The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Epochs #269 ｜ The Life of Henry VIII： Part V

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome back to Epochs. If you follow Epochs on a weekly basis you will have noticed

00:00:26.580 that we had a hiatus for two weeks whilst we gave you that interview i did with apostolic majesty

00:00:31.660 all about the french revolution so back to our story about henry the eighth uh quick uh apology

00:00:39.240 for being so informal without a shirt without a blazer and without a tire with my sleeves rolled

00:00:46.380 up it is baking today it's the hottest day on record in june it's swelteringly hot um so you

00:00:54.240 know usually i do wear at least a blazer don't i but it's just too hot today so i would really

00:00:59.420 melt so okay with that said let's uh go straight on with the story let's we got up to the point

00:01:04.880 where uh anne boleyn had given henry a child but it was a daughter they weren't to know that that

00:01:13.080 daughter would go on to be one of the greatest monarchs in english history an actual golden age

00:01:18.040 Their daughter is Elizabeth, Elizabeth I. 0.96

00:01:22.280 As I say, it goes on to rule over a golden age.

00:01:25.060 They weren't to know that.

00:01:26.260 At the time, in Henry's mind and in everyone's mind, really,

00:01:29.580 he needed a son in order to avoid at least the potential

00:01:32.960 of something like the Wars of the Roses happening again,

00:01:35.840 the whole country, the whole kingdom falling into civil war and chaos.

00:01:40.700 Henry thought he needed a son at all costs.

00:01:43.600 and he had fallen out of love with Anne Boleyn basically

00:01:48.700 and there's a lot to that story and that's what we'll get into today

00:01:52.660 as well as the ongoing thread, the ongoing theme

00:01:56.120 of the break with Rome and Protestantism and all that sort of thing

00:02:00.740 Okay, as usual I should be reading from Sir Winston Churchill and Sir Charles Oman

00:02:05.380 both great 20th century historians

00:02:09.820 so let's pick up the story a little bit here with Churchill and he wrote this quote the king was

00:02:16.080 still paying court to Jane Seymour that's the young lady that Henry's eye had turned to even

00:02:21.200 before he's done away with Anne Boleyn in any real sense he's already his eyes already turned

00:02:26.420 to Jane Seymour he was still playing court to Jane Seymour when it became known that Anne was

00:02:31.540 expecting another baby but this time Henry refused to have anything to do with her it actually

00:02:37.200 happened really quick when you look at the chronology of how quickly henry went from being

00:02:41.660 at least on paper at least as far as everyone else was concerned certainly as far as anne was

00:02:46.400 concerned went from being just on board and happy with her and everything's okay more or less even

00:02:53.000 though they struggled the quickness of going from that to having nothing to do with her

00:02:58.500 not basically not seeing her at all physically seeing her anymore and then it's a slippery

00:03:05.260 slope towards treason trials and an execution. That happened quite quickly, over the course of

00:03:10.880 a few short weeks, basically. Okay, so Henry refused to have anything to do with her. She was

00:03:17.620 pregnant. She was haggard and ill and had lost her freshness. That's Churchill's opinion, but 1.00

00:03:23.620 reflecting what the accounts at the time said. Rumours were current at court that he had only

00:03:29.440 spoken to her 10 times in three months although formally he could hardly bear to be separated

00:03:36.140 from her for an hour formally like that was the story he was keeping up everything's okay but in

00:03:43.020 reality he put her aside in his mind at least basically Anne Anne Boleyn became distracted

00:03:50.100 with anxiety and was obsessed with fears of arising against her and the infant Elizabeth

00:03:55.980 in favour of Catherine and Mary, that is Catherine of Aragon and her daughter with Henry, Mary,

00:04:03.540 who does go on to be bloody Mary, Mary I. Two queens there, Elizabeth and Mary, future queens.

00:04:10.040 But they were still alive, Catherine was still alive, and it seems that Anne Boleyn was much

00:04:15.500 more worried about that than Jane Seymour. Apparently not many people knew, basically,

00:04:21.560 hardly anyone really knew that Henry had turned his attentions to Jane Seymour.

