Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - History's Worst F*ckboys: Henry VIII

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

Charismatic, passionate, insatiable - Henry VIII is known across the world as the king who had 6 wives, and a few mistresses on the side. But was Henry a romantic or a scoundrel?Kate is joined by Natalie Grueninger, host of 'Talking Tudors', to find out just how badly behaved Henry was.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.If you'd like to get in touch with the show you can contact us at [e-mail] 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.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely bird twixters. How the hell are you doing? Well, I am fine and fabulous. Thank you so much for asking. And I'm very glad to see you here once more. But before I can allow you to listen to any more of this smut and filth,

I do have to tell you. This is an adult podcast, Pokemon, adults, to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way covering a range of adults subjects and you should be an adult too. And we call that the fair do's warning, because you can't get offended now. If you keep listening and something gets on your wick,

well, really, that one's on you because fair do's, we did tell you. Oh, thank God that lots out of the way. Right, on with the show! It's the 1530s, and Hampton Court is a buzz with gossip. I mean, it always is a buzz with gossip, but it's particularly gossipy right now. Around a thousand courtiers and servants are walking the courtyards and corridors, each of them out for themselves and on the make.

Away from the crowds, the king and his most esteemed courtiers are enjoying some new music. I mean, it's all right, but definitely made more exciting by the rumours swirling about it. I heard that the king wrote it for a woman who isn't his wife. He's promising love and fidelity, which seems unlikely given what he's up to right now. Of course, none of this is true. The music Green Sleeves was actually composed after Henry the 8th's death. But far more importantly than that, the fact that so many people believed Henry VIII wrote this for Ambulin is perhaps testament to what a fuck boy he really was. What do you look for a man?

Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful done. Goodness has nothing to do with it. Hello and welcome back to Betwixta Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with the E. K. Lister.

As you may be aware, this month we have been examining some of the many, and I mean many fuckboys of history. And what discussion of general toadishness can be complete without a mention of the man himself? Henry the 8th. I am joined by none other than Natalie Gruniger from the On the Tudor Trail podcast as well as talking Tudors to find out more about Henry's behaviour with women.

From changing the religion and therefore the everyday lives of his subjects just to get his leg over to the hefty topic of why he had a two and a half pound codpiece. Execution as blocks and ruffs at the ready, betwixters. Let's do this. Hello and welcome to Betwixta Sheets. It's only Natalie Gruniger. How are you doing? I'm doing really well. Thank you so much for inviting me to speak with you. Well, there are a few other people that we could possibly have requested for this particular episode, because this is part of our mini series, which is titled The Greatest Fuck Boys in History. So of course, we have to talk about Henry the 8th. But before we get to him, can I ask you, what brought you to the Tudors? I'm always interested in historians' origin stories. I know that they're your babies. What brought you to study them? Yeah, I think, look, like a lot of us, I think it was a book for me, because if the accent hasn't given me away, I'm a born and bred Sydney cider. So we don't learn about the tutors at school here, unfortunately. So I came to the tutors a little bit later than others. And it was a book that my sister lent me, actually. It was the secret diary of Anne Berlin by Robin Maxwell. And I read that and I became immediately fascinated with Anne Berlin, but her daughter, Elizabeth, as well. And following on from that, not long after, actually, I went to London for the first time.

I was quite young and I was doing a tour of Europe and I thought I'd visit London for a few days beforehand. And I asked my sister, what do I need to see when I'm there? And she said, well, definitely the Tower of London, definitely Hampton Court. So that absolutely fueled the fire, Kate. And honestly, I have been caught in that Tudor Web ever since. Oh, that's amazing. So we need to talk about Henry, but let's define our terms first because we're sensible academics over here. So using one of the many definitions from Urban Dictionary.com as to what a fuckboy is, I have got,

a fuckboy is that guy, the one who doesn't respect women but relies on them heavily. He's distant, doesn't care about other people's time and won't commit. He's self-absorbed, just stupid things and fucks around with other people's emotions. So that's the definition that we're working with. Does that sound like Henry to you? Just first off the bat? There are some traits that do sound familiar. Absolutely.

I'm looking forward to discussing it with you. See what you think? I think so. Henry does, see, look at me being on first name terms, but I'm going to persevere. Henry does have a reputation for being a man of considerable appetites. And part of that, he does have a reputation in the popular imagination for persistent womanize him. And I wonder how true that is. because yet he was married six times.

But if they were the only people he ever had sex with, then he had sex with six women, which that's not fuck boy behaviour. Do you think that his reputation as a womanizer is well deserved? I actually think it's greatly owed to a certain man by the name of Jonathan Rees Myers, partly who in the Tudors presented exactly this. This is a king who is insatiable, right? He loves women.

He's having lots of extramarital affairs. But I suppose the question is, is this the he, historical Henry. And of course, six wives, you've just mentioned that. But I think some listeners, Kate, might be surprised to know that, in fact, we don't have that much concrete evidence for other casual sexual relations. We know we do suddenly have at least two, maybe three, certain mistresses. And I use mistresses in our modern way, not in the 16th century way, so someone that you're having an extramarital affair with. So we know of a little. a woman called Elizabeth Blunt, better known as Bessie Blunt, and maybe some people have heard of her.

