After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Henry VIII's Descent into Darkness

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

He's known as one of history's most murderous kings, but was he always a monster? Or was he acting in ways expected of a king during his time.Joining Anthony as special guest co-host is author and historian Gareth Russell, to explore the theories that support the latter.Did the break from Rome set him off on a violent spiral? Did a fall from a horse in a jousting tournament really start his descent into darkness?! Or is there just no justifying what he did?You can now watch After Dark on Youtube: www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitEdited by Hannah Feodorov and Anna Brant. Produced by Stuart Beckwith.For tickets to see Anthony and Maddy talking about her new book, Hoax, click here: https://www.conwayhall.org.uk/whats-on/event/hoax/Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Looking for more shady and sinister stories, sign up to History Hit. You can join us to explore the tragic life of the Bronties or discover the chilling story of Burke and Hair. Plus, with your History Hit subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe to start exploring the past. At Tyburn, a cart creaks to a halt before the gallows. The prisoners are months from the London Charterhouse, dragged from their cloisters for refusing to recognise Henry VIII as head of the church. Huds are soon pulled back methodically and ropes tightened with choreographed precision.

The crowd watches as the King's Justice unfolds. These men will be hanged, cut down alive and pulled asunder before the gathering public, A warning of what it means to defy a king. During the reign of King Henry VIII, it is said England grew more fearful. Holy men were butchered, his closest friends sent to their deaths, and his queen placed on the chopping block. All this has seen him gain a reputation as one of history's most monstrous kings, but was Henry VIII always a monster?

And it so, did the machinery of the Tudor state create him? Or was he, when all is said and done, no more brutal or ambitious than any other ruler in early modern England? From the dark heart of the Tudor Court, welcome to After Dark. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony and I'm Gareth. And you will have noticed Garth is not Maddie. No. Because Maddie is currently...

No, he confirms no. So Maddie is currently trying to discover the best smoking method for preserving cheeses. and that's what she's doing with her time. And until she returns, which she will, Gareth is one of my guest co-hosts. And we know that you love Gareth and we love Gareth, so we are delighted to have him here. But before we get into the nitty-gritty of this episode,

which of course is going to be Henry VIII in all things dark, or potentially not, I'm going to ask a Gareth question about Gareth. Gareth, I was just saying to you before we started recording, you have right there in Centre, Queen James is his most recent book, but Gareth has written so many books, so many. incredible history books. How did you come to history in such a prolific way? Like, I'm not even just blowing smoke up you now. You really do have such a love and you can tell in your work that the love and the passion is there for this subject. Oh, well, thanks. Very kind. I suppose part of it

was, I mean, I go between different periods very, very broadly. It's early 20th century and then sort of early modern and part of it is a coping technique. After say two or three years, looking at 16th century handwriting, I physically can't bear it anymore. Yeah, it's so true actually. So I go to Fountain Penes and typewriters for my sources.

But also, I mean, I did a book on the Titanic and part of that was that I grew up in Belfast and my great grandparents were still alive when I was born and they could remember seeing it and told me stories about it. And then I loved Sunday school. Like the old of the Bible story we were

being told the better, you know, your exodus, your genesis. It's drama. Absolutely. I was like, is Pharaoh going to let them go? Tune in next week. And so it was all, it was sort of a combination of things. But I loved it from childhood. And then my dad was the reason I got into tutor history accidentally, which was we were

down south sort of Bally Bunyan direction on a summer holiday. And we were talking about the Irish version of summer before we started. And it rained for, for a biblical sounding tale of day. absolutely. Everyone was appropriately dressed. But during one of the re-inded days, RTE, which is the national broadcaster in Ireland, broadcast an old Richard Burton movie, Anne of the Thousand Days. And Dad was a massive Richard Burton fan, put it on. And Genevieve Bejold de Zambolein, I was sold, sold and entranced. It is, it's amazing those little things. And I think like so many people, it feeds back into something that's just, it's potentially innate, but at the same time it's something that's developed in childhood where you're like, like, whoa, this is all of this drama. And I do love the way you move between those time periods. I think it's actually remarkably rare for historians to do it.

And I think we should try and do it more. So it's great that you are able to bring that perspective because it helps in the long view of things, I think. But let's talk a little bit about Henry because the last time that you were on After Dark, we talked about Henry as, and I loved this. I really stuck with me when you said it, that he was a medieval king in an early modern. world, just to kind of grasp that kind of cuspiness of him. Do you stand by that, Gareth? Is that something you, or like, what do you think is, why is that the way that you've nailed him down?

