The Last Days of Henry VIII

Citation

Coleman, J. (2005), "The Last Days of Henry VIII", European Business Review, Vol. 17 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2005.05417eab.009

The Last Days of Henry VIII

The Last Days of Henry VIIIRobert Hutchinson2005Weidenfeld and Nicolson Review DOI 10.1108/09555340510620447

This is a well researched book and beautifully presented. It is full of fascinating details and hard to give once you have started reading it, but, and this is the real question: does it paint too black a picture of Henry VIII? Times were hard and vicious penalties attended any deviation. That might not have been quite so bad had there not been two sides ready to use these penalties at the slightest provocation. The Spanish Ambassador, whose country initiated the inquisition is hardly a good witness to judge Henry VIII's character. The country was beset by plots and Henry was in the middle of it all.

There are several points worth mentioning in Henry's favour. First that in his last speech in Parliament he made a remarkable plea for Christian charity. Hutchinson quotes it: "What love and charity is there amongst you when the one calls the other heretic and Anabaptist and he call him again papist, hypocrite and Pharisee? Are these tokens of charity amongst you? Are these signs of fraternal love between you?" Second, we may note that after the awful treatment of Anne Askew on the rack, Hutchinson describes how Sir Anthony Knyvett, Lieutenant of the Tower, was sent for by Lord Chancellor and ordered to put Anne on the rack, he obeyed but refused to let his men tighten it. The Lord Chancellor and Sir Richard Rich stripped off their gown and did it themselves.

Knyvett went to the King and was not blamed for his action. And third, many measures to improve the condition of the people of England were brought in by Henry VIII's express wishes: the closure of Jack o'Newbury's weaving factory in favour of the individual weavers and laws to ensure that farms were not entirely turned over to sheep for the profitable wool trade, are but two examples.

Of course the treatment of his wives was terrible, but it has to be remembered that he married Katherine of Aragon out of duty because she had been his deceased brother's wife and remained married to her for 20 years. How far his behaviour was personal and how far it was driven by the terrible and bloody logic of the religious struggles of his time is hard to tell.

How Henry VIII is viewed today does still seem to be very much dependent on whether we take a pro-Catholic or a pro-Protestant angle and perhaps it is not too far-fetched to suggest that something of that still lies at the heart of Britain's uneasy relationship with the rest of Europe?

John Coleman