Henry VIII's Final Descent Into Paranoia | Henry VIII: Man, Monarch, Monster Season 1 Episode 3

[00:00:04]You might think you know everything there is to know about Henry VIII.

[00:00:11]You'll know he married six times and had two of his wives executed.

[00:00:18]But the truth about our most famous king is much more complex and far more compelling.

[00:00:28]This series tells Henry's story over six of the most tumultuous decades in English history, separating the real man from the myth.

[00:00:39]To some, Henry was a cruel bully. He's clever. What he likes to do is to trap people. He's a very skillful manipulator.

[00:00:47]>> Henry's punishment was exemplary in its brutality. [music] >> To others, he was a charismatic and successful ruler.

[00:00:57]He jousts, he rides, he sings. What more could you want from this perfect prince?

[00:01:03]>> But Henry's [music] personality, his innermost thoughts, and his motivations have remained elusive.

[00:01:10]>> Henry didn't take the blame for his own mistakes because that would not have worked for him as a king. He was so [music] good at convincing himself of what he saw as the truth.

[00:01:21]Now, a team of TUDA experts have come together to investigate who the real Henry was.

[00:01:27]>> If you ever needed proof that Henry was a bit of a megalomaniac, this is it.

[00:01:32]>> And they'll go backstage at Henry's court to unravel a murky world of power, plots, and petrifying ambition.

[00:01:41]>> The English court is a nest of hissing snakes.

[00:01:45]>> No one quite knows who to trust. There [music] are spies and informers. It's very very clear that behind this public facade [music] was somebody who was fundamentally vulnerable and insecure.

[00:02:03]Henry VIII has been on the throne for 28 years and the once carefree [music] prince has become a paranoid king suspicious of everyone around [music] him.

[00:02:15]He's divorced his first wife. He's executed his second.

[00:02:21]And his third wife has died after the birth of his only son.

[00:02:27]Now Henry is alone. His controversial break with the Roman Catholic Church is making him unpopular and there are rumblings of dissent across his kingdom.

[00:02:39][music] Feeling increasingly vulnerable, Henry commissions [music] a portrait designed to promote himself as a formidable ruler.

[00:02:50][music] This is the iconic portrait of Henry.

[00:02:55]This is what everybody sees in their mind's eye when they think of Henry VII.

[00:03:00]The silhouette of that figure could identify him just by itself.

[00:03:07]He shows Henry shore-footed, wide-legged, staring straight at us. He looks like a mighty emperor.

[00:03:17]>> It's no coincidence that the codpiece is at eye level. You can't fail to notice it. Is sending out a message that Henry is this great viral king. Everybody knows all the problems he's had getting a male heir. But this painting sets the record straight. None of that was Henry's fault.

[00:03:36]The painting presents Henry as a powerful monarch in total command of his country.

[00:03:42]But this portrait is a lie.

[00:03:47]That picture is propaganda.

[00:03:50]We know that it's been changed to make his legs look longer, to make him look more muscular. But in reality, Henry was slumping into geriatric decay.

[00:04:04]It's an image of Henry that he wishes the world to see. Not the actual Henry, the sick Henry, the overweight Henry, the Henry that's suspicious about everybody, and that's also feeling the effects of the infirmity of age and the oncoming march of death.

[00:04:23]>> Henry is suffering from a painful leg ulcer which deeply affects his state of mind.

[00:04:32]Sometime in the 1530s, Henry suffered a jousting injury which caused a terrible, debilitating, agonizing disease in both his legs.

[00:04:45]>> Tudtor medicine was rather basic.

[00:04:48]So his doctors advised that his wound would be kept open, which meant that he smelled, that his bed sheets stunk, his clothing stunk.

[00:04:58]This is a man that you could smell before you saw.

[00:05:02]The pain that Henry got from his leg was absolutely huge. When the leg was really, really bad. He could turn black in the face and just sort of lie still hardly able to speak for, you know, for several hours on the trot.

[00:05:17]The infection had to be released, >> which meant the leg often had to be cut open and past drained and ointment stuck on it.

