Henry VIII, eh? What a bastard.

[TunipTheVegemal]

I just feel there should be an ongoing thread on what a vile piece of work Henry VIII was where people can leave their opinions on the complete and utter appallingness of Henry VIII.

Of course, this being Mumsnet someone will probably come along and say IABVU and he was actually very nice.

(What sparked this off, btw, was me discovering that the Pilgrimage of Grace marched past where my house is, having mustered troops a mile away. Now every time I have to go into the garden at night I will imagine rotting corpses swinging from the trees - he had some of the rebels hanged in their own back gardens and some women got into trouble for cutting down their husband's bodies when they were supposed to leave them there to rot as a warning. What a bastard.)

Nah, I've seen that letter, someone linked to it, it was fine. Her handwriting is quite good and her syntax is fine.

Lots of people didn't have formal education, FWIW. I would love to know more about what education she did have - but purely the fact of not having formal education wouldn't mark her out as so very different from other women of a similar background.

I get what you're saying about the God thing, but I find it difficult to imagine someone like that. Which is probably a failure of my imagination.

Here: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/museum/additional_image_types.asp?item_id=13&image_id=17&extra_image_type_id=1

There's a transcription you can click on. The lovely katiescarlett linked me to it on the old Richard III thread.

My grandmother is a Howard from oop north. I like to kid myself there is a family connection.

I don't doubt that AB was scheming and ruthless in her ambition to snare a king, but I also think she was a victim of the machinations of the senior male members of her family and their quest for more power. Once her ability to produce a male heir was questioned it was easier all round to paint her as the evil sorceress and adulteress as a convenient way of getting rid of her without her causing too much of a fuss. I don't think AB was arrested and accused until after CofA was dead, so one obstacle was removed for him. If Henry had then annulled his marriage to Anne or divorced her to marry someone else there would still always be questions about the validity of the next marriage and the legitimacy any children, as there had been when he married Anne. With both women dead Henry could not be deemed still married by anyone, whether Catholic or Protestant, so would be free to move on as a widower. The accusations against AB seem too over-the-top to me; but then if all this was alleged against her people must have believed at least part of it was true, she wasn't popular anyway, and who would argue with a king? I do feel sorry for AB but having said that her actions to CofA and Mary were callous and vindictive, so she was definitely no innocent pawn.

Ohhh, that would be so cool chub.

My DM is convinced we're descended from Mary Boleyn, as one of her grandchildren married someone with our family name and settled in our county!

Even eustace chapuys who hated AB with a passion (he never referred to her by name once, he called her the concubines or the whore in all his years of dispatches) said she was convicted without a shred of evidence.
He famously said (when she mc her son) "she has miscarried of her saviour"
Jane Rochford (nee Parker) was George bolyens wife and hated both him and Anne.
Her testimony sent him to the scaffold.
She was later executed for her part in smuggling Thomas culpepper into Catherine Howard's privy for their trysts!

Anne knew she was doomed after her mc...she even sent Mary conciliatory letters.
She knew Mary could help Elizabeth and to her credit she did for many years.

Poor Katherine Howard, it always makes me sad that she was only about 20 (maybe younger) when she was executed. Silly and misguided I think, rather than any sense of what she was in for. The story of her asking for the executioner's block the night before so she could practise putting her neck on it :(

Has anyone read Bring Up The Bodies? I know it's a novel rather than historical fact, but to me it seems a very plausible account of Anne's fall. That basically Henry wanted to annul the marriage and send Anne away, but when Cromwell started investigating all this gossip about Anne came out and it got to the point where he couldn't just ignore it, he had to use it.

It sort of snowballed, but no one started out with the intention of killing Anne. It ties in with some recent research, like by G W Bernard, that although Anne may not actually have been guilty, she acted in a way that left her open to those kinds of accusations - courtly love was acceptable, and it was actually OK to say you loved your queen (the same way everyone would say they loved the king - it just meant you were loyal). But this was then twisted against Anne. Plus people like Jane Rochford came forward to say that she had definitely been to bed with her lovers at specific times and places, but it looked a bit bullshit.

Yes, that and wolf hall.
Both very good.

noble - that is so sad, isn't it?

BBB - I love Wolf Hall. So much.

I haven't read Wolf Hall but just bought it in a charity shop for 99p. I was excited to find it, after all the MN recommendations!

Any surname beginning with Fitz, meant there was an ancestor who was illegitimate. Fitzroy was used for any kings by blows.
The present royal family don't have haemaphilia, because it is only passed on by women or male sufferers. It is on the X chromosome, so therefore as Edward VII wasn't a sufferer, he hadn't inherited the gene so none of his decendents inherited it. On the other hand the pophyria that George III had has apparently been seen in more recent members of the Royal family, I think Princess Margaret admitted a cousin had had it.

