Throughout his 37 and a half year reign, Henry VIII rode roughshod over just about anyone who stood in his way (or whom he regarded to stand in his way). A petulant, spoiled brat of a king who also happened to be a tyrannical monster. Most people are aware of the dreadful damage he inflicted on his wives, his ministers and the general population. From the beheading of two of his wives, one nothing more than a naive young girl to truly malicious executions including that of Richard Roose. Richard had been accused of attempting to poison John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester.
Henry was extremely paranoid (a trait that ran through the remarkable Tudor family with even Elizabeth I susceptible, especially in her later years) and he particularly dreaded being poisoned so such an accusation being levelled against Roose was triggered the king’s deepest fears and, with it, brought out the absolute malice of his character. Richard Roose was boiled alive; an absolutely sickening form of execution that is every bit as horrible as it sounds.
But there was another execution that I recently learned of that horrified me even more, ordered by this monstrous man. This was of a 15 year old boy whose parents were both dead. Alone in the world, this young began to listen to the preachings of a heretic and became invested in them. When this preacher was convicted of heresy, the 15 year old orphan would go the same way. He was burned at the stake. I repeat, a 15 year old boy. This was Henry VIII’s England. Thousands upon thousands had their heads chopped off, were burned at the stake, hanged, drawn or quartered or, as with Roose, died by some other horrible means. Traditional estimates of the number of executions ordered by Henry VIII are given at 72,000 although that figure has been challenged. This was the reward for people who dared to challenge Henry in any way or, as the case may be, to not challenge or even pose a threat to him at all.
The cowardice of Henry’s nature didn’t just cause a catastrophic loss of human life. It did untold damage to the very history of this nation. Famously, to get his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, Henry broke with Rome and made himself the Supreme Head of the Church in England. He then waged a most unholy and impious war to prove his “supremacy”. Monasteries and other religious houses were effectively destroyed and the king helped himself to vast lands, properties and other riches. What this resulted in, disastrously, was the loss of the remains of some of English history’s greatest figures.
At Canterbury, the shrine of Thomas Becket was destroyed and his remains burned. For centuries, the shrine had served as a focal point for pilgrims from far and wide, not just in England. Becket, of course, had stood strong against what the interference of church matters by Henry II and, no doubt, Henry VIII would have been little impressed by this act of defiance against the power of the crown and so the shrine, and Becket, would be lost forever.
At Reading Abbey, in Berkshire, lay the remains of the great king Henry I, son of William The Conqueror. The abbey fell victim to Henry’s onslaught as did Faversham Abbey in Kent where King Stephen, nephew of Henry I, lay along with his wife Matilda of Boulogne. There is some hope that the remains of both Henry I and King Stephen may be found one day. And there is also lingering hope that the remains of the great Anglo Saxon kings Alfred The Great and Edward The Elder, buried at Hyde Abbey and also lost in the Reformation, may also be rediscovered in time. In modern times, a documentary was filmed where the pelvic bone belonging to either Alfred or his son Edward was unearthed and identified. At Malmesbury, the tomb of Edward’s equally brilliant son, Aethelstan, built in the 15th century, survived the purge and can still be seen although, again, the remains were lost, likewise with Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, one of the great early female trailblazers.
This then is Henry VIII’s legacy. Whilst he threw his toys out of the pram when he didn’t get his own way and made everyone else pay, he inadvertently undermined the crown that he wore on his head. The England that he now ruled over had owed its very existence to the likes of Alfred, Edward The Elder, Aethelstan and Aethelflaed, the very people he was solely responsible for losing, most probably for ever. Yes, he may have viewed the houses they lay in and the tombs themselves as the symbol of everything he had come to hate but what he had also done was spit in the face of English royalty. This was more than ironic for a man who was nothing more than an Edward III or Henry V wannabe. What is particularly sad is that Henry VIII now attracts more attention because of his destructive ways than, for example, a noble king like Alfred The Great. That seems to be the way of the world.
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