[00:05:27]There was a lot of decaying flesh and they wanted to remove that by quarterizing. It was red or irons are applied to these wounds in his leg. It must have been a living nightmare for him.

[00:05:43]Henry's increasing infirmity, his ailments had a profound effect on his psychology. He couldn't cope with the knowledge that he's no longer this kind of thrusting young king he had been.

[00:05:55]He's turned into this incredibly vulnerable, painridden old man.

[00:06:04]Henry's infirmity is laid bare when you look at his private household accounts.

[00:06:10]So, there are these primitive lifts to move Henry between the floors of his apartments. He's wheeled about in a chair. He has a whistle to summon his attendants. This is not the image that Henry wants for himself.

[00:06:27]Henry thinks that he knows how to cure his leg ulcer better than his doctors.

[00:06:34]A 16th century manuscript contains 32 medicinal recipes that [music] Henry concocted himself.

[00:06:42]Most of his recipes are concerned with pain in the legs. So here's a plaster devised by the king at Oxford to ease the pain and swelling about the ankles.

[00:06:55]I would not use some of the ingredients today. The king's gray plaster, for example, contains various roots, flower buds, garden worms, scraping of ivory and powdered pearls, and finally, it also contains red lead, which is deadly poison. Do not try this at home.

[00:07:22]The exact nature of [music] Henry's health has been subject to speculation.

[00:07:29]Recent research suggests that he suffers from a rare condition which affects his mental health.

[00:07:40]Down the centuries, people have had lots of different theories about what was the matter with Henry VIII. I think Henry suffered from a hormonal disorder called Cushing syndrome. In 20% of cases, it turns the victim into a suspicious person, wary of everyone around them.

[00:08:00]They become melancholy, depressed, anxious. They can't take a decision.

[00:08:05]They'll change their minds continuously.

[00:08:07]Now, all these symptoms Henry displays in the latter years of his life.

[00:08:14]>> Other historians attribute Henry's [music] increasing paranoia to diabetes.

[00:08:21]There's a lot to be said for the view [music] that um as he became more and more obese, he he he got type 2 diabetes. I mean, it can start to affect your [music] mind and you can develop elements of paranoia and Henry certainly has elements of paranoia in these last years.

[00:08:39]Whilst Henry's body and mind are starting to fail, his enemies are gaining [music] in strength.

[00:08:48]There are reports of a huge uprising in the north of England, and Henry has to act swiftly if he's to keep control of [music] his kingdom.

[00:09:08]Henry VII is now 46 years old. His painful leg ulcer has transformed the highly active king into a man who struggles to even walk without assistance.

[00:09:21]This lack of exercise combined with massive overeating are making him obese.

[00:09:27]And there are detailed records of the enormous [music] quantities of food he eats.

[00:09:33]>> Here we have an example of what Henry would be eating uh on pretty much any given day of the week. We have everything from swan and custard through to rich roasted baby kid or lamb.

[00:09:46]There's butter and eggs. There's jelly and hippocrass.

[00:09:49]Porpus and seal for the king's delight.

[00:09:52]But it's been estimated that King Henry VIII would have been having about double the number of calories bare minimum that you would recommend in the 21st century.

[00:10:02]Because Henry was eating so much meat, he inevitably suffered severe constipation. And there's an account in the letters and papers of King Henry VIII of how one of Henry's physicians actually had to come and administer a clister, that is an enema, as we'd call it today, to the king in order to try and flush out his system. And the document goes on to proudly report how the king got up in the middle of the night and had a fair siege on the toilet. Delightful for all those around him. Obviously, Henry always saw himself as that beautiful young prince. He had been once universally adored, as a sportsman, an athlete, a renaissance prince. And I think he found it very difficult towards the end of his life as what he saw in the mirror was no longer that handsome young man, but instead undeniably a sort of slightly hideous sort of old creature.

[00:10:57]It's 3 years since Henry broke [music] with the Roman Catholic Church and declared himself head of the Church of England.

[00:11:06]But now the repercussions of his religious revolution are catching up with him. [cheering] This radical move [music] is extremely unpopular and results in a religious uprising in the north of England known as the Pilgrimage of Grace.

