Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Sex Life of Henry VIII

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

When we think of Henry VIII we think of a big, blood thirsty tyrant.But was there more to this caricature of a king then we give him credit for? Joining Kate today to help us get to know this man better is the fantastic Tracy Borman, author of Henry VIII and the men who made him.Why did Henry love his daily horoscopes? How did his hypochondria affect his sex life? And was he in, in fact, a bit of a prude?This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Voting is open for the Listener's Choice Award at the British Podcast Awards, so if you enjoy what we're doing, we'd love it if you took a quick follow this link and click on Betwixt the Sheets: https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/votingEnjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code BETWIXT sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here. 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 betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I am here, you are here. The guest is here and raring to go. But before we can proceed together, I have to give you the fair do's warning because this is an adult podcast,

spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. And if you can't tick off all of those boxes, then be gone with you, off with you, don't be writing as angry letters. because fair do's you have been warned. But while you're here, oh loveliest of betwixters, I wonder if you could do me the teeniest, tiniest, tiniest, tiniest, tiniest, tiniest, tini.

What would that be, Kate? Well, it is that time of year again. It is time for the British Podcast Awards listeners choice. And that's where you come in. If you go to www.witwitwadstawords.com forward slash voting and click on betwixt the sheets, you would be voting for us, and I think we can do it this year. We were so close last year.

We made top 10. Let's marshal all of our efforts. And let's see if we can do it this year. And for those of you that have already voted, Gold Star, thank you very much. Right on with the show. Welcome one and all to another fantastic Tudor jousting match for Twixters. It's impressive, but to be honest, this is all about pomp and ceremony as much as it is about any kind of sporting prowess.

It's all very macho. It's all very extra. These events are masculinity writ large, what with the first. all the knights and their gleaming armour, their decorative flags and all their peacocking about. Seriously, guys, just take off the cod pieces and we can see you as a bigger lance, and we'll just save everyone a lot of bother. But then we wouldn't have this fabulous spectacle, would we? If this was just a Willy-waving match, it would all be over quite quick.

But if there was one man who represented peak masculinity in this age, it was the big guy himself, Henry the 8th. And here he comes galloping in now. Marvelous effort, Henry, brother. As the young man we see before as Henry is athletic, handsome, yeah, he really is, he's a looker, and charismatic. One can't help but swooned just a little bit. And was it really the jousting accident in 1536

that triggered his descent into paranoia and tyranny? What could have happened to turn this handsome and powerful lad into, well, let's be honest, a complete dick? What was the full story here? We will find out in due course, but now I'm off to get another flagon of mead. 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 copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, for a beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society. with me, Kate Lister. He's one of the most notorious kings to have ever ruled Britain, and we think that we know his story. Big guy, big personality, killed a load of his wives, bit of a dick. But is that the full picture? Could there possibly be a softer, more cuddly side to Henry that would make us rethink all of this? Well, joining me today to argue just that case is the fabulous

Tracy Borman, historian and author of Henry VIII and the Men Who Made Him. to help us get to know this man a whole lot more. Ruffs at the ready, let's do this. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Tracy Bourbon. How are you doing? I'm very well, Kate, thank you, and I'm very excited to be talking about

what I love talking about most, which is the Tudors behind closed doors, really. The bits they wouldn't want you to know. I think it's going to be great fun. And we're talking about possibly the Tudoriest of the Tudors. That's not a word. But the one that you think. It should be a word.

Tudorius. Let's start it. The Tudoriest. But he's the one. Not to be said after. No. Mead. But Henry is definitely the one you think of.

If you just, you, your average person, if you say Tudor, it's Henry the 8th, isn't it? That's who we're all envisioning in our minds. And you? Yeah, sadly. Sadly. Because I would say, of course, Elizabeth the first, we should think of immediately. But you're right, she tends to be kind of the one we think of next. So it's all about Henry the 8th and we think of that kind of Holbein image, you know, the strident king, but how different he was in private.

I love that. And you have researched the Tudors for most of your career. And Henry the 8th, hmm, as far as... Skeletons in your closet go and things that he gets up to in the bedroom that perhaps we shouldn't know about. There's so much one I'll ask you, but I suppose my first question is, how do you get to that history? Because as you've just said, they didn't want anyone to know that. So how do you find out what Henry was sneakily up to? Well, the great thing is that the Tudors were bureaucrats. They loved writing things down, and I don't just mean the Tudor monarchs here.

