Customer Reviews

The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracies, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you're a Tudor buff, you'll love this book even though it portrays Henry VIII as a monster. Hutchinson believes that Henry was responsible for some 150,000 deaths. Towards the end of his life he was so viciously unpredictable his courtiers must have been in constant fear that they would go next to the block. His severe illness pushed him over the brink of any sense of fair play or decency. He was always a tyrant, however.

What was Henry's illness? There's been 400 years of speculation.

Hutchinson believes along with others including the surgeon Clifford Brewer's "The Death of Kings" (available at Amazon)that Henry did not have syphilis, but varicose ulcers on his legs. Both legs. Syphilis was treated in those days with mercury, and since hundreds of potions Henry was given by his doctors are recorded, mercury would most certainly have been administered. Also, none of Henry's wives or children showed any sign of congenital syphilis. Anyway, when the ulcers healed over,infections resulted underneath the skin, and very likely spread into the bones. The king's physical sufferings played a large role in shaping his behavior towards the end of his life.

Here is one Hutchinson's descriptions of Henry's awful disease: "He is the personification of geriatric decay. One can almost smell the the putrid stench of the rank pus oozing from his ulcers, staining the bandages on his swollen legs. Chapuys [the Spanish ambassador] labelled them 'the worst legs in the world.'"

Henry weighed, according to Hutchinson, 28 stone or 392 pounds. His waist was 54 inches around. Many suits of Henry's armor survive, so his physical proportions are easy to calculate. His gluttony contributed to his health problems, so his obesity and his ulcers did him in at age 55, and just before his death he lost the power of speech, finally sinking into a uremic coma.

"The Last Days of Henry VIII" goes into great detail about the state of England towards the end of Henry's life, but my interests lie in character portrayal. Edward VI, Henry's only son, is described as a boy of unattractive "prissiness". The stupidity of Kathryn Howard, Henry's fifth wife, in cuckolding the king right under his nose, is discussed. Anne of Cleves emerges as "no fool, behind her pock-marked face". Interestingly, Anne and Henry's daughter, Mary, became fast friends. They died at the same age, 42, one year apart. The Duke of Norfolk emerges as a coward and hypocrite. The power behind the throne towards the end of Henry's life was Sir Anthony Denny, a man I had never heard of. Sir Anthony was Chief Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and controlled all access to the monarch and managed all of Henry's finances.The power behind the throne.All of these character studies, along with many more, are what interest me the most in the book.

There's an especiially interesting plate in the book, in black and white, of Mary, painted in 1536 by Holbein when Mary was twenty years old. Mary looks like a woman of forty, her face shadowed with fatigue, her thin lips rigid and uncompromising. Facing the page of Mary is the superb portait of Elizabeth when she was 13. It's very odd, but Mary and ELizabeth facing eachother, look astoundingly alike even though Elizabeth is fresh-faced and young.In real life, the sisters did not resemble eachother and yet these two portraits, side by side, are food for thought. It's a bit eerie!

The tangled web of conspiracies and heresies and treason are brought forth in the book to great effect, including character studies and influence of the clergymen Cranmer and Gardiner. Henry VIII was responsible for many burnings at the stake of people from all walks of life. As his illness became more incapacitating, the more ruthless Henry became so that in the end, he died a lonely old man with no friends. And horribly, it was rumored that Henry's immense coffin burst a seam and issued forth a stream of corrupted matter. A dog was caught trying to lap up the blood, like the dogs who lapped up the blood of Ahab. The story may be apocryphal, of course, but maybe not.

To get a real gut feeling for the times of Henry VIII "The Last Days" is recommended.

I found Hutchinson's Last Days of Henry VIII to be well written and very readable. Anyone looking for a general overview of this part of Henry's life should be well pleased with the book. The depiction of Henry's dealings with his inner circle and of his funeral are perhaps the most detailed that I have read anywhere. I did feel, however, that the book failed to achieve five stars in that it didn't examine in any depth Henry's relationship with his surviving children - all of whom went on to rule England in their own right. It would have added much value to the book if the author had spent some time discussing how Henry's gargantuan personality shaped those of the rulers who came after him.

