The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - June 28, 2026


PREVIEW： Epochs #269 ｜ The Life of Henry VIII： Part V

Hosted by
Callum Edmunds Carl Benjamin Connor Tomlinson Harry Robinson John Wheatley Joshua Ferme Edward McLaren Elizabeth Heverin
Guests
Winston Churchill
Mentioned
Henry Norris Anne Boleyn Jane Seymour Mary I. Two Hilary Mantle Elizabeth II Thomas Cromwell Queen Anne Mark Smeaton Wolsey Francis Weston Wolf Hall Mary Nominally Charles Oman Thomas Moore Mark Henry Lambeth
PREVIEW： Chronicles #52 ｜ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner： Part III The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1450

Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

160.29

Word count

3,464

Sentence count

99

Harmful content

Misogyny

12

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Henry VIII was the first English monarch to fall out of love with his wife Anne Boleyn, and one of the most hated monarchs of all time, Henry VIII was also the first monarch to be executed for treason. But how did he go about it? And why did he do it?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Hello and welcome back to Epochs. If you follow Epochs on a weekly basis you will have noticed
00:00:26 that we had a hiatus for two weeks whilst we gave you that interview i did with apostolic majesty
00:00:31 all about the french revolution so back to our story about henry the eighth uh quick uh apology
00:00:39 for being so informal without a shirt without a blazer and without a tire with my sleeves rolled
00:00:46 up it is baking today it's the hottest day on record in june it's swelteringly hot um so you
00:00:54 know usually i do wear at least a blazer don't i but it's just too hot today so i would really
00:00:59 melt so okay with that said let's uh go straight on with the story let's we got up to the point
00:01:04 where uh anne boleyn had given henry a child but it was a daughter they weren't to know that that
00:01:13 daughter would go on to be one of the greatest monarchs in english history an actual golden age
00:01:18 Their daughter is Elizabeth, Elizabeth I. 0.96
00:01:22 As I say, it goes on to rule over a golden age.
00:01:25 They weren't to know that.
00:01:26 At the time, in Henry's mind and in everyone's mind, really,
00:01:29 he needed a son in order to avoid at least the potential
00:01:32 of something like the Wars of the Roses happening again,
00:01:35 the whole country, the whole kingdom falling into civil war and chaos.
00:01:40 Henry thought he needed a son at all costs.
00:01:43 and he had fallen out of love with Anne Boleyn basically
00:01:48 and there's a lot to that story and that's what we'll get into today
00:01:52 as well as the ongoing thread, the ongoing theme
00:01:56 of the break with Rome and Protestantism and all that sort of thing
00:02:00 Okay, as usual I should be reading from Sir Winston Churchill and Sir Charles Oman
00:02:05 both great 20th century historians
00:02:09 so let's pick up the story a little bit here with Churchill and he wrote this quote the king was
00:02:16 still paying court to Jane Seymour that's the young lady that Henry's eye had turned to even
00:02:21 before he's done away with Anne Boleyn in any real sense he's already his eyes already turned
00:02:26 to Jane Seymour he was still playing court to Jane Seymour when it became known that Anne was
00:02:31 expecting another baby but this time Henry refused to have anything to do with her it actually
00:02:37 happened really quick when you look at the chronology of how quickly henry went from being
00:02:41 at least on paper at least as far as everyone else was concerned certainly as far as anne was
00:02:46 concerned went from being just on board and happy with her and everything's okay more or less even
00:02:53 though they struggled the quickness of going from that to having nothing to do with her
00:02:58 not basically not seeing her at all physically seeing her anymore and then it's a slippery
00:03:05 slope towards treason trials and an execution. That happened quite quickly, over the course of
00:03:10 a few short weeks, basically. Okay, so Henry refused to have anything to do with her. She was
00:03:17 pregnant. She was haggard and ill and had lost her freshness. That's Churchill's opinion, but 1.00
00:03:23 reflecting what the accounts at the time said. Rumours were current at court that he had only