[00:11:24]This was the first major rebellion against Henry's reformation and it shocked him to the core. Because he was so good at convincing himself of what he saw as the truth, he thought his people still loved him. This now changed everything.

[00:11:42]The whole point of the Tudtors were that they brought peace and union to England after the divisions of the Wars of the Roses. And now you have division again.

[00:11:52]This is an epic failure of kingship and Henry understands that and he is extremely concerned.

[00:12:01]>> But with no army at his disposal, Henry is unable to defeat the [music] rebellion with brute force.

[00:12:08]Kings of England never had standing armies. So they had to rule with the consent of the people. He realized that he was he was in a very dangerous situation now and he needed to act tactically, politically and this is what he did.

[00:12:24]Henry comes up with a plan to deal with the rebels. He offers them a pardon and invites their ring leader Robert As to a secret meeting.

[00:12:36]Henry has this master stroke. I mean he invites Robert Ask and the leaders of the pilgrimage to court and [music] he entertains them for Christmas. He gives them gifts and looks after them.

[00:12:46]>> Ask went away very happy saying that he'd enjoyed every sign of the king's grace of his mercy. What a fantastic king As is essentially saying.

[00:12:59]>> But it soon becomes clear that Henry's show of mercy is a trick and he turns on the rebels with a vengeance.

[00:13:10]Henry was the sort of ruler who would gull you along and then basically cut you off. He's clever, but what he likes [music] to do is to try and trap people, move them about on a chessboard. He's a very skillful manipulator.

[00:13:25]Robert Asks returns home and Henry orders his arrest and execution.

[00:13:32]>> Henry's punishment of Robert Ask was exemplary in its brutality. I mean he was hung up for days esphyxiated under the weight of his own body.

[00:13:42]>> This is a message to the people that this is what happens when you oppose Henry. And in fact he wanted to go much further. He wanted people from every village involved in the rebellion to have somebody executed.

[00:13:56]But the man who was in charge of the retaliation simply didn't carry out Henry's orders.

[00:14:04]Henry's ruthless suppression of the rebels marks a turning point in his reign.

[00:14:10]>> England had changed an awful lot during this period. It was no longer the merry England of Henry's [music] early years.

[00:14:17]It was now pretty much a totalitarian state. There were spies everywhere.

[00:14:22]Suddenly, nobody was safe. Nobody could trust anyone. There were neighbors informing on neighbors. So, you never knew when there was going to be that knock on the door. People were now afraid to open their mouths in any public place. People were afraid to write letters and express an opinion because they were always looking over their shoulder.

[00:14:46]>> The name of the king.

[00:14:50]>> The man responsible for enacting Henry's crackdowns is his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell.

[00:14:59]Cromwell has previously masterminded [music] the break up of the monasteries and engineered the downfall of Henry's second wife Anne Berlin.

[00:15:09]But now that Henry's people are turning on him, he shifts the [music] blame onto Cromwell.

[00:15:16]Henry didn't take the blame for his own mistakes because that would not have worked for [music] him as a king. One of the purposes of good servants was that they would take the [music] blame if things went wrong. It was their advice with the pilgrimage of grace. They didn't attack Henry so much. They attacked Cromwell.

[00:15:33]>> There is definitely a sense in which Thomas Cromwell is Henry VII scapegoat.

[00:15:37]Henry could step back and say, "I'm innocent of this. [music] I don't know what's going on. I don't know what my servants are doing. And now that I found out, I'm absolutely appalled."

[00:15:47]>> There had been warning signs for Cromwell for a few years now that actually his luck was changing. There were arguments with the king and in fact on a number of occasions the king was said to have beneaveth Cromwell. He was beating him up in front of the court. On one occasion pummeling him about the head as if he were a dog. Cromwell must have been terrified.

[00:16:15]As he starts to fall out of favor.

[00:16:17]Cromwell is given the chance to redeem himself.

[00:16:21]It's been 2 years since the death of Henry's great [music] love, Jane Seymour. And now Cromwell is tasked with finding him a new wife.

[00:16:31]He's now got the heir, but you know, he doesn't have the spare. And Henry is deeply skeptical about female monarchy.