00:04:25.980 so Anne Boleyn was worried about you know some sort of internal palace coup or just falling out 0.98

00:04:32.180 of favor Churchill goes on without consulting the king or his council she sent messages to Mary 0.69

00:04:38.880 through her governess making all sorts of promises if Mary would swear to the act of succession

00:04:44.360 and renounce her claim to the throne so that was a big thing you know we talked before hadn't we

00:04:49.440 about how Henry had passed the act of supremacy saying that he was the spiritual master of

00:04:55.520 religion in England that if there was anyone closest to God on earth it wasn't the Pope

00:05:02.220 anymore it was him that he was the master of things both temporal and spiritual and everyone

00:05:09.340 nearly everyone had signed this and accepted it the couple of exceptions were Bishop Fisher

00:05:17.240 and Thomas More the Chancellor the other big exception to that was Mary Henry's own daughter

00:05:24.480 who was brought up Catholic, brought up a good Catholic,

00:05:27.580 half Spanish, basically.

00:05:30.600 She considered herself, or she was, a staunch Catholic

00:05:33.400 and she refused for a long time, for a long, long time.

00:05:36.820 She got very close to having treason brought against her

00:05:40.420 and perhaps even executed his own daughter.

00:05:43.160 So for a long time, she refused to sign this thing

00:05:45.280 and it was a big point of contention, very big point.

00:05:48.540 And it was in Anne Boleyn's interests to see that happened. 1.00

00:05:51.720 So she's trying to sort of cajole, coerce, bribe Mary 1.00

00:05:57.840 Nominally her stepdaughter to take this oath 0.99

00:06:02.220 But none of that worked

00:06:04.340 Churchill continues

00:06:05.880 Promises were followed by threats

00:06:07.760 But Mary refused to give way

00:06:10.100 One day, after an unfavourable report from the governess 1.00

00:06:14.060 Anne was found in a tempest of tears

00:06:16.580 Soon afterwards, her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk

00:06:19.620 strode into the room and told her that henry had had a serious accident out hunting in her grief

00:06:26.020 and alarm she nearly fainted five days later she miscarried end quote now henry had already put her

00:06:34.400 aside in his mind basically he was looking for somebody else to give him a son and when she had

00:06:41.500 this miscarriage it wasn't the first one either he obviously decided we'll get into all of this

00:06:46.980 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.

00:06:56.780 And that's what he needed above all else.

00:06:59.200 And so most historians agree that that particular miscarriage was was her doom one way or another.

00:07:07.480 Churchill says the king, instead of pitying her, gave way to an uncontrollable outburst of rage.

00:07:13.120 he visited her repeating over and over again and these are supposed to be his words i see that god

00:07:19.180 does not mean me to have male children church's words again as he turned to leave he added

00:07:23.920 angrily that he would speak to her again as soon as she was better and replied that it was not her

00:07:29.320 fault that she had failed to bear another child she had been frightened when she heard of the

00:07:34.760 king's fall besides she loved him so passionately with so much more further than katherine that it

00:07:41.320 broke her heart when she saw that he gave his love to others. At this allusion to Jane the king left

00:07:47.720 the room in a towering passion and refused for days to see her. Jane Seymour was installed at

00:07:53.720 Greenwich i.e near the king not at Wolf Hall in the west country. Through her serving man who had

00:08:01.060 been taken into the pay of the imperial ambassador we have a story of the royal courtship. One day

00:08:07.580 the king sent a page down from London with a purse full of gold and a letter in his own handwriting

00:08:13.320 Jane kissed the letter but returned it to the page unopened then falling on her knees she said

00:08:20.080 and these are supposed to be her words I pray you beseech the king to understand by my prudence

00:08:25.620 that I am a gentle woman of good and honorable family without reproach and have no greater

00:08:30.840 treasure in the world than my honor which I would not harm for a thousand deaths if the king should