00:03:29 spoken to her 10 times in three months although formally he could hardly bear to be separated
00:03:36 from her for an hour formally like that was the story he was keeping up everything's okay but in
00:03:43 reality he put her aside in his mind at least basically Anne Anne Boleyn became distracted
00:03:50 with anxiety and was obsessed with fears of arising against her and the infant Elizabeth
00:03:55 in favour of Catherine and Mary, that is Catherine of Aragon and her daughter with Henry, Mary,
00:04:03 who does go on to be bloody Mary, Mary I. Two queens there, Elizabeth and Mary, future queens.
00:04:10 But they were still alive, Catherine was still alive, and it seems that Anne Boleyn was much
00:04:15 more worried about that than Jane Seymour. Apparently not many people knew, basically,
00:04:21 hardly anyone really knew that Henry had turned his attentions to Jane Seymour.
00:04:25 so Anne Boleyn was worried about you know some sort of internal palace coup or just falling out 0.98
00:04:32 of favor Churchill goes on without consulting the king or his council she sent messages to Mary 0.69
00:04:38 through her governess making all sorts of promises if Mary would swear to the act of succession
00:04:44 and renounce her claim to the throne so that was a big thing you know we talked before hadn't we
00:04:49 about how Henry had passed the act of supremacy saying that he was the spiritual master of
00:04:55 religion in England that if there was anyone closest to God on earth it wasn't the Pope
00:05:02 anymore it was him that he was the master of things both temporal and spiritual and everyone
00:05:09 nearly everyone had signed this and accepted it the couple of exceptions were Bishop Fisher
00:05:17 and Thomas More the Chancellor the other big exception to that was Mary Henry's own daughter
00:05:24 who was brought up Catholic, brought up a good Catholic,
00:05:27 half Spanish, basically.
00:05:30 She considered herself, or she was, a staunch Catholic
00:05:33 and she refused for a long time, for a long, long time.
00:05:36 She got very close to having treason brought against her
00:05:40 and perhaps even executed his own daughter.
00:05:43 So for a long time, she refused to sign this thing
00:05:45 and it was a big point of contention, very big point.
00:05:48 And it was in Anne Boleyn's interests to see that happened. 1.00
00:05:51 So she's trying to sort of cajole, coerce, bribe Mary 1.00
00:05:57 Nominally her stepdaughter to take this oath 0.99
00:06:02 But none of that worked
00:06:04 Churchill continues
00:06:05 Promises were followed by threats
00:06:07 But Mary refused to give way
00:06:10 One day, after an unfavourable report from the governess 1.00
00:06:14 Anne was found in a tempest of tears
00:06:16 Soon afterwards, her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk
00:06:19 strode into the room and told her that henry had had a serious accident out hunting in her grief
00:06:26 and alarm she nearly fainted five days later she miscarried end quote now henry had already put her
00:06:34 aside in his mind basically he was looking for somebody else to give him a son and when she had
00:06:41 this miscarriage it wasn't the first one either he obviously decided we'll get into all of this
00:06:46 He obviously decided in his mind that was the final straw, or he decided he just didn't want her anymore and that she wasn't going to give him a son.
00:06:56 And that's what he needed above all else.
00:06:59 And so most historians agree that that particular miscarriage was was her doom one way or another.
00:07:07 Churchill says the king, instead of pitying her, gave way to an uncontrollable outburst of rage.
00:07:13 he visited her repeating over and over again and these are supposed to be his words i see that god
00:07:19 does not mean me to have male children church's words again as he turned to leave he added
00:07:23 angrily that he would speak to her again as soon as she was better and replied that it was not her
00:07:29 fault that she had failed to bear another child she had been frightened when she heard of the
00:07:34 king's fall besides she loved him so passionately with so much more further than katherine that it
00:07:41 broke her heart when she saw that he gave his love to others. At this allusion to Jane the king left
00:07:47 the room in a towering passion and refused for days to see her. Jane Seymour was installed at
00:07:53 Greenwich i.e near the king not at Wolf Hall in the west country. Through her serving man who had
