All language subtitles for Ch5.Henry.VIII.Man.Monarch.Monster.1080p.HDTV.x265.AAC.MVGroup.org

You might think you know everything
there is to know about Henry VIII.

You will know he married six times

and had two of his wives executed.

But the truth about our most famous
king is much more complex

and far more compelling.

This series tells Henry's story

over six of the most tumultuous
decades in English history,

separating the real man
from the myth.

To some, Henry was a cruel bully.

Henry was self-obsessed,
desired admiration.

He could never be wrong.

He wanted the theatre of punishment
to be perfect.

This is what happens
when you defy Henry.

To others, he was a charismatic
and successful ruler.

He jousts, he rides, he sings.

What more could you want
from this perfect prince?

But Henry's personality,
his innermost thoughts

and his motivations
have remained elusive.

Today, we might call Henry
a little bit OCD.

It was said of him
he couldn't hold somebody's gaze.

He felt uncomfortable.

Now, a team of Tudor experts
have come together

to investigate
who the real Henry was.

They'll unearth
never-before-seen documents,

including some
from the Vatican's archives.

Thank you so much for showing me

one of the greatest prizes
in Tudor history.

And they'll go backstage
at Henry's court

to unravel a murky world of power,
plots and petrifying ambition.

The Tudor court is a bear pit.

It's an aggressive
and violent place.

When somebody is
no longer useful to him,

that's it. He cuts them out.
It's almost pathological.

He was willing to change
the entire country,

even the entire map of Europe,

in order to get what he wanted.

Henry VIII is born
on 28th June, 1491.

But he's never meant to be king
in the first place.

He is the spare heir,

living in the shadow
of his older brother, Prince Arthur.

As the second son,

the younger of the princes,

comparisons could be made
with Prince Harry.

In fact, Henry was known as Harry
for much of his childhood,

and there are some similarities
physically as well.

He was allowed, really,
to be a little bit wilder,

to indulge his favourite pastimes.

He just didn't have the same
pressures as his elder brother.

Henry clearly sees himself
as the spare, rather than the heir.

I suppose, in some ways,
that might be liberating,

but in other ways, it might nurture
a certain jealousy.

But Henry, later in life, has this
urge to prove himself all the time,

to show that he can be a success,
even at his most successful,

and there's something

that must relate there
to his childhood.

His mother
and all her female attendants

spoilt him and made sure

that the hard knocks

and bruises of boyhood

weren't inflicted on their charge,

and anything he wanted, he got.

As the second son,
Henry is ignored by his father,

and instead,
raised by his loving mother

in the protective female world
of Eltham Palace.

Henry's relationship with his mother
was unusually close.

His mother seems to have taken
a real care

for the education of her son.

For a royal princess to grow up
in this sort of environment

wasn't that unusual.

For a royal prince, however,

it was a little bit strange,

and it just goes to show
how unimportant, really,

Henry was considered
in the line of succession.

But when Henry is
just ten years old,

something happens
that transforms his life.

Unexpectedly,
his older brother dies,

leaving him as heir to the throne.

He's no longer the second son.

He is the first son, and he's going
to be king of England.

It's hard for us to imagine
the pressure on him,

the idea of having to take up
that position.

To make matters worse,
Henry's beloved mother,

Elizabeth of York,
dies just months later.

Recently, this remarkable survival

from Henry's childhood has
been revealed to us,

and it's incredibly exciting,

because for a long time,
it was thought

that this was just any old page
in an illuminated manuscript.

But when we look behind
this figure of King Henry VII here,

we see King Henry VIII,
as he later became, as just a boy.

This weeping child on the edge of
an empty bed, that of his mother.

He can't contain his emotion.

His head is thrown into his arms
in despair.

We imagine Henry VIII as being

someone that maybe didn't feel
emotion,

that wasn't affected by grief,

but we can see, in his reaction
to his mother's death,

that it really broke his heart.

He was now the heir to the throne

and he didn't have his mother
to guide him.

