There is no gainsaying that Henry was both fearful of and fascinated by sickness and disease, but this does not mean that he was either a coward or a weakling. He was a notoriously difficult patient, rarely allowing ill health to keep him from the council chamber or the hunt, and in the end it was only the extraordinary vitality of the man that prevented the swollen and abused body from disintegrating into a helpless mass. Moreover, his personal courage and endurance were attested to, time and time again. The royal person may have been too precious to risk upon the battlefield, but the King’s life was in constant jeopardy during the joust at which he so excelled. No one could stand against him as the royal giant, clad in ninety-four pounds of armour, thundered down the jousting course. For hours on end he would test strength and match spears against the bravest of the realm. Monarchs as well as subjects could be killed at this mock warfare, and the King of France lost his life in 1559 while practising the dangerous sport. Twice Harry of England was unhorsed, and once he lay unconscious for two hours. On still another occasion he escaped death by a fraction of an inch, when either by mistake or through sheer bravado he failed to lower the visor of his helmet. The Duke of Suffolk’s lance struck the King scarcely an inch above the opened visor; the impact was so great that the spear shattered and the King’s helmet was filled with bits of splintered wood. By the purest good fortune Henry was not seriously injured, and he announced that ‘none was to blame but himself’ and insisted that his armourer put his helmet back together again so that he could continue to joust, ‘by the which all men might perceive that he had no hurt’.
18
Except for the silent and deadly action of the plague, which could destroy and mutilate the most splendid physique, Henry seems to have been beyond fear, and the Spanish Ambassador was probably correct when he noted that the sovereign was always desirous of convincing society that he had ‘no respect or fear of anyone in the world’.
19
Again, the picture of a gross and lustful monster is deceptive. There is no evidence that Henry over-indulged in wine to the point of intoxication, and, if anything, the vast quantities he consumed indicate a strong head and a sturdy constitution. Moreover, his faithfulness to his wives (while he had them) was conspicuous in a monarch who could gratify almost every whim. In contrast to the promiscuous capers of his royal brother across the Channel, Henry’s two recorded mistresses seem the epitome of virtuous domesticity. What sets Bluff King Hal apart from other sovereigns is not the adultery but the legality of his promiscuity. Unlike most kings of his generation, he insisted upon marrying his concubines. Henry has a reputation as a Bluebeard because he had six wives, while Francis I of
France
has achieved but negligible distinction, despite an infidelity remarkable even in a society that abounded with Lothariois.
Hernry was also one of the most accomplished diplomats of
Europe
, and even his enemies conceded that he was a dangerous and cunning foe. Obstinate and ruthless he may have been, but as the Imperial Ambassador acknowledged, he was ‘more accessible to persuasion than to threat’.
20
Educated in the Machiavellian atmosphere that knew the value of the adage ‘three may keep counsel if two be away,’ Henry could be both nefarious and merciless,
21
but he also had that rarest and most precious of gifts – the ability to inspire loyalty and devotion. For all his brutality, the man had magnificent animal magnetism, and even when old and fat and helpless he could hold men to him. In a strange fashion, all men respected and many loved this bulging bully who wept and blustered, pranced and preened. It may have been that such loyalty was wasted upon a man who would sacrifice both friend and foe, minister and subject, upon the altar of his egotism, and the insight of Sir Thomas More may approach the truth when he predicted that if Henry thought that ‘my head could win him a castle in France it should not fail to go!’
22
Nevertheless, councillors were loyal both to the man and to the crown he wore.
For all his cruelty, vanity and egotism, Henry was immensely aproachable. He may have delighted in basking in the reputation of being ‘kind and affable’ and full of ‘graciousness and courtesy’, yet he was willing to pay the price for such renown. Sovereignty was constantly on display. The endless and peripatetic progresses about the realm, the ceaseless royal appearances, and the incessant ceremony that enveloped every action were all matters of calculatcd statecraft, and, like any illusion, the pomp and circumstance of sovereignty were achieved at the cost of personal exhaustion and tedium. Henry never seemed to mind the grimy, grasping hands of the frenzied citizens of
London
, or their badbreath, noxious clothes and boisterous manners. Once when a throng of ecstatic subjects stripped their sovereign to his hose in a delirium of devotion and souvenir-hunting, Henry passed the affair off as a delightful game.
23
If this was play-acting to feed his self-esteem, then at least it was done magnificently, for King Hal was a past master at catching and holding men’s imagination. Whatever the ultimate verdict may be, the indisputable fact remains that the sixteenth century held him to be both a great king and a great man, ‘undoubtedly the rarest man that lived in his time’.
24
Even Cardinal Pole, whom Henry had done his best to destroy and whose family he had systematically liquidated, wrote at the monarch’s death that he ‘was the greatest king who ever ruled that realm’.
25
Possibly the final and most balanced judgment comes from the observer who, years before, had maintained that Henry was the most dangerous and cruel man on earth. With grudging praise, Castillon wrote that ‘he is a wonderful man and has wonderful people about him; but he is an old fox.’
26
Ever since he died on
27
Sickness of mind and soul may have been accompanied by disease of the body, and the theory that Henry suffered from syphilis has never been totally dispelled. The evidence is entirely circumstantial, resting on what appears to be a marked deterioration in the King’s character, his ulcerated leg, and the dreary list of miscarriages that plagued his first two wives.
