After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Henry VIII's Murderous Reign

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

Henry VIII was a monarch everyone was excited for, and turned into someone who weaponised his powers for murder.What happened in his life that caused the death toll to suddenly rise?In this episode, Anthony and Maddy are joined by historian and author, Gareth Russell, to unpack the warning signs that led to beheadings, burnings and savagery in the Tudor court.Find out more about Gareth's work: https://www.garethrussell.co.uk/This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign 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.

Hi, we're your host's Anthony Delaney and Maddie Pelling. And if you would like After Dark myths, misdeeds and the paranormal, ad free and get early access, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. He spent his reign carving his will into the bodies of his realm, be it the Reformation martyrs who burned, the scholars who were slaughtered, or the queens he beheaded. Even Thomas Cromwell was fed to the killing machine that he created for Henry. So was Henry the eighth a serial killer, or just a product of a brutal time?

Tyburn, Central London, 1536. A may wind rolls through the crowd as the Carthusian monk kneels, hands bound, lips moving in a prayer, no longer recognised in this land. The rope is coarse, the silence absolute, until the herald shouts the king's will. Henry has torn England from Rome, the Pope and some whisper from God himself.

The monks who once floated above politics in a hush of incense, now dangle over the abyss. The cart jerks, the body folds, the blade's weight. Conscience is treason, and treason has choreography. Hang, cut, quarter, display. Around Tyburn tree, mothers clutch children, counselors take note, and every soul rehearses obedience. If the holiest men can suffer this fate, who is safe? Wives, ministers, martyrs, The scaffold is busy. This is Henry VIII's England, where killing passed as governance

and not even silence could grant you survival. Hello, I'm Maddie. Now, Tudor history is something, I think it's fair to say, we've covered a lot on After Dark. We've done a recent, yeah, we did a recent episode with Philippa Gregory on Jane Ballin, which is very good. You may have heard of her, Gareth, I don't know. I haven't even introduced the guest yet, and I'm already talking to him. You're already breaking the fourth wall? Yes.

So, today, we're going to be talking about the poster boy for. how messed up the Tudors could be. I think it's fair to say. It's Henry the 8th himself. Oh, I thought you meant Gareth. I'm doing it again. I'm sorry to go. Do you know what? We're joined by Gareth. Yes, sorry. We're very excited. Garrette, welcome to after-down. Thank you. What a well-maintiness. I really appreciate it. It's showing my professionalism here. What a grand reveal. It's after lunch, guys.

It is. We've got our sandwiches. It's chaos already. Like, hey, Gareth's here, everyone. Okay, Gareth, tell me this. You spend a lot of time in the Tudor. world. Yeah. What is it that people love about the tutors? Why do we keep coming back and back to them? I think part of it is it's a self-feeding machine, to be honest, because I think once you become familiar with the names, you then can start to have a much more in-depth reaction to it. So people, the six wives are the most famous in this group, but they sort of become avatars for what you see in your life. You know enough about them that you can start to construct

a morality play. So, for instance, people will often pick a team between Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn or Anne Boleyn and Jean Seymour. And when you ask them who their Catherine is, who their Anne is, you might be hearing about two very, very different people. So I think the familiarity sustains the industry in itself. It's sort of that self-generating thing. The other thing is that it is a little bit like the Titanic disaster. It becomes a grand and dramatic example of all of life's big themes with the dull bits cut out. So there's no such thing as a marriage going a little bit south in the Tudor Court. I don't do it by half. No, no. There's no kind of like, you know, I wish you well. Yeah, yeah. This is an amicable

breakup, goodbye. Yeah, when they go low, we go lower. That's that's the theme. Right to the chopping block. There's something in that, you know, sometimes I feed into this when they go low, we go lower a thing. I'm like, go on, let me see what that looks like. Yeah, I mean, sometimes. That's Anthony's playbook. Sorry, Michelle. Anne Belin did it. You're like, the Duke of Suffolk made one bad comment

about her and she was like, totally hear what you're saying huh, and I'm just intrigued about you marrying your son's fiancé right after your wife's death.

Sorry, did I say too much? Whoops. So I'm just going to thrive over here. So they're all messy bitches is what you're saying. Exactly. So, I mean,

if you could do a reality TV show, their confessional straight to camera would have been absolute gold. Why has nobody done that? I want to do the Real Housewives of Hampton Court. Oh my God.

Somebody commissioned that in me. Yeah. And I wanted to you know if you ever watch those shows like Real House as a reality TV, it's usually like, let's play a game that bonds us as sisters, pick up the crossbow and fire it at whichever one around this table has the ugliest child.

That's always something like... He's thought a lot about this. I want it to be Ambelin being like, I would love us to play a bonding game, ladies. Let's drink whoever's child achieved the most. Catherine, Jane, nothing, cool. Just a drink from evening. So I think, I mean, even the fact that you can joke about it,

the fact that there's humor there, These are familiar enough tropes and people that you can buy into it. These are characters we've all spent time. Correct. And I think it is something that even that joke there about reality TV, there's a modernity to it. But the other thing is that it matters. It is, I think the moment, at least now, where we feel the modern age to begin. It moves into something recognizably modern, but still strange enough that it's a intellectual application to go there.

So it has a lot of the ingredients. Oh, intellectual vacation. Just came to me and I'm enjoying it. She just made that, that's very good. There's something very insightful in that, I think, because yes, it's asking questions. You know, it's asking us to explore some of those things, but there's also escapism in the Tudors. Yeah. We overlooked that too easily, I think.