I commenced this book with the view that perhaps Henry VIII was no worse than your average black-hearted monarch of the Middle Ages; that view went up in smoke in the first 50 pages of this fascinating book. Hutchinson has researched well for this book and the bibliography is full of reference to primary documents and quotes at length from them.

In some ways Henry was no worse than some of his scheming, ruthless and murderous Councilors and Government officials, but he bested them all with his acutely developed sense of low cunning, deviousness and intelligence. The book offers a brilliant cross section of the personalities and the dynamics of the rulers and some of the would-be rulers during the last years of Henry's reign.

Henry was a very sick man for the last few years of his life and in great pain and this made him a very dangerous person to be around with his power of life and death over his subjects. His natural qualities of selfishness, ruthlessness and cruelty became even more pronounced as he sunk deeper into pain and ill health and edged towards death.

Hutchinson gives a very good analysis of the effects in England of Henry VIII's break with the Roman Catholic Church and the consequences, some fatal, for his subjects as they tried to deal with the aftermath. The author gives a sad and heart breaking account of some of his executed victims, some are in their teens, some are poor and they all have no hope of a fair trial or hearing under Henry's despotic rule. This book is well worth reading, if only to see how far human rights have advanced; in some countries anyway!

Henry VIII ruled his kingdom, at least towrd the end of his reign, with low political cunning, and a mixture of tyranny and terror. Even those closest to him at court could never be sure about the long-term stability of their positions. His mind was mercurial, and often changed by the last person with whom he spoke, but the final decision, good or bad, was always his. This is an extremely readable work that takes us through the last years of his life, when life around him became extremely bad, not only because of his natural inclination to incite terror, but the very real physical pain he sufered from various problems with his often abused body. This is a cautionary tale of how absolute power corrupts absolutely, and a fine addition to the lengthy volumes on the Tudors.

Henry VIII's story does not end with the beheading of Anne Boleyn. Hutchinson pulls from many sources of Henry VIII's contemporaries to tell the most interesting bits of Henry's last few years as King of England. The chapters do not follow a consecutive timeline, but rather skip around and focus on a single theme such as reforming the church, the ordeal surrounding the king's marriage to Anne of Cleves, the war waged with France, Henry's health, etc.

I found this book very easy to read for a number of reasons. Hutchinson continually reminds the reader of certain characters and their relations/roles to King Henry VIII. If you still can't figure out who someone is, simply flip to the back of the book and there's a whole list of names and a short one or two line "biography" on each person. There's also a timeline in case the flipping back and forth between years gets confusing. I didn't have any problems following along and I'm not well versed on Tudor history! In fact, this is the first historical biography I have ever read! And I read it for pure enjoyment!

So, if you're looking for an interesting book on one of the more interesting characters of the English monarchy, I highly recommend you consider this book!

The obese, disease ridden old man, rarely seen by the public, a man with an evil heart and a foul mouth and temper bore no resemblance to the athletic good looking young buck who had taken the throne of England 35 years previously.

The young Henry was a sportsman of some renown and his vibrant personality and good looks attracted many beautiful women. The old Henry was fat, dirty, riddled with disease and took most of his pleasure from watching other people suffer, including those closest to him.

Robert Hutchinson's book on the final years of Henry's life, brings forth many startling revelations of the intrigues, plot and counter plot of the time. He has unearthed death warrants, confessions, pleas for clemency and many other, until now, little documented facts.

I enjoyed the book immensely, but it was tinged with sadness for me. Henry VIII might (who can say) have been one of the greatest King's England has ever had. But like so many great men he had the fatal flaw in his make-up, which eventually makes them press the self destruct button.

