Henry VIII: Mind of a Tyrant Part One with David Starkey

500 years ago, an 18-year-old boy sat on this chair in Westminster Abbey to be crowned King of England. He would grow up to become the most infamous monarch in history. Henry VIII is the only king whose shape you remember. For Henry is not simply an historical figure. Henry is a myth. He's the king who had six wives and beheaded two of them. It's the best and the bloodiest royal soap opera of them all. But Henry isn't just soap opera. He's also one of the most important and original monarchs ever to have sat on the throne of England. Henry and I go back a long way. I've been fascinated by him all my life. Now, on the 500th anniversary of Henry's accession, it's finally time to write his biography. For the man behind the myth is a psychological enigma. The 18-year-old who was crowned here was a slim, beautiful, elegant, musical, poetical, reasonable, charming, sweet-tempered young man who'd married for love. How does he turn into the Henry who is the horror? The Henry who is the tyrant? Who, in short, was Henry? Henry VIII and his world are long gone, or at least it can seem that way. But hidden in the world's great libraries are magical objects that can bring that world vividly to life once more. They are the books, manuscripts, plans and letters that Henry and his contemporaries read, touched and wrote. Through them, the dead can speak again. Never since the death of my dearest mother has there come to me more hateful news. I will never be at rest till I often have letters from you. He was in complete subjection to his father and his grandmother and never opened his mouth in public. Our king does not desire gold or gems or precious metals, but virtue, glory, immortality. It's in these original sources that I hope to find the real Henry. The very first mention of Henry comes in this document. It's very beautiful and very precious. It's one of the great treasures of the British Library. It's Lady Margaret Beaufort's Book of Hours. Lady Margaret Beaufort was Henry's grandmother, and this Book of Hours, that's an exquisitely illustrated aid to personal devotion, was already old when she got it. At the back, there's a calendar, and in it, she notes important dates, births, marriages and deaths, great events in her son, Henry VII's life. And here, in the margin, she's noted, in heavily abbreviated Latin, the birth of Henry. But look, the date is corrected. Did she get 1491 wrong? Wasn't she sure? There it is, entered twice. Now, his own grandmother's blunder over the date of Henry's birth is a telling sign of his relative unimportance, for Henry was only the second son. It was his elder brother, Arthur, who was the heir. Baby Henry was just the spare. The two brothers hardly knew each other, for they had very different upbringings. As was traditional, Arthur, the Prince of Wales, was sent away with his own household of tutors and counsellors to Ludlow Castle in the Welsh Marches to learn how to be a king. But little Henry stayed close to home in the palace his parents described as our nursery. In the 1930s, this lavish country house was built on the site. It's a stunning example of art deco. But down this corridor, and through these doors, and you step back 500 years into Tudor England. This is the Great Hall at Eltham, the sole surviving building from Henry's first home. Here, he was brought up alongside his sisters Margaret, Mary and Elizabeth. And, I believe that, unusually for a royal prince, his mother, Queen Elizabeth of York, played a big part in his childhood. The evidence lies here, in Henry's handwriting. Henry's handwriting has always been a bit of a mystery. The Ys, with their little back loop, the Rs, which look much more like a Z in modern handwriting, and the Hs are quite unlike the handwriting of Henry's known teachers. On the other hand, it is rather like this. And this is one of the very few surviving specimens of the handwriting of Henry's mother, Elizabeth of York. This book is mine. Elizabeth the King's Daughter, it says. It's only eight words and 39 letters. And yet, it's characteristic enough in weight, rhythm and letter forms to prove conclusively, I think, that Elizabeth herself was the first teacher of her daughters and of her second son, Henry. It's a charming picture, Henry the Little Prince, in a loving family of women. It shaped him, I think, in ways unusual for a 16th-century monarch. As king, Henry would eventually come to place love above all other considerations, with explosive consequences. But Henry's childhood was also shadowed by death. When he was four, his youngest sister, Elizabeth, died. Little Elizabeth was the first child of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York to die. Nevertheless, they