I mean, those who worked for them, lived with them at court, and they kept a lot of paperwork. If you served the king or queen, then mostly you would keep a record of your daily activities. Even quite lowly staff would be required to do so. And many of those records have survived. And for centuries, I'm very pleased to say I've been pretty much overlooked because we all obsess about the great political events and the marriages and all the rest of it. And these household accounts can often be dismissed as just trivial, domestic, but they're so revealing. I think you can only truly understand Henry VIII and his fellow Tudor monarchs when you look at what they went through in private, how they really were, how they behaved. And in Henry's case, in particular, what they suffered as well.

So, yeah, there's a embarrassment of riches when it comes to source mental. for this subject. And where would those records be stored? Where would you get access to them? Just these kind of, like you said, they're quite, it's not the Archbishop of Canterby writing about him. It's just people quite low down. Where would they be stored? Where are they today? So the vast majority are in the National Archives in Q's, in West London. I'm sure you're very familiar with it. And it used to be my old stomping ground. I think one of my first ever jobs was at the National Archives. And it just gave me this love of original. documents which can sound really dry and dull, but what a treasure trove they are. And they've been

preserved, you know, ever since the Tudor period, not universally. Some have been lost over the centuries, but many, many more have been preserved. And they really do make for fascinating reading. It's worth sifting through the more dry accounts, such as Henry the Sevenths, for example, who's obviously obsessed with his account books. And it's definitely worth persevering because, yeah, you find out things like the names of servants, the names of pets, what the Tudors were spending their money on, what they were suffering from, the lists of their possessions.

Oh, it's a real eye-opener. So can you read Tudor script then? Because I can't. I look at it and I can make out a couple of words. I'm just like, oh, no, no, I can. But can you just look at it and just, it's just fluent for you? Well, I wouldn't say it's quite fluent, but the single most useful thing I did at university was a course on paleography, so the study of old handwriting essentially.

And it's just addictive because once you get your eye in, it's kind of like code breaking. When you first look at a Tudor document, particularly in the early part of the period, it just looks like a foreign language. But then you learn to spot patterns in words and the, you know, you see, these, once you know your letters, then you see them repeated and then eventually, eventually the words come. I'm pleased to say, as primarily and Elizabethan historian, that the writing does get much easier as the 16th century goes on and the development of the so-called secretary hand. That's much more like modern day handwriting. Earlier in the Tudor period, yeah, it's a challenge,

but it's worth it. One thing I can't do to my eternal regret is read Latin and you do get quite a few documents in Latin. Thankfully, not the kind of accounts that I'm talking about. Henry is, where do we even start with this man? I don't think he has a very good reputation in general. I think that people would view him as, and I know that the Tudor people might come for me, but a tyrant as certainly not a feminist, we could say that much. But what we always forget, well, lots of people forget, because the

image that dominates him is he's quite a chunky king who's kind of sour-faced is that in his youth, Henry was a hottie. He was a hottie. He genuinely wasn't it. This wasn't just a case of everybody flatters the king. Of course they're going to say he's gorgeous. Genuinely, he was an all-rounder. He was a brilliant sportsman. He could play musical instruments. He could speak several languages. And he had this very athletic physique and probably actually really annoying, particularly for the men at court, because he was just good at everything. And everybody fancied him. Well, all the, you know, the kind of women at courts anyway were reported to have found him very attractive. And then that was the case really for the majority of his life.

When we think of Henry, it tends to be the bloated tyrant that you have described. But that was only really, for the last sort of 10, 11 years of his reign, there was a sort of pivotal moment in 1536 that changed him when he had this jousting accident. And then he couldn't really exercise very much after that. And that's when the weight piled on. I hope to dismiss a number of myths in this podcast. And one of them is that Henry just ate too much. Always he just ate too much. until the accident, he was eating the right amount because he was exercising all the time. So it's kind of like a bodybuilder today. He was really getting lots of protein, lots of calories that way.

But then he didn't moderate his diet when he wasn't exercising anymore. And yeah, that's when things started to slide. There's a sound bite doing the round on TikTok at the moment that everybody is resampling and making into funny tunes. But it basically comes from this girl saying, I'm looking for a guy in finance, 65, Blue Eyes, Trust Fund. And that was Henry, pretty much. He was over six foot tall, wasn't he?