00:08:36.600 wish to make me a present of money I beg him to do so when God shall send me a husband to marry

00:08:42.360 end quote now that uh historians believe that that was quite a canny move because on the face

00:08:48.200 of it you might think oh refusing the king's present so especially a king like Henry might

00:08:53.640 make him terribly angry or just turn away from you after that he might take that as a rebuke

00:08:59.000 a rebuttal especially she mentioned someone to marry i.e not him he's already married twice in

00:09:05.320 fact. So you might think that's a dangerous thing for her to do. But no, she'd obviously 0.99

00:09:11.800 probably been coached that Henry would have liked that gesture, that she's playing up

00:09:16.840 the idea that she's completely and utterly pure. And she wouldn't dream of accepting a gift,

00:09:25.460 even from the king, as it's sort of slightly improper. And that was what Henry in this stage

00:09:31.460 in his life that's exactly what henry was looking for and it seems to have been where it was an

00:09:36.320 absolutely correct calculation churchill goes on saying the king was greatly pleased

00:09:40.800 she had he said displayed high virtue and to prove that his intentions were wholly worthy of her

00:09:48.980 he promised not to speak to her in future except in the presence of her relation in january 1536

00:09:55.320 queen catherine died catherine of arrogant of natural causes if the king was minded to marry

00:10:00.540 again he could now repudiate Queen Anne without risking awkward questions about his earlier union

00:10:06.280 remember he's already made himself the highest authority in things spiritual if he could annul

00:10:12.680 his marriage to Catherine of Aragon which he had he could do it again for Anne Boleyn there's no

00:10:17.420 one stopping him it was already rumored by the Seymour party that in her intense desire for an

00:10:23.780 heir Queen Anne had been unfaithful to the king soon after the birth of Elizabeth

00:10:28.840 with several lovers so this is where the story starts where Henry wants to do away with her

00:10:35.900 not necessarily have her executed in the first instance but he needs grounds in order to divorce

00:10:43.020 her or annul the marriage needs grounds well straightforward easy one is adultery if she had

00:10:49.780 been unfaithful to him then that's all he needs he can just doesn't necessarily matter if it's

00:10:56.180 made up or not. If he can say it and people believe it, that's the whole ballgame. So

00:11:03.720 rumours start going around that she had indeed been unfaithful and the rumours climb to sort

00:11:10.540 of extraordinary lengths. That's another thing that historians argue about loads. Was Anne Boleyn

00:11:16.980 actually unfaithful? And even if she was, were all the stories about her true? Because they become

00:11:23.060 more and more extreme we'll get into it here my personal feeling my personal opinion

00:11:30.580 and I think a lot of probably a lot of scholars would probably agree with this that

00:11:36.080 there may have been may have been some kernels of truth there may or may not but some of the

00:11:43.540 more extreme stories are almost certainly not true like for example she slept with her own

00:11:49.460 brother or that she slept with a hundred different men things like that it's almost certainly

00:11:56.280 impossible because the queen somebody like the queen any woman of note in the court would hardly

00:12:02.840 ever apart from anything else would hardly ever be left alone look really hardly ever

00:12:07.260 they would always they would always be people around ladies in waiting and such to have had

00:12:14.700 affairs with dozens or hundreds of men or something. It's just physically, logistically

00:12:20.300 extremely unlikely. Did she have an affair with somebody like Mark Smeaton, one of her

00:12:27.820 personal servants who played an instrument, he was like a minstrel type? Maybe. Maybe

00:12:35.080 there's truth there. There's some scholars who say no, it's all entirely fabricated,

00:12:40.400 so henry's got an excuse we shall never know for sure it is one of those things in history

00:12:45.460 that the the actual historians and scholars will always argue about it seems okay churchill goes

00:12:51.200 on saying it was rumored she had several lovers if proved this offense was capital i.e the sentence

00:12:58.580 is death it's treason really the queen had accordingly been watched and one sunday two

00:13:07.300 young courtiers, Henry Norris and Sir Francis Weston, were seen to enter the Queen's room and

00:13:13.140 were, it was said, overheard making love to her. Remember, all of this stuff quite possibly is

00:13:19.320 fabricated by, well, Thomas Cromwell. Thomas Cromwell by this stage had become Henry's right

00:13:25.400 hand man, basically in all things political. He wasn't actually the Chancellor yet, but he was

00:13:31.580 Henry's fixer. He'd been a great fixer for Wolsey and now he was Henry's great fixer.

