The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Epochs #271 ｜ The Life of Henry VIII： Part VII

00:00:00.000 Professor Sir Charles O'Mearn writes

00:00:22.440 Cromwell's end greatly encouraged the Roman Catholic Party

00:00:26.220 because of course Thomas Cromwell had been sort of the arch reformer

00:00:29.660 right the arch protestant if you like so once he's done away with some sort of revival of catholicism

00:00:35.880 on some degree in some places and they were still more elated when the king married a lady known to

00:00:42.440 incline towards the old faith this was catherine howard she wasn't particularly religious one way

00:00:47.660 or another but the howard family remained catholic basically or as much as they could catholic liked

00:00:54.120 shall we say you couldn't be full blown you had to have signed the oath saying that you accepted

00:01:00.880 henry as as a king as a head of the matter spiritual in england if you still wanted to

00:01:08.060 retain let's say i don't know the trappings of being roman catholic you could and howards did

00:01:14.780 that so catherine howard a cousin of anne boleyn and like her a niece of the duke of norfolk henry

00:01:22.160 had been caught by her beauty and had not discovered that she was a person of abandoned

00:01:28.660 manners so charles oman writing at the very beginning of the 20th century the very end of

00:01:33.720 the 19th century so that's sort of quite a polite way someone of abandoned manners they used to say

00:01:39.700 she was uh sort of uncontrollable she wouldn't do what she was told even if it was extremely

00:01:45.340 dangerous so oman says she was a person of abandoned manners whose amours were known to

00:01:51.160 many persons about the court within 18 months of her marriage she was detected in misconduct with

00:01:57.920 one of her old lovers and sent to the blot in her case henry had much more excuse for his ruthless

00:02:04.620 cruelty than in the that of anne boleyn again there's sort of no real doubt it seems it seems

00:02:10.280 that catherine howard was adulterous of not trying to hide it isn't that mad isn't that mad

00:02:17.840 you know what Henry's like you must know the type of man he is people must have told you or you

00:02:24.340 would remember when from when you was a child or a teenager how what how it played out with Anne

00:02:29.060 Boleyn you're going to go around being reasonably openly adulterous crazy isn't it that's crazy

00:02:34.100 and when Catherine Howard was sentenced to death to have her head chopped off as we read earlier 0.56

00:02:40.760 from Churchill she was one of those few people in this age who when she gets up on the scaffold

00:02:48.280 who doesn't say things like what Anne Boleyn said where I still love the king he's the greatest

00:02:55.600 monarch he's the most noble uh fair-minded a king there ever was uh I if anything happened

00:03:02.660 incorrectly it was all my fault and he's the best and uh may God have mercy on his soul and all that

00:03:08.120 sort of thing no she's completely unrepentant again a bit crazy isn't it a little bit crazy

00:03:14.540 considering hardly anyone else chose to do that she said no she basically said no I loved Culpepper

00:03:20.640 yeah yeah I slept with Culpepper yeah yeah and I love him and that's it yeah put me to death then

00:03:26.180 if you have to fine of course I'm paraphrasing you can only really infer she was a loose cannon 1.00

00:03:31.040 you may well have met a young extremely pretty woman who was completely uncontrollable and a 0.99

00:03:37.360 loose cannon is going to do and say whatever she wants you may well have met one of those in your 1.00

00:03:41.380 life cannot be controlled even if it's entirely self-destructive to her and everyone around her

00:03:48.380 okay charles ironman continues he henry the eighth was undeservedly fortunate in his sixth marriage

00:03:54.600 with catherine parr the dowager lady lattermore whom he wedded a year after catherine howard's

00:03:59.780 execution she was a young widow of 26 see that's interesting didn't uh churchill say she was more

00:04:06.040 like 31 it's funny sometimes even the queen of england we're not sure exactly the year of their

00:04:11.960 birth that sort of thing went all the way on into like the the 20th 20th century 19th 20th century

00:04:19.300 we're not sure the exact year for sure starling was born or mal yeah so going back to the 16th

00:04:25.700 century we're not sure exactly how old someone like catherine parr is a person of piety and

00:04:31.680 discretion who gave no opportunity of offense to the king and nursed him faithfully through the

