10 Things You Need to Stop Believing About Henry VIII

Think you know everything about Henry VIII?

Well, you probably do know quite a lot if you are a Tudor history nut, but I come across very strange ideas all the time on social media.

In this video, I bust some of the biggest misconceptions about Henry VIII and reveal the truth behind the legend. Was he really a monster? Did he write “Greensleeves”? And what’s the real story behind that “Flanders Mare” insult?

And here’s my video on Henry VIII and syphilis

Transcript:

Things you need to stop believing about Henry VIII:

1. That he had 8 wives! Ha! I’ve seen this a few times on social media. He had six wives, and the 8 is because he was the eighth King Henry in English history and is nothing to do with the number of wives he had.
2. That he was always a big bloke. The general public probably wouldn’t recognise Henry in his younger days when he was a strapping, slim, athletic young man who enjoyed hunting, jousting and tennis. Like his maternal grandfather, Edward IV, he put on weight as he aged and became less active due to accidents and illness.
3. That he had syphilis. Nope, there’s no evidence that he did. I’ll give you a link to my video on this topic.
4. That he had loads of mistresses. He wasn’t a bedhopper. We know he slept with Bessie Blount and Mary Boleyn, and he probably did have others, but we don’t know how many and he certainly doesn’t seem to have been promiscuous.
5. He was nothing but a tyrant and monster. Well, ok, yes, he definitely had his tyrannical side, and he did some truly awful things, but like us all, he was multifaceted and could be incredibly charming and generous too. He was a patron of the arts, a composer, a keen sportsman, a man interested in theology, architecture etc. He wasn’t some kind of two-dimensional cartoon character, he was a real man who was loved by some, and I find it fascinating. He’s worth digging into, rather than just dismissing as a tyrant.
6. He set up the Protestant Church of England. He broke with the authority of Rome and made himself supreme head of the church in England, but it was Catholic in flavour, just without the pope.
7. All his marriages were short – Nope, his marriage to Catherine of Aragon lasted from 1509 until 1533, although sometime around 1524/1525 he was looking to replace her. So that marriage lasted nearly 24 years.
8. He wrote Greensleeves. There’s absolutely no evidence that he wrote the song for Anne Boleyn or that he wrote it at all, it appears to date to Elizabeth I’s reign. However, he did compose music and a popular hit of his was Pastyme with Good Company.
9. He called Anne of Cleves a “Flanders Mare”. There is no contemporary evidence for Henry VIII calling Anne of Cleves a “Flanders Mare”. Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, wrote in his 1679 book that Henry “swore they had brought over a Flanders mare to him”, but that is him saying that Henry VIII uttered those words and it is not backed up by evidence. Anne was not from Flanders anyway, something that Henry VIII was well aware of. Interestingly, after the annulment, Henry and Anne had a good relationship, so good that it was even rumoured at one point that she’d given birth to his son!
10. He went through a dramatic personality change after his jousting accident in 1536. Whatever you believe about the jousting accident of 1536, there was no dramatic change in Henry VIII’s personality. He didn’t suddenly become more tyrannical. By that point, he’d already treated his wife and daughter abominably; he’d started his reign executing Empson and Dudley as scapegoats; he’d had the Duke of Buckingham executed without any good evidence against him; he’d seen his former friend and father figure, Sir Thomas More, executed; he’d executed his grandmother’s chaplain, Bishop Fisher; the Carthusian monks had been brutally killed, and so on and so on.

Can you add to my list? What myths and falsehoods about Henry VIII have you come across?