Yeah, I suppose as well, the historic tropes that we have is this idea that the medieval world is just bloody and it's people being bludgeon to death and hacked to death and all of this. And then the Tudor court, yes, it has its brutality. But it has those machinations, that plotting, it has this cerebral element to it, which of course exists in the medieval world too, and any medieval historian will tell you that. But our perception is that that begins in the Tudor period. I completely agree. And actually now that I'm thinking about it, I think absolute monarchy, or in this case quasi-absolute, is cleaner for us to invest in. So once you start to get into the 17th century, you start to get much more complex ideologies rather than factions.

And by the time, you'll know this. Once you get into the 18th century, it is really complex. And there's not the same monarchical shorthand, right, in terms of if you're explaining to any kind of public audience, there's not the same, oh, Georgia Third. People might know, oh, this is the marketing or lost America, but there's not the same.

If you say Amblin or Henry VIII, people are like, yep, I know exactly what that rule looked like. What is a person after? Like, what is a wig? What is a Tory? What's a time? Yes, yeah, yeah. And I think even if you talk about periods in the 18th,

century that are really famous, like the French Revolution, and you're having to say, actually, a royalist and a monarchist aren't quite the same thing. And then there's a Jacob and Azure. Like, it's all very complex. And it's much more in Jernic-Sign. And I think with the Chudors, it is morally complex, but politically simple. And that's what I think allows that investment. You should consider talking about the Chudors more. I think quite good at this. One of the things that I am intrigued by, we're kind of touching on it. So let's go straight to is this idea of the world into which a man like Henry the 8th can become king. What is that world, Gareth?

What does it look like? Why is this all set up to favour him on the throne? I think there is a sense of fatigued relief that the Wars of the Roses or whatever term they were using men is over. And there is that kind of cross-community feeling with Henry and his siblings, that they are the children of both the last. Sprigg on the Lancasterian family tree and Henry the 7th and also the brightest bloom of the York family tree. And people ultimately do want peace. They want this to work. And, you know, in many ways that the kerfuffle between Edward the 5th and Richard the 3rd has swept the board. There isn't a lot of choice left for the Yorkers.

There's not really that sense of let's keep this going for honour's sake. So in that sense, he is a child of peace and people are happy about that. Oh, the irony. the irony. But that actually cuts to it, I think, because one of the big defenses of Henry that I think is an inappropriate, or at least in my view, an unsustainable defense, is that at least the country didn't slide into civil war, which is true. It's a low bar. It's really low. It's like, you know, after, like, imagine White Starline after the Titanic advertising every voyage being like, it didn't say. At least this one didn't think. Chances are, this one will be okay. Statistically, you're fine. Like, the bar is that low. And also, if you go to the people of the

north in the 1530s or Karagagunnel in the south of Ireland, also in the 1530s, and ask them to tell the difference between a civil war and what he's done to them. I mean, it's not really going to be that different. In fact, they probably suffered more than they would have under the civil war because the civil war tended to target the upper classes in terms of its body count. I think that cuts to why there is such relief when he comes to the throne in 1509, because it's the first since 1422 that has been completely uncontested. That's a lot. almost certainly there is no one alive

and you can remember Henry VIII becoming Henry the 6th simply so it is the last time the English monarchy has worked as it is intended to work so Henry the 8th almost seems to be

bringing back those halcyon days of Henry the 5th and Edward the 3rd and the glory days of the monarchy passing as it should whether that was accurate or not is by the by

that's how it is perceived and then from Henry the 6th onward it's been sort of passed the parcel almost when it happens. And so Henry the 8th comes to the throne on a wave of adulation and relief and also money. So Henry the 7th is a very astute businessman and probably overly astute, but he also, he is clever in using a lot of the financial advisors of Richard the 3rd and Edward the 4th to create fiscal and financial continuity. So the monarchy is solvent,

which is pretty much every Tudor monarch and all of the Stuarts will discover is no small task to achieve. So he's rich, he's young, he's good-looking, he's of uncontested legitimacy. So he arrives ostensibly as Prince Charming. But what I think, I mean, everyone has their view on this. I think that creates another chimera. I think that's another mistake because I think we sort of treat Henry VIII the bit like the French Revolution, the years of light, the years of dark. Everything's going really well, and then it isn't.

And it's the fall from the horse in 1536. I do not believe that is correct. Yeah, we have these kind of slightly mythological beats in his story. Yes. Taking this idea that he's this kind of charismatic Prince Charming at the beginning and whether or not he has other traits within him at that moment that already exist. How do we go? This is no small question.

From this hopeful new monarch that everyone is excited for, that is bringing this idea of the sort of golden days that have passed and all this and bringing all these these these potentials to the throne how do we go from that to someone who is weaponizing the tools of the state for his own purposes it's that's a pretty remarkable transformation and if we don't have those traditional beats like the fall from the horse in your view what what does that look like that narrative arc I suppose yeah that's a great way to put it it's an arc yeah I don't think there is a Rubicon or a Berlin Wall or however you want to phrase it. I don't think

there's a point where the light becomes dark on the sunsets. I think we're watching. I don't think the sun's ever that bright, to be honest, under him. I think you only have to look at some of the warning signs really early on. So the first in 1510 within a year of becoming king is the execution of two of his father's most unpopular advisors, Epson and Dudley. And they were not fuzzy and cuddly men, and they had been knee-deep. in Henry the 7th's increasingly unjust taxation policies, but they had been following orders from Henry the 7th, and Henry the hit throws them to the wolves to bolster his popularity.