00:04:38.140 infirmities of his later years for henry who had now reached the age of 52 was growing grossly

00:04:45.420 corpulent fat and developing a complication of diseases which wrecked him fearfully during the

00:04:52.840 last five years of his life and partly explained the frantic exhibitions of cruelty to which he

00:04:58.880 often gave way i mean does it really explain it can imagine someone who's already tyrannically

00:05:03.700 minded and quick to temper yeah if you're in pain if you're in constant pain it would add to that

00:05:09.520 does it really explain it no there's something else but still you can see why historians say

00:05:13.880 things like that if you're already cruel and then you're living in constant pain i don't know if

00:05:20.300 anyone out there has ever lived in pain a couple of times in my life for the space of a few days

00:05:26.480 or a few weeks even a few months i don't know if if anyone out there has ever lived in pain

00:05:30.480 right the painkillers aren't really doing much you've got a really bad back or whatever it is

00:05:34.760 you've got you're suffering from terrible headaches and nothing seems to be working

00:05:38.160 you've got a terrible earache that you keep getting the infected keeps coming i've never

00:05:41.680 had these but i'm just saying loads of examples it could be you could have a broken arm or a

00:05:45.900 broken leg and it's not healing properly and you're just in pain you can take painkillers and

00:05:50.560 they work to some extent but they start not working you're just living day after day after

00:05:54.120 day after day in pain right that that's that's nightmarish yeah i've had a couple of times where

00:05:58.780 i've had to it's been days or even a few weeks where i've had pain it doesn't go away it's a

00:06:03.720 horrible horrible existence anyone who's experienced it will know what i'm talking about

00:06:08.500 it's a horrible existence if you've never had that if you've never experienced that

00:06:12.280 god bless you i hope it lasts for you i really do it's it's a terrible thing to just live in pain

00:06:20.120 and that's obviously what henry was doing of course they've got no anesthetics whatsoever

00:06:24.400 nothing nothing so you know in a way you can see why he became more and more cruel

00:06:30.320 to everyone around him he was already that way inclined the time was a very evil one for england

00:06:36.820 not only was the king persecuting romanists and protestants indifferently but he had added

00:06:42.840 external to internal troubles a war with scotland had broken out in 1450 and was always keeping the

00:06:49.100 northern frontier unquiet though the english had the better of the fighting james v the king of

00:06:55.620 scotland allied himself to france the elder alliance and henry had to keep guard against

00:07:00.700 attacks on the south as well as the north the victory of solway moss in november 1542 put an

00:07:07.020 end to any danger from scotland the news of it killed king james who left his throne to his infant

00:07:13.160 daughter mary the celebrated queen of scots her minority gave rise to factious struggles amongst

00:07:18.940 the Scottish nobles, and Henry, by buying over one party, was able to keep the rest in check.

00:07:24.900 In 1544, a great English army under the Earl of Hertford, Jane Seymour's brother, laid waste the

00:07:30.600 whole of the lowlands and burnt Edinburgh, but did not succeed in driving the enemy to sue for peace.

00:07:36.680 The French war was far more dangerous. King Francis collected a great fleet in Normandy

00:07:41.600 and threatened an invasion of England. Henry was forced to arm and pay a vast array of shire

00:07:47.140 levies to meet the attack but when it came in 1545 the French were only able to land and make a raid

00:07:54.100 in the Isle of Wight they drew back after fruitlessly demonstrating against Portsmouth and

00:07:59.000 burning a few English ships again just to break off there for a moment this episode here has been

00:08:03.580 passed over quite quickly by Churchill and and going to be again by Oman but in that moment

00:08:10.280 that was a big deal all right the fact that we look back in the history and it looks like a blip

00:08:15.620 it looks like barely even a blip it looks like oh there was a bit of concern for a while but it was 0.89

00:08:19.980 okay no no no no when you live through things like this it looked like the French might invade

00:08:25.880 England successfully right it looked like it might be another Norman conquest where they get to

00:08:31.780 London they take London the Tudor dynasty is done with Henry VIII's on the run is eventually 0.74

00:08:38.500 captured put in the tower killed and the king of France is now the king of England and France