were all too well aware of just how transitory a child's life could be in the 15th century. For it was the death of children, or rather, the unimaginable horror of their murder at the hands of a close relation that had paved their own way to the throne. For the world into which Henry was born was scarred by hatred, treason and betrayal. For almost 50 years, there'd been two royal families in England, the House of York and the House of Lancaster. And time and again, their rivalry had erupted into bloody civil war, the so-called Wars of the Roses. Many of the darkest deeds happened here in the Tower of London. It was here that Henry VI, the last Lancastrian king, had been bludgeoned to death with a heavy instrument, here that the Lord Chamberlain of England was dragged from a meeting of the Council and, without any form of trial, had his head hacked off on a log of wood. But the blackest crime of all was the disappearance of the princes in the Tower. It had happened just eight years before Prince Henry was born. The princes were the boy king, Edward V, and his younger brother, Richard, Duke of York. They were the heirs of the House of York, which it seemed had won the Wars of the Roses. But before Edward V could be crowned, the boys were seized by their own uncle. They disappeared into the Tower of London, presumed dead, and their uncle took the throne as Richard III. But Richard III had overstepped the mark. Even in that age, the apparent murder of two innocent royal children was so shocking that it led to an unlikely alliance between disaffected Yorkists and the last survivor of the House of Lancaster, Henry Tudor, who was in exile in France. With the aid of a French army, Henry Tudor invaded England and defeated and killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Henry Tudor became King Henry VII and then proceeded to marry the sister of the princes in the Tower, Elizabeth of York. It was a union intended to heal a devastated and divided country, and the births of first Arthur and then Henry provided two princes in whom flowed the blood of both rival royal houses. But what would happen to Arthur and Henry if it turned out that the princes in the Tower, the true heirs to the throne, were not dead after all? November 1491. Cork in Ireland. A mysterious and expensively dressed stranger is walking the streets. To the roughly dressed locals, it seemed he must be someone important. And that someone important, it was decided by two Yorkist partisans, was Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the two princes in the Tower who disappeared in mysterious circumstances only eight years earlier. And shortly after, it was indeed as Richard, Duke of York that the young man turned up here in the Netherlands. In fact, his name was Perkin Warbeck, an 18-year-old Fleming who'd gone to Cork to model garments for a Flemish merchant. Once a mannequin for silk finery, his backers hoped he could be turned into a puppet prince, rekindle the Yorkist cause and reignite the Wars of the Roses. His lodgings were hung with the royal arms of England, with the Latin inscription, the arms of Richard, Prince of Wales and Duke of York, son and heir of Edward IV, sometime King of England, France, and Lord of Ireland. It was all too much for a couple of Englishmen loyal to Henry VII. But Warbeck was no joke, for he soon attracted the support of several European rulers hostile to the new Tudor regime. Henry VII knew he had to take the threat seriously. He was all too aware that, with the backing of a foreign power, even the most obscure claimant could seize the English throne. After all, he'd done it himself. So, first, he would expose Perkin Warbeck as a counterfeit Duke of York by creating a real one, his second son, Henry. And the ceremony would begin by making the boy Knight of the Bath. Even today, the imagination of childhood is fed on tales of knights and chivalry. It was the same for little Henry 500 years ago. But now, the three-and-a-half-year-old prince would live the fantasy for real, and it would change his life. The elaborate ceremony took place in the already ancient setting of Westminster Palace. As darkness fell, Henry joined his fellow knights-to-be in the Parliament Chamber, where richly decorated baths had been laid out. He was ceremoniously undressed and placed in his bath. Then his father, the King, entered, and the Earl of Oxford read to him the solemn admonition, or undertaking, required of a knight. Be strong in the faith of the Holy Church. Protect all widows and oppressed maidens. And above all earthly things, love the King, thy sovereign Lord, and his right defend unto thy power. The King dipped his hand in the water and made the sign of the cross on Henry's shoulder and kissed it. A second