I think it's really, I think it's really pertinent. Well, I do stand back, partly because I think periodization is something that only happens with hindsight. They would not have been aware that that much had changed. But I think when you look at the world that he sees him. himself existing in. And really, foreign policy is the big giveaway that he sees himself as a medieval king. This is someone who's trying to finish and revive what Edward III and Henry the 5th started with their wars in France. But also, I think he's not quite as familiar with

sort of the importance of bureaucracy that his children will be. And that's much more of an early modern thing. So yeah, I think he is, he, 1509 to me, is the last medieval accession. And 1540, 47's the first early modern one. And Henry, somewhere between the two. I think that's really interesting. I know when I did my MA in York and it was early modern, early modern history, something I can't remember the exact title. But we always worked, that early modern period started on the day that Henry the 7th came to the throne. It was 1485 and that was it.

We're in the early modern period. And I remember thinking, God, how can we be so exact with that? And I do think that that messiness of periodization. is really important, especially when you're talking about the Tudors specifically. Totally agree. And I think if you look at, say, the 23rd of August, the 24th of August 1485, no one knows that anything's changed. They don't know that the Wars of the Roses is being buried.

They still see a corpse twitching. And I think for Henry the 7th to me is very clearly, very successful, but very much a medieval king. Elizabeth of York is sort of the perfect and last. Maybe Catherine of Arrigan, actually. but they exist in a world in which the concept of monarchy has not changed that much at all, really, for the Middle Ages. So we're going to talk today about Henry the 8th's darkness,

his monstrosity, his evilness. And we hear this a lot, and we hear this increasingly, right? And eventually we're going to go through in this episode five points at which people have theorized that this was his, the beginning of his descent into darkness. But before we do that, I want to give some stats, and let's talk a little bit more about the kingship idea before we go into this. But I have some stats here in front of me, which is that in terms of his, the numbers of executions that he oversaw in his 37-year reign, we're talking about between 20,000 to 25,000, which equates to about 700 per year.

So this is one of the things, you know, when we talk about Bloody Mary later when she's on the throne, we're like, oh, God, it was her. But actually, we see an awful lot more here. We see the numbers are certainly inflated here. However, it is worth bearing in mind that these numbers, while they are inflated for European peacetime standards at the time, think about Russia or France later, obviously, the following. They don't come close to that. They're actually not necessarily as diabolical as perhaps we have been led to believe. But by European standards, he's by no means the biggest killer. So we're going to talk about these individual potential dissents.

But do we think to start off with there's any point in defending him slightly? And I think it might fit, if there is a defence, right? Yeah. I think it might fit into this idea of kingship that you've been talking about. Like what are kings supposed to do at this period of time? That's a great question. I think that's exactly the way to look at it. So it's interesting you start with France.

with the French Revolution and moving forward into Russia. And there have been quite a few historians that have looked at the idea of state terror and how it develops after 1789. And one of the things that's so insidious and leads to such a body count is the idea that a lot of the new republics created by revolutions in part,

which is kill before they strike. So kill someone for what they are or what they think. And with the exception, I mean, obviously this wouldn't apply to the Inquisition, but within England, with the exception of heresy, that isn't really something that they do in the early modern period. Kings are not supposed to do that. There have been a couple of horrific exceptions, the biggest of which is Edward I expelding the Jewish community in 1290. And then Henry V. 4th onwards introducing the heresy laws. But Henry the 8th is a really interesting example because he, again, slightly has his toe on the kill them for what they're thinking. Yes. And he moves into that.

So one of the things that Henry does is he radically expands the treason laws. And he says that treason is no longer simply in action. It is an almost Catholic theology of treason, which is, you know, when you beg pardon for things that you have done, things you have not. done things you have said and things you haven't said. And so Henry expands the treason in law to be, did you know that someone might be about to do it and you didn't dob the minute? Did you have a treasonous thought in your heart? That's where he starts to move into a much more modern concept of punishing dissent. That being said, if you go back to the figures, they are nowhere near, even as a percentage what we're looking at

for totalitarian regimes that happened later. So a cynic might say that's simply because he didn't have the technology to do it. The technology of murder on a mass scale just wasn't there yet. I'm not 100% convinced by that argument, but it's worth saying. Henry is someone at its core, I think, who cannot handle dissent in any way. And as his reign goes on,

he creates more of it. So what kings are supposed to do is hold the line and to hold everything together. They're not really supposed to be innovative. They're supposed to be stable. God doesn't change. God is where he was. Kings are the pale limitation of heavenly monarchy on earth. You're supposed to keep things ticking over. And so a defence would be if someone is like the serpent in the garden, a traitor within the body politic of the realm, then what you do is you have to strike them. that's the duty. It's just that Henry stretches what the sin is so much compared to his predecessors that that's where I think we see the higher body count compared to he came before him, not he came after him.