Their relationship lasted probably a few years, and she's the mother of Henry Fitzroy, who the king acknowledges. That's the king's only acknowledged legitimate son, is Bessie Blunt's son, and his name was Henry. Then we have another quite famous mistress, I suppose, and that's Mary Berlin, sister, of course, to Anne Boulin, who later becomes queen. but we actually don't know how extensive that relationship was. We know that there was some sexual contact because Henry has to, in fact, get a dispensation to marry Anne because of this.

But we don't know. That could have been a one-night stand. Then there's a couple of other, you know, names thrown out through the state papers and stuff, but really not as many as you might think. He's not like a Charles II, is he? Where it's just like on a revolving door type of a basis. No, there's a lot of flirtations. So remember, the Tudor Court is really.

renowned for this game of courtly love, as we call it. So there's a lot of flirting going on. There's a lot of innuendo. There's a lot of banter. All of that is certainly happening. And it was, it was permissible at the time for a king to have mistresses, especially when his wife is pregnant. And of course, his wives are pregnant quite a lot at different stages. So Henry, and that's when we see him, that is when we see him looking for the attention and affection of other women, because it was considered dangerous actually at the time to be having sex while you're pregnant. They thought that could affect the baby. So they just, you know, abstained from sexual relations when the queen is pregnant. So Henry does go looking elsewhere. But I don't know. He's either a bit

of a prude or he's just very discreet. So I'm not sure which one. Am I right in thinking, because this might be a case to argue, no, not a fuck boy. Am I right in thinking that he really thought of himself as an old-school romantic. Like he based himself very much on the chivalrous knights of old, that he was going to have a lady love. Like he really thinks of himself as the ultimate chivalric romantic knight. You are absolutely correct. Henry is raised on a diet of Arthurian legend and romances.

He does see himself as this sort of knight in shining armour. And as Sarah Griswold says, you know, the tutors are kind of in love with the idea of being in love. and I think Henry is a perfect example of this. He's such a complicated guy. It's a bit of an enigma. But I think what's clear is that he wants to be liked. He wants people to like him.

He wants to be respected. He wants to be admired. And he wants to be in love. He really does. And this is why he tries sort of six times. But I'm not sure that Henry was quite capable of loving, to be honest with you. Oh, interesting. So I suppose that the first thorny issue that would have to

deal with, that might be a bit Henry, Henry, really, behave yourself. He did marry his brother's wife. He absolutely did marry his brother's wife. That's right. So we're talking about the amazing, the brilliant Catherine of Aragon here who. All hail Queen Catherine. Exactly. All hail Queen Catherine. And it was Arthur that she was intended for and they got married. But unfortunately, as so often happens in the 16th century, Arthur dies very young. He's only about 15, I think. So Catherine is plunged into this sort of limbo a number of years, like six, seven years where she's, you know, things were uncertain for her, but she's still, she's there. She's in London. You know, Henry the 7th is still alive at this point. But she knows Henry the 8th, the future Henry

the 8th. He actually accompanied her on her wedding day. He was only like 10 at the time. But it was already quite clear that this is a guy or a boy at that point that loves being the center of attention. You know, it's Arthur's wedding, and we've got the chroniclers talking about Henry dancing and ripping his coat off and all sorts of things. So it's quite an interesting story. But yes, of course, he does marry his brother's wife in the end. And it was quite shocking at the time, but not for the reasons that it would be to death. Or maybe it is for the reasons it would be today. That it's a bit close to home that.

It absolutely is a bit close to home. And, you know, this is why Henry later questions the validity of this marriage. because he says that his conscience is in fact troubled. You know, at the start of their relationship, his relationship with Catherine, it all seems to be going really well. Everyone's reporting that they're in love. He's writing her lovely letters. You know, he's saying lovely things about her that her love, that's his singular love.

And he's praising her virtues. And it's all very romantic. But, of course, Catherine has a really, really tragic, obstetric history. They lose a lot of babies, you know, only Mary. future Mary the first survives out of, well, it's debated, but, you know, let's say at least six pregnancies. This is really tragic and upsetting. And Henry, of course, needs an air to secure this dynasty. And that, he becomes obsessed by that. He does seem to be genuinely head over heels in love with Catherine of Aragon in the beginning. Or maybe, maybe, I'm interested in what you

were saying is that maybe he couldn't, he wasn't quite sure what love was. Maybe he was playing that part that he thought he was supposed to be the chivalric knight. So when he's writing about her virtue and he writes to her dad saying how much he loves her, maybe there's something in the fact that he's playing a role there more than he actually feels. Oh, Henry is always role playing. You've absolutely got it exactly there. He is a role player. He's a perennial role player from young. This is how he's raised. This is what happens at the Tudor Court. You know, this is sort of all the rules that you have to play by. But Henry, Henry loves it. He's constantly dressing up and taking on roles and, you know, and everyone around

