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A Brief History of Henry VIII

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For some reason, Henry VIII's reputation seems to stand higher than ever. The man Charles Dickens called "a blot of blood and grease upon the history of England" is forgiven nearly all, perhaps because he broke the power of a corrupt and greedy clergy, built a great navy, gave England a new brand of nationalism and raised its status, so that it was no longer considered a strange island where people kept overthrowing and murdering their kings.

Derek Wilson's book does not continue this vogue for adulation. It might best be described as a book that seeks to lay forth Henry warts and all, and reveal his insecurities, his tyranny, his crimes, his selfishness and his capriciousness.

Personally, I found this lack of adulation refreshing. Wilson claims in his introduction that "The picture I shall try to paint in the following chapters is very different. I shall argue that Henry VIII was a man whose blustering egotism covered a basic insecurity. He was both morally and intellectually limited and heavily dependent on others - ministers, courtiers, wives. He was too self-obsessed to have any vision of a greater or better England. The changes that came over the nation during his reign were in large measure the work of others and often emerged from the muddled interaction of external influences and internal factionalism." Nonetheless, this impression is created through a rapid-fire presentation of facts, rather than through sheer opinionatedness.

I would recommend the book, in spite of some factual errors. He states that Henry's mother was 38 at the time of her son Arthur's death, when she was 36, and died ten months later on her 37th birthday (1466-1503). He states (p.30) that Margaret of Austria/Savoy was the mother of Eleanor of Austria, who Henry VII had arranged should marry his son, when Eleanor was her niece. After the death of her third husband, Philibert of Savoy, in 1504, Margaret of Austria was left a childless widow, and when her brother Philip of Flanders died in 1506 and his wife Juana went mad, she became Regent of the Netherlands for her nephew Charles (the future Emperor Charles V) and brought up him and three of his five siblings. Historians can hardly be expected to specialise in everything; however, reading even one biography of Margaret of Austria would have made this mistake impossible. (For the record, there are three: by Jane de Iongh, Eleanor E. Tremayne and Christopher Hare.)

On p.39 Wilson states of Louis XI, "Louis it was who broke the power of France's mighty vassals, annexed Brittany and Burgundy, established centralized administration and made the crown autonomous". Louis XI certainly annexed Burgundy (and Anjou), but his son Charles VIII invaded Brittany and married Anne of Brittany in 1491 - eight years after his father's death. Did Louis XI really intend this? Shortly before his death in 1483, he had married his son to the three-year-old Margaret of Austria. (When Charles married Anne of Brittany, he annulled the marriage and sent the girl back to her father.)

Re Catherine of Aragon, Wilson states (p.30) that she had been in England eight-and-a-half years when she married Henry, when she arrived in late 1501 and married him in June 1509 - that's seven-and-a-half years. He claims on p.51 that Catherine had "further miscarriages in 1514 and 1515" when everything else I have read dates these miscarriages to 1513 and 1514 - after all, for most of 1515 she was pregnant with Mary.

On p.78 he states that Henry's sister Mary was 28 when she married Louis XII in 1514, when she was only 18 (born 1496). He adds on that after Louis's death in January 1515, "The first reaction of Henry and his minister was to save the situation by marrying the young widow to Louis's cousin and heir, Francis I", when Francis had been married to Louis XII and Anne of Brittany's daughter Claude for nearly a year, and she was pregnant with their first child. Mary did complain that Francis made advances to her, however they were probably only a means of frightening her into hastily marrying her beloved Charles Brandon - which she did - so that her brother could not marry her to one of Francis's enemies. Besides, it is inconceivable that Francis would have relinquished control of Brittany, which Claude had inherited from her mother the year before; as Desmond Seward commented in his biography of Francis, Prince of the Renaissance, Brittany stood in relation to France almost as Scotland did to England. So determined had Louis XII been that Brittany stay part of France that when Charles VIII died childless, he annulled his own childless marriage so he could also marry Anne of Brittany. And even though Anne had vigorously opposed Louis's plan to marry their eldest daughter to his heir (she intensely disliked Francis and his ambitious mother, Louise of Savoy), a mere four months after her death, Louis went ahead and married his 14-year-old daughter to Francis. Would Francis really have undone all this work, and allowed Brittany to revert to being a feudal duchy? (not to mention bastardising his unborn child).

There's a confusing one on p.150: "Catherine intended that Mary should inherit the crown. Such an eventuality might be anathema to the English but the Habsburg tree had produced many women who ruled either in their own right or as regents." What had this to do with Catherine of Aragon? She wasn't a Habsburg, she was a Trastámara! Her sister Juana married a Habsburg, Philip of Flanders, however that didn't turn her sisters into Habsburgs. And who are these Habsburg women who had ruled in their own right or as regents? At the time (1525) Philips's sister Margaret of Austria was Regent of the Netherlands, however I'm not aware that her father, the Emperor Maximilian I, had any female relatives who had ruled Austria (and the Netherlands had only come to the Habsburgs when he married Mary of Burgundy). Could the author be referring to Spain, which was not ruled by the Habsburgs until Juana's son Charles inherited it? According to Peggy K. Liss's biography Isabel the Queen, Catherine of Aragon's mother had not been the first woman to inherit Castile and León; there had been half a dozen others in the distant past (Chapter 6 gives a run-through of them). But they had almost always been crowned along with their husbands, who became king and did most of the ruling. And they were not regents. What's going on here? Enlightenment, anyone?