[00:16:37]He's not excited about the prospect of either of his daughters becoming his successor. So, he's looking for a new wife to produce sons.

[00:16:48]Cromwell strikes a political deal for Henry to marry the German noble woman Anne of Cleves and Henry agrees to marry her based solely on seeing her portrait.

[00:17:01]Well, he sees an image of a girl who looks like a doll. She's pretty, she's young, she looks very unthreatening.

[00:17:11]So Henry sees the portrait and he thinks she looks bit of all right. Um, I'll I'll go for that. Yep, that seems that's fine.

[00:17:21]>> But when Henry meets Anne in person, he changes his mind completely.

[00:17:28]>> When Anne arrives, she's put up in Rochester Castle, and Henry can't wait to see her, so he goes in disguise with a gift to basically have a quick peep.

[00:17:36]But actually, Anne doesn't really take any notice of this rather obese stranger who sort of pops by. And um, that that's not a good start. Poor Anne of Cleves was dressed in the most hideous German costume with sort of contrasting bands of fabric and a sort of helmet that looks like something out of Star Wars.

[00:17:54]And he was horribly disappointed.

[00:17:57]Henry made his revulsion towards an of Cleves absolutely clear. He complained that there were displeasant heirs about her. And there's a very lurid description of their wedding night where Henry is said to have run his hands all over his wife's body, feeling her breasts and her belly. And it gave him enough of a conviction to declare that she was no maid. She hadn't come to him a virgin.

[00:18:26]Henry's smear campaign against An of Cleves actually reveals more about his own personal insecurities than anything else.

[00:18:35]Henry has for some time been suffering from bouts of impotence and he finds himself unable to consummate the marriage. I think perhaps he has a a bit of a go. It doesn't work out and then he decides this is not my fault.

[00:18:52]Henry said that he was capable of having sex with other women that he was still having wet dreams. He absolutely insisted that that was known by everyone around the court. really it undermined his masculinity that he couldn't have sex with his own wife, but he was not willing to acknowledge that it was his problem. As far as he was concerned, it was her.

[00:19:12]Henry's PR campaign against Anne was so effective that even centuries later, there's a tendency to still refer to her as the Fllanders may, the ugly wife, whom he was lucky enough to get rid of quite quickly. We completely overlook the fact [laughter] that actually there's probably nothing wrong with Anne and frankly Henry was no oil painting by this time.

[00:19:39]>> The Anne of Cle's marriage is an unmititigated disaster and Henry lays the blame squarely at Cromwell's feet.

[00:19:48]>> I don't think Henry really turns against Cromwell until the Cleaves marriage.

[00:19:53]When Henry feels that somebody has disobeyed him or has been working against him, he feels that the scales have fallen from his eyes and he's going to do something about it. And so he will cut them off. And you know, he's got this infinite talent for turning loyal servants into enemies of the state. And Cromwell [music] falls into that bracket.

[00:20:15]Seeking to exploit the growing rift between Henry and Cromwell, Cromwell's enemies at court start to plot against him.

[00:20:23]Chief among these enemies is Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk.

[00:20:29]>> Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk.

[00:20:31]He's been one of the most unpleasant men in English history. He was ambitious, vain, arrogant. For Norfolk, Thomas Cromwell was public enemy number one.

[00:20:42]Norolk thinks that Cromwell's, you know, too big for his boots. He's a self-made man. He's not an aristocrat. The country should be run by people of noble blood, the true counselors of the king, not these sort of upstarts.

[00:20:56]To remove Cromwell from power, Norfolk starts a campaign aimed at [music] discrediting him.

[00:21:03]It doesn't take much to stoke Henry's [music] suspicions.

[00:21:07]Norfolk claimed that Cromwell was plotting to marry the king's daughter, Mary, make himself king. He pointed out the fact he had this huge household that could perhaps turn into a private army and take the throne by force. There was literally no evidence behind any of the charges, but Norfolk knew Henry was so paranoid [music] that he would believe it.

[00:21:29]>> Henry was thinking if Conro has let him down, he must have meant it. He must have been in some way acting cruy to the king. And Henry's ego was particularly precious and particularly vulnerable where he thought he'd been betrayed.