He had, instead, a very different
figure in his father,

a very problematic, I think, figure

to try and move him
into this new phase of his life,

and I don't think
that made it any easier for him.

Henry's father, Henry VII,
won the Wars of the Roses,

a bitter civil war
which lasted three decades

and divided the kingdom.

As the first Tudor king,

he united the warring houses
of Lancaster and York.

But he now reigns
over an unstable and uneasy peace.

Paranoia was part of the Tudor DNA.

The Tudors really had
a rather tenuous,

legally fragile claim
to the throne of England.

They were a very insecure dynasty.

There is a seed of insecurity
planted in Henry

from a very early age.

The political history
of his father's reign

has, essentially, been the history
of plots and conspiracies,

the hanging-over
from the Wars of the Roses,

who's in, who's out,
who's being watched.

Everything changes for Henry when he
becomes next in line to the throne.

He is now brought up directly
by his controlling father,

after years of being sidelined.

Henry's relationship with his father
was really complex.

There are lots
of eyewitness accounts

that Henry was never permitted
to go out of the palace,

he was kept to his rooms,

and that,
when he did appear at court,

he never opened his mouth,
except to answer a question.

This is so different to
the upbringing that Henry had known.

He must have felt
like a virtual prisoner.

As soon as Henry VIII is brought
under his father's control,

you see his personality
just being squished,

almost this overbearing weight
of his father's anxieties,

his paranoia, his concern
that something might happen

to this last vestige
of the Tudor dynasty.

As a very young boy,

he hadn't really had much
of his father's attention at all.

But then, of course, suddenly,

Henry had too much
of his father's attention.

He found it suffocating

because Henry VII was trying
to make up for lost time,

and kind of chiselled this young,
wild prince into a future king.

Sometimes, they argued quite
violently in front of the court.

On one occasion,
a scandalised ambassador reported,

"It looked, this evening, as if
the King might murder his son."

Little wonder.

There was a deeply personal
resentment against his father.

After seven years of living
under this harsh regime,

Henry finally glimpses freedom.

His father is now dying,

and Henry has been summoned
to see him one last time.

He knows that, in a few short hours,
his father will be dead

and he will be king.

This is a king who is dying,

still not feeling
anywhere near secure on his throne.

He wants the Tudor dynasty
to continue.

So, to his last breath,
he's giving advice to his son

how to secure the realm,

what sort of advisers
to surround himself with.

He told Henry that he had to marry
Catherine of Aragon,

the widow of his elder brother,
Arthur,

and he would rule England with her.

It wasn't a sort of if or but.
This is what you're going to do.

And Henry meekly accepted it.

HENRY VII WHISPERS

At exactly an hour before midnight,
Henry VII dies.

In that moment,

the 17-year-old Prince Henry
becomes King Henry VIII.

Henry's feelings about becoming
King would have been

a mixture of apprehension
about what was going to happen,

would he be able to smoothly
take over the levers of power,

mixed with a wonderful sense
of release

that he was going to be his own man,
his own master,

and he could do things
which he wanted to do

instead of other people telling him.

Remarkably,
no-one outside that room will hear

there's a new king on the throne
for two whole days.

The story of what happened
in that 48-hour period

has intrigued historians
for centuries.

The next 48 hours will decide
the fate of the kingdom.

As soon as the old king dies,

his closest courtiers
start plotting.

When Henry VII dies,
there's essentially a court coup.

His death is kept a secret
for the best part of two days,

while in the background,

they decide how to bring on
this new regime with a splash.

Henry played

a full part in this great cover-up

of his father's death.

Of course,
he had a vested interest in it

because he wanted to secure
the throne.

For Henry,
this is his first real experience

of the ruthless machinations
of Tudor politics.

The Tudor court is a bear pit.

It's an aggressive
and violent place.

Your best friend can become
your enemy

and your enemy can become
your best friend.