I mean, what they had done were his father's orders, and he sort of absolves the dynasty by sacrificing these two men. So the propensity towards legally questionable savagery is there from the get-go. The other thing that I think is a wound he carries is that he has played like a fiddle in the first five years by his father-in-law, King Ferdinand, and by the Habsburg Emperor Maximilian, who are more intelligent asleep than he is awake.

And they kind of trick him into very expensive wars and the continent he gets involved. He thinks it's going to be the second coming of Henry V. And what they do is they make him bring the English army in, use it as a distraction, get what they want out of France, and then leave him to face the cost and ruin alone. And it's really not until this brilliant Oxford graduate father, almost Woolsey rises through the ranks in one of those wars and becomes his chief minister, that we see a wall being built around Henry and one where he becomes a lot more careful about

who he trusts, but also I think he doesn't take the right lessons from having been played by his father-in-law and emperor Maximilian. I think he always wants to prove that he actually was cleverer than them. And you see the wrong lesson is taken from it. We should be starting to see us stripping away those mythological beats that you mentioned, one of which is his first marriage. And this idea that it was a blissful romance and he was so in love with Catherine of Aragon

and people will tell this story of him dressing a Sir Loyal Heart and you know, jousting in her honour. He was one of a cast of seven. They all had names like that and they all picked ladies to joust for. There's not actually a huge amount of evidence that he's ever besotted with Catherine

of Aragon. It's that she's the perfect queen for this period. She's very elegant. She's internationally connected. She manages to weather pretty competently the storm that comes when her father humiliates her husband. But to be honest, I think he's from the get-go, prickly about his reputation, reactive, impulsive, and also, I don't think he is anywhere near as bright. I think he's an averagely intelligent person. I totally agree. So we're going to come to the wives and we're going to come to some of the ways in which Henry's leanings, or limits, actually, based on what you're saying. Influence, attack, shape the histories of these women. But before we get there, let's talk about the Reformation specifically.

Give us some background about what is the Reformation on the ground in England at this time. How is that taking place? And then who are some of the casualties? Beyond the wives, we'll come to them separately, but wider societally religious institutions, etc. Who are the casualties under Henry at this time of that reformation. Well, to Maddie's earlier point, I actually think if I'm looking for the moment, the fall from the horse for me is actually the reformation. That's interesting. I think all of those ingredients that we've talked about are there. And I think at his core, he cannot handle disobedience or embarrassment. And after 1531, 1532, really, he embarks upon a policy that is guaranteed to generate a substantial, indeed unprecedented amount

of disobedience and pushback, and that's when you start to see the body count really beginning to rise. And it's before the fall. I mean, it's really the Carthusia monks who start to pay the most brutal price early on. One of the most exciting books, I think it has come out recently is James Clark's History of the Dissolution, and it's a tomb. It's a chunky book. But one of the things that he exposes in this is almost more blood-chilling than the official narrative,

which is that there was never a plan to shut all the monasteries down in one go. it was an engine that no one was driving. And it just gathered... That's more worrying. Absolutely terrifying. And that, yes, there were people around him like Thomas Cromwell, who rises to sort of replace the defunct Woolsey,

but who were keen on the dissolution of the monasteries to put it mildly. You have a second wife, Ambulin, who turns very strongly against them. But that almost corroborates further the theory that it just becomes, again, a self-fulfilling machine. So the Reformation initially starts with being presented,

not as a revolution, but as a restoration. The suggestion that the Vatican had usurped the authority that the so-called donation of Constantine, the first Christian emperor, that had given the Vatican supremacy over the other parts of the church and over kings was a forgery, which in fairness it probably was. And that, in fact, if you went back to the early days of Christianity,

the alliance between throne and altar, church and monarchy, monarchs had played a huge role in it. Constantine had gone to the Council of Nicaea, Justinian had been involved in Chalcedonian, So the argument put forward is actually incredibly conservative, or at least reactionary, which is that... And it's very, very clever. Very, very clever, which is actually we're not Protestants, we are restoring. And that's a theme that runs through Christianity, restoring the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And that is something that they present themselves as doing. But once the legislation goes through and the Pope is sort of demoted to simply being a bishop, the bishop of Rome, and the king is in nominal control of, of the church within England, Wales and Ireland, then it becomes open to what is the Church of England. And initially it does seem to be that the plan is for it to be Catholic. And the first victims are to use sort of modern parlance on the right of the Catholic Church in England. It's the Carthusian monks who cannot in good conscience accept that Henry has the right to usurp the headship of the church. And the other two victims of that are the former Lord Chancellor Thomas Moore and Cardinal John Fisher, who had been very close to Henry's grandmother

and to his wife. And interestingly, if you look at Thomas Moore's personal private writing, he has no problem accepting the King's marriage to Anne Boleyn. He excuses himself from the coronation, probably on the grounds of the Archbishop's schism with the Vatican. But he does refer to her as being really anointed queen, and he prays for the safe birth of her children. So it's less about the demotion of Catherine of Aragon and more for the truly devout that they cannot accept. the break with Rome. Initially, though, there is not, if you look at 1533, 1534, there is no uprising in the Pope's favourite. The behaviour of the faithful is, well, we'll get on with it. And actually relinquishing the Vatican is not a totally unpopular move. It's when it starts again