00:08:44.760 that something like that could happen right because this incident isn't as famous as like i

00:08:49.660 don't know the the spanish armada you think oh it's not a big deal and a lot of historians

00:08:54.220 skate over it relatively quickly but no in that moment in in the summer of 1545 that looked really

00:09:01.560 genuinely like a possibility it's an existential threat right there right now it's all or nothing

00:09:07.960 it's like a battle of britain type thing if we lose this if we lose here it's all over it's all

00:09:12.820 done. Omar says this, quote, the balance of gain in the war was actually in favour of Henry who

00:09:19.480 had taken Boulogne in 1544 and proved able to retain it against all attempts till it was ceded

00:09:26.080 to him by France at the peace of 1546. But the struggles with France and Scotland had the most

00:09:32.740 disastrous effects on the finances of the realm. Henry had wasted all the wealth that he had

00:09:38.020 wrested from the monasteries and now to fill his pockets tried the unrighteous expedient of

00:09:43.880 debasing the currency never a good idea almost never a good idea well certainly in the pre-modern

00:09:48.840 world english money which had been hitherto the best and purest in europe was horribly misused

00:09:54.540 by him he put one sixth of copper into the gold sovereign and one half and afterwards two thirds

00:10:00.760 of copper into the silver shilling to the lamentable defrauding of his subjects who found

00:10:06.340 that english money would no longer be accepted by continental traders though previously it had

00:10:11.380 been more esteemed than that of any other country they had ways of finding out the sort of the true

00:10:17.720 silver and gold content of coins that was sort of well known by by this point in time the debasement

00:10:23.400 of the coinage was only one of the many symptoms of misgovernment which embittered the end of

00:10:28.300 henry's reign the general upheaval of society caused by the overthrow of the monasteries

00:10:32.760 and the sudden transfer of their enormous estates to new holders had given rise to much distress

00:10:38.440 not only the paupers who had lived on the monk's doles and the pilgrims who had been wont to wander

00:10:44.140 from abbey to abbey thrown on the world to beg but many of the old tenant farmers were displaced

00:10:49.700 for the new owners often preferred sheep breeding to agriculture and drove out the cottiers who had

00:10:56.720 been wont to hold a few acres under the old-fashioned management of the monastic bodies

00:11:01.860 contemporary writers speak bitterly of the plague of quote sturdy and valiant beggars quote who

00:11:08.100 flooded the land unfrocked monks pilgrims whose trade was over disbanded soldiers and evicted

00:11:14.420 peasantry the king and the parliament issued the most ferocious laws against these vagrants 0.99

00:11:19.820 when apprehended they were branded and given as serfs for two years to anyone who chose to ask

00:11:26.780 for their services serfs a type of slave basically branded and made a slave at least for a while

00:11:31.720 if called a second time they were liable to be hung as incorrigible you just can't be trusted

00:11:36.880 so we've got to put you to death to complete this gloomy picture there only remains to be added the

00:11:42.880 story of the king's last outburst of suspicion and cruelty conceiving that the duke of norfolk and

00:11:48.780 his son the earl of surrey were counting on his approaching death to make an attempt to seize the

00:11:54.380 regency you know away from the the tudor family he had them both apprehended though nothing definite

00:12:00.500 could be alleged against them save that of late they had taken to quartering the royal arms in

00:12:06.300 their family shield a distinction to which they were entitled as descendants from edward the third

00:12:11.740 and you know obviously edward the first well all the plantagenets really sorry a soldier of great

00:12:19.200 promise and a poet of considerable power was beheaded his father was doomed to follow him

00:12:24.880 had not the king's death intervened it is even said that henry in one of his more irritable

00:12:30.680 moods was threatening to try his blameless wife queen catherine catherine parr for concealed

00:12:37.260 protestantism that's very that's very telling isn't it that it's supposed to be a protestant

00:12:41.920 country well it is a protestant country the break with rome fully happened a long time ago

00:12:46.580 and even catherine parr who's nothing really but his sort of nurse couldn't be more loyal and

00:12:53.420 helpful to him even his suspicions turned against her a bit it seems and and again right up to his

00:13:01.000 very death henry was mercurial he was capricious he made sure that you whoever you were did not

