The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - July 05, 2026


PREVIEW： Epochs #270 ｜ The Life of Henry VIII： Part VI

Hosted by
Callum Edmunds Carl Benjamin Connor Tomlinson Harry Robinson John Wheatley Joshua Ferme Edward McLaren Elizabeth Heverin
Mentioned
Henry Pohl Thomas Cromwell Jane Seymour Edward Edward Winston Churchill Edward Curtin Queen Elizabeth William Tyndale Charles Oman Anne Boleyn Henry VIII Edward IV Montague Margaret Grey
PREVIEW： Chronicles #53 ｜ The Inimitable Jeeves Part 1 Breakfast With Beau ｜ Monday 6th July 2026

Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

165.88

Word count

3,113

Sentence count

8

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Henry VIII was a man of many talents. He was a scholar, a military man, a philosopher, a poet, a statesman, a writer, and an intellectual, but above all else, he was a religious man. And yet he was also a man who was, in the eyes of his critics, an enemy of the Roman Catholic Church. His name was Henry VIII, and he was known as one of the most feared men in England at the turn of the 16th century.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
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.
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome back to Epochs where I shall be continuing my story of the reign of Henry
00:00:25.160 the eighth as you may have noticed we're in the first year studio today because of uh just because
00:00:30.420 of technical and scheduling reasons but we've done a number of epochs from the first studio
00:00:35.120 haven't we we've got the bespoke video wall behind us for just such a purpose so let's continue the
00:00:39.620 story we got up to the point where Anne Boleyn had had her head lopped off hadn't we we just got to
00:00:44.420 that point so Henry also just gets married to Jane Seymour basically straight away doesn't he
00:00:49.420 straight after that so let's pick up the story here as always for this episode for this series
00:00:54.340 at least I'm reading from Professor Sir Charles Oman and Sir Winston Churchill so let's just pick
00:01:00.680 up the story in Oman who wrote this but he had small time Henry had small leisure to spend on
00:01:07.020 his wedding the wedding to Jane Seymour for the year 1536 was one of great peril to him
00:01:13.600 a rebellion in Ireland led by the Fitzgeralds the greatest of the Anglo-Irish nobles was already in
00:01:20.400 progress a still more dangerous phenomenon was the stir which was rising in the north of england
00:01:25.840 the northern counties were always a generation behind the rest of england in their politics
00:01:30.880 there the monks were more powerful and less disliked than any than in any other part of the
00:01:36.620 land and the nobles still retained much of their old feudal power over their vassals
00:01:41.680 and some of their old turbulence the north had beheld the breach with rome with dismay and
00:01:48.040 dislike and remained strongly papist in its sympathies the dissolution of the monasteries
00:01:53.620 moved it to an active protest against the king's religious action rioting suddenly broke out in
00:01:59.680 lincolnshire and then in yorkshire the insurgents gathered in great bands and at last no less than
00:02:05.900 30 000 men mustered at doncaster under robert ask a lawyer and lord darcy they called themselves
00:02:13.740 the army of the church raised a banner displaying the five wounds of christ as their standard
00:02:19.120 and demanded a reconciliation with the pope again be careful demanding anything from henry
00:02:25.540 especially at the point of assault he's not the tough man to take that sort of thing laying down
00:02:30.440 or is likely to capitulate in any way even on tiny points let alone on something as big as this
00:02:36.540 but okay they demanded a reconciliation with the pope the restoration of the religious houses
00:02:42.520 that's the monasteries and the dismissal of the king's impious minister cromwell and the quote
00:02:48.760 heretic bishops quote who had favored the breach with rome the gentry of the north and the priors
00:02:55.660 and abbots of the great abbeys of yorkshire joined the rising which men called the pilgrimage of
00:03:01.540 grace that's what it's largely been known as throughout history the pilgrimage of grace
00:03:05.920 i mean is it a pilgrimage an armed pilgrimage some people say that the crusades you know like
00:03:11.660 the 11th 12th 13th century crusades are an armed pilgrimage a pilgrimage doesn't necessarily mean
00:03:18.560 peaceful okay history is largely known this as the pilgrimage of grace because the rebels wished to
00:03:24.940 go to meet the king and to submit their demands to his personal judgment again there's that old
00:03:30.340 thing that only if only the king knew surely the king himself can't be for this in favor of all
00:03:35.460 this surely it's just his evil ministers that's a story as old as time isn't it even up to the 20th
00:03:41.060 even the 21st century surely the ruler himself that like the father figure surely he wouldn't