to mutate and change. And this is what you will see going through revolutions and progressive causes throughout history. There are points at which people will go, actually, this is as far as I ever wanted to go. It's going too far. And you start to, to see that with the attack on the monasteries. And there are certain elements that are much more popular with the people. So that the two that really seem to be points of no return are veneration of the Virgin Mary and prayers for the dead. But just below that transubstantiation and the monasteries. And if you go to places like fountains, you'll see just what an enormous social and cultural unit they were. It's one of those things that is so omnipresent the monasteries that

you don't notice how much they're there until they're not. Yes. So when that starts to change, then you begin to see massive fracture lines. And the executions that he's ordered in 1534 and 1535 are, I can understand why Catholics regard them as martyrdoms. They are points of religious principle. Moore and Fisher are beheaded that the Carthusian monks are publicly torn limb

from limb by being hanged drawn and quartered. So those are notorious and tragic, but they are contained. it's really after 1536 when you start to see a geographical bent coming to this and the north in particular of England saying this is too far for us and we're not going to support the ripping apart of the monasteries that you begin to see massive, massive pushback against his policies with the Pilgrimage of Grace uprising.

And that's where the numbers begin to really rapidly rise. And I do think you see, by his own standards, what Henry does is morally appalling because he lies through his teeth. you know, he summons the leaders to court and says, I really want to hear everything that you're, let's talk about this. His third wife, Jane Seymour, is wheeled out as sort of the charming first lady to trick that, whether she knew or not, we'll never know. But certainly the charm offense was put on at Christmas 1536. The rebels dispersed thinking they're being heard. And then Henry sends a flimsy pretext his men north to brutalise it. And it's that and the Kildare

rebellion that you see in South, Eastern Ireland, at the same time that you see Henry sent out genuinely unprecedented orders, which is kill the women and children as well. You read the letters he sends the Duke of Norfolk and Suffolk and the letters he exchanges with Lord Gray, I think, Lord Gray and he becomes, the Lord Deputy in Ireland. And they're bone-chilling. I mean, it is unprecedented the lengths he goes to when those big rebellions, one in Ireland and one of the north, that rise up against him. And of course, there are multiple motivations in them. but ultimately at their core they are religious in motivation. What is the reaction to those at court around Henry, his advisors, the people who he's giving orders to,

who are then going and carrying out these atrocities? How do they view him as a monarch in this moment? Are they reading those letters thinking, excuse me what? Or are they just thinking that's the king? We're going to do what he says. This is all fine. We have religion and morals on our side. This is okay.

What's the situation there? That's a great question. I suppose the answer is unknowable, but it does tap into something broader about how does he hold on to the throne. So the scale of Lord Kildare's rebellion in Ireland and the Pilgrimage of Grace in the North of England are massive, particularly in the case of the pilgrimage of grace, it's the largest rebellion against the Tudor's by quite a distance. And ordinarily, it should have been enough to push the monarch off his throne. Can I just say this is so interesting to me that we don't discuss this when we talk about the tutors. We're so focused on the romances and the thought and all that that this doesn't register. It's really hitting home with me as well. as not as a Tudor specialist, but going, actually, this is why I should be interested in this more than I'm led to believe, yeah. Well, that's interesting that this is sort of anecdotal.

But I remember about 20 years ago, was it? There was a two-part mini-series that came out with Ray Winston as Henry the Year. Oh, yeah. And I had Helen the Bonham Carter as Ambulin and Emily Blunt as Catherine Hart. It's very good. They're excellent. Great casting. I know.

That was her first big role, Emily Blunt. But they had Sean Bean, as Robert Ask. And I think it was episode two. Yeah, Amblin was episode one. So episode two, it was the first one recently that showed the Pilgrimage of Grace. And one of the reviews said, I've read many Trudor books and they've just made up a rebellion. That's how little it got reported on. Wow.

And so the Pilgrimage of Grace and the Kildare Rebellion in Ireland, they are huge. They're really, really big. And I would say the Kildare Rebellion deserves its own book because it's the first of Ireland's sectarian tensions. It's the first time you see that taking precedent with the Pilgrimage of Grace in the North. The reason why he is not nudged off his throne, or at least clipped in the way, say, Henry the 3rd or Henry 6th had been by rebellions, is the aristocracy don't break rank. Or if they do, it's individually. So it's Kildare kind of acting on his own.

The Earl of Warman doesn't get involved. It's some of the minor lords in the North. It's not the Duke of North. And it usually doesn't unwell for them. Correct. So had the aristocracy broken right. this could be a very, very different story. So then you go into hypotheticals or maybe just sort of whimsical wonderings, what is it? And we're back to, I think, this is so speculative

for my part. I'm sure listeners and viewers will align me it. We're always doing this on this podcast. It's fine. I think the most unquantifiable thing in history is charisma. And you cannot explain it. I mean, remember Jack Scarsbrick, who wrote a brilliant academic biography of Henry the 8th. He said, you'll never really understand Anne Boleyn, except to understand that she obviously had charisma seeping out of her fingertips. Yeah, she's it. Yeah, that's it. She had, some people have it. Henry VIII, I do think must have had it, or whether it's Stockholm syndrome, whatever it is, there is something in these people at court that they don't break rank. And they are aware that he's not, this myth that generates itself, that he was incredibly popular. I mean, when I wrote a book

in his fifth wife, I had a, I love doing this to the politics, the start of the 1540s and the 1830s, because of what you said, which is that we don't hear about it. It's really messy and it's fascinating. But a lot of the reports that the Privy Council were receiving were saying some things like if the king knew men's thoughts about him, his heart would quake. So the informants coming into court are saying there are jokes about the royal family, so the Prince of Wales, the Future Edward the Sixth. They're saying, oh, he'll grow up to be just like his father because he murdered his mother by being born. So like the first murder, they're all these quite dark jokes. And English public. politicians or privy councillors, I should say, who are abroad when Henry the 8th dies.

