Henry VIII - waste of space?

[ImJustMadAboutSaffron]

"Apart from his immaturity over religion and which way he really swung, and the total waste of lives, time and money fighting France which achieved sod all - just for starters - anyone got a good word to say for the guy?"

These are not my words neither is the subject heading, I saw it on Facebook. But was he a waste of space? I do have one good word to say for him though I'm not going to start discussing religion.

@Sandra1984 actually the Catholics never burnt anyone as witches( in britain). The witchtrails were brought about by James1st who was a protestant. Historians believe that as the former Catholic religion was so steeped in superstition they were actually afraid of Pagan belief and therefore left it alone. James 1 st was so anti witchcraft he passed the witchcraft law to make it illegal for the first time in history. All subsequent hangings and burnings were done in the name of the Church of England.
As for the Magdelene laundries there is no doubt this was a horrific thing that happened, but things were very very different in medieval times and any historian would agree that the monastaries and convents played a much greater role in supporting the poor than the Crown did.

The Catholic church (through the monasteries) played a massive role in the care of the sick, poor and old prior to the Dissolution. It had done for centuries and many academic studies on the matter attest to this.

Also, Protestants did their own fair share of burning those who did not conform.

The Catholics burned witches thing might have come about because Mary 1st burnt Protestants as heretics?

Lots of people don't realise how much money and support Anne Boleyn gave to the poor as the monasteries were dissolved. She allegedly asked for some (the good ones) to be spared.

I've got a lot of time for Anne Boleyn. I wrote my dissertation about her. She is very misunderstood I think and gets a bit of a raw deal on how she is often portrayed.

DNA can only determine your past 5 generations I believe, but I've been doing genealogy for years as I was keen on history at school and because I have a terminal illness and am currently signed off work long term, I decided to go into my genealogy with as much research as if it were my paid job.
It keeps my mind off the fact I'm not in a good place anymore and won't be and keeps my brain active and I find all of the historical research very interesting and I've also treble-checked my findings with historians and paid genealogists as well as family who have also done their own trees - that's how I discovered my link

Via one of his many illegitimate children apparently - not sure if the screenshot will post - like someone else has said though, I'll never be able to be totally 100% sure but I did only post as a joke which was why I mentioned my normal house and elderly car

Wolf hall is a fantastic series of books about this period of history (fiction but well researched and characterised)

Really interesting about family trees/dna. I think both Richard III and the Romanovs were identified using female line (mitochondrial) DNA. But the rate of false paternity is estimated at about 1-2 percent per generation, so if you trace back up a male line then it gets less and less likely that your actual great great (etc) grandfather is the same as your legal one. However I suppose royal wives might be a bit more careful/closely guarded than the average, particularly with the first couple of children.

From the Richard III analysis I think tracing a mixed male/female line (eg my fathers fathers mother) is much harder/impossible. Is that true?

He was a domestic abuser who murdered 2 of his DPs.

If he was non royalty and living now he'd be in prison on a whole life sentence.

I agree with the Wolf Hall books. Also loved the TV adaptation. Claire Foy was the perfect Anne Boleyn

You absolutely took the words out of my mouth with most of this, but may I take issue with the 'historians believe ...' bit. I've never come across anything historians could agree on, but I would say the consensus moved away from 'Catholicism steeped in superstition' a few decades ago. That reading of history is largely based in the Victorians' love of the Renaissance (Victorian as a new Gloriana and all), which also prompted them to take a lot of Protestant polemic about the superstitious horrors of Catholicism rather more literally than it perhaps should be taken.

Magdalene laundries didn't exist in medieval Catholic England. I don't know of a widespread practice of forced adoption either.

He had a chromosome issue preventing him having children and blamed all his wives for not producing full term children (against the odds he had Elizabeth). He also plundered the Catholic Church for their wealth. This then knackered pregnant women for having their children safely in the catholic monasteries where the nuns where basically midwives. The poor would be able to stop at the catholic monasteries for a break/food/ to recover their travels but Henry stopped that! It made him very rich but affected the poor very much!

He had 4 children.

What chromosome 'issue'?

Catherine Carey was Queen Elizabeth’s cousin/possible half-sister and they were very close. She married Francis Knollys and they had 14 children, only one of which died young - so there are loads and loads of her descendants around these days! Josh Widdecombe being one of them, as mentioned already.

And Princess of Wales another!

He was a bit of a cunt, but he founded my old school, so we were fed the positives more than the negatives about him. Since I've started reading more about him, the accident was a pivotal point in his life and he went to hell in a handcart thenceforth.

BTW I love that this is in "the Royal Family" topic. Henry puts many of the travails of the current one into perspective!

I heard a talk by Simon Schama about how the Reformation was really Brexit 1 - taking Britain out of the European bloc, then manifest as the Papal stranglehold

I like how he was so corpulant and gross by the end of his life that he exploded when they put him in his coffin.

True story.

They all do

There are some monarchs that we know a lot about, most people will be able to tell you about Henry VIII and Elizabeth, probably about William I, probably Richard III, probably George III, certainly Victoria,,, but wouldnt be able to say too much about the rest

But they all had pretty bad lives but good lives with plenty of scandals

That wasnt him, that was William Rufus

Poor old Henry. Always second to the ball.

I study medieval English childbirth culture and I don't think nuns were particularly more likely to be knowledgeable about midwifery than anyone else. Some might be, but many were in enclosed orders, which laywomen could not routinely have entered. Some monasteries would have given charity to the poor on journeys, but journeying from place to place if you were poor was considered pretty dodgy behaviour; for quite a long period poor people were bound to their local area and would have had to have a very good reason to leave. So, monasteries might often treat poor people on their travels as criminals rather than a focus for charity.

Ive never read that about Henry in formal books and I have read history extensively.

If it happened then yes, someone got there before you Henry!

Im fascinated with all of them and its the best 'stories' you'll ever read with the added benefit that it was real life!

He founded Trinity College Cambridge and Christ Church Oxford in 1546

www.philippagregory.com/news/henry-viiis-burial

It was said that the corpse exploded (or that the coffin cracked and leaked) while stopped at Syon Abbey overnight and that dogs licked some of the remains from the floor, although this may have been a story meant to discredit Henry – in the Bible Ahab (a notoriously wicked king of Israel) was punished by having his blood licked up by dogs after allowing his pagan wife Jezebel (read Anne Boleyn) to assert her religion on the country. A Franciscan friar had preached in the 1530s that dogs would lick Henry's blood – now, apparently, the prophecy was fulfilled. Syon was a significant place for the story – Henry had dissolved and seized the abbey. Its community, living in exile in Europe, returned briefly during Mary I's reign.

I think I originally got the story out of a kid's book called Yeuch! It was full of disgusting historical detail and we absolutely loved it 😆