00:03:46.840 be doing this to us it must just be his evil his evil ministers the worm tongues in his ear
00:03:52.240 if only we could tell the big man himself what's going on surely he would protect us and do the
00:03:57.360 right thing well very very very often that's just not the case and in this instance absolutely isn't
00:04:04.160 the case this is what henry wanted robert ask and the others thought if they could just see the king
00:04:09.280 if they could just tell him what was going on then everything could get fixed
00:04:13.160 oman continued saying henry was caught unprepared but he managed to extricate himself from the peril
00:04:19.980 by unscrupulous double dealing he sent the duke of norfolk again it's his sort of go-to military
00:04:25.780 man isn't it the duke of norfolk whose dislike of protestantism was well known to treat with the
00:04:31.120 rebels norfolk pledged his word that the king would pardon the insurgents and take all their
00:04:36.740 demands into favorable consideration the simple northerners dispersed trusting to henry's good
00:04:42.860 faith but the king employed the time he had gained in raising an army and getting together a great
00:04:48.620 train of artillery he then marched into yorkshire as an invader and made no further pretense of
00:04:54.380 listening to the claims of the insurgents classic henry viii there cannot be trusted once he's
00:05:00.380 decided he's made his mind up about something that's what he's going to do that's what's going
00:05:04.380 happen don't try even to change his mind certainly don't try to blackmail him or bully him or coerce
00:05:11.240 him or anything or even argue with him in consequence the more vehement of the partisans
00:05:17.180 of the old faith again took arms this was as henry desired says oman for he wanted an excuse to
00:05:24.660 terrorize the north he easily put down the second rising and hung all the leaders of the pilgrimage 0.83
00:05:30.320 of grace ask lord darcy lord hussey and the abbots of all the greatest monastic establishments of
00:05:37.080 the north wally fountains gervaux barlings and sorely and this was between march and may 1537
00:05:45.360 this fearful blow cowed most of the partisans of the papacy and no more open revolts followed
00:05:51.260 but a little later the last representatives of the house of york were detected in paths which
00:05:57.540 the king suspected to be treasonable. They thought, it seems, that the indignation of
00:06:02.680 the Catholics against the king's doing might be turned into a dynastic revolution in favour
00:06:07.620 of the old royal line. Edward Courtney, Marquess of Exeter, a grandson of Edward IV, and Henry
00:06:14.880 Pohl, Lord Montague, a grandson of George of Clarence, were the persons implicated in
00:06:20.380 this intrigue, which never got beyond the stage of treasonable talk. Nevertheless, the
00:06:25.560 king beheaded them both though the evidence against them was most imperfect but henry never
00:06:30.680 stayed his hand for want of legal proof and slew all whom he suspected once again he has been thought
00:06:38.000 of as a time i mean starkey thinks of him as a tyrant many at the time and since of as thought
00:06:44.100 of henry viii as something of a tyrant yeah he doesn't again right there doesn't necessarily
00:06:49.380 need any legal proof he's just going to have you executed even in the 16th century that's uh
00:06:56.740 beginning to be a bit much but nonetheless he could get away with it his his sort of his position
00:07:03.540 the safety of his throne was never in doubt so he can get away with it effectively i mean we're
00:07:09.940 just not in the wars of the roses anymore where other noblemen and houses will rise up and raise
00:07:16.020 armies and march on london multiple times you know like they did to edward edward the fourth
00:07:21.580 henry doesn't really need to worry about all of that he's just in a much much stronger position
00:07:25.940 than say edward the fourth so he can just have people killed in a sort of what basically an
00:07:31.840 extra judicial manner and he does oman continues saying he even imprisoned and some years afterwards
00:07:39.400 executed the aged mother of lord montague margaret of clarence countess of salisbury
00:07:45.280 sister of the unfortunate Edward of Clarence whom his father had slain 41 years back so yeah 0.85
00:07:51.980 Margaret of Clarence a little old lady that even he couldn't Henry VIII couldn't abide even her
00:07:58.260 still sort of living so even she's got to go I've seen more than one historian sort of point to that
00:08:04.700 and say there's no way to sort of properly properly justify that if Henry had any sort of
00:08:11.760 magnanimity in his bones he probably wouldn't have done that many of the others he had had executed
00:08:18.080 you could at least make the argument that it was just the prudent thing to do even if it was
00:08:22.740 extrajudicial it might it might be prudent whereas you know lopping off margaret of clarence's head
00:08:28.440 when she's an old lady it's not like there was some giant rebellion about to spring up around