00:08:01 been taken into the pay of the imperial ambassador we have a story of the royal courtship. One day
00:08:07 the king sent a page down from London with a purse full of gold and a letter in his own handwriting
00:08:13 Jane kissed the letter but returned it to the page unopened then falling on her knees she said
00:08:20 and these are supposed to be her words I pray you beseech the king to understand by my prudence
00:08:25 that I am a gentle woman of good and honorable family without reproach and have no greater
00:08:30 treasure in the world than my honor which I would not harm for a thousand deaths if the king should
00:08:36 wish to make me a present of money I beg him to do so when God shall send me a husband to marry
00:08:42 end quote now that uh historians believe that that was quite a canny move because on the face
00:08:48 of it you might think oh refusing the king's present so especially a king like Henry might
00:08:53 make him terribly angry or just turn away from you after that he might take that as a rebuke
00:08:59 a rebuttal especially she mentioned someone to marry i.e not him he's already married twice in
00:09:05 fact. So you might think that's a dangerous thing for her to do. But no, she'd obviously 0.99
00:09:11 probably been coached that Henry would have liked that gesture, that she's playing up
00:09:16 the idea that she's completely and utterly pure. And she wouldn't dream of accepting a gift,
00:09:25 even from the king, as it's sort of slightly improper. And that was what Henry in this stage
00:09:31 in his life that's exactly what henry was looking for and it seems to have been where it was an
00:09:36 absolutely correct calculation churchill goes on saying the king was greatly pleased
00:09:40 she had he said displayed high virtue and to prove that his intentions were wholly worthy of her
00:09:48 he promised not to speak to her in future except in the presence of her relation in january 1536
00:09:55 queen catherine died catherine of arrogant of natural causes if the king was minded to marry
00:10:00 again he could now repudiate Queen Anne without risking awkward questions about his earlier union
00:10:06 remember he's already made himself the highest authority in things spiritual if he could annul
00:10:12 his marriage to Catherine of Aragon which he had he could do it again for Anne Boleyn there's no
00:10:17 one stopping him it was already rumored by the Seymour party that in her intense desire for an
00:10:23 heir Queen Anne had been unfaithful to the king soon after the birth of Elizabeth
00:10:28 with several lovers so this is where the story starts where Henry wants to do away with her
00:10:35 not necessarily have her executed in the first instance but he needs grounds in order to divorce
00:10:43 her or annul the marriage needs grounds well straightforward easy one is adultery if she had
00:10:49 been unfaithful to him then that's all he needs he can just doesn't necessarily matter if it's
00:10:56 made up or not. If he can say it and people believe it, that's the whole ballgame. So
00:11:03 rumours start going around that she had indeed been unfaithful and the rumours climb to sort
00:11:10 of extraordinary lengths. That's another thing that historians argue about loads. Was Anne Boleyn
00:11:16 actually unfaithful? And even if she was, were all the stories about her true? Because they become
00:11:23 more and more extreme we'll get into it here my personal feeling my personal opinion
00:11:30 and I think a lot of probably a lot of scholars would probably agree with this that
00:11:36 there may have been may have been some kernels of truth there may or may not but some of the
00:11:43 more extreme stories are almost certainly not true like for example she slept with her own
00:11:49 brother or that she slept with a hundred different men things like that it's almost certainly
00:11:56 impossible because the queen somebody like the queen any woman of note in the court would hardly
00:12:02 ever apart from anything else would hardly ever be left alone look really hardly ever
00:12:07 they would always they would always be people around ladies in waiting and such to have had
00:12:14 affairs with dozens or hundreds of men or something. It's just physically, logistically
00:12:20 extremely unlikely. Did she have an affair with somebody like Mark Smeaton, one of her