and higher baptism into the sacred role of knight. Then Henry was dressed like a hermit and kept vigil through the night. Early the next day, Henry rode a charger into the King's presence through the vast space of Westminster Hall here. Then his father dubbed him a knight. A knight. He had heard the tales told by his nurse of knights and oaths, of maidens in distress, of disguises and transformations, of hermits and kings. It was the world of chivalry and romance that he already inhabited in his imagination and dreams. Now he was part of it indeed. He had sworn the oath, kept the vigil, ridden the horse, been touched by the sword. He was a knight. Some of the others here are astonishingly like... And look, he's adding a word. Look at the R. The R like a Z. Principal. The ceremony was recorded by the court herald in this document. But when we went to film it at the British Library, we made an astonishing discovery. Here we are. This is him. Yes, again. That's his hand. Yes. We think this has been corrected by Henry. Look, it's almost as though he's remembering. Here it's inserted and his verge of gold in his hand. Years later, the adult Henry must have gone back and added these corrections and additions, which proves that the ceremony made an unforgettable impression on the little boy. And all his life, Henry would think of himself, however badly he actually behaved, as a chivalrous knight. But soon, Prince Henry had another and much more disagreeable, unforgettable experience. There was great fear in London. And cries were made. Every man to harness, to harness! Some ran to the gates, others mounted on the walls, so that no part was undefended. Henry would have heard echoes of these cries here in the Tower of London. His mother had gathered him up from his nursery house at Eltham and rushed him to London and the safety of the strong walls of the tower. Perkin Warbeck, the counterfeit Duke of York, was on the march, threatening to invade from Scotland, whilst an army of Cornishmen, who'd flocked to his cause, were closing in on London from the west. There could only be one Duke of York. Which would it be? Henry or Warbeck? With the main English forces on their way north, the Cornish rebels swept across southern England, unopposed. But the Thames acted as a giant moat round the capital and the Cornish were on the wrong side of it. Meanwhile, to the north, Henry VII shadowed them and gathered his forces. Finally, when the exhausted Cornishmen reached Blackheath, just a few miles from the royal nursery at Eltham, King Henry was ready to give them battle. On the 17th of June, he crushed them with clinical efficiency. It was the beginning of the end for Warbeck's extraordinary odyssey. Within a few months, he too was in the tower. But he never came out again. While the counterfeit Duke of York languished in the tower, the real one was beginning his formal education under the tutorship of John Skelton, poet laureate. And one of the textbooks which Skelton wrote for his pupil still survives here in the British Library. Called Speculum Principis or A Mirror for Princes, it's a kind of how-to-do-it guide to wielding authority. The core of the text consists of a series of short pithy maxims about proper princely conduct. The young Henry was probably required to memorize these and recite them by heart. First of all, it begins, loathe gluttony. Probably because it was already clear that little Henry was a greedy boy with results that we're all too familiar with. Then it continues, none cease parcus, do not be mean, honor doctors, honora medicus, consult philosophers, consule philosophos, consule philosophicus, amplictare poetas, amplictare... It's easy to smile at all this, especially when Henry is solemnly warned do not deflower virgins, do not violate widows. But it's clear that Henry tended to take all this rather seriously. And some of Skelton's advice would have directly answered to his own experience, especially when Skelton spoke about the fragility and the riskiness of the royal position. Although you are of a famous family, nonetheless remember that ruin and exile are no more impossible for you than similar fates were for your fathers. But Skelton was not the only intellectual influence on the young Henry. On the continent, the Renaissance was in full flower led by men like the Dutch scholar Erasmus. Erasmus believed that a prince should be more than chivalrous and pious, he should be a patron of learning and learned it himself. In 1499, Erasmus was in England visiting his friend Thomas More. The two men decided to drop in on young Prince Henry's little court at Eltham. When we came to the hall, all the retinue was assembled. In the midst stood Henry, aged nine, already with a certain royal demeanor. I