Posted on 01/28/2018 9:43:51 AM PST by beaversmom
1
Henry VIII was slim and athletic for most of his life
At six feet two inches tall, Henry VIII stood head and shoulders above most of his court. He had an athletic physique and excelled at sports, regularly showing off his prowess in the jousting arena.
Having inherited the good looks of his grandfather, Edward IV, in 1515 Henry was described as “the handsomest potentate I have ever set eyes on…” and later an “Adonis”, “with an extremely fine calf to his leg, his complexion very fair…and a round face so very beautiful, that it would become a pretty woman”.
All this changed in 1536 when the king – then in his mid-forties – suffered a serious wound to his leg while jousting. This never properly healed, and instead turned ulcerous, which left Henry increasingly incapacitated.
Four years later, the king’s waist had grown from a trim 32 inches to an enormous 52 inches. By the time of his death, he had to be winched onto his horse. It is this image of the corpulent Henry VIII that has obscured the impressive figure that he cut for most of his life.
2
Henry VIII was a tidy eater
Despite the popular image of Henry VIII throwing a chicken leg over his shoulder as he devoured one of his many feasts, he was in fact a fastidious eater. Only on special occasions, such as a visit from a foreign dignitary, did he stage banquets.
Most of the time, Henry preferred to dine in his private apartments. He would take care to wash his hands before, during and after each meal, and would follow a strict order of ceremony.
Seated beneath a canopy and surrounded by senior court officers, he was served on bended knee and presented with several different dishes to choose from at each course.
3
Henry was a bit of a prude
England’s most-married monarch has a reputation as a ladies’ man – for obvious reasons. As well as his six wives, he kept several mistresses and fathered at least one child by them.
But the evidence suggests that, behind closed doors, he was no lothario. When he finally persuaded Anne Boleyn to become his mistress in body as well as in name, he was shocked by the sexual knowledge that she seemed to possess, and later confided that he believed she had been no virgin.
When she failed to give him a son, he plumped for the innocent and unsullied Jane Seymour instead.
4
Henry’s chief minister liked to party
Although often represented as a ruthless henchman, Thomas Cromwell was in fact one of the most fun-loving members of the court. His parties were legendary, and he would spend lavish sums on entertaining his guests – he once paid a tailor £4,000 to make an elaborate costume that he could wear in a masque to amuse the king.
Cromwell also kept a cage of canary birds at his house, as well as an animal described as a “strange beast”, which he gave to the king as a present.
5
Henry VIII sent more men and women to their deaths than any other monarch
During the later years of Henry’s reign, as he grew ever more paranoid and bad-tempered, the Tower of London was crowded with the terrified subjects who had been imprisoned at his orders.
One of the most brutal executions was that of the aged Margaret de la Pole, Countess of Salisbury. The 67-year-old countess was woken early on the morning of 27 May 1541 and told to prepare for death.
Although initially composed, when Margaret was told to place her head on the block, her self-control deserted her and she tried to escape. Her captors were forced to pinion her to the block, where the amateur executioner hacked at the poor woman’s head and neck, eventually severing them after the eleventh blow.
Huh? My friend, Stephen Lark, the historian, who is vehemently anti-Tudor & anti-Henry VIII (he estimates the number of people Hank killed approaches 52,000) is Jewish. It has nothing to do with Catholicism and everything to do with his corruption and cruelty.
Is your friend a Freeper? Do you grasp that distinction that I made?
The distinction being that only Catholic freepers dislike H8? If we were to believe what you said, why would it only extend to Catholic freepers and not Catholics at large? (My friend is a conservative Brit but he may be a sleeper freeper. Who knows?)
Plenty of people dislike Henry the Eighth. You don’t have to be Jewish to like Levy’s...er, I mean Catholic to dislike him.
Watch the threads whenever Henry VIII is the topic or even mentioned in passing. You’ll see. It’s true even of England or the UK in general. It’s religious.
It is NOT entirely religious. I’m on dozens of forums on Tudor/medieval history. He has his supporters (why I don’t know) and his detractors. They come from a range of religions and political points of views. I think you’re letting your bias get in the way of reality. The religious threads here are by their very nature going to focus on religion.
Someone here mentioned the tv show Wolf Hall based on Hilary Mantel’s book. It is from the Protestant point of view, very intelligent, and even THAT show portrays him as an unstable tyrant.
I think you’ll enjoy this thread.
Again, recall the scope of my original reply to which you’ve responded. I am speaking of this forum. No need to name-drop for appeal to authority, unless they’re participating here.
Oh, yippee. I’m a-fixin’ to git the Tri-State Area kulcha treatment again, lol. I hear the hooves thundering in the distance.
That wasn’t meant as some sort of attack on you. She likes history and I thought she might enjoy chiming in. For the most part, this has been an enlightening conversation. I hate to lower the tone but it is you who brought up Catholics for no good reason and you who are starting to snark at people who live in NYC.