[00:21:46]For Cromwell, it's only a matter of time before Henry turns on him.

[00:21:59]Thomas Cromwell knew the end was coming.

[00:22:01]He could smell it.

[00:22:03]He must have constantly been looking over his shoulder, not knowing who to trust.

[00:22:11]Henry finally gives the order to [music] strike.

[00:22:17]And when Cromwell arrives late at a privy council meeting, the Duke of Norfolk is waiting for him.

[00:22:27]>> We don't know why he was late. It might have all been part of the plot, but he's thought it was just a routine meeting.

[00:22:34]And this is a man who has this sophisticated spy network. He knows everything. He didn't know this.

[00:22:40]>> When he moved to sit down, Norfolk said, "Stop. That's not the seat for a traitor."

[00:22:47]Cromwell was frozen.

[00:22:49]>> He must have been absolutely terrified cuz he knows where it ends.

[00:22:57]When the guards rushed forward, there was a cry of traitor and he was seized.

[00:23:03][snorts] >> He was astonished and he said, "Well, why are you calling me a traitor? Tell me what the charges are."

[00:23:10]>> Nobody said a word. Because they hadn't finished making those charges up yet.

[00:23:16]They had no answer.

[00:23:17]>> There's a moment that's almost Shakespearean where the Duke of Norolk rips the chain of office from around his neck.

[00:23:25]This method of arrest has been devised deliberately to surprise and shock him.

[00:23:31]>> He was dragged out and taken by boat to the Tower of London on that dreadful one-way ticket.

[00:23:50]Henry [music] VIII has been on the throne for over three decades.

[00:23:57]After ordering the arrest of his chief [music] minister, Thomas Cromwell, Henry's suspicions intensify.

[00:24:06]After Cromwell's fall, Henry is actually a rather different character because he starts to say for the first time, I trust no one but myself. He doesn't appoint another chief minister. And you know, people have said, oh, these are years without a policy. You know, no one was up to the job. No, no, no, no, no, no. Henry believed he was up to the job.

[00:24:27]He was going to direct everything.

[00:24:29]>> He was so sensitive to any accusation that he was being governed by other people, that other people were manipulating him, that he was the play thing of other people's ambitions, that he did everything in his power to try and assert himself as the ultimate authority in the kingdom.

[00:24:45]>> Even though Cromwell is now his prisoner in the tower, Henry still needs his former advisor's help.

[00:24:54]Henry remains trapped in his marriage to an of Cleves and he needs Cromwell's legal expertise to get him out of it.

[00:25:02]>> There's nobody else who can get him out of this fiasco marriage with Ann of Cle.

[00:25:07]So Henry's writing to Cromwell asking for his help. You know, give me evidence that [music] the marriage uh was never valid, that it could be unnulled. So Cromwell is working for Henry till his very last breath.

[00:25:24]I think that he believes that the king at some point is going to turn around and say, "Sorry, all is forgiven. This is a mistake. I'm going to release you.

[00:25:34]Live out the rest of your years. [music] Um, we're going to find a place for you somewhere."

[00:25:40]>> But once [music] the An of Cle's marriage is anulled, Henry has no further use for his former adviser.

[00:25:51]Someone like Thomas Cromwell isn't a friend. He's a human tool of whatever it is that Henry wished to achieve at any moment. And so he will pick a tool up and he will use it. And when it no longer serves its purpose, he will cast it aside.

[00:26:05]>> On the 28th of July [music] 1540, Thomas Cromwell, once one of the most powerful men in England, is led to the scaffold and publicly executed on Tower Hill.

[00:26:22]With Cromwell out of the way, his arch enemy, the Duke of Norfolk, sees an opportunity to secure greater powers for himself.

[00:26:31]And he has a secret weapon to help him.

[00:26:34]His teenage niece, Katherine Howard.

[00:26:39][laughter] >> The moment that Katherine Howard was in the king's bed, Norfolk probably thought he was absolutely made for life. I mean, Norfolk was a cynical, unpleasant career aristocrat who beat his wife, knocked her teeth out. I mean, this was not a nice man. So, the fact that he was using women as pawns in a political game shouldn't surprise us.