Yeah, I think that's really key to understanding the world in which he's operating in. And then just before we get into these five points, does that mean, do you think that with Henry, we're starting to see the seeds of monarchies, anarchical absolutism. That comes to fruition, problematic fruition with the Stuart's generation later. Are we seeing some of that being laid in place here? Absolutely.

I think we forget that the divine right of kings isn't really a medieval thing. In the same way we think of witch hunts as medieval and actually, both the divine right of kings and the witch hunts are products of the early modern world. Kings in the Middle Ages were very much, you know, they were some of God's favorite servants. but they were servants nonetheless and the church outranked them. That was the theory anyway and Henry has quibbles with the theory.

Yes, I think that if you set him in context, monarchy in Western Europe in particular is centralising a lot more from about the 1520s, 1530s onwards. You see that with high rules in Ireland and Wales. And also it is becoming less tolerant

of the remnants of feudalism, any kind of federalism and any kind of regional pushback or dissent. That is something all monarchies are starting to push back very strongly against. So in that sense, he's very much a man of his time. Yeah, I think he's looking to France as well, an awful lot and going and people around him going, what's happening over there? That looks like an interesting consolidation of power and we'll look at that. But, okay, let's talk about some of these pivotal moments then where we often hear historians

or, you know, just enthusiasts of the Tudors talking about, well, these were turning points. And I'll go through them with you and then if you tell me how much stead you put in some of these theories. I'm going to call this first one from the off. I'm not buying into this, but I'd like to hear what you have to say. The first one is the fall from the horse theory. Okay. I think we may agree on this. So we're talking January 1536.

Henry is 44 years old and he is taking part in a jousting tournament and he is thrown from his horse, the horse falls on top of him and contemporary reports say that he was unconscious for around two hours which you know like that that's a lot of time. But the timing of this in terms of how it feeds into Catherine of Arrigan's end of life what happens with Ambulin over the course of the next few weeks and months has been pinpointed to this is this this this changed him this irreparably sent him on a course that he couldn't come back from tell us what happens after the horse lands on Henry how do things

deteriorate and then tell us whether or not you think this is in any way real yeah well if this was say a little cheeseboard of options I would be I would be passing this one back yeah I agree it's it's a little over baked for my taste again I love the drama of it absolutely Absolutely. Absolutely. I love the drama of June and Star Wars too. It doesn't mean they're real. I've never seen Star Wars, you know. It's a pained love affair. There are some brilliant bits. Yeah, do you know what it is what it is? Oh, he knows what it is. Okay, fine. Henry VIII.

Henry VIII. He has a horse on him. He has a horse on him. And he, so the theory is that Henry's jousting in January 1536, he falls from his horse, as many people do. and there is a version that claims, it seems a little bit later, that Henry has the horse that pins him down and that he is unconscious for a prolonged length of time. So the most common people is two hours. People have said half the day. The Duke of Norfolk breaks the news allegedly to Anne Boleyn,

who at this point is pregnant. Some people, including at one point possibly her, thinks the shock of this might have caused the subsequent miscarriage. So the theory is that Henry suffered quite a severe concussion or some sort of damage to his brain that makes that day the sunset of his goodness, which was at best a feeble sunlight beforehand. But anyway, that he got on that horse, Prince Charming and arose a monster. and which I would have to assume would be news to Thomas Moore and Cardinal Fisher and the nuns. Sorry, the monks he had publicly castrated, but I digress.

So the idea that 1536 is the pivot between dark, between light and dark is quite a popular one. I, as my extremely unprofessional grunt of distaste at the start of the segment showed, do not believe it. Because I think, first of all, and most importantly, the source of, are not there to support it. There is nothing by way of eyewitness testimonies within the court that would suggest he was unconscious for that length of time or that anyone around him noticed any real difference. So the idea that the horse caused a shift in his personality that he was unconscious for

it to have caused the damage it would have needed to are both from a circumstantial and source-based approach, dubious. The reason why I don't think it carries any weight is that I, as I've said, he wasn't lovely before. So even if you step away from the question of 1530, was he unconscious long enough, the sources don't back it up and neither does his behaviour.

And I usually don't speculate on why people have certain theories. And I should point that some of the people who believe this do you think Henry was a terrible king. I do think there is a tendency for the 1536 bump to the head theory to be an attempt to excuse him. I think it's often, it's often, often, often, not always, because some brilliant historians give it more weight than I do. But they, I usually see it in the context of this was another tragedy that befell Henry, that actually, you know, he was a great and charismatic and charming king. and then this terrible biological accident happens to him and that's why he becomes the chop and change Henry that we see.