him has to understand this. But I think you're completely right. I think there's points where we see Henry as the kind of ardent lover. That's the role he takes on. At other points, he's the wounded lover, you know, so he shifts. He does this sort of shifting act. But at the start, I actually think that he thought, in a way, he was saving Catherine. He was like the night riding in on his stallion and saving poor Catherine that's been in limbo for. all these years. So I do think he saw himself like that. And of course, she was a really fantastic catch. She's incredibly intelligent. She's so well connected. Her relatives are on all the thrones around Europe. This is great for those still fledgling Tudor dynasty at this point. And they

have a lot of detractors. This is strategically, politically, politically an excellent match and an excellent choice for Henry. But yes, of course, the, you know, the chroniclers at the time focus as well on the fact that the king is very in love with Catherine. And he stays with her. I mean, before the Berlin girls sort of come onto the scene, it's like a 20-year marriage, isn't it? We forget that. It's not like they got married and then within a week he was chasing women around the court. This was a long and established marriage. Absolutely. And I think you're right. I think when we think of Catherine and Henry, we think of a much older Catherine. You know, we think of Catherine during those really troubling years of the great matter, as it's called.

And we think of Henry as that kind of huge, grotesque man that Holbein, of course, immortalised in his incredible painting where he's like arms at Kimbo, legs astride. But of course, Henry, when he comes to the throne and Marys Catherine, he's 17 years old. You know, we have to keep that in mind. He's a baby, exactly. And for a lot of his life, because he wasn't the air, he was the spare, he's been closeted. His father has literally kept him locked up. Like one observer said that he's kept like a little girl.

Henry the 7th did not let him joust, didn't want him to get hurt because of course he's got only him now. There's no other air. So he comes to the throne and suddenly he has basically unlimited power. But at that point, Kate, he's incredibly handsome. He is the epitome of a Renaissance prince. You know, he writes music. He writes poetry. He does all the outdoor pursuits.

he's great at bowling, shooting, you know, archery, sword fighting, everything, hunting, of course, and jousting. Six foot two? Yeah, he's like between 182 and 184 centimetres. So he's a good head above your average person at this point. So he stands out and he's incredibly fit and trim and you only need to look at the armour that survives from that period to see that this is a lean, fit man, you know, and he's got all the intellectual pursuits to go with it.

So he's interested in astronomy and really interested in medicine as well, in fact, and books and reading and debating, you know, topics. And he's a pretty good catch at that point, of course. But we all know what he kind of transforms into. So it's difficult. See, that to me, that is actually more evidence for him possibly being considered a fuck boy today, being extremely good looking and being interested in star signs. I think that would probably do it for me. But the point is that he was a hottie. Like, he was a really good look. He must have had women flinging themselves at him. Yeah, look, there are some really funny quotes from this period, I have to say, where ambassadors are just falling in love with him.

Like, I'll read you a bit of this one. You'll love this one. His Majesty is the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on, above the usual height with an extremely fine calf to his leg. His complexion, very fair and bright, with alban hair combed straight and short, in the French fashion and a round face. so very beautiful that it would become a pretty woman. So there's Henry in 1515. Can you just picture him with his little bob cut?

Wow. He was good looking. Was it Bessie come on the scene? Was she his mistress when he was with Catherine of Aragon? Exactly. So Bessie, around the time of this actual ambassadorial report, is when Bessie comes on the scene. And it's interesting because, of course, that would coincide with Catherine being pregnant around that time. So it makes sense because that's, when they're out looking for someone to play with, I guess, to be honest, sadly. So he is. He's very charming.

He's very vain. He knows he's good looking. He knows he's good at everything. But of course, he does have a darker side. But the thing is that at this point, it is masked. It's masked by this facade that is still attractive, you know. He dazzles people. That report is just one of many.

People are calling him the handsomest prince in Christendom. Much better looking than Francis I. one said. So, you know, he's, he knows he's good looking and he knows that he's good at the stuff that he does. So it's quite interesting comparing that Henry to the later Henry. And a lot of historians look to the jousting accident and the head injury as possibly one of the reasons why he experiences, what seems to be quite a dramatic personality change, not a complete 180, but this much darker, more volatile, paranoid side of himself emerges. What do you think? about that? Or do you think it was a combination of other factors? Yeah, I do. I don't buy the

head injury theory, unfortunately, because, you know, like I said, it's quite masked at this point because he's still active and he's able to do the things he loved. What I think that 1536 accident, and that actually happens during a training activity, so he's not in an actual competition. He literally falls over doing something he's done hundreds of times. So the injury that I think is really crucial there is to his ego. It is a major injury to his ego. He's fallen almost certainly in front of the guys that very soon will find themselves on a scaffold.

