Last March my friend Mike Glaeser gave a lecture at the University of New Hampshire on the courtship of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. He has only recently uploaded it to YouTube, so please take a look!
Kingdom For A Heart: The Courtship of Henry VIII & Anne Boleyn
June 10, 2013 by
That was very informative and easy to follow. Mike certainly managed to get a lot of information into a short space of time. It was nice to hear the nicer side to Henry for once, rather than the norm of the ‘Tyrant and the Harlot’ story
Henry wasn’t born a Monster, though he did become one, and it is a shame that he is mainly remembered for what he became rather than for his abilities and achievements.
I have always thought that from early 1536 after that bad jousting accident, his physical and mental health deteriorated dramatically, and this accentuated any signs of tyrannical behaviour which may have been part of his natural temperament, but lurked in the back ground.
Henry was also under enormous pressure to produce a male heir to keep that ‘New’ dynasty going, or it could be back to the dark times of The War of the Roses, the Tudors took the throne, and kept it by the skin of their teeth, as there were others who had more right to it than Henry. Doesn’t excuse his brutal behaviour, but there are reasons why people behave as they do, and having absolute power, corrupts absolutely…. I personally think Henry became unstable for many reasons, and many suffered for it, no mental health act to fall back on in those days 🙂
If you put it into perspective, would Henry have become this ‘Monster’ if all of the sons he and Katherine had had lived? to my mind I don’t think he would have. Katherine would have been safe, and his mistresses would have stayed just that.