I just say the evidence for it is not there at all. It's one of those things that keeps getting repeated and then it's sort of two plus two equals 306. Yeah, and it does. Yeah. This is a maths podcast just in case you didn't know. One of the things I think as well is there's this circumstantial additional, not evidence, but information

that comes around that, right? Because I think it's the 7th of January that Catherine of Arrigan dies. So it's starting to feel like if you were to buy into this, which I don't, but if you were, that the world around him is starting to crumble because within four months Anne Boleyn is now

being raked in front of everybody and arrested and eventually executed. She miscarries, as you said. It was said that this was a male fetus that she was carrying at the time. And so, it's that kind of, it's too convenient, right? People really want to believe that there is, there's stepping stones to monstrosity.

But I always remember, we have Professor David Wilson on, you know, very early on in After Dark, and he's a criminal psychologist, and he says that when you're talking about people who are extremely violent or who murder or who commit atrocities, stop asking the question why. Yeah. Because if we can never know that why, we cannot find it. And that's an extreme example to apply here. Sure. But I think this is too linear.

I think it's two step by step. It's way too neat. And as you say, the primary sources are just not there. Not there at all. And another, there doesn't seem there's going to be any debate. Just us mutually agreeing with each other. I totally agree on the design. desire for the linear. So one of my, the longer view I take of history and the more I get to see

how people interpret it is, I think people are often trying unconsciously maybe to dim the power of coincidence. Yeah, sure. The terrifying impact that coincidental things can happen. And instead, what they're looking for is here is the sequence of events. Because even if those events are terrible and terrifying, they are less terrifying than the fact that we live in a magic eight ball of, you know, that it's that. Hate it, but love it. Like, it, like, it, welcome to chaos. You can't do anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Life is a smorgasbord of absolute chips. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Here we are. We find ourselves in it, nonetheless. We should really do, I think, sort of like affirmation or life coaching. Just be, oh, no, I'd be really bad at affirmations.

I'm like, I like, listen, guys, just so you know, life is shit. But actually, I think, oh, now we are getting into Africa. But I think there's something freeing in that. Like there's something of it going like, listen, just buckle in and have as much crack you can have kind of a thing. It's like, buckle up. It's going to be a bumpy night. But also, you'll enjoy it a little bit more if you're, you know. I think the other thing I try to say, there's no such person as they.

Like in history and in politics, they want, who is they? There's no they. Yeah, yeah. Everyone thinks they is the other side. Yes. Yes. It's just all of us. Yes, being shit.

Yeah. And on that note, let's go on to the next theory then, which, you know, I think this one's slightly more complex, but I think there's things to be unpacked in it. And this is all around Henry's break from Rome. Yeah. So now we're getting into some things that there is a lot of primary source material going and. And you hinted earlier that, you know, because of this break with Rome, certain things kind of

had to happen or just did happen or in the chaos of the way life unfolds, as we're saying, ended up happening. But talk us through that break and then let us know why you think that that's one of the, or if you think that's one of the pivotal moments at which this dissent might be discernible. Yeah. This is one I think I can get on board with. In fact, I would say it is, the reason I can get on bored with it is it's not really relying on like biological supposition. It's relying on things that very clearly, I think, react badly with his personality. What didn't? But he, so the break with Rome is something that I think ultimately he had hoped to avoid.

I think Anne Boleyn hoped to avoid it deep down. Yes. Really interestingly, when I, there's a book a couple of years ago in Hampton Court, and there's one chapter in it on her, and she was there when the break with Rome happened. And what I found fascinating was she was pregnant at this point with the future Elizabeth, with the first. And Henry took the decision not to tell her that the break with Rome was about to happen and that the Pope had finally ruled in Catherine's favour. And if, because he thought it would negatively impact her health, which suggests to me that right up to the last minute,

she sort of hoped that Clement would do what she saw as the sensible thing. And to Anne's credit, that is because the break with Rome was something that unless you were extremely spiritually invested in the emerging Protestant theologies, you wanted to. to avoid. The scale of it is enormous. And Henry, I think actually far more than his second wife, becomes a sort of enthusiastic convert, not to Protestantism, but to the cause of the break with world. Sure, sure, sure.

Once he starts it, he is all in. And it is the thing that people are saying by about 1540, 1541, he will never negotiate on. And the Habsburg ambassador to London has this brilliant assessment of his personality, which is that once he's left someone, he's never going back. and that includes Mother Rome in this case. So as I'm sure most viewers and listeners will know, the initial detonation is over the end of his first marriage. He petitions Clement the 7th to annul the marriage.