You know, jousting a touch to sort of describe how important this was for Henry, how much of this was his identity. This is where he can show his prowess. He doesn't have very many military expeditions. So this is the arena to show how manly he is, to show, you know, to display his honour. and there he goes and falls over. So there are accounts that he's unconscious for a couple of hours,

but they're actually not our best accounts. We have two observers in London that report that he's up and about very quickly. So it seems that it may have affected a leg and that may, a couple of ulcers he had may have sort of reopened and he certainly doesn't joust anymore. As far as a head injury is concerned, no, I think that dark side has always been there. You know, one of the first things he does when he becomes king is have two men executed were loyal servants to his father, but they were unpopular. So, yeah, so this is one of the first things he does.

And not to admit, let's think of 1535, it's absolute bloodbath. So this is before that accident. He's murdering best friends. He's having, you know, monks literally dragged through the streets of London. He's doing awful, appalling things all in the name of his supremacy. So I think that side has always been there. Do you know what I think it was? I think that made him very much the grumpy tyrant that we think of.

This is just my opinion. I think it was pain because he seems to develop this venous ulcers in his leg. And I'm not going to compare myself to someone who's suffering from venous ulcers. But for a year I had a ruptured back disc while I was waiting for surgery. I was the grumpiest and the most miserable and the most pissed off I've ever been. Like when you're in pain, not that that's an excuse for what he was doing. But I wonder if that was something to do with it because he was in a tremendous amount of pain throughout most of his life, wasn't he? Or maybe he wasn't. Maybe that was an exaggeration.

No, no, you're absolutely right. Look, and I totally agree with you. I think chronic pain transforms people, and I have also seen it firsthand myself. You know, and certainly from 1536, the King's health is deteriorating at a fast rate. In the 1540s, he's unbearable. He's really almost impossible to be around. By the end of his reign, he literally is torturing those people around him because he's in such poor health, you know, and he's in so much pain. And there's just no relief at that point.

is there? The doctors are doing what they can, but, you know, there's no painkillers. There's nothing that they can do. So he lives with that pain constantly. And he's a big boy by the end. He's a big guy. He's very heavy. I think one report says that three average men could fit in his doublet by the end. So he's gone from that incredibly, you know, handsome, attractive, very physical man. And suddenly he becomes sedentary. He can't do the things he loved. And, you know, that also makes you cranky, doesn't it, when you're not able to pursue the things that you love? Very, very much so. Perhaps the allegation of slightly fucked body behaviour that we have to deal with is you did have both of the Berlin sisters.

That has always struck me as like what on earth were Christmases at the Berlin's like when that was going on. Like Mary, Berlin, whatever it was and whatever form, she had this relationship with it. And then her sister, her younger, we think it's her younger sister, then goes, on to marry, like, oh my God, what on earth is going on there? Yeah, yeah. It's a really interesting family, isn't it? I love the Berlin's for this reason. They're intriguing.

But you're right. And, you know, funny story, Kate, at one point when the whole annulment thing is happening and people are talking a lot about it, his question, he's accused of having also had sex with Elizabeth Berlin, their mother. The mother? Yeah. And Henry, in typical Henry style says, never with the mother. So he admits that with Mary, yes, but never with the mother.

You know, he's such a good bloke. So, yeah, there's a lot going on. Yeah, wow, exactly. And like I said, we don't know how long the relationship with Mary lasted, but there was certainly something enough for him to seek a dispensation to marry Anne. The relationship with Anne is, of course, you know, this is what attracts many people to this period of history because it's been painted, hasn't it, as this great love story, this huge, you know, story of passion.

But that is actually being challenged now. That interpretation is actually being challenged. And I can mention, if anyone's interested, the work of Professor Tracy Adams, who's actually published a fascinating piece on the love letters. So the love letters were 17 letters that survived. They're actually in the Vatican, funnily enough, that Henry wrote Anne. And we've always referred to them as the love letters. But this is increasingly being challenged for a number of reasons.

he ended up executing Anne. Can we call these love letters? It's just one question that we might ask ourselves. Good point. Yeah. But there's also this idea that he was pursuing her and that she was reluctant, that she was using this as a sort of ploy, you know, keeping him at arm's length. But this is all being re-evaluated because the love letters, when you read them, what they are is what we talked about before. Henry's raised on this language of courtly love and is literate in this language of

course because she's been raised in France. So these are more formulaic perhaps than what we have considered before. And again, I have to say Tracy's work is incredible in this area. And she's actually identified that the word mistress, so that everyone makes a lot about this one letter that Henry writes and he says to Anne to be his sole mistress. And she isn't too sure. She's a bit reluctant because he's trying to assure her throughout the letters. But mistress, in fact, in the 16th century at this point means a beloved, someone that you intend on marrying. So where... Interesting.

Before, yeah, whereas before we've thought of these letters as Henry trying to court Anne trying to make her his mistress in the sense that we know, in fact, it's more likely that this was in fact that they were already planning marriage as early as 1528, that, you know, 1527, perhaps the dates are debatable. But so it kind of changes that whole Anne being this erotic woman that Henry's passionate about and chasing because he knew Anne. He knew Anne since at least 1522. How could that passionate love have just emerged out of nowhere?