[00:26:58]>> You like it here.

[00:27:01]>> Norfolk's position [music] is secured when Henry takes Katherine Howard as his fifth wife.

[00:27:08]>> He seems to rediscover something of his lost youth in her. He adors her and is seen playing with her in public. [music] So he feels himself to be this young king again.

[00:27:22]He wanted to prove to everyone around him that he was a viral man. And [music] I think that his caressing of Katherine Howard, his constant parading her about this place as this young bride on his arm is just massive overcompensation.

[00:27:36][music] He's old enough to be her grandfather.

[00:27:40]So they must have presented this rather inongerous image of Beauty and the Beast.

[00:27:53]But Henry and [music] Catherine's honeymoon is short-lived.

[00:27:58]After just 15 months together, evidence emerges that Catherine wasn't a virgin when she married him.

[00:28:06]On the 2nd of November 1541, Henry VIII was at mass up in the uh king's closet just above us here in the Chapel Royal of Hampton Court Palace and he was presented with a letter from Archbishop Cranmer that relayed the sorded details of Katherine Howard's past. And it explicitly says in this account that Cranmer didn't just tell the king this information, but instead put it in writing. He declared the information thereof to his highness in writing.

[00:28:35]Because as it says here, he had not the heart to express the same to the king by word of mouth. And I can easily imagine that he wouldn't have the heart to tell the king that his jewel of womanhood was in fact a woman of considerable sexual experience.

[00:28:49]This account makes it very clear that Henry was completely heartbroken when he discovered this news. It says his joy was turned to sorrow. He wept bitter tears. And you get this impression of someone who really really wanted this marriage to work, who was deeply in love with Katherine Howard, and whose world just came crumbling down around him when he found out the truth about her.

[00:29:15]Several days later, the allegations against Catherine [music] intensify, and she is accused of having an affair during her marriage to Henry.

[00:29:26]The moment he learned about this, the moment he learned that it was true that she had had an affair, he left. And that's what we see Henry doing time and time again in his relationships. It's quite disturbing that Henry has this capacity to just sort of turn off and move on from a person, even one who clearly he loved very deeply.

[00:29:46]>> Katherine Howard's fate is clear the moment Henry turns against her. She is beheaded [music] for treason at the Tower of London.

[00:29:57]>> Katherine was just a girl who had been taken advantage of by men for most of her life who ended up dying very bravely but very horribly.

[00:30:08]After Katherine Howard, Henry is left with the reality of an aging man who's losing his verility. There is a sense of deep unhappiness that this is what he now has to live with. This the wreck of the prince he once was.

[00:30:28]>> Despite five failed marriages, Henry only has one legitimate son.

[00:30:34]So he embarks on his sixth marriage to Katherine P, hopeful that she will provide him with a spare heir.

[00:30:45]But Henry's also increasingly concerned about his imperial legacy. And for a TUDA king, that means only one thing, going to war.

[00:30:55]>> He's trying to recapture his lost youth.

[00:30:58]And he tries [music] to do that by going off to war. He's going to be this great crusading king again, reclaiming parts of France.

[00:31:06]>> Henry grew up on tales of daring do against the French. Henry V aging core and all those other famous victories.

[00:31:18]Henry had always wanted to have military glory in his portfolio of achievements.

[00:31:22][music] In this period, the English nobility want to go smashing up the French. You know, just like [music] 21st century tourists want to go, you know, around northern France on holiday.

[00:31:34]Here at Windsor Castle is a treasure that epitomizes Henry's [music] image of himself as a warrior king.

[00:31:43]In the latter years of his reign, [music] Henry specially commissions this suit of armor.

[00:31:50]Here is the physical embodiment of Henry's childhood dreams. The symbol of chivalry and the image of an armored man, Henry VII's armor. Now, armor in the 16th century was made to measure.

[00:32:06]None of this off the peek stuff. It provides us with the true image of Henry, as he would like to be projected, of power and might and ruthlessness. You can almost imagine his little piggy eyes behind that visor glaring at us with contempt.