00:12:27 personal servants who played an instrument, he was like a minstrel type? Maybe. Maybe
00:12:35 there's truth there. There's some scholars who say no, it's all entirely fabricated,
00:12:40 so henry's got an excuse we shall never know for sure it is one of those things in history
00:12:45 that the the actual historians and scholars will always argue about it seems okay churchill goes
00:12:51 on saying it was rumored she had several lovers if proved this offense was capital i.e the sentence
00:12:58 is death it's treason really the queen had accordingly been watched and one sunday two
00:13:07 young courtiers, Henry Norris and Sir Francis Weston, were seen to enter the Queen's room and
00:13:13 were, it was said, overheard making love to her. Remember, all of this stuff quite possibly is
00:13:19 fabricated by, well, Thomas Cromwell. Thomas Cromwell by this stage had become Henry's right
00:13:25 hand man, basically in all things political. He wasn't actually the Chancellor yet, but he was
00:13:31 Henry's fixer. He'd been a great fixer for Wolsey and now he was Henry's great fixer.
00:13:37 And Henry had said to Cromwell, basically, I want to get a divorce or an annulment from Anne Boleyn.
00:13:43 I want her gone. I want to marry somebody else. Make that happen.
00:13:47 You're my man. You're my fixer. Make it happen. Don't care really how you do it.
00:13:52 Just do it. And so then it's Thomas Cromwell's job to find adultery, whether it's there or not.
00:14:00 It just so happens that Henry Norris and Francis Weston had been enemies of Wolsey and Cromwell all along.
00:14:10 So the finger gets pointed at them, among others.
00:14:14 There's a great line in Hilary Mantle's Wolf Hall where people like Norris and Weston say to Cromwell when they're in the tower awaiting execution.
00:14:23 They say to him, look, we didn't do this, and you know, really, let's be honest, you know we didn't.
00:14:31 This is all Hilary Mantle's fiction, but nonetheless, it speaks to probably the truth.
00:14:38 They say to him, we didn't commit adultery with the Queen, and you know we didn't.
00:14:43 And he replies to them, yes, I need guilty people, though.
00:14:49 And you may not be guilty of this crime, of sleeping with the Queen of England,
00:14:53 but you are guilty of crimes against me and Wolsey so I am finding guilty people it may
00:15:00 not be for the crime you're accused of but there you go into an interesting insight that that may
00:15:06 well be what happened that's one of the things Hilary Mantle wrote which I tend to agree with
00:15:11 again we don't really know for sure and there's a whole bunch in Wolf Hall which I don't agree with
00:15:16 a whole bunch where I think no that's Hilary Mantle taking it too far I don't agree with that
00:15:21 that couldn't have been how it was etc etc but on that count on that one that's that rings true to
00:15:26 me i i can believe that and who knows maybe henry norris and sir francis weston did commit adultery
00:15:33 with amberlyn who knows but thomas cromwell's spires said that they heard them making love to
00:15:38 the queen next day a parchment was laid before the king empowering a strong panel of counsellors and
00:15:44 judges headed by the lord chancellor or any four of them to investigate and try every kind of
00:15:51 treason the king signed on tuesday the council sat all day and late into the night but yet there
00:15:57 was no sufficient evidence the following sunday a certain smeaton i mentioned him didn't i mark
00:16:02 smeaton the bard a gentleman of the king's chamber who played with great skill on the lute
00:16:08 was arrested at the as the queen's lover smeaton subsequently just a boy and nobody i say a boy i
00:16:14 mean a young man just some young man who was in and around the court nobody of real importance
00:16:19 smitten subsequently under torture confessed to the charge now that's a classic thing isn't it
00:16:26 you can't trust a confession that's been got under torture because people will say anything
00:16:32 they will say anything to avoid more torture even if it means their execution just give me a quick
00:16:37 death but in those days in the ancient world and often even in the medieval world it's funny it
00:16:41 was considered the other way around it was often considered that a confession under torture was
00:16:45 of more value than one that wasn't.
00:16:49 We just don't think like that these days, do we?