He was six foot two, which, yeah, impressive height for the time. And he was, I think, very much like his maternal grandfather, Edward VIII. So, you know, Edward VIII, very good-looking, again, very popular with women, very sporty, confident. He was of the House of York. Henry the 8th's father, of course, was the House of Lancaster. And yeah, they weren't quite that TikTok thing really so much as the House of York. So I think Henry the 8th was pure House of York, Totty. Is that a word?

That is a word. Yeah. I think we need to hammer it home as well because he was super sporty, super active. He was into wrestling, jouston, horse riding. Like, you name it, he was doing it. I picture him almost as like a rugby type of a guy today. And he was famous for it. Yeah, he was really famous for it.

And he was a world-class tennis player as well. And even fairly hostile ambassadors said that, you know, who didn't necessarily want to report back to their own king that actually the King of England is really good at tennis. But they were. And so, yeah, he ticked all the boxes. And I think, you know, partly this was because he was a Renaissance prince and he had this very privileged upbringing.

But also partly, he was given a much freer reign because he was born the spare, not the heir. And that's often overlooked. So his father, Henry the 7th, was paranoid about his eldest son, Arthur and his safety. So he had a much more restricted upbringing, whereas Henry, well, you know, he can do what he likes, he can joust, he can do all the rest of it.

And it's only when Arthur dies young. and Henry becomes the air, that then his father kind of too late tries to rein him in a bit. But by then, Henry is just obsessed with jousting and with tennis and with hunting and all of these other things. So yet he was, he was a catch. He was a catch, let's say it. And it does explain some of what happens next, but perhaps not all of it. Is there any chance that Henry, Harry, was a virgin, on his wedding nights?

Or do you think he'd indulged a smidge before? Yeah, I think there is a chance. But then when you look at who he was spending time with before he became king and before he married Catherine O'Ragan, it was the likes of Charles Brandon, ultimate playboy, you know, great womanizer,

bedded just about every woman in court, and he was Henry's best mate. So that's the sort of company Henry was keeping. So I struggle to believe he would have been a virgin on marriage. But it's possible. It's possible. It's one of those frustrating things that we'll probably just have to debate rather than know for certain. I would have thought, given his appeal, given the fact that he was the heir, given the fact that he was in the company of men, I think, I think that he probably would have indulged. How old was he when he got married to Catherine of Aragon? So they married. They married,

married in 1509, she says, doing mental arithmetic very speedily, because if he wasn't quite 18, literally within a few days, he was 18. So that's it. He was 17 when he became king, and he turned 18 in June, which is when he married Catherine.

Could you even imagine being king at 17? I mean, for all of his faults, and we get into that, but no wonder they were all mad. Am I like, you're the king now? You're 17. My God. But then, one of the fact,

that really astonished me when I was researching the private life of the Tudors, shameless book plug alert, is that Tudor childhood was believed to end at the age of six. Wow. That's when you became an adult. So you became an adult from the age of six. You would be sent out to work from the age of eight. So actually, 17, yeah, why not? Run the country.

You're an old hand by then. From your research, what I really like about? is you try and push past a lot of the spin and the political front of these kings and try and get a sense of, well, actually, who was he? Who was Henry? Like, if you knew him when, you know, he was just in his chambers and he was just sat down having a chat

and his armour had come off, as a young man, what kind of a sense do you get about who Henry was? Yeah, he liked wrestling and stuff like that. But as a person, who was he? Yeah, that's such a great. question because I think even from a young age he was a man of contrasts. On the one hand, great fun to be with. You just seem that way. Just charismatic. Yeah, you'd want him at a party. Very charming, good fun, cultured, educated, could talk about anything to anyone, quite open-handed,

and certainly in his early days as king. He welcomed everybody to court. He was very generous. And you see that in his childhood. He's a confident child. Mummy's boy very much, very close to, oh, we could do all sorts of psychology on this, I'm sure, but very close to his mother, Elizabeth of York, who, I mean, he was her favourite. She absolutely doted on Henry and she was a pivotal influence in his upbringing. There's been analysis of Henry's handwriting and it's very similar to Elizabeth of York, so it's likely she taught him how to write. She was a bit more hands on than was usual. So he had mother attachment issues, should we say, and then was devastated by her sudden death and by the sudden