mean, a dignity of mind combined with a remarkable courtesy. Thomas More then stepped forward to present Henry with the customary gift. In his case, some Latin verses that he'd written. But where was Erasmus's gift? To his embarrassment, the young Henry teased Erasmus, sending a note during dinner, challenging him to write something. For three days, Erasmus laboured to produce this collection of Latin poetry in praise of England and its new Tudor dynasty. It was the beginning of a remarkable relationship between the scholar and the prince. In his covering letter, Erasmus flatters Henry as a kindred spirit who understands that worldly wealth and position are fleeting and that it is the work of scholars and poets that alone confers immortality. Thus, under the magic of Erasmus's pen, the little Tudor prince had blossomed into the complete Renaissance man. How did Prince Henry, the quick-witted, charming little boy, turn into the Henry VIII of legend, the bloodstained tyrant? The more I study him, the more I'm convinced that the answer doesn't lie, at least to begin with, in the seismic political and religious conflicts of his reign. Instead, it came from closer home, in the conflicts in his own heart and family. In the modern world, politics is one thing, whilst family life is, or is supposed to be, another. But for the hereditary rulers of the 16th century, politics and family were pretty much the same thing. The resulting fusion is called dynasticism, in which family relationships of husband and wife, parent and child are also power relationships, whilst the marriage bed is the most powerful diplomatic instrument of all. The whole of Henry's life would turn on the outcome of just such a dynastic marriage. It was arranged before Prince Henry was even born, in 1489, when English ambassadors came here to Spain, to the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Ferdinand and Isabella were both monarchs in their own right. He of Aragon, she of Castile, which is why their thrones here are of equal height and dignity. Their marriage united the two principal kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, making Spain the new European great power and an attractive ally for Henry VII of England. So, he instructed his ambassadors to negotiate a treaty that would marry Isabella and Ferdinand's youngest daughter, Catherine, into the English royal family. The marriage treaty between England and Spain was signed here at Medina del Campo, but Catherine wasn't intended for Henry, who was as yet unborn, but for his elder brother, Prince Arthur. Prince Arthur and Catherine were only three years old, so the actual marriage would have to wait. Meantime, Ferdinand and Isabella were keen to keep a close eye on their future in-laws, which means that, strangely enough, one of the best places to find out about events in Henry VII's court is here in the Spanish state archives at Simancas, which still hold the dispatches sent to Ferdinand and Isabella by their ambassador in England. And they're as fresh as though they'd been written yesterday. The theatre of court life, births, marriages and deaths in high places, and, above all, acute pen portraits that plumb the psychological depths of Henry VII and his family. The king looks old for his years, but young for the sorrowful life he has led. Those who have reached the greatest favours from Henry are the most discontented. He knows all that. By 1501, Catherine and Arthur were 15 and considered old enough to marry. Their marriage will be celebrated by the great spectacle of the English court, the joust. Jousting was a way for the warrior aristocracy to show off the martial skills which were fought to mark out a true leader. Tournaments were held for every great occasion and success in the tiltyard meant star status, even political influence. Prince Arthur's marriage joust would be an international competition and leading the English team was Edmund de la Peau, Earl of Suffolk. Suffolk personified the knightly ideal, brave to the point of recklessness, impulsive, arrogant, as Henry idolised him and his like. But like most of the best jousters, Suffolk had the blood of the Yorkies kings coursing through his veins and he felt that Henry VII of the House of Lancaster was not treating him with the respect he deserved. Shortly before the wedding, disaster struck. Suffolk defected abroad and sought refuge with the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian. Once again, Henry VII faced a challenger who claimed the throne. Still worse, unlike the pretender Perkin Warbeck, Suffolk had a genuine hereditary claim. There was treason in the air and King Henry, who had his spies, knew that there were very few in his kingdom he could really trust, as a remarkable document