[00:32:24][music] Despite the commanding image that Henry wants to project, his armor is actually enlarged to accommodate his increasing size.

[00:32:37]Here they're having to let in 5 cm plates on each side of his back plate because of his expanding girth. because he did weigh 28 stone. Now, in National Health Service terms, his body mass index was way off today's scale. He was a man mountain.

[00:33:04]In order to make him feel more comfortable and to flatter him, his male courtiers start to wear enormous padded dublets and clothes so that they appear [music] just as big as the king. This also affected Henry's psyche. I think he was really humiliated by what he had become.

[00:33:23]>> Henry's very aware that his advancing years and medical [music] disorders threatened to derail his battlefield ambitions.

[00:33:31]So while he still can, he personally launches an assault on the French port of Bologin.

[00:33:38]>> I mean his idea of leading his army in person of course means directing operations from a safe distance inside a um a sort of wooden pavilion which is lined with fake marble inside.

[00:33:49]>> He is like a small boy with lots of toy soldiers. He is [music] in his element.

[00:33:57]He loves the siege. He loves all these cannon aids which fire day and night.

[00:34:05]>> It was an attempt to gain glory by conquering France again. It was an attempt to resurrect the idea that England would be mighty by ruling over France.

[00:34:15]>> Henry's attack on Bologin is a success and he enters the captured port as a conquering hero.

[00:34:23]But his vanity project has a serious impact on England's economy.

[00:34:31]Henry painted the capture of Beloid as a great victory, but it cost them enormous sums of money and in fact England became bankrupt by the cost of war.

[00:34:43]5 years after Henry died, a TUDA accountant was given the task of calculating how much the wars had cost.

[00:34:52]He produced a 16page account which showed that it had cost the poor English taxpayer equivalent in today's money 1.87 billion.

[00:35:05]And it shows the burden which his subjects had to bear to pay for his hopes of military glory.

[00:35:16]Despite [music] plunging England into bankruptcy, Henry's military ambitions do have some benefits.

[00:35:25]>> Henry's military legacy was enormously positive. Yes, he'd depleted the Royal Treasury in the process, but he'd created one of the greatest navies in the world and also an incredibly impressive army as well. He'd made England a power to be reckoned with. I think Henry understood that all nations in the early modern period were unstable [music] and so you had to maintain the appearance of a strong king able to deliver justice, [music] able to lead a nation in war. These were the things that united the realm. Henry would have been seen as a good king because a king who leads to victory and war is a good king almost regardless of anything else.

[00:36:08]But just after Henry secures the military legacy he's always [music] dreamed of, his health takes a turn for the worse.

[00:36:28]As his health deteriorates, Henry takes to shutting himself away in his chambers.

[00:36:37]The last years of the reign are [music] definitely tainted by claustrophobia.

[00:36:41]You know, no one quite knows who to trust. And of course, because of his immobility, Henry is closeted in a secret study at the far end of White Hall Palace and doesn't come out that much. People think that, okay, he's sort of switched off. This is not the case. I mean, this is somebody who is almost like [music] in his lair. He's checking up on everything.

[00:37:01]A good way to view Henry would be as a rather malignant spider at the center of everything which went on within England.

[00:37:10]All those lines of the web all run through and end up with him.

[00:37:20]It's becoming clear to Henry's courtiers [music] that he's nearing the end.

[00:37:26]In the last days of Henry's life, the atmosphere at court must have been pretty [music] toxic. There was a sense of fear, of anxiety, of uncertainty for what the future would hold. There was a real sense, I think, that the end was coming for King Henry VII.

[00:37:41]>> But no one is brave enough [music] to mention this to Henry himself.

[00:37:46]>> A dying king is like a dying lion, extraordinarily dangerous.

[00:37:51]Everybody was terrified that Henry still had the power to kill. It was said that no one would give him any official advice because they were frightened of his reaction.

[00:38:03]Imagining the death of the king was treason. So in a capricious reign where people had been charged with treason for all kinds of offenses, simply telling the king that he might die is not something that even the bravest counselors would be able to do. The only thing to say to a king is it's a scratch. You're sure to get better.