He knows her. So at some point he decided that she was going to give him the air that he wanted. What caused that? We don't know because so much is lost to us. Yeah. So there is a lot of re-evaluating going on in that area. I've always thought that Anne gets a bit of a raw deal in the popular imagination of this stuff because I was thinking like if the king has turned his attention to you, where'd

you go? There's no HR department to go, excuse me, I seem to be being harassed by the king here. It's like what, you've got nowhere to go. This is going to happen. I've always felt a little bit like maybe she was putting it off because she genuinely didn't want to do it or maybe I've just misread that. But I mean, she plays a blinder by the end. She ends up queen. But it seems, I'm not sure it's a love story. No, no, exactly. That's that's exactly right. and I think, you know, and has gotten a real deal. You know, she's painted as this home wrecker. You know, this woman that woke up one day and decided,

well, you know what I'm going to do today? I'm going to steal the king of Catherine of Aragon, who my family has loyally served since she came to the throne. It absolutely makes zero sense. I think that this is a much more complex issue than what it's been kind of painted, the whole black and white thing. And she was reluctant. I think we sit, we don't, unfortunately,

we don't have any of her responses, which is a real frustrating thing. So we can only judge what she's saying based on what Henry says in his letters. And by the way, they're all digitised. So if anyone wants to be really nerdy and go and have a look at them, it's fantastic because you get to see Henry's handwriting. It's really bombastic and kind of messy at times. And, or Kate, he puts little love hearts.

He puts their initials. He's like a schoolboy. Like he puts his initials, her initials in little love hearts and he's like, you know, the language is that language of courtly love of the ardent lover. That's the role he's taken on. And we see it throughout those letters. It's really interesting to have a look, partly written in French, partly in English, and the king hates writing.

He doesn't like writing his own letters. So these are a real treasure. I'll be back with Natalie and Henry after this short break. One of the defining features of a fuckboy, as far as I can see, is that what they're really in it for is the chase. That's the bit that's very exciting for them, is the trying to obtain the woman that they want. And then as soon as they've got it, the passion calls, the ardor,

evaporates. Do you think that that is what happened with Henry and Anne? Because he was chasing her for years to get this marriage and then it falls apart, but really quickly. Yeah, I absolutely do. I think they were propelled by this joint cause that they had. It sort of became like an obsession to get this marriage annulled. I do think that at some point, Anne decided that this was, she was divinely chosen, that this was what God wanted for her. And I think that that's when we see her sort of become more committed to this relationship. And I think she realized that she could do good in this role. She was incredibly educated, very politically astute. Yes, she had some, I suppose she was questioning some of the traditional religious views at the time. Certainly was it a Protestant.

They weren't Protestants in England at this point, like we would call them Protestants. But she's very curious. She's incredibly intelligent. She's very much interested in poor relief and that sort of thing. And education, she's a, you know, a chance. champion of education. So I think she understood that her position would give her scope, perhaps, or she hoped, or she hoped that her position would give her scope to explore some of those areas. And it's really interesting because when Henry later marries Jane Seymour, maybe we can touch on the otherwise, if you like, but when he does marry Jane, at one point, Jane actually speaks up on behalf of the abys, because of course this is the time where the lesser monasteries,

as a smaller abbeys have been dissolved, and Henry tells her off and tells her to just stay at up his affairs and reminds her of what happened to her predecessor for meddling in state affairs. He doesn't say for having sex with five men, including her own brother. He says for meddling in state affairs. Anne didn't stick to her lane and pushed the boundary as she was, you know, she was testing things. And Henry didn't like it in the end. And one of the things that we've got to to account for with Henry's behavior, as much as we might try and say that he was a romantic and that he just wanted a baby boy and all the rest of it. What he did to Catherine of Arrigan was atrocious. But what he did to Anne Boleyn, like he sat by while they said that she'd,

like you said there, that she'd been having sex with five men, she'd been having sex with her brother, that she was a witch, that she'd been trying to kill the king. And I've often looked at I thought, did he talk himself into believing this crap? Or did he, was he aware that this was just made up lies against her? No, well, I actually, I argued that he, he never believed that she'd had affairs. You know, it's five men that she's accused with, including her own brother. But Henry's walking around saying, no, she's had sex with a hundred men. You know, and there's Thomas Cromwell ripping his hair out because this is just making a joke of the Crown's case. You know, it's a farce. By the end, everyone knows exactly what is going on here. You know, Anne and George Berlin, they're this

incredible pair. They're brilliant at everything they do. They're great on people. They polarize people. You either love them or you hate them. You know, even today, they polarize opinion. So Henry, we haven't spoken about the fact that although Henry is, yeah, he's great at all this stuff, he's deeply, deeply insecure, deeply, deeply paranoid. Weirdly insecure. Yeah. He's got also this huge ego. So imagine a person who has unlimited power. So by this point, Henry... I'm trying to imagine someone like that. It's kind of difficult in today's day and age. Somebody with a really weak ego with enormous power. Yeah, exactly. To sound familiar. So he thinks that God is answerable to him, Kate, at this point. This is what I put for, you know, the usual only