28
Another equally circumstantial thesis is that the King suffered a serious brain injury when, in 1536, at the age of forty-four, he was thrown from his horse and lay unconscious for two hours. Possibly it is not coincidence that it was in the following years that the ulcer on the leg first began to give serious trouble, or that it is after 1536 that we begin to perceive the picture of a man who is suffering from chronic headaches, is reduced to a staff and felt slipper for his game leg, and is constrained to forsake the violent exercise of his youth. In the circumstances, it is not surprising if Catherine found her royal spouse overweight, irascible, melancholic, unpredictable and brutal.
29
More than brain damage and a draining ulcer are involved in the transformation of the royal character: we must include the nature of kingship and the personality of the sovereign. For all the splendid display and costly glamour that surrounded the monarch, the position of kingship had marked drawbacks. Ultimate authority is a lonely station, and when Henry alluded to himself as ‘King, Emperor and Pope in his dominions’,
30
he had to pay a fearful price in terms of normal human relationships. As the ‘father and nurse to his subjects’, the King was the final arbiter of national policy. Henry might sanctimoniously announce that he contented himself with what was his own, and wished only ‘to command my own subjects’, but he also added the proviso that ‘I do not choose any one to have it in his power to command me, nor will I ever suffer it.’
31
The irony, of course, was that many men conspired to command the sovereign, and a few actually manipulated him, breathing selfinterested advice into the royal ear. All roads converged upon the King’s person, and the councillor who could plant the seeds of policy in Henry’s impressionable mind might elevate his family, win title and estate, and determine the political and spiritual fate of the kingdom. Consequently, each facet of the King’s personality, every aspect of his health and well being, was avidly observed, dissected and analysed. His every act, his every need, and his most trivial fancy, became matters of grave concern. Traitors dreamed that the King’s ulcerated leg would kill him and ‘then we shall have jolly stirring’;
32
the state of Henry’s intestinal tract was a topic worthy of constant conversation;
33
and the royal person was incapable of retiring into even the most ‘secret place’ without a cluster of ambitious courtiers, office-seekers and hopeful policy-makers crowding in upon him for fear lest some privileged and intimate friend whisper dangerous counsel to the King when he was at his most vulnerable.
34
Henry may have stamped his personality upon both his court and his kingdom, but he was also a helpless prisoner of his office, and constantly had to be protected from the swarming clutch of nagging petitioners, office-seekers and supplicants who pervaded every inch of the royal household. All men came to ‘hammer at this anvil, some for money and some for favour’, and those about the sovereign had to be warned against molesting the ‘King’s person with suits’. Such petitions were to be presented in writing and delivered to a special council appointed to review them.
35
These precautions were rarely satisfactory or effective. They might guard the sovereign from the approach of the lesser sort, but they could not save him from the artful requests and pregnant hints of those who were in constant attendance about his person. Moreover, Henry’s wandering and amorous eye was always a subject of intense speculation, for a royal mistress or spouse might influence the mind as well as the passions of the man who shared her bed. Later in the century, popular interest in the subject of a royal mate for Queen Elizabeth was so much a matter of national discussion that gambling odds were given on almost anyone who received even the slightest recognition at court. When, for instance, Sir William Pickering arrived in London and was accepted with manifest favour, the bets were running twenty-five to a hundred that he would be king.
36
Henry himself was constantly being ‘solicited by his council and nobles of his realm to frame his heart to the love and favour of some noble personage to be joined with him in lawful matrimony’, so that His Majesty ‘might have some more store of fruit and succession to the comfort of the realm’.
37
Not only were the King’s matrimonial inclinations a question of immense international and domestic importance, but so was Henry’s virility, and when the Imperial Ambassador questioned the King as to whether he thought he would be able to produce more progeny, Henry’s temper snapped and he demanded thrice over: ‘Am I not a man like others?’
38
What Henry forgot was that he was something more than a man; he was not only a King to be obeyed, but an idol to be worshipped’.
39
The sovereign was a victim of yet another weakness of his office, for he was constantly at the mercy of flatterers and fortune-seekers. The oily blandishments of professional panderers and flatterers were the most destructive and vicious elements within the monarchical system, for such men made it a policy to ‘shamefully and flatteringly give assent to the fond and foolish sayings of certain great men’.
40
Yet for all the susceptibilities of both the man and his office, Henry had neither sycophants nor toadies as companions on the hunt or servants in the privy chamber, and generally he was told the truth no matter how unpleasant it might be. But even so, kings lived with the nagging doubt that the truth, both of a man’s motives and his information, might not appear on the surface, and Henry was painfully aware that the reports of courtiers and bureaucrats could easily be cut to suit the royal temper. In a frenzy of frustration, he once upbraided and lectured his council as if they were a group of wilful and rebellious school boys, and he stormed that ‘most of his privy council, under pretence of serving him, were only temporizing for their own profit, but he knew the good servants from the flatterers’ and ‘he would take care that their projects should not succeed.’
41
The safety of kings may be built upon the fears of their subjects, but as the French Ambassador pointed out, Henry would never ‘cease to dip his hand in blood’ so long as he continued to doubt his people.
42
For all his keen sense of character and the magnetism that held men to him, it is little wonder that the young prince learned to harbour doubt and suspicion, or that the ageing monarch grew to distrust most men. When Marillac wrote to his master that Henry’s ‘subjects take example from the Prince, and the ministers seek only to undo each other to gain credit, and under the colour of their master’s good each attends to his own’, it may have been that the Ambassador had the situation reversed.
43
The King may have taken example from his subjects.