[00:38:21]Tomorrow we'll go hunting. Everything will be fine.

[00:38:26]>> As Henry's health gets worse, the finishing touches are put on one of the most important documents of his reign, his last will and testament.

[00:38:38]It reveals his attempts to retain control over his kingdom even after his death.

[00:38:46]This very excitingly is the last will and testament of King Henry VIII.

[00:38:52]>> Here you see Henry R. Henry Rex Henry the king. This is Henry's last ditch attempt at controlling the future of England. If you ever needed proof that Henry was a bit of a megalomaniac, this is it.

[00:39:08]An enormous proportion of this will is taken up with the thing that had concerned Henry right from the moment he accceeded to the throne which is the succession to the dynasty of the Tudtor after Henry died. It's not a surprise that of course what Henry most wants is his son Edward to become king after him.

[00:39:27]But perhaps because he himself was a second son, he provides for the possibility that Edward might die. In other words, even on his deathbed, Henry is still trying to claw his way into control beyond the grave. Even more extraordinarily, given that Henry, as I say, is dying at this point, he provides for the possibility that there might even be another wife in his future. Any lawful wife who I shall hereafter marry.

[00:39:57]>> I mean, that is rank optimism in the face of all possible evidence, I would say.

[00:40:04]I think there's something almost tragic about this king on his deathbed who has striven for nearly 40 years to have absolute power over the people in his country. And now in his dying moments, he's still trying to do that. He's still trying to maintain control. And there's something moving about that almost admirable uh and also slightly repulsive if I'm completely honest.

[00:40:36]Henry is growing so ill that he's started to drift in and out of consciousness.

[00:40:44]When Henry was on his deathbed, he must have felt that his dynasty was coming to an end. Henry wasn't in a position to pass on his crown [music] to another stable male monarch.

[00:40:56]His son Edward was still very young.

[00:41:01]When Henry knows that he really is [music] now going to die, he must have been wondering if he was going to end up on the right side of things with God. I mean, he was Christ deputy on earth, but he was also going to be judged. And Henry must have been wondering whether actually he hadn't quite got things right.

[00:41:18]Henry was now presiding over a realm divided in which religion had become an irreconcilable grievance. Henry's lifetime as king had seen the creation of a divided England and that was a genie he couldn't put back in the bottle.

[00:41:37]Henry's courtiers finally muster the courage to warn him of his approaching death. There was a great deal of tension in the court. Who was going to tell the king that he was about to meet his maker? Eventually, the task fell to Sir Anthony Denny, who in life had fulfilled Henry's most intimate needs as groom of the stall.

[00:42:02]Now, he had one last service to perform for his master to tell him he was dying.

[00:42:10]He asked Henry [music] effectively if he wanted to make his last confession.

[00:42:14]Should I send for Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop [music] of Canterbury? And Henry replied and said, "I will first take a little sleep and then >> and then as I feel myself, >> I will think on the matter."

[00:42:32]They were the last words he ever spoke.

[00:42:39]>> On the 28th of January [music] 1547, Henry VIII dies.

[00:42:47]Henry VIII has gone down in history as our most famous king probably because he's [music] our most married king. He's a kind of larger than-l life character.

[00:42:57]But it's very very clear that behind this public facade was somebody who was fundamentally vulnerable and insecure.

[00:43:06]The story of Henry VIII has everything [music] in it. It has transition from young irresponsible being to someone blighted later in life by paranoia.

[00:43:17][music] >> Henry was self-obsessed, desired admiration. He could never be wrong. You cannot ignore Henry.

[00:43:26]He put England in the center of European politics. But he also gave the English a sense of national identity. England was [music] never going to be quite the same after Henry. He'd broken with Rome. He had centralized the kingdom.

[00:43:42]Institutions like Parliament, the Church of England hardly changed for another 400 years.

[00:43:48]>> Henry was tremendously charismatic. He knew how to be a king. He understood the myth of English kingship.

[00:43:56]>> I think if you looked at Henry VII's reign as a whole, you would have to accept that it had been a reign that changed the state of England [music] forever.

[00:44:07]Heat. Heat.

[00:44:20][music] [music]