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Many people tend to think of Henry VIII as he was in later life -- overweight, dictatorial, and not always very kind to his wives. But in his younger days, he was actually quite tall and athletic, talented in music, sports, and jousting, and even his enemies admitted that he was "the handsomest Prince in Christendom". (The television show The Tudors got it right when they cast a handsome actor in the part!) He was also intelligent and well-educated, so in other words, quite a catch even aside from being King of England.
After Arthur's death, Henry VII became more and more protective of his only surviving son. For several years, the younger Henry was hardly allowed to do anything, constantly surrounded by guards and mostly confined to his rooms, and he was very unhappy at being unable to indulge in his love of hunting, jousting, and other sports, as he was used to doing. He was only seventeen when his father died, and it was no surprise that he immediately took the chance to do all the things he had been forbidden to do. Though he was capable of hard work, he disliked it and soon made a practice of finding the most capable people available so that he himself could take it easy while they handled the difficult parts of running a kingdom. Unusually, he didn't particularly care whether these people were of high birth or not -- he could easily give them titles as rewards for good work -- and he liked being surrounded by courtiers who owed all their wealth and position to him.
Thanks to his father, however, he had inherited a relatively stable country, with a full treasury and a considerable amount of power. The elder Henry had understood the need for the occasional grand, showy display for political reasons, but his son loved shows of luxury and wealth for their own sake. His lavish spending and high taxes meant that his heirs would have to face serious financial issues, but for the moment he only wanted to make sure that no one else outshone him in anything.
Tapestry depicting the Field of the Cloth of Gold
Tapestry depicting the Field of the Cloth of Gold
In 1520, for instance, he went to France to negotiate a peace treaty with their king, Francis I, and went to huge expense trying to outdo his rival. The two men were much the same age, both considered handsome, and both athletic, so it was natural that they tended to compete. Their meeting became known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and nobles on both sides went into debt in order to have the funds to look suitably dazzling. The cloth of gold of the name was literally fabric with gold threads woven into it, and it was used everywhere, in clothing as well as for making entire gleaming pavilions. One yard cost roughly 40 shillings -- about the wages of a cook in a noble house for an entire year!
Soon after his father's death, Henry had married Katherine of Aragon, his brother's widow, when the bride was twenty-three and the young king seventeen. The marriage lasted for 24 years, longer than all his other marriages combined, and they were about as happy as any royal couple could expect to be. Unlike his father, he did often have a royal mistress, but he was not quite the womanizer of legend. His infamous six marriages were mainly the result of his very real fears about the succession, since Katherine had only one child that lived more than a few days, a daughter named Mary. Unlike France, England had no law forbidding women to inherit the throne, but this did not mean that they would be glad to have a female ruler, and Henry wanted the family line to be secured.
In order to marry his second wife, Anne Boleyn, Henry had to first find a way to divorce his first wife, who flatly refused to be put aside. He took the tremendous step of breaking with the Catholic church, denying the pope's authority and creating the Church of England, with himself at the head of it. It was a bold and terrifying move (known at the time as the King's Great Matter), for he was risking excommunication and therefore his soul by defying the church, but he went through with it despite this, so anxious was he to marry Anne. And he profited by this in other ways, too, since as part of this Reformation, he seized much of the land and wealth of the monasteries and nunneries, though even this did not solve his financial woes. A lot of this new wealth went to reward his favorites and those who held high office.
Perhaps because of his brother's death and his father's protectiveness, Henry was terrified of illness. Any rumors of sickness in an area would send him racing off to another of his many grand homes and palaces, trying to stay away from the contagion. He also confessed every day to a priest so that his conscience would always be clear. When he was wooing Anne Boleyn, she fell ill with the sweating sickness, which was possibly the disease that killed Arthur. On hearing of her illness, Henry gave what was for him the strongest proof of love: he wrote that he would "willingly bear the half" of her sickness if that would save her.
As he grew older, the once charming, friendly king became increasingly difficult to deal with. He was inclined to fly into rages and became depressed and paranoid at times, often obsessing about various matters. When he was still a young man, his chief advisor, Cardinal Wolsey, had cautioned a courtier to be careful of "what matter ye put in his head, for ye shall never put it out again," and this became more true of Henry than ever with age. His health was bad and he probably weighed at least 300 pounds by the time he died. Worst of all, he still had only one somewhat sickly son and two daughters, despite all his marriages.
He was 55 when he died in January, 1547, possibly of complications from diabetes. As he had requested, he was buried next to his third wife, Jane Seymour, the mother of his only surviving son.
Henry VIII in his later years
Henry VIII in his later years
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