Robert Hutchinson's The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracies, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant is something of a mixed bag. On the plus side, it does provide a number of valuable insights into the last years of Henry VIII's reign, particularly with regard to how truly dangerous life in his court was for those around him. Hutchinson draws on an abundance of research, drawing from many contemporary personal accounts so that we actually hear the opinions and observations of those who knew the man intimately (many, as it turned out, to their ultimate misfortune) in their own words:

"It is now no novelty among us to see men slain, hung, drawn, quartered, beheaded. Some for trifling expressions, which were explained or interpreted as having been spoken against the king; others for the Pope's supremacy; some for one thing, some for another."

The book contains a number of detailed accounts of the intrigues and conspiracies that went on in Henry's court, and shows how Henry was in fact the master of the game, constantly keeping the factions in his court off-balance and frequently turning their own plots back on them in publicly humiliating ways. Two of the more telling episodes related deal with plots against Archbishop Thomas Cranmer:

"No one was entirely safe from the devious intrigues at court. Almost certainly encouraged by Gardiner and Sir John Baker, some of the seven conservative canons of Canterbury Cathedral accused Cranmer himself of encouraging heretical sermons within the diocese of Canterbury in 1543. Their complaints and accusations were dispatched to the king. As Henry was rowed upriver on his royal barge one evening, he saw Cranmer standing outside the gates of his palace at Lambeth. The vessel pulled into the bank and the archbishop, coming aboard, was stunned by the king's light-hearted greeting: 'Ah, my chaplain! I have news for you. I know now who is the greatest heretic in Kent.' Henry then pulled the paper listing the accusations against Cranmer from his sleeve and showed it to him. The king liked Cranmer, perhaps was even fond of him, for his easy-going honesty, otherworldliness, compassion and total lack of personal ambition. With a neat sleight of hand, Henry appointed him to head the commission of inquiry into the accusations against himself. After lengthy deliberations, a general pardon was issue to all concerned."

And in the second plot against Cranmer two years later which Hutchinson lays out in great detail and then summarizes:

"Henry's motivation in this tense little human drama remains unclear, if not downright Machiavellian. He had patently agreed to his archbishop's arrest, if not actively encouraging his enemies amonst the conservative faction. But Henry then proceeded to tip Cranmer off about his impending doom in a melodramatic late-night meeting [at which he gave him a royal ring to show his continued favor]. From that moment, in the empty corridor at Westminster, the archbishop was never in danger. Yet the king happily let the plot run its course before firmly and publicly stamping upon it. Humiliation plays an important part in the story - Henry teases his advisers about it: the humiliation of Cranmer, kept waiting amongst the common lackeys; the humiliation of his Privy Council accusers by the sudden production of the life-saving king's ring mere moments before the planned arrest; the humiliation caused by Henry's rebuke. That flourish by Cranmer in holding up the royal ring, immediately showed Gardiner, Norfolk and the rest of his enemies that the game was up and that they had been outmaneuvered. And that must have been Henry's intention all along. His aim, this time, was to mortify the conservative faction as part of his delicate balancing act in the difficult area of developing religious policy. The constant conspiracies and divisions amongst his councillors must also have exasperated him, as did similar contrversy amongst his subjects."

The book also goes into many of the aspects of Henry's last years, including a fairly detailed history of the king's many injuries and ailments ("he has the worst legs in the world" according to the Spanish ambassador at the court at the time) that in all likelihood contributed to his often foul disposition and his frequent rages. Hutchinson also includes several illustrations of portraits done of many of the key personages of Henry's court, including some very illuminating ones of Henry at different stages of his life that show more clearly than mere words a king going from his prime into decline.

"Thus we have before us the image of a remorselessly cruel monarch, totally ruthless in his hold on the reins of power; careless of the lives of his friends and subjects; always determined to get his own way; and rapacious in the accumulation of wealth, almost always at the expense of others. He was a psychotic, paranoid bully, perilously enjoying absolute authority. But if he did suffer from Cushing's syndrome, perhaps somewhere even in the coldest of hearts we may find a few shreds of sympathy for the old ogre."