One's in a pub in Italy. And you don't expect in deepest Catholic Italy and Berlin to have become a folk heroine, but they're coming up to him and saying he slaughtered poor Queen Anne. He's become notorious throughout Europe. So the world beyond the palace walls, I think, sees him in one way. And the world within sees him in a very different way. And it's this sort of bone-chilling obsequiousness that they all have. And again, there's that you see this even in.

you know, some regimes throughout history where it's sort of, I mean, having been really pseudo-flippant here, but it's a bit like an abusive relationship where he gives them enough, I mean, they're falling over themselves to win his approval. And he can turn like that. There's almost something pathetic about the way they live for his smiles and his charm and then they live in terror. I think an abuser is a really good way of putting it. And I think something you said earlier, Gareth, about he's kind of middling intelligence, actually. And I think that's fascinating because I'm always interested in the people that we come into contact in the past, you know, as historians we spend so much time with in the archives, whether it's a monarch or a lowly farmer or whoever it is, and actually being able to access who they were and what they would have been like to be in the room with. And I think Henry's one of those people where because he's so contradictory and because we have such contradictory views of him as this monster.

but also this charismatic, handsome young man who wooed all of these women and everyone was falling over themselves to get his approval. That really interests me, this idea that he is charismatic but not very clever. And that that actually is a sort of a winning combination. For a lot of dictators in history, actually, a lot of men who are abusers, actually. That's the combo. Well, yeah, I mean, that regime, the kind of government that he creates, You talked earlier about the weaponisation of the apparatus of the state.

It is important that we, you know, I think that there can be a bit of present to us naval gazing where we try to make everything applicable. And, you know, he isn't, he isn't a tyrant. And the reason why I would say he isn't is that he really doesn't actually go over the boundaries of parliament, which is one of the big litmus tests off it. Parliament, for their own reasons, I think, tend to be more obedient than they probably should have been. and when you have kings who don't have charisma like James the first

yes literally who's coming to mind poor James he was like and he makes this I mean I did a book on him recently and I remember excellent thank you very thank you very much do go and buy this yes yeah great cover great title fantastic thank you very much

but I swear at one point was like I kind of am getting on the divine right of king's side here because essentially his complaint was I am the first king in God knows how long he's had a family, so I have to pay for them. I'm spending just about as much as Elizabeth the first did in herself. You not once asked these kind of difficult questions to Elizabeth and certainly not to Henry VIII. And they were more difficult with Elizabeth because she was a woman and they could press on the marriage point. You didn't really have to press that with Henry the 8th. But with Henry,

they don't ask difficult questions about, well, how have you blown through all the money from your father and then all the money from the dissolution in the monasteries? And you're still coming to us for more. So there must have been a charisma there. But he also, to the middling intelligence point, he's not stupid. But he's not, he's certainly not intelligent as his son or his youngest daughter. And I don't think he was as intelligent as his elder daughter either. I think the children were all more intelligent than he was. If you read Sartio Septim Sacramentorum, his defense of the seven sacraments, it's fine. It's, but it's sort of just regurgitating everyone else's views. It's not. Yeah, it's quite transcriptive. Yeah. It is. It's a really. It's a real. really, it's like, don't make it look like you copied my homework. Yeah. Changed a few words. Yeah. And, you know, and the Pope is grateful because it's useful, not because it's brilliant.

I think with Henry, he's also for a long time masked by the people around him. So he, his first two wives were both charismatic and both very intelligent. And he clearly resents that. And they are, you know, he doesn't, you know, his sixth wife is extremely intelligent. intelligent. But the next four are not on the same level when it comes to outshining him, which I think Catherine and Anne had done on more than one occasion. He think there's a deliberate choice by him. I do. Or as deliberate as the impulse to fall in love can be. There is a good piece of evidence so that it's not too speculative, but there is a

good piece of evidence from an argument he had with his third wife, Jane Seymour, when he said that his second wife had lost her head because she disputed too much over the affairs of the realm. So in that moment, he not only accidentally admitted that he knew Anne Boleyn was innocent, but that essentially she had been too clever

and that he had taken matters into his own hands and she talked back. So I do think there's a good... And what a chilling thing for Jane to read and be like, oh, I'll be quiet then. Absolutely. Do you know what? I mean, keep quiet and hope for better days. You've spoken about a lot

that has got me thinking about the tutors in a way. I haven't necessarily thought about them since probably my undergrad days because actually you forget the nuances, especially once you enter into public history realms and you're talking about the Tudors, it can become very wife-heavy.

Because the same stories are rehearsed all the time. But actually, you know, I remember talking about some of these things at undergrad and being, this is why I loved Tudor history at that time, actually, because the nuances and the complexities are, they're all there. But you're talking about, you know, this idea of bone-chilling.