Catherine of Arrigan contests the grounds for it. Clement the 7th is caught between the Chuders and the Habsbergs, which is not a comfortable place to be, particularly since the Habsburgs control most of the land in either side of the papal states. And Emperor Charles V, Catherine's nephew, makes it very clear that he will take a dim view of his aunt being demoted. And they try a lot of things that other monarchs have tried to do before, particularly in France, to sort of squeeze the Pope a bit.

And in 1533, Clement, July 1533, Clement finally, after seven years, reaches a decisioning in Catherine's favour. But by this point, a church court in England has already said the marriage is invalid. And they did have the right to do that within Catholicism at the time. Henry's married Amble. in, she has been crowned queen. It's trying to bolt the stable door after the horse has got, has fled. And so Henry creates almost, by accident as being a bit reductive, but it's reactive to circumstances,

he creates an independent Catholic church in England. Yes. And I think that's a really good distinction, right? That people often overlook, that they often see this as the point at which Protestantism takes over in England. But that's not the case. No, I always, I mean, the person I always like to sort of trot, obviously, the example is Anne Boleyn.

And, you know, take away the Pope and she's essentially quite a good Catholic. People are often, sometimes it looks like you're taking away their hero because they know Anne as the Protestant hero. And that's not to say she wasn't very gutsy and convinced with what she was doing, but simply because she read something doesn't mean she agreed with it. And you see her refusing to support the work, the research of theologians who, who attacked transubstantiation. She continues to believe in praying to the Virgin Mary, Catholic versions of the Eucharist, purgatory, pilgrimage. Her checklist is almost completely Catholic until you get to Rome.

And even then, that's sort of being a choice forced upon her. And Henry is in many ways, actually, maybe a step further in radicalism than she is when it comes to the monasteries. And that's where the two of them really butt heads. Okay. Now, that is the perfect transition point into the next. idea of dissent that we're talking about, which is the Carthusian monks. Now, we're in May 1535 here, and it is, this all feeds into this idea, Garth, that you

were talking about at the beginning of Henry packaging his power almost, and you were talking about ideas of treason changing. We have the act of supremacy swimming around in this general time period. we have the treason act in 1534 and then this is 1535. And so this is where we start to see the mechanics of that, that power shift happening. And again, why there's a certain level of credence to what we're talking about here of this dissent because you can nearly map it in the documentation. So talk to me about the Carthusian monks.

What happens? What goes wrong? And how does this feed into this overall picture of dissent? Well, love it, not what happens to the Carthusian Mon. No, you do. You love what happens to Carthusian. It's your favorite thing in history. Whose isn't?

I would merge those two. And what I would say with turning points is sometimes we have an idea of seeing it as a pivot, when we should see it as a broad arc. So I think 1533, 1535, and then into sort of 36, 37, to me, that is the four-year long turning point. with what you see with the Carthusian monks is really a great example of what the break with Rome was going to do no matter what Henry wanted to do, no matter how much he thought everyone would fall in line. Loyalty to the crown is really, really deep, but for many people loyalty to God will go deeper. It just has to. And particularly if you're a Carthusian monk,

which I am. But of course, well, notoriously. Absolutely. Anthony, the Carthusian monk is your handle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not, and I'm not. Just to be very clear. So, yes, I think with the Carthusians, you see a very public, very brutal pushback against orders within monasticism

who will not accept that Henry has the right to call himself head of the church. So it's even by, you know, the fairly low standards of tutor executions, it's theatrically grotesque. They're dragged through the streets. They're publicly hanged until they're half dead, they're cut down, they're castrated, they're disemboweled and then they die.

Which is why it's not one of my favourite things. No, and it's meant to be shocking, right? Correct. And so therefore it fulfills its function. I mean, it's gruesome, it's brutal, it's violent. But it's meant to send a message. And it does. And it does, which it also feeds back into this thing of going, I'm going to start policing

thought in a different way. But not just thought, because it's allegiance as well, right? These monks are adamant that Rome is their. North Star. Correct. So what you get with this is, I think one thing we can do with the Chudors and the past in general is we over-contextualized horror. So when I'm sure there'll be people watching this who might think, well, actually,

that's just what people did in the time. No, no. Yeah. Castrating and disembarking someone is as horrific a site in 1535 as it would be in 2026. It's supposed to horrify. It's why you burn people. It's supposed to horrify and terrify and persuade people. of the weight of sin, which they see treason as.

