Henry VIII's Health in a Nutshell (2 page)

Gout is sometimes proffered as an explanation of Henry’s attenuated legs, but upon closer examination the theory is also seen to be weak. In most cases, gout causes “kidney stones in its victims and painful swelling of the big toe, the latter so common as to be almost synonymous with the disease”
¹⁴
, but Henry never exhibited either of those symptoms. If there had been any sign of gout, the royal physicians would have certainly diagnosed it. Remedies for gout had been part of Western medical training since Dioscorides and Pliny the Elder 1,500 years before. Often it is assumed that Henry must have been gouty, simply because he was overweight. This is an incorrect assumption, since there is no correlation between gout and obesity except in old wives’ tales.

1. Figure 3 -
   Henry’s May Day 1540 armour with a huge 51 inch waist and 54.5 inch chest - Photo ©2012 Tim Ridgway
   

Type II diabetes is also postulated to have been the outcome of Henry’s tremendous adipose tissue gain, but the link between fat and type II diabetes is as tenuous as that between obesity and gout. This is probably a shock to most people, since the correlation is implied in almost every media report about type II diabetes or the obesity epidemic, but in reality almost half of all type II diabetes sufferers are of normal weight and the large majority of obese people will
never
develop the disease. Type II diabetes occurs when the body can no longer process insulin correctly, and is a metabolic disease that can strike whatever the patient’s weight. Genetics and poverty rather than weight or diet seems to be the biggest factor. Some ethnicities, such as Hispanic/Latino Americans, African-Americans, Native Americans, Asian-Americans, Pacific Islanders and Alaska natives, all have higher risks of developing type II diabetes. Being poor also increases the risk, even when
ALL other factors – including weight – are taken into account. Nevertheless, obesity and type II diabetes are so often studied
together
that general misinformation linking them remains strong even in the medical community.

What
can
be correlated to both obesity and diabetes is a sedentary lifestyle. Sitting at work and then coming home and sitting some more “were both associated with significantly increased risk of diabetes in multivariate analyses adjusting for dietary and nondietary covariates”
¹⁵
. Basically, sitting down too much is a bigger risk to your health than almost anything else, including what you eat and what you weigh.

Ironically, Henry’s weight might have been a health
advantage
. Type II diabetes is yet another illness that experiences what researchers call the “obesity paradox”. Rather than hurting the patient, excess adipose increases survival rates. Overweight and obese people with type II diabetes
live longer than
normal or underweight people diagnosed with the same illness. Henry’s large body mass may have initially aided his longevity, contrary to common belief.

Occasionally it is suggested that type II diabetes is the explanation for Henry’s problematic reproduction and mental alterations, as well as for his leg ulcers. If Henry had type II diabetes, then it might provide an explanation for his personality change, infertility and ill health after midlife, but would not address the reproductive problems that tormented his first two wives. The suggested link between fertility problems and diabetes in his early reproductive history is highly unlikely. Miscarriage due to diabetes is typically linked to the mother having diabetes, not the father. Although superstructure defects in the sperm of male diabetics can increase the chances of a miscarriage in their partners, these miscarriages would occur early in the first trimester because the embryo would be nonviable. The more common side-effects of diabetes are erectile dysfunction and low sperm count, which could explain the lack of pregnancies in his marriages to his fifth and sixth wives, but could not account for the frequent pregnancies and subsequent late-term miscarriages experienced by his first two queens.

Near the end of Henry’s life, yet another problem developed in his legs – they became grotesquely swollen. The most likely cause of this swelling was congestive heart failure. The king was a corpulent invalid and his blood pressure was unlikely to still be in the normal range later in his life. Hypertension would have promoted the retention of fluid in his legs and ankles, intensifying his immobility and weight. The less he moved, the worse his blood pressure would have become. Henry’s sedentary existence would have subsequently encouraged the development of type II diabetes, which would have caused attendant venous ulcers and depression, which would in turn have made it harder for Henry to move or exercise
¹⁶
. Henry would thus have become trapped in a perpetual circle of worsened health until, wherein his ailments fed and sustained one another in a kind of perfect storm that only ended with his death in January 1547.
¹⁷

1. Figure 4 -
   Henry’s famous “Silvered and Engraved” armour, made around 1515 - Photo ©2012 Tim Ridgway
   

A brief account of the king’s offspring

When Henry married Katherina of Aragon, often spelt Catherine, on 11 June 1509, everyone was hopeful that the newlyweds would have their first child, preferably a son and heir, quickly. Things seemed promising. The new bride felt her first known pregnancy quicken in November, just five months after the wedding. Sadly, the joy was short-lived. Katherina prematurely gave birth to a stillborn girl on 31 January 1510. Her loss was kept strictly secret with only a handful of trusted attendants and healers in the know. Women who miscarried were open to speculation that they had offended God or practised witchcraft, and her friends were eager to protect their beloved and long-suffering queen from malicious gossip. To add a complication, after the delivery her uterus swelled so much that physicians thought there might be another, still living, foetus inside. This was a real possibility, so the doctor wasn’t being unreasonable to suggest it. Regretfully, the physician was wrong in this case. The king was told that Katherina was still pregnant and was due to give birth in May. In April, the queen retired for her lying-in, a month before the expected birth. This she would spend lying in bed in a dimly lit room with only women as her attendants. It was only when May arrived with no baby to be seen that Henry was told of her prior miscarriage.