00:08:33.920 the person of margaret of clarence and yet henry couldn't abide her still breathing so okay it's
00:08:41.560 the measure of the man isn't it it's the measure of the man again don't cross him don't get on the
00:08:45.620 wrong side of him he will mess up your program okay oman continues saying the insurrection in
00:08:53.460 ireland which had been raging at the same time as the pilgrimage of grace ended in a way no less
00:09:00.120 profitable to the king not only did he capture and hang well nigh the whole family of the
00:09:05.780 Fitzgeralds of Kildare, the heads of the rising, but his armies under Lord Deputy Grey pushed out
00:09:12.560 from the English pale and compelled most of the chiefs of Munster and Connacht to do homage to
00:09:18.320 the crown, though the king's writ had not run in those provinces for two centuries. This was the
00:09:23.820 first step towards the conquest of Ireland afterwards carried out by Queen Elizabeth.
00:09:28.900 Meanwhile Henry's determination to strike at all the roots of papal power in England had been
00:09:34.200 carrying him further than he himself realized on the road towards protestantism the quote
00:09:39.720 articles of 1536 quote drawn up by his own hand declared that all doctrines and ceremonies for
00:09:46.420 which authority could not be found in the bible were superstitious and erroneous so right there
00:09:51.680 that's it's going quite far down the road of protestantism isn't it it's a full-blown break
00:09:57.460 with with rome and catholicism there's no two ways about that i mean full-blown how henry didn't
00:10:03.000 realize that or perhaps he did perhaps he did i mean i would have thought he did remember he was
00:10:08.640 raised to be in the church wasn't it all his formative years and childhood his older brother
00:10:14.740 arthur was supposed to be king and he was groomed to be in the church so henry 8th does it happens
00:10:20.880 to actually know a lot about theology and such things and the actual logistics the reality of
00:10:27.580 how ecclesiastical matters work so i would think there's no real way he didn't know that something
00:10:34.380 like that you know declaring that any doctrines and ceremonies which are not found in the bible
00:10:40.380 were superstitious and erroneous yeah that's that's sort of full-blown lutherism really
00:10:46.480 it's protestantism certainly there is no way that rome could ever accept that and still allow you to
00:10:54.440 be orthodox and one continues saying this quote the translation used was that made by a zealous
00:11:00.980 protestant william tyndale who had printed it in antwerp some years before the unfortunate
00:11:07.360 translator had been caught and burnt by the emperor charles v for being a heretic catholic
00:11:12.080 heretic only a short time before his book became the rule of life for englishmen when the bible
00:11:18.060 had once been placed in the hands of the people protestantism in england began to advance by leaps
00:11:24.240 and bounds it was secretly favored both by archbishop cramner and by the king's great
00:11:29.580 minister cromwell the latter thomas cromwell more logical than his master wished to see all traces
00:11:36.120 of roman catholicism removed from england and tried to guide the king towards a frank recognition
00:11:41.780 of protestantism and an alliance with the lutheran princes of germany but it was dangerous work to
00:11:47.680 endeavor to govern or persuade henry as cromwell was defined to his cost yeah again henry not
00:11:54.160 only sort of won't be argued with but even even this even if he feels like you're trying to
00:12:00.460 manipulate him then you're you're already in danger just there right so full-blown uh going
00:12:06.380 against his wishes or his will of course that's off the table but yeah even if he thinks you're
00:12:12.300 trying to uh manipulate him coerce him manage him even if he gets the first inkling that you're
00:12:19.160 trying to manage him you're attempting to try and put words in his mouth no matter how subtle
00:12:24.140 even that is a massive massive problem and well that's where cromwell thomas cromwell finds
00:12:30.360 himself among saying one more step at least he did induce his master to take the final destruction
00:12:36.780 of all the remaining monasteries the plunder of the lesser houses had been so profitable
00:12:42.140 that henry was easily induced to doom the greater of to the same fate in the course of 1538 to 39
00:12:50.120 and into 1540 all were swept away in many cases the abbots and monks were induced to surrender
00:12:56.320 their estates peaceably into the king's hands in return for pensions or promotion but where
00:13:02.260 persuasion failed force was used an act of parliament was passed by henry's submissive
00:13:07.800 commons bestowing on him the lands of all the monastic foundations then they were suppressed
00:13:13.820 i.e closing them down taking all their wealth and money and closing them down entirely taking on
00:13:19.620 the estates so any levies or taxes that they used to bring in that just now goes to the crown
00:13:26.200 then they were suppressed the harmless and well-ordered ones no less than the worst and