Bring Up The Bodies is even better. Honestly. It's incredible. I've studied the sixteenth century at undergrad and masters level, and it chimes so well with what I've learned/always imagined that it's actually a bit weird

Not sure you could blame Anne if in desperation she slept with someone else to try to get a healthy son. (hopefully not her own brother though!)

The same suspicion was voiced about Margaret of Anjou, and how she got a son from Henry VI when he was pretty much insane.

Bring up the Bodies is awesome. I know what you mean about her capturing such a real-seeming tone (though I don't do C16th really, I'm trying to work into it, partly as a result of threads on here).

I wonder if some time periods are just naturally more in sympathy with each other, or if it's a fashion to be keen on the Tudors that happened more or less randomly?

I think the part about Katherine Howard believing that Henry could hear her in the confession box is less about her education/mental health and more about the importance religion played in everyday lives. Plus, she was in that generation that only knew religious life after the break with Rome, where they were taught that Henry was God's direct representative on earth and their spiritual as well as temporal leader. Add to the mix the way that the King's person was sacred and he certainly encouraged ideas of his own quaisi-god like status (Louis XIV a few generations early?!), it is not inconceivable that someone of low intelligence, without formal education, and a woman, could believe that Henry was literally aware of all that went on in every church.

More interesting really is the fact that Henry only suffered limited rebellion, despite what he did. He was definitely a tyrant to the nobility, but the people loved him - reference the Pilgrimage of Grace in which the people believed their beloved King was being led astray, rather than inherently evil.

I think we should remember that personal rule meant that the people suffered when a ruler was weak, the Wars of the Roses were not that long ago, and Henry was undoubtedly a strong ruler whose days of being Bluff King Hal were endorsed on the common mind. One of Elizabeth's greatest assets was her ability to draw a comparison between herself and Henry, and she used it very effectively to boost her popularity and the perception of her inherited strength of character and kingly qualities.

I sort of want to find that convincing, and I have an uneasy feeling I tend to over-modernize past societies, so I'm attributing things to them that they didn't feel. But I don't know about the God thing and religion in everyday life. There are people who were properly, seriously, sure they were inspired by God, but who would still, I am pretty sure, not have thought that the king or anyone else could hear their thoughts.

What I mean is, sure, religion is a huge part of people's lives and sure, Henry is God's representative on earth and the divine right of kings is a real belief - but I don't know if there is a framework for associating those things, with the something like another person being able to hear your thoughts? It sounds properly odd to me. Maybe I am just out of time-period. Is it connected to any superstitious beliefs that had sprung up?

I am so pleased there is a history club!

My only contribution though is to the haemophillia question.
Queen victoria's kids had the Haemophilia mutation originally (BUT VIC DIDN'T - it must have occurred in her eggs or something). Many moons ago, (before we had discovered DNA and 48 chromosomes, and x-linked inheritance etc) there was obviously some study over who had inherited what diseases in the royal family. I was told by my biology teacher (so I am uncertain how true this is)that when the queen married phillip there was a detailed study of his family tree to check he couldn't 'bring it back' to the family (which of course we now know he couldn't because they had x-linked haemophilia and it would have been obvious he had haemophilia if he had the gene on his x chromosome.)

hope that helps.

Yes MadameGazelle - I'm sure that the general population minded a lot less about some distant aristocrats getting topped than they did about minor royals waging war up and down the country, dragging everyone into it and getting them slaughtered as had happened 50 years before. Although the dissolution of the monasteries did cause a lot of social problems.

Elizabeth wasn't all great, actually (even though in general I admire her). Certainly better than Henry but she made some stupid foreign policy decisions and it was only luck/Spanish incompetence/the French wars of religion that stopped England being invaded. She was very unpopular in the last years of her reign, especially after no one got paid for fighting the Armada... But the English were (and are?) incredibly xenophobic and independent and I suppose they thought she was better than a foreigner.

Queen Vic had two X chromosomes, one was fine and one was faulty. If she had had two faulty ones then she would have had haemaphilia.
It is thought that she got the faulty X from her father, who was quite old when she was born, so more likely to pass on a random genetic mutation.
Some of Queen Vics kids got the faulty X some got the okay X, if it was a boy it would develop haemaphilia, if a girl they would carry the disease.
If you have a healthy boy they obviously didn't have the faulty X so it wouldn't occur in their decendents. A healthy girl might or might not be a carrier.

If Henry Fitzroy hadn't died young, as Henry recognised him, would we have been more likely to get Henry IX on the throne than a woman? Especially as both Mary and Elizabeth had been declared bastards at various times?

Catherine must have had some education to be able to read and write, but I do fear it was probably very lax, and she probably wasnt as classically trained as some of the other wives.

Can you imagine nowadays a Law being written and passed in parliament after the offence occurred?

umm...actually yes I can well imagine it...perhaps that is something to do with our fascination for the Tudors?