death of his brother. And this is when we start to see the other side of Henry, because there was a vulnerability there as well. It sort of turned eventually into a darker trait, and he became paranoid and obviously tyrannical. But it started out with vulnerability and fear. And one of the most astonishing quotes I read about Henry in private was by an ambassador who was allowed to visit Henry in his privy chamber. And he described Henry as being the most timid man you could hope to meet. Wow. And like you don't hear the word timid in the same sentence as Henry the 8th very often at all. Had he got into the right room? Exactly. Maybe a, oh, you meant to go to Henry the 8th chamber, sorry, here he goes. Yet timid. And the reason for that

remark, the ambassador went on, is because Henry was a hypochondriac, absolutely terrified of disease and sickness. I think the early loss of his mother and his elder brother had certainly played into that. And then, of course, his father had been paranoid about his only son's safety after that, wrapped him in cotton wool, stopped him jousting. And so Henry wouldn't come within a mile of anybody who so much has sneezed. And one of the most tantalizing, glimpses we get from the household accounts is of his medicine cabinet. So we know that he had a medicine cabinet and he had all sorts of weird and wonderful potions in there and he liked to experiment. He liked to kind of mix up potions himself.

He claimed that he'd invented a cure for the plague. Okay, Henry. Didn't seem to catch on, but anyway. Okay. Okay, let's leave him on that one. And the most intriguing entry, because all of these were catalogued these various potions that were in Henry's private medicine cabinet was something called his grace the king's special ointment and it goes on to say that it was used to treat his swollen member oh so think yeah quite why it was swollen not sure he had an ointment to regularly treat his swollen what on earth would that have been for that can't have just been like the Renaissance equivalent of baby oil by the sides of the bed, can it?

Maybe it is. Maybe it was. Maybe that was Tudor Loub. No. Tudor Loub. I'm never going to read that sentence the same again now. I'm just going to think, oh God, that's what it was. But what would that have been for?

I'm just trying, like, what would cause a swollen member? Yeah, I know. But what we do know is that Henry, as well as having this medicine cabinet, that every single morning he was examined by a team of physicians. This is the extent of his paranoia. They would come in, they would examine every part of him, they would take a sample of his urine, they would ask about his bowel movements

and give him a good old physical examination. And he did this every day of his reign, for the entirety of his reign. And this is why he was also very interested in horoscopes, because in Tudor times you would have your horoscope cast, not to find out, you know, what's going to happen to you generally, but to find out what health worries you should be thinking about. Because it was believed that, you know, that's the sort of thing that you get to know from a horoscope.

And so Henry's always having his horoscope cast. He's very interested in all of that kind of thing. What star sign was Henry VIII? He's a cancer. Oh, that's fitting. Well, yes. The irony of all of this, you know, he goes to, all of this trouble to avoid getting ill, but he goes jousting, like the most dangerous sport

ever invented. It's like, oh, that's all right, but I'm not going to come near you if you sneeze. Would we call him like a germaphobe? Yeah, I think he was. Except he's not a germaphobe, is he? He's, except they didn't know about a myasmaro. I think they got the link between good hygiene and health. And so, for example, when Henry's precious son was finally born, after nearly 30 years of trying, he absolutely went to town with the young Prince Edward's apartments. He had the walls washed twice a day. If you were visiting Edward, you had to be washed. And so he was...

You had to be washed. Yeah, yeah. You couldn't just walk in and visit the Prince. Henry ordered that, you know, visitors had to be washed. They had to be clear of any sickness, of course, or disease. And yeah, yeah, he was paranoid. How does this play out then? into his sex life because there's a persistent story that he had syphilis.

I'm sure you can pick up on that. But I'm now thinking about if this is someone that is so paranoid about catching disease and being contagious that he's washing people before they're allowed to see his baby. Like how does that impact how he is in contact with other people? Because they were well aware that diseases were sexually transmitted. Yeah. Well, they were. We know less about the nitty-gritty, I have to say, of his sex life.

But here again, I'm really pleased you ask this because there are so many myths about Henry and immediately Henry the 8th, you think, oh, string of mistresses, his history's greatest lethario. No, not a bit of it. By the way, because I have written about every monarch in British history since 1066, and so I can tell you, the greatest Lothario was in fact Henry I, the first.