answerable to God. No, I actually think by this point, Henry believes that God should be doing. exactly what Henry wants. That's what I think we've come to. And so this is dangerous. This is a dangerous person when you've got unlimited power, yet you're deeply insecure and you've got this huge ego. And so, I'm paranoid. So Anne and George made him feel diminished. They made him feel inadequate. And when you make the king feel inadequate, there's only one way that's going. You are dead man or woman walking because Henry can never be wrong. He can never make mistakes. And when you don't live up to his expectations, when that little fantasy reel that's going on in his head doesn't actually manifest in reality, he's never blaming himself. He will always look for somebody

else to take the blame. In that case, it was the Berlin's and the other men that were executed alongside, you know. But I have to say, Anne and George show their medal at the trial. They're tried at the Tower of London. And this is related to what we've been discussing because at one point, so George is tried after Anne, they're tried by a jury of their trial. He is very intimidating, but they do this incredible performance. It's in this Great Hall. There are accounts that there are 2,000 people observing this. It's completely silent.

George is handed a piece of paper, and he's told not to read it. He's only to read it himself quietly and then answer the charge, not to read it out loud, sorry. But of course, he knows he's dead. He knows he's going to be executed, so he reads it out loud. And the accusation was that apparently Anne had told George's wife. that the king, and I quote, although this is a translation from French, was not skillful in copulating with a woman and he had neither virtue nor potency. And that was revealed to 2,000 onlookers. So this is the kind of people we are talking about when we're talking about the Berlin's.

They can be, you know, terrifying opponents. So Henry wants them gone. Oh my God. And of course, you know, when we're talking about, him being insecure and having a hell of an ego. Another way that that's very visually represented is with his codpiece, which is such a weird item of clothing. I'm always surprised by how big they are the cod pieces, like just to be walking around with this huge phallus thing. Yeah.

Talk to me about that. Talk to me about Henry's codpiece because it's so bizarre. Oh, Henry's codpiece. And, you know, if you've ever been to one of those historic sites where there are costumed interpreters, like it's a mock penis that is in your face. So it's really confronting, isn't it? You're like, don't know where to look.

Yeah, it's not like a bull judged an area. It's a proper dick that they've got. It is. And yeah, it's hard to know where to look. And you sort of, you know, turn into a high school kid giggling and not knowing what to do. But so, yes, this cod piece becomes very popular in, certainly in Henry, the 8th's reign at the start of the 16th century. And it kind of gets bigger and then it disappears. So by the sort of 1550s, it's out of fashion.

And certainly when Elizabeth's on the throne, no, it's the woman's silhouette that takes up more space at that point, not the man's. But anyway, during Henry's when, yes, he wears these huge codpieces, even on his armour, you can see them on his armour as well. And of course, they're a symbol of the king's virility, of his sexual prowess, and they're padded, so they're really quite big, and they can be embellished with jewels as well, which is quite interesting. And Henry, yeah, he owns a lot of them, he wears them all the time. but considering that little quote that George revealed at his trial, it's really interesting because you have to ask, well, why was, you know, what's he trying to hide behind that hugely padded codpiece? But yes, it is, it's like the jousting. It's all this symbol of how manly Henry is and how virile he is. Because of course, he doesn't have a, you know, he's got, well, he gets

one son later with Jane Seymour, but at this point, he's only got his legitimate son. So people might be wondering, oh, is this the king's fault? Of course, the woman was blame for everything at this time. So yeah, the cod pieces are really funny. But Henry is obsessed with clothing as well. He's very much into beautiful fabrics and beautiful clothing. But this isn't a sort of, this is an important thing. This is part of projecting your majesty, you know, but he spends something like, I think it's equivalent to a few million dollars on clothing, you know, within a very short period of time. So he loves it. But the cod piece is a favorite. That's a favorite accessory. His virility and his masculinity and his penis do come up again.

When it was, who was it that he married? It was Anne of Cleaves. And didn't he have a doctor announced in Parliament that the issue wasn't with the King because he was still having nocturnal emissions? What a weird thing to have announced in Parliament. Yeah, so basically the King's having wet dreams and he tells everyone he's really proud of the fact that he's having wet dreams. you know, he loves it. And that's because the claim, of course, and this is only because the first meeting between Henry and Anne of Cleves, who is wonderful, by all accounts, was a disaster. And it was a disaster because Anne, poor Anne, was not conversant with all those little rules I talked about. This court is governed by all these unspoken rules and you need to know them to operate successfully and safely within this court. And Anne having been raised to a different court overseas in Germany with a different court. just didn't understand about this dressing up. So basically, Henry rocks up to their first meeting

in disguise, Kate, because he loves dressing up. Absolute disaster. Yeah, disaster. And nobody warns her. It seems that she's not warned. So this aging, giant guy just comes in in costume and tries to kiss her. And of course, she's appalled, you know. We've got a couple of accounts. One says she didn't even turn to face him. The other one says that she was like, oh, you know, and kind of moved back. But it was it was done. The damage was irreversible. Again, that pride that we talked about, that ego was immediately injured. And so what Henry does, he just turns the story around. It was because Anne, apparently, according to Henry, was not attractive. You know, her breasts were soft, her tummy was

soft. You know, he wasn't sexually attracted to her. He couldn't do the deed. So he got everyone to say things about Anne, which weren't true in order to get out of that marriage. But yes, one of them was that it wasn't the king's fault because everything, all his, you know, all his equipment is working fine. Imagine that marriage falling apart because nobody had taken the time to give you a warning that the king might dress up as Robin Hood and charge in your room. Like what a demented thing to have happened. The poor woman.