And I love that as the way you phrased it because I think it's very easy to say, tyrant or evil or whatever it is, but actually to internalize that a little bit more and to then think about it in terms of the other wives that are following the first two and know what the stakes are. But what is striking me even more is that Henry comes at a point which James, six and first doesn't benefit from this. Henry's coming at a point where there is this transition. You talked about we're coming into almost a sense of modernity or something we recognize. But there's also something of the medieval king about him here too, right?

you know, we're talking about fields of blood, we're talking about power through coercion, we're talking about physical violence. And these are threads that although we're not as present in Henry's reign, he still seems to use as threats or as things to, I can take your head off because they did. And that's not weird, because this is the legacy that we come from. Whereas I think by the time we get to James, he doesn't have access to that medieval threats anymore. So I'm just wondering, we moralise around Henry a lot, don't we, where we go, tyrant, all of these kind of things. Do you think it's because there's anything in this idea of him sitting between these two periods and straddling them? Is he the last medieval king? Is he the last medieval and the first

modern? You know what I mean? Does that allow him a, grace is probably the wrong word, but an elasticity that later kings are definitely not afforded. I hadn't thought of it that way, and I think you're right. So I think the history of the modern world is the push and pull. to some extent, it is the story of the push and pull between government by the many and government by the one. And also the curse, the benefit, the debate over strong man government. That runs through the modern period as much as ideology does. And so Henry, in many ways, is the avatar of the strong man. And a narrative was created around Bluff King Hal, which presented him as a great example of strong man government. And it fed into that myth, which is actually to make the omelette, you have to

break a few eggs. There will have to be bodies in the wake in order for the greater good. And what is never asked is, or seldom asked, I should say, is, but were those eggs the ones he needed to break? So once you move away from him being the last of the first or the avatar and just go into that period with him, all of a sudden, what it becomes is a fascinating, sticky, unnecessary mess. And all of the things that he did achieve, i.e. no civil war and preventing foreign invasion, or at least in the case of the Scottish invasion, defeating foreign invasion in 1513, all of those things that he achieved certainly could have been achieved with a much lower body count. So at that point, you step away from him as the strong man. Or, if you're still

inclined to see him that way, it asks really interesting questions about the strong man in government, is that is strength necessarily justified by savagery or in order for someone to win, must somebody else lose? That's the question that I actually think Henry, in a strange way, does answer, which is, this is how you don't to do it. Yeah, it's a tricky old Meyer, isn't it? He's a complex man, and of course he is, because it's one of the reasons, again, why he endures. If he was very black and white, he wouldn't endure. Correct. But because of this complexity, he's there. Something that you said earlier, about him, especially early on, feeling threatened or undermined or unmanned in some way, whether that's by the intelligent

women in his life or whatever it is. I'm thinking about Smith's other, the other casualties of his reign, I suppose, and particularly Berlin and Catherine Howard, who are two wives, he obviously has killed, but also Cromwell as well, who's his, you know, very close advisor and sometime good friend. How should we read those? Are they people who ultimately humiliate him or threaten him in a way that makes him feel small, and therefore it's reactionary to have them killed, is it that he sees their behaviours as betrayals and therefore that's how he legitimises it in his own mind? In terms of Henry's own psychology, if we can ever access such a thing, what do you think is going on with those, those three in particular who are, they stand out

as particularly brutal and tragic moments in the story? So that's interesting. I think I would actually start with a fourth that I think is a good introduction to those because this person wasn't, people weren't just close to him, but there's an element, there's a whiff of what Henry will do. And it goes back to what we were talking about with the Kildare Rebellions. So dashing Silken Thomas Fitzgerald, so-called, because he's the best dressed man in Ireland. We grow up with him, by the way. He's one of the ones we know of. Yeah. Nice. So Silicon Thomas leads the Kildare Rebellion. And I think if memory starts each five uncles, I might have the numbers wrong one way or the other. I think two back the government

and three back him or three back the government and two back him. Anyway. Kildare is given the same deal the pilgrimage of grace leaders are which is all is forgiven come to London and explain yourself and he brings the uncles and Henry then kind of ritually humiliates them

because he has them all condemned to death for treason but despite the fact that Silken Thomas is the Earl of Kildare and Asan Earl should be beheaded he has tied on a hurdle along with the cousins and dragged to the streets like a common criminal oh Henry's a petty bitch Petty bitch and hanged alongside all of the uncles, the guilty and the innocent, the loyalists

and the rebels. And it is partly to decimate the house of Fitzgerald, which has been one of the great houses in Ireland. But I think the inclusion, that the figures there are yes, the humiliation of Silicon Thomas, but the really interesting one are the uncles who backed Henry. And they are still knocked over as collateral damage. And I think you can see that with people like Henry. That tells you so doesn't who Henry is. That's why I always try and tell. So you look at, look at Silicon Thomas, not just because he's a great, horrible, overlooked example. And you can see this. It runs through everything. So when you go to the downfall of a second wife in 1536, how can Henry throw one of his best friends, Henry Norris, to the wolves with her? How can he throw Thomas Cromwell, who has been a

friend, who has been a close advisor? And why is it that when it comes to Catherine Howard, he is easier on Thomas Culpepper, who looks like he wanted to sleep with her after the marriage, but is more brutal to Francis Durham, who he had slept with her before the marriage. There is all of this culture of him humiliating and degrading and destroying before or after. So it isn't done to him. There's something there. And psychology and every, we're all a messy bitch, but... Talk face off. But I think, I know the Goldwater standard is an important thing, and in my books they try not to, because I I can't. I'm also not trained in psychology. But part of the joy of doing things like this is that

