genetic disorder. It would explain why his wives had so many miscarriages. The king spent his last days on earth as a bedridden mess. The smell from his many ulcerations was foul, and while he was clearly on his last legs, doctors were afraid to tell him he was dying because of the Treason Act. Henry created this act which made it a capital offense to speak about the king’s death. Apparently, Thomas Cranmer broke the news and on January 28, 1547, King Henry VIII died; he was 56 years of age.