He had the most recorded mistresses. However, Henry the 8th, bit of a prude. not a lethario at all. I didn't expect you to say that. Very, very discreet about his affairs, which was unusual, because kings like to boast about their sexual prowess. We only know, sort of for certain, of two or possibly three women who were his mistress,

and they include Bessie Blount, who was the mother of his illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, and Berlin's sister Mary, at Madge Shelton. They have some fabulous names. Oh, they're grey names. Gray names. But we don't know what went on between the sheets,

whether Henry kind of found, you know, the whole kind of filth too much. The filth involved. Whether that was too much for him, whether he didn't really like the sort of, all of that, somebody who was so paranoid about germs and if he'd understood what they were, and that sort of thing.

But he does come across as a prude because Anne Boleyn shocked him. So she kept him at bay famously for seven long years, refusing to be his mistress because she knew he would just lose interest. It had happened to her sister Mary. When he finally did start sleeping with Anne, he was really taken aback. Now, the sources aren't too specific, but she was more experienced than he was expecting her to be. Put it like that. And she'd pick things up in France, certain practices that aren't named in the French court that Henry just found very shocking. And we know he didn't like dirty jokes.

If somebody told a dirty joke at court, Henry would blush furiously and then order the person out. So he's not what you think he is when it comes to his sex life. No, he's not. No. And let's just talk about the syphilis for a moment because that almost certainly is entirely fabricated. And just on the basis largely of his.

fertility problems. Because let's be honest, probably he's the one with the problem, not his wives. He keeps marrying them because they can't give him a son. He's the common denominator. Yeah, exactly. So because we know so much about what's in his medicine cabinet, what his physicians are treating him for, we would have known if mercury had been used. And that was the number one cure for syphilis. It's never mentioned. And there are no other symptoms that match up with this. So I think we can discount syphilis. More convincing is that Henry had, I think it's Kel's syndrome,

which is when you can have one healthy child with the same woman, but no more than that. And that matches up to his, both marital history and his extramarital history, actually, because, yeah, he only ever has one healthy child per woman.

I've never heard of that before. Worth looking up. That's much more compelling than the whole syphilis argument for me anyway. But there was never any official mistress title in Henry's court, like other kings had. The closest we get to that is Anne Boleyn, but she was a mistress, so in title only, and was very much treated as almost a queen, really, took over poor old Catherine's apartments

when Catherine of Aragon had been banished from court. But she actually wasn't a mistress in reality, because she played him brilliantly. Anne Boleyn could have written the rules. You know, she kept him at arm's length knowing that that was the only way to keep him interested. And yeah, it worked. And the minute they started sleeping together, he said, oh, she's just like any other woman, charming.

Except quite good at sex, it would appear. Well, yes, exactly. A bit more experienced than old Henry. I'll be back with Tracy and Henry after this short break. So what of his mistresses then? What was her name, Bessie? Bessie Blount. I'm not that familiar with her. Who was she?

So she was a member of Catherine of Aragon's entourage. You do find this. Henry doesn't sort of hunt very far afield. Oh, let's look at who's serving my wife. Oh, yeah, she'll do. Nearly all of his wives or mistresses come from the kind of court and from the household of his then wife. Cast a wider net, Henry. Exactly. All we know about Bessie is, you know, she was the daughter of a gentleman. She was reportedly very beautiful. The king spotted her dancing at court one evening and, yeah, the dart of love, etc., etc.

And they conducted an affair quite discreetly. And then we really know about her because she's the one who gives Henry a son first. Well, okay, let's be fair. Catherine of Arrigan had given Henry a son first, but sadly that son did not survive longer than a few weeks very early in their marriage. But then Bessie Blount gave birth to a healthy boy. And this was in 1519. So Henry had been king for 10 years. And he was starting to really worry about the fact he didn't have a male heir.

So this was exactly what he needed because it was proof. Problems not with me. Look, I can father a healthy son must be Catherine. And this is when things start to unravel a little bit. But Bessie is, you know, pensioned off. She has a nice life. And Henry takes care of her. And he's actually very proud of his son.

He makes him Duke of Richmond. There's no sense of, we'd better hide him away. He's a secret love child. It's like, no, this is proof. I can have sons. I know people don't write books about Betty, and there's no documentary series about Betty, but well played Betty, I think, quite frankly.

