Bob the Builder said

Boleyn said …John died in October of 1216 and is buried in Worcester Catherdral, I know it well. his tomb is very beautiful and if you look at his effigy you can see a man who was a as tyranical as is believed.

drivel.

you cannot possibly derive charactor from appearence – John might be the ultimate shit (and was, in my view..), but his looks, or indeed the looks the stonemason decided to give him, have no place whatsoever in determining his actions.

you’re getting into the territory of that lunatic woman who’s in love with Richard III – ‘is this the face of a tyrant?’

i know Johns’ tomb well as well, it reveals nothing about him apart from him being dead.

You could be right there Bob, Perhaps I allowed my historical mind to give John’s Effigy poetic licence so to speak, in short I saw what I wanted to see, if that makes sence. (I really should stop my mind from wondering about, it’s too little to be out on it’s own)
I agree with you about John being a total shit though, a very unpleasent man. He comes across from what i’ve read about him as a very petulant bad tempered,arogrant brat. The strange thing is that he was always kind to beggers and never once turned to away without giving them a groat or 2.

I agree about the woman who fell in love with Richard the 3rd, she really was quite devestated to discover that Richard did have some form of spinal deformaty as was believed by those in the know. She had spent so long building up a mental image of a dark haired God that when she was faced with the reality of the situation it was simply all to much for her to bear. Her illusion of what she believed was Richard was shattered along with her chance to try and prove the expects wrong. She so wanted in my opinion to get oneupmanship on the boffins so to speak.

SteveJ said

You and I should cash in with a Historical Dating Service, Bo. We’ll have lots of customers from the Richard III Society, methinks.

LOL, but I certainly wouldn’t want to play matchmaker to old lard arse.

some people today will put up with infedelity, ugliness, and not a little stupidity if it means a particular lifestyle – i’m thinking of several footballers wives for example – so i fail to see that the shine of a crown wouldn’t blind some to bit of syphallys, genocide and religious extremism…

fixing up Henry VIII with some goldigging moron (err.. of course i mean worthy person who judges on personality and not looks..) would be pretty easy.

Boleyn said …As for Henry’s ideal woman? Pass. I think whoever was brave enough to try and fix him up with someone you can bet your last groat that they wouldn’t be good enough for him. He’s find something wrong somewhere with them.. Actaully the only thing that would be Henry’s ideal match would be a mirror. That way he can worship himself.

i think his mother, Elizabeth of York, would be a good candidate. dead of course, so she wouldn’t have opinions, or actions, but fertile, silent, and submissive. even then i think that if he’d had to deal with her as King, rather than as a stylised memory, he’d have gone off her – she was, after all, much more Royal than him…

i know that its the fashion to slag him off as a wife killing psychopath (which he probably was..) but its important to put his actions in context – he is the last male alive of the Tudors, his family history of the last 60+ years has seen three Kings of England (Grandfather, Edward IV, Great-Uncle, Richard III, and half-Great Uncle(?) Henry VI) go to their graves without being succeeded by their sons and that being the end of their Royal houses – in that circumstance, his obsession with having legitimate sons who, upon his own death, would be old enough to claim the throne, is not that unreasonable.

Henry’s whole reign was really one farsicle soap opera. I agree that Henry was a desperate man (securing the Tudor line) and desperate men do desperate things. Chopping up or changing them when he felt like it was the least of his worries.
At the centre of it all was Henry’s massive ego, and yes Steve you are right about the portrait, to me it speaks volumes of just how over inflated Henry’s ego actually was. (well the whole of him was over inflated but that’s beside the point)
H7 victory at Bosworth far outstripped any acheivements Henry made, and I suspect that Henry was perhaps a little jealous of that. Even KOA outstripped Henry’s poncing about France tour in 1513, when the army defeated the Scots at Flodden, he simply didn’t like the idea of anyone upstaging him, be it animal, vegetable or mineral. There was one sun, and one moon in Henry’s world…..Himself.

Bob the Builder said

SteveJ said …and not enough on Henry as an incredibly selfish egotist….

oh i’d agree that the mans ego and sense of entitlement was spectacular – and i’d put forward the defacing of his own Brothers Tomb as part of his religious see-sawing as evidence of that – but i just cannot believe that the issue of lawful male heirs and the succession was not at the front and centre of his ego clouded and pleasure seeking mind.

the Lancastrian claim ended because Henry VI had but one son who was killed in battle – merely 55 years before Henry decided he wanted his marriage to KOA annulled. his Grandfather, Edward IV’s, line ended a mere 40 years before because his sons were not old enough to enforce the succession – and they both died because of it, and of course they were ever present ghosts at the Tudor feast, his mothers murdered Brothers, but without their deaths the Tudors would still be nobodys living in exile. the whole Yorkist claim – with which Henry VIII identified in his early years – ended 38 years before because when Richard III was killed at Bosworth he had no legitimate sons who could even be used as Yorkist figureheads, let alone who could fight for York against Henry Tudor.

i think Henry VIII was one of the worst Kings England has ever had – easily giving company to John, Henry III, Henry VI and Richard I – he achieved little and destroyed much, but i think that to believe that his racing through wives was only caused by his gigantic ego and self-image is to seriously underestimate the pressures he would have felt requiring him to have an heir and a spare, and in good time (remembering of course that if Henry VII had only had one Son, the Tudor dynasty would have ended in 1509..). he was a thorough-going shit, he was filled with greed, pride, pettyness, averice, cruelty and jealosy, but to think that those were his only motivators is, in my view, to fail to understand him.

Totally agree with you there Bob. Henry was all bluster and ballast at the end of the day. He was in effect like a giant carbarcle on the arse of sociaty. He wanted it all and yet lacked the courage and intelligence to follow through with his grandoise schemes for glory. When he was ponching about in France he hoped that he could brag to all and sundry about how brilliant he was taking on the French Blah Blah Blah. KOA showed him up good and proper there. That must have been a real passion killer for Henry to be outstripped by a woman.
He was a bigot, and was jealous of everyone and everything. He chopped up all those who he felt were laughing at him behind his back (not that I blame them for laughing at him I would be doing the same).

Put simply he was a useless waste of space, he as you rightly said acheived very little in his reign. Henry V for instance did at least gain some success in France, and was within a inch of taking the French throne, and I believe he would have done, had it not been for his untimely death.
Henry ultimetely blamed everyone else for his short commings, he simply refused to except any critisism, and use it to better himself. Anyone who questioned his actions on taking a certain course of actions, soon found themselves locked up or woke up with their head not where where is should be. He bullied woman basically to make him feel better about himself, if that makes sence and I have no doubt that he would have killed Mary (daughter) if she had continued to hold out against him. He divided the country and started a war, in what can only be described in my opinion the wars of religion. Yet he still blamed other people for it, Anne B being one of them and also becomming a victim of it too. Anne did nothing to start the war, Henry was determined to conquer Anne and it was his actions alone that tore the country apart. He bullied the clergy into excepting that he was a higher authority to the Pope, he bullied his people into excepting his religion, and destroyed anyone who stood in his way.
He was a coward and a bully, certainly not a God like ruler who was the saviour of the world, although that is how he saw himself.