On the minus side, however, is that the first two thirds of the book tend to jump around quite a bit chronologically, making it difficult to follow. That portion of the book in particular could have been much better organized and presented to give the reader a more focused and coherent picture of what led up to the last few years and how the myriad dramas of those last few years unfolded.

I would recommend this book as a good resource on the subject, but more to be viewed as a good resource than necessarily a good read.

The Last Days of Henry VIII was recommended to me by a friend with whom I have had many informative discussions about Tudor England, one of the most fascinating periods in Western History, and in particular, the court of King Henry, the eighth of that name.

Hutchinson starts with the first part of Henry's reign in order to set the background for the events that were to follow. It is the last period, during his final marriage and the French war, that he goes into greatest detail-- and welcome detail it is. A great deal of ink has been spilt over Henry's earlier life, particularly his marriages to Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn-- indeed, entire single volumes have been devoted to them. Most histories of Henry's reign go into greatest detail over his first three wives, giving rather short shrift to the final three. In the cases of Anna Klewes and Katherine Howard, this might be forgiven as both marriages were short-lived (6 months and just about 2 years, respectively) and their ends very public. But his marriage to Catherine Parr, who ultimately became the only woman to survive the Royal Marriage Bed, has also been gone over lightly, mention most often being given to her Reformation beliefs, her skilled management of the affairs of state during Henry's absence to fight in France, and her negotiations to restore the positions of the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth. Hutchinson certainly he pays attention to those extremely important points, but he also takes us much further behind the scenes: Far from being a placid, ideal wife. companion and family administrator to an aging monarch, Catherine is shown to be a woman of great intellect, passion, and perhaps most interestingly, a woman who spent more than a fair share of time in fear of her well-being, if not her life. Fortunately for her, she had already been married to two older, sickly men, and knew well how to manage such a husband, and also had the examples of 5 previous failed wives to learn from. And she learnt well.

Henry's decline into paranoid, mean and capricious old age are also well documented. The "medical treatments" (quotes deliberate) he received for his numerous ailments, particularly his legs, were barbaric and it's hard to believe any reasonable person thought they would be in th e least effective, and reading Hutchinson's careful documentation of Henry's decline in health, one is forced to wonder: If the King had access to aspirin and antibiotics, how much milder might he have been? Instead he wages unnecessary and foolish war, tortured and burned dozens of perceived heretics, then did a complete about face and adopted their beliefs into his official state religion, bankrupted his country, and upon his death, far from leaving a certain strong heir, left the country in a turmoil it would not emerge from completely until his second daughter, Elizabeth (whom he swore would never sit on his throne), took the reigns of power, some dozen years later.

One senses some bias in the book, but it does not overwhelm the facts (as can often happen in a history book), and one comes away from the book with a clearer picture of the real importance of this last period of Henry's life, and how it would affect England for some time to come after he departed this mortal coil.

This book--historically accurate, intriguing, and a real knuckle-biter for aficiandos of Henry VIII's fascinating time on this earth--would be perfect if written by a historian who was capable of retelling historical facts in a unique and literary fashion without clouding every paragraph and sometimes every sentence with his own prejudices and scorn. Why write a book about someone you simply can't stop from disparaging at every turn? Henry VIII is poorly judged by present day standards and his accomplishments are meagerly recounted; the author is too quick to point out the dire repurcussions of every move and slow to donate any charitable interpretations of the ruler's many accomplishments. This book could truly have been a great jaunt were it not for the writer's heavy hand and inability to keep his personal feelings out of his way. Fans of Henry will hate it---a shame because it's replete with little-known asides and shadowy counter-plots otherwise missed by most accounts of this great king's life.

This book was extremely disappointing, especially for a person well read in Tudor History. The title is very misleading. I thought this book would examine in depth the final years of Henry's reign. Theses final years were full of scandal, intrigue and death but the book read like a summary of his whole reign. There are plenty of other books that do this and do it better (Alison Weir for example). It's pages and pages of he said, she said quotes followed by summaries of crucial events that surely deserve more description. If you are looking for a thorough historical analysis of the final years of Henry, save your money.