Well played. She just, well played. She had sex him a few times. She gave him a baby, and then she got a nice retirement plan. Yeah, and no one's head had to come up. Nobody's head had to come up. There was no unpleasantness. Good old Bessie.

I think she was one of the Tudor Court's winners, I would say, right up there with my own personal favourite, Anne of Cleaves, the ultimate winner in the story of Henry. Oh, she is. Why we all obsess about the other five, I don't know, because come on. She gets the ultimate divorce settlement, five palaces, £20,000 a year,

royal status and doesn't have to live with Henry the 8th. She does well. Perfect. Do you think that Henry falls in love with these women? because I've noticed a pattern that he falls into. Obviously, it's so famous the six wives that he has, but he seems to, he develops like an obsession with them. And then when he realizes they're actually just human women,

it's like, oh, yeah. Do you think he really loves them? He loves being in love. Right. And I don't know whether that means he actually loves the women in question. I don't think he loved the one he's supposed to have loved more than any of the others, which is Anne Boleyn. I don't think he did.

I think he was, he wanted what he couldn't have. because the other thing that I should have mentioned when you asked me about who Henme was, he was a spoiled child, and I think he never stopped being a spoiled child. His mother had spoiled him. He'd put her on a pedestal, and nobody ever really quite matched up to that,

including the various women in his life. So he loved to think of himself as a chivalrous knight, you know, rescuing a damsel in distress, and then he played the game of courtly love to perfection. But real love, if push, I would say the only wife he actually came close to loving was Catherine of Aragon, the very first one. They had a really happy marriage for almost 20 years. Of course, it went spectacularly wrong after that. But he respected her and honoured her. And in his eyes, she was an idea of wife in every respect.

But one, she didn't give him the son and heir. So when he's divorcing Catherine of Aragon, which is horrendously painful, or is ordering the execution of Anne Boleyn, or he's divorcing the others, from what you, you've read around, is there any sense of guilt around this? I know it's not something that he could publicly show, but is there any sense of like, well, shit, just cut my wife's head off today, oh dear. You know, as Dr. Phil would say, what does he tell himself about that to make it okay?

I love that phrase. I think Henry, if we take him at face value, is almost pathological in his ability to kind of compartmentalize, move on. He's betrothed to the, new wife the day after executing Anne Boleyn. The day after. And I think he would have to be putting on one hell of an act in public,

not to be feeling that in private. But the only record, the only tantalising glimpse we have of Henry ever feeling regret about anybody is when he's found weeping after the death of Cardinal Walsy, who was one of his favourite, most powerful advisors, then you get a sense of remorse over his wives. No. I think Henry was great at believing his own publicity. So it suited him to believe, for example,

that Anne Boleyn was this wicked adulterous, this great whore, and she deceived him. And so, of course, she deserved death. And so it went on. And then, of course, the narrative changed with Jane Seymour. Oh, dear, poor Jane. She died, but it... Yeah, come on.

She'd given him a son. Of course he was going to make a song and dance about that. I'm sounding very cynical here. But I don't think Henry was a man to really live with regret, to even admit to regret. But interestingly, later years, Henry, very, very different from early years, Henry. I think today we would say that Henry suffered from depression. It wasn't called that at the time.

He was described as being very melancholy, spending a lot of time alone. often tearful, and particularly during and absolutely after his marriage to Catherine Howard. So this was, Catherine Howard was Henry's midlife crisis. Yeah, she was more than 30 years younger than him, beautiful teenager. He was now morbidly obese, thanks to that injury gained in the joust. And all the rest of it, he had ulcerated legs that apparently could smell from three rooms away. Not quite the catch he had been in his younger. days. And then she betrayed him. And she wasn't the rose without a thorn. She wasn't a virgin when

she married him. And she was cheating on him with Thomas Colpepper. How much choice she had in any of this, by the way, is debatable. But Henry never really got over her betrayal. And that's really when the depression, I think, set in. And it continued, really, for the rest of Henry's life. He sought solace with his final wife, Catherine Parr, and certainly enjoyed her company. But there's this sadness to Henry in his later years. And I think he's aware he's not the man he once was. And he really does suffer mentally, I think. I found myself almost feeling sorry for Henry, despite everything he'd done, all the lives