Luckily for Katherina, she conceived again almost immediately, some time in late April or early May, meaning that Henry was clearly visiting his wife when she was in confinement. This is not as
outré
as it would seem to those who know about the medieval belief that pregnant women should not have sex. It was a bit more complicated than that. Although the “rules” about sex during pregnancy discouraged intercourse in some months in a woman’s pregnancy, medical wisdom
encouraged
coitus during other months of the gravid period. One of the months in which sex was encouraged was the final month of pregnancy, because it was thought that the father could “fashion” his child and “set his influence on it” by engaging in sexual activity with the mother at this time
¹⁸
. If both Henry and Katherina believed, based on the doctor’s speculations, that there was a growing foetus in her womb, they would have thought it both prudent and pleasurable to engage in frequent sexual intercourse during her lying-in. The king was still in his teens and doubtlessly had a strong sex drive, so this would probably not have been a hardship for him.

Two pregnancies in rapid succession demonstrate fairly conclusively that both she and Henry were fertile together. On New Year’s Day 1511, she had a son, the new Prince of Wales, who they named Henry after his father. He initially seemed to be a healthy baby and the entire kingdom was in a state of celebration. Tragically, the infant prince died on 22 February 1511. In September of the same year it was rumoured that the queen might be pregnant again, but that hope seems to have come to naught. This may be indicative of either an erroneous wish or an early, unreported miscarriage.

Owing to Henry’s absence for military reasons, she did not conceive again until 1513. In October of that year she had a premature son who died shortly after his birth, to her great grief and regret. Katherina’s sorrows continued when in November 1514, she gave birth to yet another son who died within hours. Finally, on 18 February 1516, she had a healthy daughter, Mary. This baby girl would later rule England as Mary I and receive the rather unfair nickname “Bloody Mary” for her draconian yet sincere attempts to deter the Protestant movement. Katherina was possibly pregnant again in August 1517, but it was never officially announced. Her final acknowledged pregnancy ended in November 1518, when she gave birth to a baby girl who died shortly thereafter. She had a total of six official and perhaps two unofficial pregnancies, but only one surviving child.

Much to Katherina’s humiliation and distress, Henry had a healthy son by his mistress, Bessie Blount, in 1519. It was Bessie’s first pregnancy, but possibly not her only child by the king. Some historians believe she presented him with a girl a few years later. If so, the king never acknowledged Bessie’s daughter as he had done their son, who he named Henry Fitzroy and heaped with honours. Henry Fitzroy was healthy as an infant and throughout childhood, but he became ill and died of unknown causes in 1536 when he was just 17 years old.

Henry had ceased having sexual relations with Katherina by 1524, and he sought to nullify the marriage on the grounds that a passage in Leviticus forbids a man to marry his brother’s widow. Some scholars argue that it was around this time that Henry had an affair with Mary Boleyn that resulted in two children, but the historical consensus is that the affair was real but the children were not his
¹⁹
.

Henry’s desire to end his first marriage had intensified by 1527. Not only did he want to remarry in the hopes of having a son, he had also fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, the younger sister of his former mistress Mary Boleyn. Henry eventually tired of petitioning Rome to nullify his first union, and to expedite matters, declared himself head of the Church of England and had the Archbishop of Canterbury dissolve his marriage to Katherina. Henry and Anne Boleyn were secretly married in November 1532, then again on 25 January 1533. Anne was crowned queen in May of that same year, and in September her first and only child, Elizabeth, was born. The infant princess, later to become Elizabeth I and one of England’s greatest rulers, was healthy and strong. Although Henry would have preferred a boy, as did everyone at the time, he was sanguine that a healthy first baby presaged more children for himself and Anne.

The king seemed to be right in his prediction of their future fertility when his wife was visibly pregnant again in January 1534. Anne was due around the end of July, but some time in late June she went into premature labour. The baby was either stillborn or died shortly after birth, and its sex was left unreported. The king and queen never made an official announcement about the end of the pregnancy, and it is possible that Anne had a phantom pregnancy. Again, the queen may have had an early miscarriage in September of 1534, but it was never reported as an official pregnancy and the existence of the pregnancy is a topic of historical debate. She may have been pregnant once more in March of 1535 and experienced a miscarriage near the end of her second trimester, but that pregnancy is likewise debated. Her final undisputed pregnancy ended calamitously when she miscarried a boy in January 1536. She seems to have been shortly into the second trimester when the foetus spontaneously aborted. In April she was accused of adultery and treason and, after a brief trial in a kangaroo court, was beheaded on 19 May 1536.

Henry married Jane Seymour on 30 May 1536, and their son, Edward, was born on 12 October 1537. Sadly, Jane died of puerperal fever, commonly called childbed fever, just twelve days later. The new Prince of Wales, who would later ascend the throne as Edward VI in 1547, was Henry’s fourth and final child to survive infancy. None of Henry’s subsequent marriages, or mistresses, ever gave him more
known
offspring. Without some form of confirmation about royal paternity, his reputed children must be excluded from the list of his progeny.