00:13:37.040 And Henry had said to Cromwell, basically, I want to get a divorce or an annulment from Anne Boleyn.

00:13:43.360 I want her gone. I want to marry somebody else. Make that happen.

00:13:47.380 You're my man. You're my fixer. Make it happen. Don't care really how you do it.

00:13:52.420 Just do it. And so then it's Thomas Cromwell's job to find adultery, whether it's there or not.

00:14:00.240 It just so happens that Henry Norris and Francis Weston had been enemies of Wolsey and Cromwell all along.

00:14:10.080 So the finger gets pointed at them, among others.

00:14:14.640 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.

00:14:23.800 They say to him, look, we didn't do this, and you know, really, let's be honest, you know we didn't.

00:14:31.960 This is all Hilary Mantle's fiction, but nonetheless, it speaks to probably the truth.

00:14:38.780 They say to him, we didn't commit adultery with the Queen, and you know we didn't.

00:14:43.320 And he replies to them, yes, I need guilty people, though.

00:14:49.200 And you may not be guilty of this crime, of sleeping with the Queen of England,

00:14:53.160 but you are guilty of crimes against me and Wolsey so I am finding guilty people it may

00:15:00.800 not be for the crime you're accused of but there you go into an interesting insight that that may

00:15:06.940 well be what happened that's one of the things Hilary Mantle wrote which I tend to agree with

00:15:11.380 again we don't really know for sure and there's a whole bunch in Wolf Hall which I don't agree with

00:15:16.580 a whole bunch where I think no that's Hilary Mantle taking it too far I don't agree with that

00:15:21.020 that couldn't have been how it was etc etc but on that count on that one that's that rings true to

00:15:26.340 me i i can believe that and who knows maybe henry norris and sir francis weston did commit adultery

00:15:33.060 with amberlyn who knows but thomas cromwell's spires said that they heard them making love to

00:15:38.380 the queen next day a parchment was laid before the king empowering a strong panel of counsellors and

00:15:44.840 judges headed by the lord chancellor or any four of them to investigate and try every kind of

00:15:51.000 treason the king signed on tuesday the council sat all day and late into the night but yet there

00:15:57.680 was no sufficient evidence the following sunday a certain smeaton i mentioned him didn't i mark

00:16:02.800 smeaton the bard a gentleman of the king's chamber who played with great skill on the lute

00:16:08.280 was arrested at the as the queen's lover smeaton subsequently just a boy and nobody i say a boy i

00:16:14.600 mean a young man just some young man who was in and around the court nobody of real importance

00:16:19.260 smitten subsequently under torture confessed to the charge now that's a classic thing isn't it

00:16:26.040 you can't trust a confession that's been got under torture because people will say anything

00:16:32.240 they will say anything to avoid more torture even if it means their execution just give me a quick

00:16:37.160 death but in those days in the ancient world and often even in the medieval world it's funny it

00:16:41.920 was considered the other way around it was often considered that a confession under torture was

00:16:45.840 of more value than one that wasn't.

00:16:49.520 We just don't think like that these days, do we?

00:16:51.500 It's another thing Hilary Mantle, I think, gets completely wrong.

00:16:54.300 She paints Thomas Cromwell as a goodie, an extreme goodie,

00:16:59.240 who would never do such a thing as torture somebody like Mark Smeaton.

00:17:03.340 She puts words into his mouth saying,

00:17:05.620 we don't do such things in England, torture people.

00:17:08.360 They do. They did. He did.