he'd wrecked. There's a real creeping sense of his own mortality in the last sort of four or five years of Henry's life. It's interesting how much his sexual virility comes up when he's attempting to ditch wives, past wives. I think one of the things was levied at Anne Boleyn was that she'd made some quip about how his lovemaking

wasn't all that good or some words to that effect. And when Catherine Howard was another one, apparently she'd been making jokes about the king basically not being that good in bed. It's just strange how those things seem to, keep cropping up. And was it, who was it? Was it Anne of Cleaves where his doctors had to say something in Parliament about how the King keeps having nocturnal pollution? Yes, nocturnal pollutions. Noturnal pollutions, which means he's ejaculating in his sleep. Yes. The implication being,

so he's all in working order. It must be her. Maybe that's what the ointments for, by the way. I just thought that, maybe that was. It was to stop his nocturnal emissions, stop him getting an erection in the middle of the night. It could be, you know. They really did think that nocturnal omissions was quite bad for her. Yeah. But do we know anything about Henry's virility? Because what's kind of circling is an accusation that, well, to not put too fine a point on it, he can't get it up.

He can't get it up. He certainly couldn't get it up with poor old Anna Cleese. But of course, she gets all the blame because, you know, she's so revolting, he can't bring himself to do it. And he's run his hands all over her body. and he's found signs that she's no maid. You know, her breasts are too loose and she's got a bit of a tummy. So he thinks she's had a baby before

and all of this sort of nonsense. So we know he couldn't consummate his marriage with Anaclis. And you're absolutely right. Whispers of impotence began as early as his marriage to wife number two, Anne Boleyn, who was said to have remarked that the king lacked puissance or power in the marriage bed. And so I tend to think

to think, you know, I have to give Henry the benefit of the data, I suppose, but, you know, no smoke without fire. He wasn't a well man. He's not a well man. I don't think so. And it does come across as protesting too much when, as you say, his doctors have to testify. No, no, no, he's still getting erections because he's having these nocturnal pollutions and all the rest of it.

But that's three wives, if you count Catherine Howard as well, who more than hint that he's not all that between the sheets, betwixt the sheets. betwixt the sheets. Betwixt the sheets. Get very Freudian with it, couldn't you? And suggest that that was perhaps the reason for some of his aggression because he takes a dark turn later in life. He sort of becomes, like you said, paranoid and angry.

Yes. I don't want to link that to impotence. But what do you think was, what was that? Because that's one of the things people look to when they go, oh, he had syphilis because he went mad. Yeah. Well, I don't think he did. And also I don't buy into the theory that that joustating accident

caused a head injury and then he had a brain injury rather that that's when he changed because the change wasn't that sudden and actually I don't think that really was a change it's just that his less positive character traits came out in later years and I suppose that's what happens to a lot of us really and he became just as paranoid as his father but I think health-wise Henry is suffering a lot in his later years and for me that does explain an awful lot about his apparent tyranny in public because there's not only his sex life, but he's got a lot of pain from these ulcerated legs. He nearly dies on a couple of occasions from blood poisoning from him. He's in agony. Would that be like a diabetical? I've definitely heard people say that

about those ulcers on the line. That's a possibility as well. And I think that's quite an interesting theory. And we know as well from those lovely descriptions that we have of the servants who attend on Henry, that in private there's a lot of apparatus goes into keeping Henry moving. So they have the equivalent of a stair lift at Hampton Court to kind of winch him between the floors of his secret apartments, as they're called. He has a wheeled chair. And all of this goes in behind the scenes so that when he appears in public, he's got enough strength to sort of seem okay and just, you know, he needs a walking stick, but otherwise he's okay because, of course, kings can't show weakness.

But then it's quite sad when you look at how frail he is in private. And as I say, it's not just the impotence. Can I be frank, there's constipation at play as well. Henry's suffering with his bowels later on to the extent that one of his poor servants has to administer an enema, which is made up of a pig's bladder, filled with two pints of scented water and sort of inserted with a metal rod. and then the water's pumped in. And Henry has to keep this in place for two hours.

