The Tudors: Henry VIII - Character and Aims of Young Henry VIII - Episode 13

This is I Am Stark and in this video we will be looking at young Henry VIII and his character and aims. So first of all we will look at the very early life of Prince Henry. Now Henry only came heir to the throne in 1502 when his elder brother Arthur died. However he had been well educated under the teachings of a group of tutors including poet John Skelton. Here he had studied languages, history, astronomy, arithmetic, several musical instruments and many different sports and it's clear that he was extremely clever when he came to the throne. However after both Arthur and his mother Elizabeth's death in 1503 Henry VIII lived with his father at Richmond where he had his own suite of rooms and a hundred servants. So when Henry VII died Henry VIII came to the throne two months before his 18th birthday. However much of the nation did welcome his arrival especially after he executed both Empson and Dudley for their involvement in the council learned in law which was also disbanded. Now this was the only initial major change however because Henry VIII inherited his father's experienced counsellors and these included Sir Thomas Lovell who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Bishop Fox who was Lord Privy Seal and important advisor and Archbishop Wareham who was also the Lord Chancellor. So there were many different interpretations of young Henry VIII and his character and as he was a young king it was agreed that he was an attractive, flamboyant, chivalrous and skilful. He also desired to be an imperial king and the idea of an imperial king came from the Roman Empire and Henry VIII wanted to conquer large areas of France. Now the only other real monarch who had been able to do this recently was Henry V in Hoffleur and Agincourt. Now although he was a strong king he did also have periods of uncertainty and he left many of the decisions to his ministers such as Wolsey and later on his reign to Cromwell. So this meant that many of the tedious jobs were left to other people while Henry preferred to pass the time hunting, doing sports or attending tournaments and occasionally he would intervene in business however this could disrupt and often affect the quality of the decisions made. So next we will look at the aims of Henry VIII when he came to the throne because Henry's main initial aims were to establish his status among the other European monarchs with the use of marriage, something that Henry VII hadn't really been able to do and hadn't really wanted to do. He also wanted to re-establish the role of the nobility after they had been frozen out in Henry VII's reign and he wanted to establish himself as a warrior king. So in order to establish himself among other European monarchs he decided to marry Catherine of Aragon and although it had previously been discussed, a marriage between Arthur's widow Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII had not been finalised during the reign of Henry VII. Now instead Catherine had been kept in England in conditions that she complained about to her father. Therefore Henry and Catherine married on the 11th of June 1509. Now at first this marriage was a success as is seen by many all through the fact until it was clear that Catherine would never be able to produce a male heir and therefore Henry started to regret this marriage and look towards Anne Boleyn. However we will obviously talk about this in a lot more detail in next videos. So the other thing he wanted to do was re-establish nobility and this was because the nobility had been effectively frozen out under Henry VII and only a few had any influence in politics. Now this changed under Henry VIII who largely reversed his father's decisions because this is mainly because Henry's time was spent with the sons of the nobility playing sports and there was also the nobility who accompanied Henry VIII for his military interventions in France and Scotland, also another thing we will talk about soon. Now this meant that Henry showed early gestures of goodwill towards the nobility such as cancelling 175 bonds and disbanding the Council of London law. However he did show his ruthlessness towards the nobility in 1521 and this was with the Duke of Buckingham. Now in 1520 the Duke of Buckingham, also known as Edward Stafford, was investigated by Wolsey after accusations of discussing the King's death which was seen as a treason. And in 1521 he was sent to the Tower where he was tried for treason in front of Thomas Howard, also known as the Duke of Norfolk. Now he was found guilty and promptly executed for treason. However one of the main reasons why he was executed was the fact that he was a descendant of King Edward III and he held a claim to the throne. Now it's also suggested that Wolsey may have played a part in this downfall to warn away anybody of threatening his power of Cardinal. However this is an early indication that there was a ruthless side to Henry VIII and he was still going to have things his way. So thank you for watching this video and I'll see you soon. Bye!