So you're absolutely right to say the North Star is Rome. A lot of the people who die in 1535, including Thomas Moore, had accepted that Henry and the Archbishop of Canterbury had the right to end the marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Moore sort of ducks out in Anne Boleyn's coronation probably because he doesn't like her very much, and he doesn't want to be part of this. But he does. There's a letter from him to Henry in which he acknowledges her as the rightful queen. it's the supremacy of the church,

it's the headship of the church that they cannot get behind. So you're seeing a building momentum and a building roll call of potential victims. So why 1535 is interesting is these are sort of the first,

these are the ultra-conservatives to you slightly modern parlance. These are the truly devout. They are falling at the first hurdle. It's a bit like in the French Revolution, it's the ultra-royalists who go first. But it will start to spread out. You know, terror or repression is a hungry beast. It needs to keep feeding. So the Carthusian monks are really the first gruesome shot from the government back to any

potential dissenters. We have taken one of the most respected, one of the most intense and high-profile monastic orders in England, and we have butcher them in the streets of the capital. None of you are are safe. So to me, the crackdown on the monks is even more important than the execution of Moore and Fisher because Henry's sending a message to the faithful of England, which is no amount of religious tradition that would have saved these monks before. Nothing will save you now. Let's talk a little bit about more then in the context of what's happening in 1535. And I think that's a really nice picture to create of almost the monks, although they're separate to society in many ways, They do represent a wider belief system that can so easily be infiltrated and punished if Henry so wishes.

But if we zone in on more specifically, he was the Lord Chancellor of England. This is somebody who's in a senior political and advisory role that's standing side by side with Henry prior to this. What message is he sending politically there to the inner circle, I suppose? What do you think the impact of more specifically is on a smaller scale within the castle walls almost? It's a great point because it's really more is the medieval king and the Carthusians are the early modern one. Because kings have occasionally sent trusted confidants to the chopping block before. And the message it's sending within the castle walls is none of you are safe. If you disappoint or if you step out of line, I will take you down as well.

Now, there had probably, you could make a case he'd done this before with the Duke of Buckingham, is his, they would say, cousin on his mother's side in 1521. But Moore is someone who is internationally respected as is John Fisher. And that's a real, he's executed in the same call as Moore. That's really important because it's sending a message to the court. And it's also sending a message to continental Europe. It's sort of a middle finger to them and saying, I don't care what you think of any of these people. Yeah, there's nobody.

Yeah, and the Pope right before Fisher is executed makes him a cardinal. And the joke is, well, you know, we'll execute him with the barretta on his head then. There's no, nothing's, no amount of external pressure or external regard for Henry's victims will save them. Let's come to probably the most, is iconic the right word. It's certainly most, the most contemporary word, our contemporary word, I mean, the most iconic of Henry's brutalities. That being the execution of Anne Boleyn. Yeah. Now, she would have insisted on us referring to it as iconic. As iconic, yeah. I was going to say, where's he going with this?

Where's he going to say, yes, she would have insisted on it. It would have been her writer. And it was iconic, right? Like, in terms of that literal visual terror that you've been mentioning, this becomes one of those iconic moments. And it just sticks with us. And we've spoken to you about this before. I've spoken to Tracy Borman about this before. And this is a point in history.

that actually has made so many people, fans of history, interested in history. This has been this moment, or the series of moments, has been a gateway into history for a lot of people, particularly young women, I would suggest, well, the gays and young women. And what I want to know is how we've talked already about Thomas Moore being executed. It isn't necessarily that unusual. You could see that that's happening. Okay, the Carthusian monks, this is brutal and it's bloody and it's supposed to shock. But it's not like we couldn't find similar examples of this in medieval Europe or even in England.

Come to the execution of a queen. This is something else, I think. Would you agree? Totally. It's the, to the over contextualization point, because it is such an iconic exit. And listen, Anne has, I think, a real showman's flair. She really does have that sort of, I think she is terrified. But we talked about this last time and people still bring it up.

Her and Catherine Har being like the two different kinds of gay icons. And Anne does seem to have an idea of a kind of old Hollywood exit. Like she's sort of perfect. She dresses perfectly for it. There's no doubt she's terrified. but she, particularly at her trial, it's a performance for the ages. I mean, she is so eloquent and even her enemies are complimenting her on it. She is someone with an immense sense of self.

And she, I obviously didn't want this exit, but if that's what the exit is going to be, there's a great line. It's James Goldman, the author's name, in The Lion in Winter, which is one of my favorite plays. And I think it's either Henry II or Eleanor of Aquitaine in the play says it. When all it's left to do is fall, it matters very much how you do it. and Anne I think is very aware of that and that's one of the reasons it endures but to the over contextualisation point because it's so famous

a lot of people try to diminish Anne's exceptionalism and the exceptionalism of Henry's actions in executing his wife and so when people say that my counterpoint is can you show me another King of England who did it yeah you can't

no you know and to go to Helena sorry Helena to go to to go to Henry the second, Helena would have been a great portmanteau for their couple name. Helena. That's all I wanted to be for me. Oh, Helena. That would be their hashtag.