you can't. You can. Yes. Do you understand the viewer and listeners intelligence in allowing it to just be a thrown-out theory? I know this word is tossed around far too much today, but there is something of a narcissistic rage attack there. Oh, yeah. I don't want it anymore. Yeah. So I am going to destroy it. And I think there's something. No one else has allowed it. Correct. It was my toy. It's going away. That's it. And I think when I, you know, Henry Norris, for instance, refuses to do what Henry wants him to do, which is admit that Anne had come on to him and that they had slept together

and basically provide the evidence they need to condemn Anne. So he says, well, you'll die with her then. So that's, again, the test of loyalty. And I think there's something, I don't know if this is the right phrase I have on my head, but something like an implicit truth, which I think a lot of narcissists have or manipulative people have,

which is, I know Anne Ballin deserves to die because she's disappointed me, but I know that you, won't accept that reason so I'll give you a reason why she deserves to die and it doesn't really matter because the truth

the implicit truth will get there which is that she'll be dead that runs through his reign and when I worked in the biography of Catherine Howard one of the things that I came away with

so forcefully as an impression was there is no truth in the suggestion that Henry was bounced into making that decision Henry pushed for her death even when the House of Lords

were questioning in January 15th 42, we don't know if what Queen Catherine has done justifies the death penalty. Henry says that he wants to torture her to death with his own sword. Henry is the one who authorises torture and Francis Duren to be used after he's condemned to get more information out of him. There is a kind of gattling gun of depraved, humiliating tactics being fired against everyone. And the other one that I would say where you see this that doesn't end up with a body count, but is equally revealing of the mental inspiration behind it

is his fourth wife, Anne of Cleaves. So if anyone has ever read the detail Henry goes into to justify the annulment of the marriage. It's so humiliating. Her vagina is slacks. She stinks. Her breasts are droopy. Her breath.

He really is. It's vile. And it is so unnecessary. And even by the standards of the day, by the way. Correct. It's vile and unnecessary in the standards of the day. People are embarrassed. Yeah.

And it's like, Henry, look to yourself. Yeah, and also he hasn't read out in front of the ecclesiastical tribunal consisted of 239 men who had to sit and listen to that per Anne of Cleves. I mean, that is just humiliation on another level. And he does this. There is a humiliation kink, I think, that he has, that pushes a lot of this stuff forward. So when you're looking at those executions that you brought up, I think it is Henry Smash.

I think that's kind of that that's what he wants to do, and he will do it. We recently did an episode on the most evil, kings of medieval Europe or something like that. Henry doesn't quite qualify for that because of the time period. Nonetheless, we spent time talking about three different figures and it was, you know, pretty gruesome stuff. Listening to you now, I think Henry is even worse than some people who had a much bigger body count, like Vlad the Impaler or something, but the kind of psychological approach, again, I know we're speculating around that somewhat such as the want of the podcast. Yeah, again, to come back to the, I think it's so apt, this bone-chilling thing. And it's so

easily overlooked with Henry, because again, you've said this before, Gareth, about this avatar-like appearance that a lot of these tutors take on, where they almost become those, you know those fashion dolls you can cut out of things and stick the clothes on. They start to become that, the wives especially, but him too. And it's a bit like, the king who beheaded his wives. And actually, it's so much worse than that. That's bad enough. But it's so much worse than that when you kind of get down into it. We grow up and we are told and we're left with this impression of his daughter, his oldest daughter of Mary, it's bloody Mary, and we've spoken about this before. And we know that his body count is much higher than hers. But in terms of

destruction, both of life and of institution and of moral and societal, you know, ways of being, how bad do you think, is bad the right word, how destructive do you think Henry is compared to the kings that went before and came after. Substantially. I think let's let's acknowledge his incompetence as well, which doesn't ever, there's this idea that he was a brilliant king apart from the wife murdering, oops, which is just not the case. So I, you know, when people, they'll talk, they'll try to justify, you know, ambulance, kept her mouth shut, Catherine should have learned from Anne, which is interesting. Let's have a look beyond the palace walls at what he did. I love. I love. of the story of his wives. I'm not one of those people who tries to say, let's not look at it. I think it's

one of the history's most brilliant stories. But it's not the whole story here. So let's have a look at the economy with rampant inflation and the coin is being debased time and time again. The monarchy is hemorrhaging money. He leaves massive debts to his children. He's wildly extravagant. You have the letters from Thomas Cromwell saying, sir, we don't need 55 palaces. The upkeep is insane. he pushes and pushes Scotland into becoming an enemy, which it hadn't been at the start of his reign. He leaves England diplomatically isolated because he doesn't find relationships to replace the ones with Catholic Europe that he's lost. There is no stability in foreign policy whatsoever. He messes up the Crown of Ireland Act. He forces through the surrender and regret policy with the Gaelic nobility in Ireland that arguably is the first scattering of the seeds that you and I were harvesting when we were born in the 20th century. So you have all of that.

You then have this myth that he founded the Navy and it all went super well. It's underfunded. That's the reason the Mary Rose is sitting in a museum. Because like everything he did, rather than invest in proper long-term solutions, the Mary Rose had too much stacked on top of it to make it look impressive and then it capsized. That's Henry all over there, right? It's the perfect metaphor. It's exactly.