Yeah. And, you know, it's a typical Henry move and I just can't believe that, you know, he did that to Catherine all the time barging into her apartments dressed as Robin Hood. He loved Robin Hood, you know, and all sorts of other things. And the response that Henry is expecting is that you are dazzled. First, you're like, ooh, who's this, you know, handsome man? And then you're, of course, dazzled. And then you love it when he reveals himself.

Now, those expectations weren't met with poor Anne of Cleaves. So immediately that relationship was off to a very, very bad start. He kind of meets his match. Well, no, he doesn't actually because he has her executed. But Catherine Howard. who Anne just wasn't cheating on him. I think we can just put that to bed. It's just, that just didn't happen.

Catherine Howard, I think she was being very silly, but there's definitely more in the accusations that she was cheating than there was with Anne. What's your thoughts on Catherine Howard, who was very young and was never supposed to be the queen and ends up with him because he just fancies her, and that's kind of it, isn't it? Yeah, it's so heartbreaking, poor Catherine Howard.

You're right. She's a teenager at this point, certainly not raised. for Queen's sheep, either with some of the other wives, but she's quite a bit younger. When you compare Henry's behaviour, it's so interesting around the time of all the allegations against Anne Boleyn. And then you compare the King's behaviour with the whole Catherine Howard situation. It's completely different. This is a time where Henry is genuinely surprised.

These allegations have come as a genuine shock, whereas Anne, he manufactured those, so there's no shock. But with Catherine, he was, you know, he was by that point, let's remember he's almost 50 when he meets her. She's very young. He does the accounts, no, he's not in good shape. The accounts say that he fell in love with her the second he saw her. So again, it's this idea where he wants to be in love. He wants to be, you know, loved by someone. They, of course, marry on the day that Thomas Cromwell is executed. Like, they're not a very good omen.

Stone cold. Absolutely stone cold this man. It's that ability to just turn away from people. He has this uncanny knack of just, you know, once he turns from you, there is no turning back. You know, there's, he just, everything's in little compartments. And once you're gone and that chapter's shut, you are gone. And there's no like, oh, I wish I hadn't done that. Only once, maybe, one regret, maybe with Thomas Cromwell. Very fuck boy behavior.

Yeah, that is, isn't it? And that not caring, like he just doesn't care for people's feelings. It doesn't matter who you are. But yes, Catherine certainly had some pre-marriage. affairs. That is quite well established. Whether the affair with Thomas Colpepper, who was a member, a gentleman of Henry's Privy Chamber, actually, you know, was a full physical affair is debated. You know, unfortunately, the evidence is a little bit all over the place, that something happened seems quite clear, you know. And Thomas Colpeper, by the way,

if there is a fuck boy, Kate, he's probably certainly one of them. Just as a side note. Silly, silly, silly boy. Well, like, just all. of them. You just should have just, no, you know what the king is like. Just go home and masturbate over a tapestry. Just don't do this. It's so bad. That would have been a safer option. 100% safer option. No, they don't. And Henry is devastated. Again, that injury to the ego. It's Anne Boleyn's cousin. He's like, oh, these women, you know, he just thinks that the women are out to get him. They're against him. And, you know, and he's got terrible luck. I think at one point he says something like, oh, I've got such bad luck with, you know, with women.

Zero self-awareness. Zero self-awareness. Yeah, because he, like I said, he's incapable of admitting to mistakes or anything like that. He cannot take responsibility for anything. So it's always somebody around him that has to take responsibility. But yeah, that is heart. Poor Catherine, that's a heartbreaking story. Of course, she's, yeah, executed alongside George Berlin's wife, Jane Berlin, who seemed to have facilitated the meetings.

Again, that's another area hotly debated, why she would have done something like that, given that she experienced the whole Berlin saga. She must have just been stood there at the scaffold and she's like, what the fuck is got? How am I here? What is happening? I just came to work and now I have to have my head cut off.

What on earth is happening? And an example of how vicious Henry is, he actually changed the law there because it appears that she wasn't, well, as you can completely understand, mentally quite with it. and he changed the law so that you could execute a person that wasn't mentally quite with it. You know, he is vindictive.

Who knows, he probably held a grudge from the Berlin saga against Jane. And yeah, the violence is just horrific, really. I'll be back with Natalie and Henry after this short break. And his final wife, Catherine Parr, who must have been walking up the aisle with just all the way on the back foot of just like, Jesus Christ, what's happening here. Paul Catherine. older by this point, he is in very bad shape.