00:13:07.240 know where you stand he made sure you didn't know what was in his mind he kept you guessing

00:13:12.380 at a dangerous deadly guessing game as well if you got it wrong and that's how he liked it

00:13:17.340 horrible really i hate people like that horrible i want to be around people like that

00:13:22.960 even if they haven't got any sort of real power over me if they've got the power of life and

00:13:26.920 death over me or you anyone terrifying terrifying okay so oman tells us now about his death

00:13:33.440 he says this quote but to the general relief of england henry died before his last crime could

00:13:40.520 be consummated at the execution of the duke of norfolk and this is in on january the 28th

00:13:46.000 1547. He left his realm in a condition of great misery, and for all its troubles he was personally

00:13:53.440 responsible, says Oman. He's not wrong, is he, probably. His breach with the papacy had been the

00:13:59.780 result of private pique, not of conscience or principle, again, says Oman. I'm less convinced

00:14:07.160 of that, but it's a reasonable thing to say, I suppose. When committed to the anti-Roman calls, 0.99

00:14:12.380 he had refused to move forward with one half of his subjects or to remain behind with the other

00:14:18.700 he had anchored the english church for a time in a middle position intolerable alike to protestant

00:14:24.840 reformers and to the partisans of the papacy and subjection to rome if the nation owed him a certain

00:14:31.680 debt of gratitude for not committing england to some of the excesses of continental protestantism

00:14:36.900 yet it owed him no thanks for off the church with a hierarchy of bishops some of whom like

00:14:42.620 cramner were meanly timid and pliant while others were men of low ideas and unworthy lives

00:14:49.200 and were mere creatures of court favor nor is it possible to view with equanimity the way in which

00:14:55.380 henry wasted on pageants foreign intrigues and falling courtiers the vast sums which the state

00:15:01.420 had acquired by the very proper and necessary abolition of the monasteries there you go oman

00:15:06.920 considers the abolition of the monasteries as very proper and necessary he continues here final few

00:15:13.300 words on henry we're told quote of henry's unbounded selfishness of his ingratitude to those

00:15:20.360 who had served him best of his ruthless cruelty to all those who stood in his way we need not speak

00:15:27.060 further they manifest they speak for themselves the story of his reign develops each of those

00:15:32.620 traits in its own particular blackness some historians have endeavored to justify Henry's

00:15:37.860 wavering foreign policy and all his forcible feeble wars with continental powers by the plea

00:15:44.540 that if he got no gain in land or gold thereby yet he raised England to a higher place among

00:15:51.020 european nations than she had held in his father's day but this statement seems unwise henry though

00:15:58.440 much flattered and courted at times was in fact the mere dupe of francis i and charles v the kings

00:16:05.800 of spain and france each of whom cheated him again and again and left him hopelessly in the

00:16:11.100 lurch england's growing wealth and power would have won her back her proper place in europe

00:16:16.120 far better than henry's chaotic intrigues his whole foreign policy was a mistake and a tangle

00:16:22.400 from first to last end quote okay oman is even less kind about henry's memory than churchill is

00:16:29.260 um you can say a lot of bad things about henry the eighth you know uh starkey wrote a book

00:16:34.660 talking about the tyrant king you know a lot of people look back at henry and although it's very

00:16:40.240 a colourful a colourful rain very very interesting Henry the Henry VIII himself was was bad I wouldn't

00:16:48.540 like to have been around Henry VIII I think I've said in one of the early episodes perhaps not

00:16:53.440 quite as terrifying as being in the presence of Caligula or Stalin not quite as terrifying as

00:17:00.820 that but not far off not far off it's the it's the type of person I would go personally I would go

00:17:05.680 to great lengths to never be in their company would have been would have been terrifying and

00:17:10.500 just his policy his government in all sorts of ways was a failure and weak and yet and yet

00:17:19.520 what a pivotal reign it was as i said a moment ago it puts england and europe in all sorts of

00:17:27.020 ways by extension by proxy on a different timeline we hope you enjoyed that video and if you did

00:17:35.180 please head over to lotusseaters.com for the full unabridged video.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - July 12, 2026

PREVIEW： Epochs #271 ｜ The Life of Henry VIII： Part VII

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