00:16:51 It's another thing Hilary Mantle, I think, gets completely wrong.
00:16:54 She paints Thomas Cromwell as a goodie, an extreme goodie,
00:16:59 who would never do such a thing as torture somebody like Mark Smeaton.
00:17:03 She puts words into his mouth saying,
00:17:05 we don't do such things in England, torture people.
00:17:08 They do. They did. He did.
00:17:11 In fact, Smeaton was supposed to have been tortured in Cromwell's house. 0.68
00:17:15 From where I wasn't a whiter than white individual, completely blameless and always doing the right thing.
00:17:23 Not at all, really. Churchill continued saying, on Monday, Norris was among the challengers at the May Day Tournament at Greenwich.
00:17:30 And as the king rode to London after the jousting, he called Norris to his side and told him what was suspected.
00:17:37 Although Norris denied everything, he also was arrested and taken to the tower.
00:17:41 that night Anne learned that Smeaton and Norris were in the tower the following the following
00:17:47 morning she was requested to come before the council although her uncle the Duke of Norfolk
00:17:52 although her uncle the Duke of Norfolk presided at the examination no Queen of England Anne 0.53
00:17:59 complained afterwards could have been treated with such brutality at the conclusion of the 1.00
00:18:03 proceedings she was placed under arrest and kept under guard until the tide turned to take her up 0.51
00:18:09 river to the tower so imprisoned arrested and imprisoned and accused of adultery and treason 0.99
00:18:14 so a complete and utter fall from grace she went into that council meeting the queen of england
00:18:21 unbesmirched basically formally on paper and she left a prisoner completely disgraced
00:18:28 almost certainly facing a kangaroo court and an execution
00:18:34 Churchill says, 0.99
00:19:05 That's sort of one of those classic moments in history.
00:19:07 Anne Boleyn being taken to the tower.
00:19:10 One of those moments in time.
00:19:12 The same evening at York Place, which is in London at Lambeth, not in York,
00:19:17 when the Duke of Richmond, the king's bastard son,
00:19:20 came as usual to say goodnight to his father, 0.83
00:19:23 the king burst into tears.
00:19:25 And Henry's supposed to have said, 0.99
00:19:27 My God's great mercy, you and your sister Mary have escaped the hands of that damned poisonous trumpet. 0.98
00:19:34 Anne Boleyn he's talking about. She was plotting to poison you both, end quote. So Henry, Henry's 0.99
00:19:41 mind had completely turned against Anne Boleyn. Churchill says, Henry tried to forget his shame
00:19:47 and disgrace in a ceaseless round of feasting, who however may well be suspected of malicious bias,
00:19:54 has been gayer, more happy that is, since the arrest than ever before. He is going out to dinner
00:19:59 here, there and everywhere with the ladies. Sometimes he returns along the river after
00:20:03 midnight to the sound of many instruments or the voices of the singers of his chamber 1.00
00:20:08 who do their utmost to interpret his delight at being rid of that thin old woman end quote
00:20:15 so henry's completely turned against amberlyn put her out of his mind and decided to just
00:20:22 carry on with his life and have a good time and start feasting and turn his attentions to jane
00:20:27 Seymour. Churchill says that although the Spanish ambassador called Anne Boleyn that thin old woman
00:20:35 Churchill reminds us that she was in fact only 29. The ambassador also wrote
00:20:42 he went to dinner recently with the bishop of Carlisle and some ladies and next day the bishop
00:20:48 told me that he had behaved with almost desperate gaiety. Churchill goes on saying on Friday morning
00:20:56 the special commissioners of treason appointed the previous week, including Anne Boleyn's father,
00:21:01 the Earl of Wiltshire, and the entire bench of judges except one formed the court for the trial
00:21:07 of Anne's lovers. A special jury consisting of 12 knights had been summoned and found the prisoners
00:21:13 guilty. It was always a kangaroo call, a full-gone conclusion. It's what the king wanted, so, you know,
00:21:18 what Henry wants, Henry gets. They were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
00:21:23 but execution was deferred until after the trial of the Queen
00:21:29 we hope you enjoyed that video and if you did
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