Margaret Beaufort was a very determined woman who had to grow up fast and I think at least felt sullied by such an early marriage consummation
12 I think ....She was 13 when Henry VII was actually born and it almost killed them both and she never got oreganant again despite a number of spouses
She was very very rich and held into her estate through tribulations that often fell just short of an Attainder
She managed to get along with her rival Elizabeth Woodville wife of Edward IV and survived Richard III who had issues with her but never squashed her
She outlived her son and coronited her grandson Henry VIII and owned and dispensed all her inheritance which rivaled the regents as she saw fit
Did she reallly love Jasper Tudor more than his deceased brother Edmund her husband
Did she have a hand in the death of the princes in the tower
Who knows?
She was pious and resolute and had impecccable bloodlines
Oh yes, our dear NP does love to “chime in” as you put it. A regular Dynamic Duo you two are, lol.
Even my fourth grade world history book (probably not written by a Catholic) only had maybe four lines about him one which was he wanted to divorce his first wife and so broke with the Catholic Church. The next line was something about him marrying five more times.
That was it.
So the only Americans who would know anything more about him would be the Catholics to whom he was a great villain.
People tend to ignore subjects that they don't know a great deal about so you have the preponderance of American Henry bashers being Catholic.
I don’t tend to agree with your statement that Catholics are more knowledgable regarding Henry VIII than Americans in general. I’d say they know the negatives and only the negatives, viewed strictly through the lens of religion. This lumping of Henry VIII into Protestantism would have been a serious affront to him and to the Church of England. Despite the garbled history insisted upon by some, he persecuted the Reformers right up there with the worst on the European continent and professed himself Catholic for most if not all his life, despite breaking with Rome.
That it most definitely was. That’s why I was disappointed by The Tudors. The 1970 series Six Wives of Henry VIII was so much better and then I’ve also read many of the books by Allison Weir and others as I’m a bit of an English history geek.
Did you get a chance to see Wolf Hall on BBC? What did you think of it?
I did see a couple of episodes and liked it very much. And Damian Lewis was surprisingly good casting as Henry VIII. Unfortunately, I starting watching it partway through and have just not gotten around to seeing the entire series. I believe it is available to stream on PBS and on Amazon Prime so I intend to set aside a rainy weekend and do some binge watching.
I’ve read some criticisms of Wolf Hall, one for the series as depicting a Tutor era house that was not built until the Elizabethan era, but that to me is not that big of a deal and certainly less glaring than the radiator in Henry’s bed chamber, the use of Victorian era coaches, a macadam driveway leading up to a manor house, the bad costuming and the oh so many other things wrong with The Tudors.
Some have also criticized both the series and the books it was based on for portraying Thomas Cromwell as a sympathetic character and Sir Thomas Moore the opposite. But you know, I also take for granted that some portrayals of Moore as being “saintly” and beyond reproach even as the Catholic Church venerates him as one, maybe somewhat skewed and not perhaps historical themselves.
And that’s not intended to be critical against the Catholic Church, but the political machinations and truthfully the power struggles of and against and the corruption of The Church during this time period lends me to take portrayals that cast either the complete hero or the complete villain with a grain of salt – real people tend to be much more complicated.
While my main interest and focus in English history starts with Stonehenge and runs through the Roman and Viking eras, and ends with the end Elizabeth the 1st reign, I’ve been enjoying the Masterpiece Theater series Victoria even though I do find it a bit Downton Abby-esc. But the main historical points of reference in the series seems to be accurate.
That is true. Henry VIII was not the "Reformer" some have portrayed him as.
"Despite the garbled history insisted upon by some, he persecuted the Reformers right up there with the worst on the European continent and professed himself Catholic for most if not all his life, despite breaking with Rome."
http://www.worldhistory.knowledge4africa.com/reformation/reformation-05.jsp
His 2nd wife Anne Boleyn and his last wife who outlived him, Catherine Parr were more the Reformists and Catherine Parr was personally involved in the education of Elizabeth and Edward.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Parr
Some of the costumes in The Tudors were just downright silly, they were so far off base. If the makers of the Tudors wanted the series to be “camp”, an entertaining “romp”, inappropriate costumes would have been part of the show. But I think mostly the intention of The Tudors was to be more serious history than camp entertainment.
What I thought most interesting about Wolf Hall was it was the first filmed version of the Henry 8th/Anne Boleyn melodrama (that I’ve seen) where Thomas More was not portrayed to be very saintly. Hey, I’m Roman Catholic, I didn’t know Thomas More had people tortured, LOL. I’ve also seen many versions of Anne’s execution scene on film, she was always bent over a block and the executioner (in a scary black hood and clothes) used an axe to chop off her head. In Wolf Hall she was executed on her knees by a French swordsman who was not dressed as an executioner and he used a sword to cut her head off. He told Cromwell that he didn’t want to dress like an executioner and panic Anne before she was blindfolded. After she was blindfolded he even took his shoes off when he got onto the platform. He quietly tip-toed to the right position near Anne and then made a sound to make Anne turn her head a certain way—all done to get her head and neck into perfect position for a clean slice between heartbeats.
Thanks...just getting through reading the thread now.
I loved that commercial!
That YOU have a problem with that, says a whole lot about you, nothing about her, even less about me, and your snark is puerile, uncalled for , and beyond the pale.
An oldie but a goodie.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.