in Britain's National Archives shows. Here it is. It's an informer's report of a series of conversations amongst high-ranking officials of the strategically important English garrison in Calais. I heard a nobleman say that the king's grace is weak and sickly, not likely to be no long-lived man. And some of them spoke of my Lord of Buckingham, saying he was a noble man and would be a royal ruler. Others spoke likewise of the traitor Edmund de la Pole, but none of them spoke of my Lord Prince Arthur. These men were vital to the security of the Tudor regime. And yet, amongst themselves, they talked coolly of the probability of the king's early death and what would follow it. But, in the event, it wasn't King Henry who died. In November 1501, Arthur and Catherine of Aragon were married at last in a lavish ceremony in St Paul's Cathedral. Then they left to live together as man and wife at Ludlow Castle in the Marches of Wales. Less than five months later, however, Arthur was dead, perhaps of tuberculosis, perhaps of testicular cancer. Henry VII was grief-struck at the death of his beloved elder son, in whom he'd vested all his hopes for the future. The king's first thought, the recording Harold notes, was to call for the queen to share his grief. After she was come in and saw the king, her lord, in that natural and painful sorrow, she, with great and constant comfortable words, besought his grace that he should remember that God had lent them yet a fair, goodly prince. And they were both young enough to have more children. After that, in her own chamber, that great loss smote her so sorrowful to the heart that those that were about her were feigned to send for the king to comfort her. But there would be no comfort. Attempting to replace her lost son, the 37-year-old Elizabeth died in childbirth later that year. Henry was not yet 13. He had grown up close to his mother. What was the effect on him of her death? For once, the sources are silent. But we can guess. Sometime in the summer of 1504, the 13-year-old Prince Henry, now heir to the throne, left his childhood home of Eltham and came to court, that vast travelling circus of 600 courtiers and their servants, which continually moved between the royal residences at the Thames Valley. Richmond, Westminster, Greenwich. Sadly, these great palaces are all long gone. Instead, the place that best gives an idea of these vanished splendours is known in Kent. Here, there is still the parkland setting, the hugeness of scale, the texture of brick and stone and the labyrinthine complexity of the palaces of Henry's boyhood and youth. At the heart of this labyrinth lay the King's private apartment, the secret or privy chamber. Except that, in our sense, the privy chamber wasn't really private at all. Kings led their lives in public, constantly attended by courtiers, even in their bedchamber. But Henry VII, fearful of the Yorkies' treason, which struck into the centre of this court, gave the privy chamber its own small, confidential staff and barred its door to everyone else. Now, it was secret indeed. And here, the ageing King sat with his account books, his memoranda and his bags of coin, a spider at the heart of a golden web of power. For King Henry VII had finally found a novel way to keep his rebellious nobility in check, a financial reign of terror. The law was used as a pretext to levy ruinous fines, which, instead of being collected in full, were held over the heads of Henry's subjects. I'm looking at one of the account books of the King's chamber. At the top, there's the King's signature. And here is the list of those who, in 1499 to 1500, are going to be done. Everybody from a bishop to a Lord Mayor to a Duke to leading lawyers to important barons, going right through the royal household, everybody is bound in obligation. One that really leaps out is a certain Sir Edward Brough, who is a great Lincolnshire, I think it is, knight on the margins of the nobility, who's got into trouble and he has been sent to the Fleet Jail. This was a notoriously unpleasant prison, so Sir Edward escaped, he broke out, whereupon he is fined 3,000 marks, in other words, 2,000 pounds. But not only is he fined, his jailer is fined for letting him out for 500 pounds. These are enormous sums. The income of a baron is 3,400. Earls have 1,000 to 2,000 pounds a year. These are vast sums, millions in modern money. I think there was a sense of a government that was becoming more and more fundamentally unjust. The king is taking a profound risk in cutting into the natural support for a dynasty, the natural support for any government. Prince Henry too seems to have been kept firmly under his father's thumb, at least according to the Spanish ambassador. He was in complete subjection to his father