On p.210 Wilson says that "In February 1531 members of William Warham's household were stricken with food poisoning. Two people died and it was probably the aged archbishop's abstemiousness which saved him from at least serious illness." This refers to a case of attempted poisoning for which Anne Boleyn's supporters were blamed - however it was not William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury it happened to, but John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester (I've checked three books to make sure). Right incident, wrong bishop!

Last but not least of the factual errors: on p.340 Wilson refers to Walter Ralegh's History of the World, written during the reign of James VI and I, which criticised Henry VIII's treatment of his nephew James V. He writes, "At the time of writing, the son of James V of Scotland now ruled as James I of England and the prisoner in the Tower was eager to ingratiate himself at court". What about Mary Queen of Scots! "Son" should have read "grandson".

Unfortunately, the book also has more than the usual number of typographical errors, e.g. missing possessive apostrophes ("Charles spies reported to him ..."; "Lascelles sister, Mary Hall ..."), gaps ("Throughout the winter of 1529- 30"), full stops instead of commas, commas in strange and unnecessary places, and new paragraphs that are not indented. I know proofreaders cost money, but not using them can make books look shabby - a far higher cost, some might say. In the introduction he even says, "Like him or loath him, there is absolutely no doubt that `Bluff King Hal' remains everlastingsly fascinating." `Loath' means adverse or reluctant to do something; to despise someone is to `loathe' them.

I'll still give the book four stars, since it was extremely well written, impossible to put down, and was the most interesting study of Henry VIII I have read since Lacey Baldwin Smith's Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty. However, if there's a revised edition, I hope the mistakes will be corrected. Without them, I would not have hesitated to give it five stars.

A Brief History of Henry VIII is another in the series of "A Brief History of...." originally published in the United Kingdom. Derek Wilson, the author of this incisive entry in the series, is a renowned Tudor scholar who knows the major players and the gargantuan Henry VIII like the back of his hand. In 350 plainly written prose he introduces the era to a popular audience.
Henry VIII (1491-1547) reigned in England from 1509-1547. His redoubtable warrior-king father Henry VII had won the Tudors the crown of England following his defeat of Richard III at Bosworth Field in 1485. The elder Henry was prepared for his oldest son Arthur to become King of the Realm. Arthur was married early to Catherine of Aragon the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. When he died she became the wife of the young, callow, egotistical and weak Henry VIII. Henry was not close to his father and lived in his formidable shadow throughout his life. It is still unclear whether Arthur and Catherine had consummated the marriage. She claimed she had no sexual intercourse with Arthur while Henry during his annulment ordeal claimed she had.
Henry is best known for his spilt from the Roman Catholic Church when he divorced Catherine and wed the fetching and strong willed Anne Boleyn. Anne supported Protestantism and was beheaded by Henry for infidelity.
The king then wed Jane Seymour who provided him with his only legitimate son Edward VI who reigned from 1547-1553.
Henry's daughter by Catherine was Mary who reigned from 1553-58 earning the sobriquet "Bloody Mary" for her persecution and burning at the stake of Protestants. Her reign was a disaster. She was followed by Henry's daughter and England's greatest queen Elizabeth I whose mother was Anne Boleyn. Eliaabeth reigned over a golden age of literature as Britain expanded into a global power. She reigned from 1558 to 1603. Henry's fourth wife was Anne of Cleves a Protestant whom he quickly divorced to wed the teenage Lolita Catherine Howard (soon executed) and his sixth and last wife the patient and kind Catherine Parr. (Henry was her third husband).
Wilson posits the view that Henry was a weak man who was supported by wonderful and wise advisors . Cardinal Wolsley guided England on the diplomatic front. Following Wolsley's fall from power the king was served by the brilliant Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell engineered the seizing of the monasteries and religious house making Henry rich as their wealth was deposited in the royal treasury. Cromwell was executed for treason in 1540. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer helped move the Protestant Reformation forward. All of Henry's wives and advisors lived in fear of his displeasure. He killed many of them and was the lesser ruler as a result of this behavior.
Henry did poorly on the diplomatic front in his international jousts with Francis of the Valois dynasty of France and Charles V the Holy Roman Emperor. Henry was excommunicated by Pope Paul III. Henry executed his outstanding Chancellor Thomas More a devout Catholic who would not agree to the annulment of Henry's marriage ot Catherine of Aragon. More was another of the growing list of Henry's victims. During his reign but Protestants and Roman Catholics died by ax, rack and fire.
Henry VIII was not a good man or a wise ruler. At his death his nation was deeply in debt with religiious division and conflict at home. Henry did suppress many domestic rebellions such as the Pilgrimage of Grace but never led his troops on the field of battle. He was an armchair general.
Derek Wilson's little book would be a great resource for a course on Tudor England. It is one of my favorite books on Henry VIII along with the excellent more detailed and scholarly work done by David Starkey. This book is worth the price and is well worth adding to your library shelf on the complex and controversial Henry VIII who still fascinates the public 500 years after his bloody reign.