Yeah. Their couple name on the tabloids. So Helena break up because Eleanor incites her sons to lead a massive rebellion that involves two foreign governments against her husband. And he puts her under quite comfortable house arrest. Like there have been difficult queens before. And difficult usually just means spark. and intelligent, although in Eleanor's case, I will admit, inciting invasion is a little difficult.

But Anne is exceptional. She's a remarkable person, but the real exception in this is Henry, not her. And I say that because he's the one that signs the death warrant. He is the one who takes this unprecedented step. There's all kinds of long-term theories, like, does this lead to the dislocation of monarchy? Does it make it possible for Jane Grey and Mary Queen of Scots and ultimately Charles the first to die? Does it start chipping away at the whole edifference?

very possibly because she is crowned and anointed as his consort. But the deeper thing is that she is the Thomas Moore and the Carthusian lessons merged into one, which is it is both exceptionally unusual. It's played out in front of the public, particularly the trial. The public started to turn against Henry during it. So that's one of the reasons why the execution happens behind the walls of the Tower of London. but it, on the one hand, it terrifies the court in the way that Moore did. Literally none of you are safe.

Like up to Henry, no one is safe going forward. But it also, it takes his, it takes his mania for obedience into an even darker place, a more total space, I think. And one of the great debates of Chitter history is, did he think she was guilty? And I truly believe that he knew that she was. wasn't. I agree. And he gave it away a year later when his third wife, Jane Seymour, is talking about politics and Henry loses his temper and says more than he meant to when he tells Jane that my last wife meddled with affairs of state and look what happened to her. We talked about this a bit in the last time we spoke on Henry. I think one of the reasons why he went along with multiple charges of

adultery was the desire to destroy her completely. But also, to present her as so morally depraved that it wasn't his fault. She didn't cuckled him with one person. It was her brother and a servant in three courtiers. Henry is trying to tear asunder her reputation. And to some extent he succeeded. It took a long time. And even today, you're still talking about Anne,

you have to engage with, did she or did she not do it? So the destruction of Ambelin, I think, maybe isn't a turning point, but it is it's the arrival. I think he reaches the zenith of horror and he stays there. I think as well, one of the things to take from this

is despite those kind of personal, sexual, moral attacks that Henry tries to levy and you could argue successfully because she ends up being beheaded, successfully against Anne, what's very often missed and what's often missed

in the kind of the girl bossification of Anne Boleyn's history is that Anne Boleyn, and you're highlighting it here, Ambelin is an expert in statecraft. Yes. Until that, well, not until that point, including that point. It's what you're saying.

She's on the scaffold, and she uses it as a moment of statecraft that will secure her legacy, whether she can be confident of that and that moment is up for debate. But certainly she knows how to interact with these men. She knows how, I mean that across the court. And in some ways across Europe,

She does have a sense and an aptitude and a talent for politics. And as you say, then this comes back to bite her. And it's used then as an example for Jane Seymour later on. Yeah, I think so. My sense of Ambelin in those remarkable letters at William Kingston, who's her chief jailer at the tar, he writes reports for Cromwell, a lot of which, not all of them, but a lot have survived. And you get a sense of her.

on the one hand her moods really ping pong understandably but there are moments where she seems to think she'll be sent to a convent or this is actually an attempt

to frighten her and she's accepting a divorce offer something and then there are other moments where quite early on in that I mean it's a short imprisonment but she seems to realise that she might die

she oscillates and to me I think that could credibly be someone who is looking on the one hand at the prevailing standard, which is that you don't execute your wife and you don't execute the Queen of England. But there must have been something in her head, I think,

to know he is capable of this. I think those are the two. What is acceptable and what is possible are jostling in her head. And I think she knew him very well. And the fact that she, earlier than other people, thought I might die, tells us a lot of where he has reached by 1536.

Right. as a way of bringing this conversation to a conclusion, then, one of the things I think is often overlooked when we have these general conversations about this moment in time and Henry and Anne and some of the people that we've discussed in the episode is that the court at this time is, I'm being a bit simplistic here, but it's a game to be played within certain parameters.