But after that, his groom of the stall gleefully reports, His Majesty has had a fair siege. And I think we know what he meant by that. So, you know, there's a lot going on for poor old Henry health-wise. And I do say poor old Henry and mean it, because yes, I know he is the public tyrant. But he's not a well man in private. And he's not a clearly not a happy or contented man

as well. It must have been a huge amount of pain. I think so much pain. And I think as well, perhaps when you have been that great when you are young, that much of a sportsman, that good looking, it must be hard to lose that. Maybe it's best just to be average all the way through. You know, but you can see that, though, can you? He's gone from almost supermodel, like, you know, pro-athlet status through to someone. that's having to have a servant inject two liters of perfume up in bottom and be moved around in a

chair. Did he have any friends? Yes. And I mean like friends as in people he actually spoke to, not titled people whose job it was to do this or that. He did. In as much as any monarch can have a true friend. I think he really did. And his closest friend was Charles Brandon, that kind of slightly hell-raising buddy from his youth.

And he stayed with him throughout the rain. He stayed in favour in the rain. He even got away with marrying Henry's sister without permission. Not many people can say that. So Charles Brandon, absolutely best friend of Henry VIII. But as well, what I really like about Henry is it's not all about rank. So yeah, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, yeah, of course he's going to be friends with the king. But Henry had genuine friends from amongst his servants and probably one of the closest was Will Summer, his jester or fool.

Now in the Tudor age, fools were not as we might see, you know, the kind with the bells on their hats and wearing garish costumes and prancing around making people laugh. They may have had learning difficulties, they may have had disabilities, but they weren't laughed at. They were seen as they were called fools, but they were believed to be closer to God because they weren't capable of artifice like a typical courtier. So their words could be trusted because they just said what they saw, they said what they thought. And Henry adored Will Summer. And he trusted him as he became more and more paranoid about all of these courtiers surrounding him, pretending to be his friend. He sought out Will Summer more than any other man and just spend hours alone with him

and wanted his opinion on things and treated him with respect. So he was very, very close. It's a good example of how close Henry could get to the men, mostly the men, actually, who served him in private. What happened to Will Summer? So he went on and served Henry's successors. He was looked after during the next Raynand, the one to follow. And there's a hint that he may have married another fool,

a woman called Jane Fool, almost certainly. I don't know. You could get Lady Fools. You can get Lady Fools. She was very, very popular with several of the Tudor monarchs and consorts. And there's a wonderful painting that hangs at Hampton Court called the family of Henry the 8th. And it's Henry with his heirs. But on the outreach,

of the painting. On one side you see in a little recess, Will Summer, and on the other side, you see Jane Fall. And it's a lovely little glimpse into Tudor Court Life. So my final question, because I've just realised I don't really know the answer to this one, is how did Henry die? Well, yes, I don't think anybody truly knows the answer, but I think it's almost certainly related to his ulcerated legs. He's morbidly obese, pressure on his. his heart must have been immense, whether it was blood poisoning, which, as I mentioned, he'd suffered from a number of times, or whether it just, it was heart failure. But he, take your pick, right? Yeah, it's one of those things where it could have just been a combination of

factors. But it was obvious by the closing months of 1546 that he didn't have long left to live. And it spoke volumes that he didn't attend the Christmas celebrations that year. You know, this was Henry's favourite time. He would always go to Greenwich for Christmas, and he didn't. Instead, he went to Whitehall Palace with just a handful of private attendance. And he wouldn't even allow his wife, Catherine Parr, to visit him or his daughter, Mary.

He didn't want anybody to see him like this. He was humiliated in pain and absolutely distraught at what he'd become. And so it's a very sad end, actually, to what had in part, but you do, feel sorry for him because at his best he was a glorious king and a glorious man. And I think a lot of what happened was born of disappointment, disillusionment and of this vulnerability that lay at the heart of Henry VIII. Tracy, you have been wonderful to talk to it. I didn't think that anyone

would make me feel a little bit sorry for Henry Dave, but I do have a slight grudging just, oh, Henry. Yeah, I mean, I feel too sorry for him, but you've won me around. Oh, I'm pleased to hear that because that's exactly how I felt. And I didn't expect or want to feel like that when I was researching Henry. But it certainly gives you a different perspective, I think. It does. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? So I have a website, tracyborman.com.com.

And that lists all my books and TV staff and events that I'm doing. So it's probably a good place to start. Thank you so much for talking to me today. You've been wonderful. Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Tracy for joining me. 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 want us to explore a subject, or maybe you just wanted to say hi, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. We have got episodes on everything from incest in ancient Egypt to the origins of patriarchy all coming your way. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith, the senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex, Scandal and Society.

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