And then Per Catherine Parr sitting next to him being like, this is going to be a rough couple of weeks. And also the sort of pseudoactive union with wheels is handled badly as well. I don't see a competent king. I see someone who in many ways was saved by the sophisticated bureaucracy, the structure in the counties and the gentry, and the love of stability. I mean, let's be very clear. There's one couple of threads that run through the English national character. And one is an innate small sea conservatism. And what I mean by that is, you know, even I would say people on the left in Britain are small sea. conservative. And what I mean by that is you have to really push them before they will willingly cause havoc or they will overturn stability. And that's why, you know, I sort of more critical of Charles the first than I was when I started my career. Because I think you have to push the English to be mad, mad. The English in particular are an excellent passive aggressive nation. You could argue you're seeing that now. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think

that he is saved by the fact that his people don't really want to rebel. They're pushed to. And there's a massive one in 1536 and 1537. But the South stays pretty loyal. And all of this around him, I think, endures, despite his best efforts. He's not a disaster to himself in the way that say Richard II is, or Charles I. But he is unnecessarily aggressive. He rips the monasteries out and doesn't replace them with anything either. I mean, there's a lot of Henry smash, not Henry build. There's a new plan. That's in a nutshell, there is no. That's in a nutshell, there is no plan. And so he's not really a strong man. And that's the scariest thing about him. That's the most, I mean, I remember working undergrad, like the start of the first world war. And when I realized that

both the Kaiser and the czar thought the war was a terrible idea, and I was like, oh my God, there was no one in charge of this. Like, we got there and at least three of the heads of state involved knew it was a bad idea. And to me, that is Henry VIII in a nutshell, which is there was no plan. It was all impulsive and reactive and prickly. and thin-skinned. So I don't know where you would put him on the evil meter, but I certainly would not be putting him on the great meter. I don't think he deserves to be in the top 20 of the country's best monarchs

by a considerable margin. Gareth, this has been an absolute delight. I feel like we could talk for several more hours just about Henry VIII. If people are living under a rock and don't know where to find your work, where can they do so please? Well, my website's gareth russell.com.uk. and I'm also pretty active on the Holy Graham. So underscore Gareth Russell.

You are very active on that. You do some great thing. I know, but I wasn't. I was so bad. Did you get told by an agent you need to pick? We've all had to be fun good at us. I think the best comment I got from someone I worked with was, sorry, do you have a camera on your phone? You're like, time to change my way.

I was like, I promise that I will use it. What? Yeah, no, I, you know, I think it's a useful thing to let listeners, viewers on YouTube or whatever know that as part of being a historian now is being well enough versed in social media like to whatever every single time I do anything I forget to I forget to take any pictures every time I film TV I'm starting to get better at it are you yeah but I'm certainly to like come with me like do the way yeah yeah yeah because also it's nice to be able to see what we do or like the country also some of the places I get to go yeah are really lovely and it would be so

nice to let people see that but also I mean I love what you did the other day about reacting to like off the cuff by costume dramas. But here, that can be really controversial. Yes. Like, yeah, people care about it. I'm like, people love their movies. Did you not see when he said which Brontes would enjoy Taylor Swift and which would not?

But these are two of my biggest recent videos. Nothing about real history. But I'm saying, come on. Taylor Swift and the Brontes, you mess with two religions there. Yeah, but I said the Brontes wouldn't be into Taylor Swift. And there's a big Ben diagram crossover there, right? Like, come on. Yeah.

I said they wouldn't be into that. But listen, look, we live for the controversy. you're fine. Actually, I'm stunned. I like to just stir it and walk away. I was like guys have a nice time. I was listening to you're on your own kid in the way over. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I commented

on your video being like, you're so wrong, I can't even. And I still, to this day, get notifications of like the 1,020th person. I'm like, you're just wrong. I think that video's up to like 300,000 views or something. Yeah, it's wild. By the way, it's never the ones that you think. Never. We should finish this episode. Sorry, we're saying. Final, final, final question.

Which Taylor Swift album? would be most applicable to Henry. It's got to be torture poets. Stop, everybody needs tortured poets. Because it's the best one you don't understand. I like to think. Oh, God. I feel like Anne would sing reputation.

Anne might sing smallest man who ever lived right in his face. Perfect. And he'd be like, Henry Smash. Henry smash. And she was like, please, Henry, I don't want you to be intimidated, but I've actually memorized words of more than four syllables. There's some big words. There's a really big words here, guys.

Can I just say, just to draw all those conversations together. I can hear our YouTube producer in there right now going, yes. This is the content, Taylor Swift, Henry the 8th, the tutors, all of this, just put that at the start of the episode and then they'll stay watching. I think you better wrap up before we go completely up the rails. That is one of, there are conversations that we have on this podcast over the years now, a couple of years, that I, that stick with me. This is going to be one of those conversations.

I don't just mean the Taylor Swift and, you know, so. media conversation. Oh, at least one of my sisters will watch this show solely to cover that reference. Well, yes, there we go. Finally, Garth is interesting. Yeah, thank you, Gareth.

Once in a decade. It's just, I think, the nuance that we can bring to someone like Henry the 8th is you forget that it's there. We're told it's there. We learn it underground, but actually this has been

our brilliant reminder, Gareth, so thank you for bringing this back into After Dark. Let us know what you thought of the episode in the comments on YouTube or give us a five star of you wherever you get your podcasts. We're across so many platforms

at this stage that you can't move but for finding us. Thank you for joining us and join us again next time on After Dark.