And Henry and Anne are not the only two, Henry and Moore are not the only two playing this game. And so what I'm interested to know, just as an exit, Gareth, is if you think there were other men specifically around Henry that were enabling this dissent or that were also part of this dissent, if indeed again there was a dissent, is he, because he's the king, he's put on this pedestal, but is there an ensemble here? Yeah, they all are. Yeah, they all are. then James Taff who wrote a book called Courting Scandal, which is a biography of Lady Rothford, Anne Boleyn's sister-in-law,

who was Catherine Hardly in waiting and later executed alongside her. He poses a really interesting question, which is that if you have survived that long in the shooter court, you've had to step over bodies or look through your fingers. Survival, I think anyone who's there

for more than a couple of years after 1536 did enable it. You can absolutely make the case that some of them, I think Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is a brilliant example here, of someone who did it because of very confused and confusing attitudes, on the one hand, devotion to their king, not wanting to weaken the state that could lead to another civil war. But I think at the same time, also a desire to survive and to not fall where the others had fallen. There are many, many men, I think, like Cranmer and women in the Queen's household who just accept,

a new boss quite regularly. That being said, there are some who I think enable it a lot more than others. And to strip away the wolf hole of it all, without question, the great enabler is Thomas Cromwell. Well, I was hoping you,

that's where I was hoping you would go with this, because I agree. And I'm not even necessarily casting judgment there. I am. You are, and you should. Maybe I am too. But it's certainly, I mean, master, master at that game.

Like, it's a bad game and it's, it's, but he plays it really well. I mean, it's sad when the sword strikes at him, but he's the one that sharpened it. Yes. So, and I sort of sometimes, like when Wolf Hall and bring up the bodies in the mirror and the light came out, it felt like everyone was saying, you know, actually, you know, so and so is lovely. I'm like, they're not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that they're not.

They've had a rebrand. Thomas Cromwell was a very dangerous man. And he, if you want to look for someone who is very much of the age to come, it is Thomas Cromwell. Henry's brutality is as brutal but less precise after Cromwell goes. So Henry is still the main culprit here. But Thomas Cromwell is the person who I think enabled the legal apparatus for Henry to keep going and show. him how to do what he did within the confines of the law. There's a really interesting theory about to sort of tie them back together.

And again, it's one of those things that's maybe too flimsy for an article, but you can chat about it. There is a theory that, you know, all of those holes in the case against Anne Boleyn, the fact that she was nowhere near, nearly every adultery, she either wasn't there or the man wasn't there, or they could visibly prove that the palace hadn't been opened. there is a theory that Thomas Cromwell did that deliberately in case Henry changed his mind and decided to pardon her

and then they could say, oh wait, actually, well, we can prove she wasn't there. Wow. I haven't heard that before. Yeah, yeah. And when it was said to me, I was like, that's not, that's plausible. He is that clever. Oh, that's so interesting.

And again, even if it's only, yeah, I know what you mean we can't necessarily write a robust. Well, also, we're not Henry and Cromwell. We can't analyze the inner thoughts. Although, if you're wanting to cast a random Henry and Cromwell, that nobody will be expecting we're both available. Nobody will see that coming. Now, the final question I have for you before we say goodbye, Gareth, is then we've talked about

these potential dissents. I'd like to know if you think there was a dissent or if this is just was writ large throughout the rain. That's number one. And then number two, is the monster then, Henry, or is the monster the position of kingship? To answer in reverse, the monster is Henry. Yes, absolute power or quasi-absolute can do bad things to people, but I think set him in the context of monarchy, even of his own children and his father and his great-uncle Richard and his grandfather, Edward VIII, they all do things that would shrivel the conscience of today. But they don't do a lot of the things that he does. So I think it is him. He is the rot in that particular period of English history. With regards, do I think there was a dissent?

I think the execution of his father's favorite advisors to curry popularity with the people within weeks of becoming king shows that he was always a little bit, let's say, morally acrobatic. I think there is a dissent, but I think he starts off quite low anyway, and then as he gets older, it's like a roller coaster. You're going down and then it goes faster and faster and faster.

So yes, there is a dissent, but it's not a descent from sunshine into darkness. It's more from sort of twilight into darkness. Perfect, after dark material. Listen, thank you guys for joining us for this conversation. That's been really enlightening. And it's, you know, Henry is one of those figures, right, that will always, always attract attention.

Because there is so much that we will never know. And I think there's something about just accepting the messiness of that. And that's what I love about history. And I think a lot of historians do that actually we come, looking for answers, but all you end up with is more questions and there's a real joy in that, I think. If you've enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five-star review wherever you get your podcast. You can also find Gareth and I on social media. I'm at Anthony Delaney History. Garrette, where can I find you? I am underscore Garth Russell. And we will be talking to Gareth over

the next three episodes about all manner of things. We have Titanic coming up. We have, what else do we have coming up? France, Ferdinand. Frans Ferdinand. Archduke, not bound. No, the band. I've made sure it's the band. And we've got something else which I can't remember right now. David Ritzio. Oh, very good that you remember the ball. It's always like you prepared for this. Until next time, happy listening and we'll see you soon.