00:17:11.040 In fact, Smeaton was supposed to have been tortured in Cromwell's house. 0.68

00:17:15.840 From where I wasn't a whiter than white individual, completely blameless and always doing the right thing.

00:17:23.200 Not at all, really. Churchill continued saying, on Monday, Norris was among the challengers at the May Day Tournament at Greenwich.

00:17:30.880 And as the king rode to London after the jousting, he called Norris to his side and told him what was suspected.

00:17:37.480 Although Norris denied everything, he also was arrested and taken to the tower.

00:17:41.560 that night Anne learned that Smeaton and Norris were in the tower the following the following

00:17:47.120 morning she was requested to come before the council although her uncle the Duke of Norfolk

00:17:52.660 although her uncle the Duke of Norfolk presided at the examination no Queen of England Anne 0.53

00:17:59.340 complained afterwards could have been treated with such brutality at the conclusion of the 1.00

00:18:03.820 proceedings she was placed under arrest and kept under guard until the tide turned to take her up 0.51

00:18:09.540 river to the tower so imprisoned arrested and imprisoned and accused of adultery and treason 0.99

00:18:14.120 so a complete and utter fall from grace she went into that council meeting the queen of england

00:18:21.340 unbesmirched basically formally on paper and she left a prisoner completely disgraced

00:18:28.940 almost certainly facing a kangaroo court and an execution

00:18:34.380 Churchill says, 0.99

00:19:05.260 That's sort of one of those classic moments in history.

00:19:07.840 Anne Boleyn being taken to the tower.

00:19:10.800 One of those moments in time.

00:19:12.900 The same evening at York Place, which is in London at Lambeth, not in York,

00:19:17.700 when the Duke of Richmond, the king's bastard son,

00:19:20.420 came as usual to say goodnight to his father, 0.83

00:19:23.000 the king burst into tears.

00:19:25.440 And Henry's supposed to have said, 0.99

00:19:27.540 My God's great mercy, you and your sister Mary have escaped the hands of that damned poisonous trumpet. 0.98

00:19:34.380 Anne Boleyn he's talking about. She was plotting to poison you both, end quote. So Henry, Henry's 0.99

00:19:41.520 mind had completely turned against Anne Boleyn. Churchill says, Henry tried to forget his shame

00:19:47.260 and disgrace in a ceaseless round of feasting, who however may well be suspected of malicious bias,

00:19:54.020 has been gayer, more happy that is, since the arrest than ever before. He is going out to dinner

00:19:59.140 here, there and everywhere with the ladies. Sometimes he returns along the river after

00:20:03.540 midnight to the sound of many instruments or the voices of the singers of his chamber 1.00

00:20:08.140 who do their utmost to interpret his delight at being rid of that thin old woman end quote

00:20:15.520 so henry's completely turned against amberlyn put her out of his mind and decided to just

00:20:22.880 carry on with his life and have a good time and start feasting and turn his attentions to jane

00:20:27.780 Seymour. Churchill says that although the Spanish ambassador called Anne Boleyn that thin old woman

00:20:35.440 Churchill reminds us that she was in fact only 29. The ambassador also wrote

00:20:42.320 he went to dinner recently with the bishop of Carlisle and some ladies and next day the bishop

00:20:48.860 told me that he had behaved with almost desperate gaiety. Churchill goes on saying on Friday morning

00:20:56.880 the special commissioners of treason appointed the previous week, including Anne Boleyn's father,

00:21:01.940 the Earl of Wiltshire, and the entire bench of judges except one formed the court for the trial

00:21:07.240 of Anne's lovers. A special jury consisting of 12 knights had been summoned and found the prisoners

00:21:13.020 guilty. It was always a kangaroo call, a full-gone conclusion. It's what the king wanted, so, you know,

00:21:18.680 what Henry wants, Henry gets. They were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

00:21:23.820 but execution was deferred until after the trial of the Queen

00:21:29.320 we hope you enjoyed that video and if you did

00:21:33.000 please head over to lotusseaters.com for the full unabridged video

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - June 28, 2026

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

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