00:13:31.440 most corrupt when the monks offered obstinate resistance the king dealt very cruelly with them
00:13:37.180 the wealthy abbots of glastonbury reading and colchester were all hung really for reluctance
00:13:42.800 to surrender their houses nominally for treason in refusing to acknowledge the king's complete
00:13:47.680 spiritual supremacy as head of the church the enormous plunder of the monasteries bought the
00:13:53.080 king little permanent good he had promised to use it for ecclesiastical purposes and had broached a
00:13:58.780 scheme for founding many new churches and schools and creating 20 fresh bishoprics but in the end
00:14:05.200 he lavished most of the lands of the religious houses upon those of the nobles and gentry whom
00:14:10.540 he thought worth bribing the church only benefited by the endowing of the six new bishoprics oxford
00:14:17.580 chester peterborough bristol gloucester and the short-lived sea of westminster but henry was
00:14:22.780 resolved to show the protestants that they must not expect his countenance in spite of the blows
00:14:28.420 which he was dealing to the roman catholics again he liked to keep everyone guessing he's broken
00:14:33.980 with rome in no uncertain terms and yet he's still insisting he's not a lutheran that he's not a
00:14:38.940 full-blown protestant so so what is he yeah it's one of those policies where you know the policy
00:14:46.060 itself is unclear deliberately so to keep everyone guessing it's a bit of a crazy crazy thing to do
00:14:54.680 really i mean henry met he only works really if you can manage it perfectly if you've got an
00:14:59.740 absolute dictator an absolute king and you can something like that even begin to work usually
00:15:05.780 usually but that is what henry is isn't he he's not he's not an absolute monarch the way you know
00:15:12.400 richard the first might have been or the way william the first might have been but he's not
00:15:17.280 far off of it if you've got someone that is really truly at the head of the state and the head of
00:15:22.500 government and sets all policy okay maybe something like this will work well henry does make it work
00:15:27.520 for him okay so although he's suppressing all the monasteries and breaking with rome he doesn't
00:15:32.320 want the protestants to get to get to uppity and think that he's he will do everything they want
00:15:37.960 in the very year in which the majority of the greater monasteries fell he forced his parliament
00:15:43.160 to pass the cruel bill of the six articles this odious measure condemned to forfeiture on the
00:15:49.960 first offence and to death on the second all who should write or speak against certain of the
00:15:55.220 ancient doctrines of the medieval church of which transubstantiation in the sacrament the celibacy
00:16:01.320 of the clergy and auricular confession were the chief and this was in 1539 so again you can have
00:16:08.460 everything stolen from you by the state by the king by the crown and then put to death if you
00:16:14.120 don't do these very very very catholic things if you don't accept the idea of these very very
00:16:19.960 catholic things and yet he's destroying all the monasteries he's he's the spiritual head of the
00:16:26.640 church now not the pope but you must still do these very very catholic things and in another
00:16:31.700 way adhere to these very very protestant things right it's a mess bit of a mess but again that's
00:16:39.700 exactly what henry wanted meanwhile the king had at last obtained the male heir for whom he had so
00:16:46.120 much longed his third wife jane seymour bore him a son prince edward in 1537 though she died at the
00:16:53.960 child's birth it was a few a couple of days later on this boy all of henry's fondness was lavished
00:16:59.200 he was to be the sole heir to the throne and his sisters mary and elizabeth were both stigmatized
00:17:06.440 as illegitimate end quote okay so a fair bit has happened there obviously the continuing story of
00:17:13.240 the break with rome and sort of that odd balancing act between between the pope and luther henry's
00:17:20.960 own going his own third way if you like and then also that he's got he's got rid of amberley in
00:17:27.220 has he and now he's got marriage to jane seymour got her pregnant quite quickly and she did give
00:17:32.680 him a boy a living boy which was exactly what henry had always always wanted he'd feared hadn't
00:17:40.140 he that for years and years god and the heavens had decided against him that he should never have
00:17:46.040 boy well he's finally got one he calls him edward edward the sixth later to become but jane seymour
00:17:52.240 henry's favorite out of his six wives his absolute favorite she died there was complications she
00:17:59.060 lived for a while after the birth but did just die and she was very young i think she was only
00:18:04.920 in her early 20s still so obviously very sad we hope you enjoyed that video and if you did
00:18:10.180 please head over to lotusseaters.com for the full unabridged video
00:18:16.040 Thank you.