and his grandmother and never opened his mouth in public except to answer a question from one of them. But was Henry's silence obedience or sullen resentment? Then a storm at sea brought another king to his father's court. He was Philip the Fair, Archduke of Burgundy, driven ashore on his way to claim the Spanish throne he'd just inherited through his wife. Philip made the greatest possible contrast to his host, Henry VII. He was young, charming and a keen jouster. Here was a very different kind of king for Prince Henry to admire. And admire Philip, Henry did. Enough for Philip to be the recipient of Henry's first letter or at least the first one to survive. Most high, most excellent and most powerful prince it begins. And then it continues, rather touchingly I think, by asking Philip whenever he found the opportunity to let Henry know of his good health and prosperity. Meanwhile, Henry promised for his part whenever he could find a suitable messenger he'd do the same to Philip and let him know how he was getting on. Now the terms of course are formal and princely but it's almost as though the 14-year-old Henry were asking the 27-year-old King Archduke Philip to be his pen pal. Was the motherless teenager lonely? He seems to have been genuinely upset when six months later he learned that Philip had died of typhoid fever caught in Spain. As he wrote to Erasmus, Never since the death of my dearest mother has there come to me more hateful news. It was about this time that Henry took up Philip's favourite sport of jousting. He wasn't allowed to compete himself. That was far too dangerous. But every day Henry was out in the tiltyard practising the exercise known as running the ring. Spearing a ring with a lance whilst riding at full tilt. But Prince Henry's companions of the tilt were the very people whom his father distrusted most. The Yorkist warrior nobility. Men who were also the resentful victims of the King's fiscal tyranny. Would they turn the son against the father? Then, just after Christmas 1508, the King took ill and to his chamber. By the 23rd of April 1509, the King hadn't been seen in public for weeks but then it seemed he was on the mend as the Archbishop of Canterbury was called in to speak to him. Behind the closed doors of the privy chamber, King Henry VII was already communing with a higher authority than the Archbishop. In fact, he died the day before. But his son, Prince Henry, had not yet been declared King. It was what the Yorkist conspirators had long hoped for. A coup d'etat on the death of the old King. But Prince Henry wasn't one of the victims. He was one of the conspirators. Instead, the plot was aimed at those members of the old King's council who were most closely identified with his policy of fiscal terrorism. Kept in the dark about the King's death for 48 crucial hours, they were outmanoeuvred, arrested and sent to the Tower. Henry VII's death is now public knowledge because Henry VIII has proclaimed a general pardon. He has released many prisoners and arrested all those responsible for the bribery and tyranny of his father's reign. The people are very happy and few tears are being shed for Henry VII. Instead, people are as joyful as if they had been released from prison. The long-threatened Yorkist rebellion never materialised. Instead, Prince Henry's accession was remarkably smooth. The first bloodless transfer of power in England since the death of Henry V nearly a century before. For why should the Yorkist nobility rebel? Henry had been brought up by his mother, Elizabeth of York. He looked like his grandfather, Edward IV of York. And as a teenager, he'd hung around the tiltyard with the star Yorkist jousters. In short, unlike his viscerally Lancastrian father, Henry was one of them. The Wars of the Roses were finally over and it was Henry who'd ended them. For an 18-year-old, that was no mean achievement. A few weeks later, Erasmus received a letter from one of his favourite pupils, William Blunt, Lord Mountjoy, who described the mood in England. The heavens laugh, the earth exults, and all things are full of milk, of honey and of nectar. Avarice has expelled the country. Liberality scatters wealth with bounty as hand. Our king does not desire gold or gems or precious metals. But virtue, glory, immortality. Virtue, glory, immortality. It's easy to smile, or perhaps, bearing in mind what was to happen, to cry. But either reaction, I think, would be mistaken. For Mountjoy didn't get Henry as wrong as all that. Henry's youthful innocence, his burning desire to be good, might fade almost as quickly as a summer flower. But the ambition, the determination to be great, to make a mark in the world, in a word, to be famous, never altered. And in that, at least, Henry succeeded.