Those legs of his are causing tremendous pain. I wonder, like, was she what they sometimes call like a nurse wife, like that marries in old age to sort of take care of him? Is he beyond his philandering ways by this point? Does he just want to calm down, or is that not the way to read this? I think he's suddenly a changed man by this point. So now we're talking 1543 roughly. So Catherine Howard has executed the beginning of.

1542. So he's had a bit of time on his own. Catherine was actually married. She was married twice and her husband dies in 1543. So it's not certain as to how he finds Catherine. Some people suggest she may have been in the Princess Mary's household and Henry saw her there or that he knew her husband, the second husband, and that's how he met her. But anyway, when he finally does meet her, he likes her. But I think the nursemaid thing is a bit of a myth. You know, Catherine is an exceptional, another exceptional woman. She's an author. She's an advocate for education as well. She is quite brilliant. She's amazing. She actually is amazing. And so I think Henry is attracted to really intelligent women. I think that is one thing that we probably can say.

And Catherine is able to debate with him. You know, she's interested in the religious debate of the day. But of course, she pushes that a little bit too far as well. So I don't think he sees her as a nursemaid. But I think certainly as a consort, as a companion, by this, this time, you know, it's said that you can smell the king before you see him, you know. So we're talking, this is a hard job for Catherine. I do start to feel a bit sorry for Henry when I hear that because the humiliation that that must have brought to him because like also, I put something on TikTok about Henry the ape's legs and lots of doctors and nurses chimed in and went, oh my God, yeah,

ulcerated Venus ulcer legs. It's like you can smell them throughout the hospital. It's really, really bad. I mean, it must, and like there was nothing that he could do apart from being pain and stink. Yeah, and poor Catherine has to sleep next, you know, when he decides he wants to try and, oh, you know, can you imagine what that must have been like. That's who we should feel sorry for. You know, and again, he's very heavy by now, so he's quite obese as well. So he has a lot of medical condition, lots of things going on. So it does seem that he was attracted to her intelligence

and thought maybe this would reignite that sort of thing that he loved doing, debating things. But Henry is still essentially Henry. And by this time, he's so irascible. it's very difficult to manage him. Even people that have been trying to manage him for years are struggling. But Catherine really does this job so well. You have to admire that sort of, oh, I don't know, that grit that she has to be able to get through this, which was quite a torture.

And I should add that she's in love. She's in love with Thomas Seymour. You know, it's well known that she loved him before she married Henry, wanted to marry Thomas Seymour, but then did her duty by the king, married him. I think Henry had a bit of an idea because Thomas Seymoy is often not at court. But then they find each other again after Henry dies. But it doesn't have a happy ending.

Sorry, Kate, I can't give you a happy ending on that one either. That one doesn't. So as a final question then, Henry the 8th, what do we think? Historical fuck boy? I look at Henry's history and I wonder how different British and European world history would have been if he'd had a different attitude to women. Yeah, I know. We didn't even touch on his appalling treatment of his sister, Margaret, either.

I think he had quite a complex, complex relationship with women. And I think it stems from childhood, losing his mother, whom he did adore, I have to say he did adore Elizabeth. And he lost her at a very young age. So, you know, a feast for like psychiatrists and psychologists, he would be, Henry. He'd be lying on that couch for days, honestly. The therapist would need therapy. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think he ticks off a lot of the boxes, a lot of the things that you were talking about before, that disrespect, that sort of promising everything, which he did every time and then not delivering, that ability to just cut things off and not care whatsoever about, yeah, turn his back. The only thing that I wonder at is whether he was as sexually promiscuous as the Jonathan Rees-Myers, for example. That's my only, like, that's the only place where I would say, not sure. still out. I think that that is a very, very good point. I think we could definitely say with the

women in his life, appalling, absolutely appalling. Even by the standards of the day, people were raising an eyebrow and just like, what? This isn't like we're retrospectively going back and looking in and going, oh, well, by modern, no, even at the standards of the day, this was bad stuff. But I don't know if he was as much of a philanderer. So I don't know if that's a point in his maybe just terrible husband. Terrible husband, yeah, lots of issues. You know, like we look at someone like Francis I first, then there you've got Kate A Philandra and a person renowned for bed hopping,

like renowned, whereas see, we don't have that evidence for Henry. Natalie, you have been incredible to talk to. Thank you so, so much for helping us unpick this highly complicated man. I think we're all just swipe left on Henry. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Oh, thank you for asking that. Yes, so they could go to, I've got two main websites. So one is on the tudor trail.com.

The other one is just my name, Natalie Gruniger.com. I'm, of course, on all the usual socials. My favourite is probably Instagram, so you can suddenly find me there. Thank you so much for swinging by to tell us about Henry. I've thoroughly enjoyed myself. Oh, I've loved every minute. Thank you, Kate. Thank you for listening.

And thank you so much to Natalie for joining us all the way from Australia, And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you would like us to explore a subject, or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. Coming up, we are going to delve into what it meant to be beautiful and ugly in the past. This podcast was edited by the very beautiful Tom Delagie and produced by the also beautiful Sophie G. The senior producer was Charlotte Long, who is also beautiful. Join me again between the sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.