You need to be able to plan
and plot your way

through this vacuum of power,

and in order to do that,
you have to make sure

that nobody knows the King is dead,
nobody has time

to stage their own coup d'etat.

He must have been affected
by this atmosphere

of intense fear and suspicion,
not knowing who to trust,

being very, very aware

that, actually, the Tudors were
a fragile dynasty.

INAUDIBLE

Henry is convinced that
the biggest threat to his new reign

is a rebellion coordinated

by two of his father's
most powerful advisers -

Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley.

Empson and Dudley were
the sort of slick apparatchiks

that Henry VII brought in
to enforce his will,

and they resorted
to unsavoury methods -

rigging jurors, accusing people
of crimes they hadn't committed.

Probably everybody disliked them.

Early on the morning
of 24th April, 1509,

after 48 hours in limbo,

Henry VIII is finally proclaimed
King.

But at the same time,
he issues orders

for the arrests
of Empson and Dudley.

Empson and Dudley are scapegoats.
They're convenient.

You get rid of them,
you appear to distance yourself

from what has gone before.
Politicians do this.

Dudley, open the door! Open up!
Dudley!

POUNDS ON DOOR

I think people had underestimated
Henry before

because they may have thought
that he was merely a puppet

that his father was controlling.

But now, Henry makes it
very, very clear

he's the one calling the shots.

In the name of the King.
You're coming with us!

Get your hands off me.

The arrests win the new king
instant support with his people,

but it's likely
that Henry has an ulterior motive.

Henry VIII continued to resent
his father for quite some time.

He had had lots of his own impulses
suppressed for years and years,

and because Henry couldn't do
anything about it

as long as his father was king,
when he was gone,

well, there's an opportunity,
with Empson and Dudley,

to play out his irritations,
his frustrations with his father.

Down the stairs!

On the same day,

Henry issues a ground-breaking piece
of legislation - a general pardon.

This extraordinary document
sees Henry explicitly criticise

his father's reign.

What Henry is trying to do
is to win popularity, and quickly.

So, as well as getting rid
of his father's despised ministers,

he issues a general pardon

to all of those who'd fallen foul
of Henry VII's justice,

so, of course, this makes him
incredibly popular. People love him.

Now, that pardon is basically
rubbishing Henry VII.

This is an extraordinary move,

that you use
your father's unpopularity

to sell yourself to your subjects.

Henry is telling his subjects
that he knew

they had suffered grievously through
injustices imposed by his father,

and he was happy to do
all he could to right those wrongs.

He wants to begin in a way that is
going to make a break with the past.

Of course,
it's all about reputation.

It's all about this gleam in his eye
that he's going to be

a famous monarch, the best king

that ever reigned
in English history.

Henry is determined to distinguish
his father's reign from his own.

But that doesn't stop him honouring
his father's dying wish

and marrying his brother's widow,
Catherine of Aragon,

just seven weeks
after he becomes king.

Catherine is the most desirable
bride in Europe -

the daughter of Ferdinand
and Isabella of Spain,

the most mighty empire
in the world at the time.

But I think Henry really did love
Catherine of Aragon.

He professes himself
to be deeply in love.

It's part of those
early grand gestures

which he thinks he can make.

But of course, he's also got an eye
on security, and this is a monarchy,

so it means dynastic security,
so it means a son.

His attempt to produce a male heir
was pragmatic.

He did not intend
that the decades of conflict

that had preceded his father's reign
would continue into his reign.

And he felt that only
a legitimised male heir could do it.

Henry's dream of producing
a male heir soon comes true.

On New Year's Day, 1511,
Henry does have a son.

Catherine of Aragon gives birth.

Henry was beside himself with joy
at having a son and heir.

His hopes and dreams
had been realised.

But Henry's happiness is
short-lived.

His newborn son dies
at just seven weeks old.

BELL TOLLS

Henry doesn't seem to have responded
very much at all

to the news of his son's death.

He does comfort Catherine,
but there's no real sense,

from any of the chronicles
or ambassador records of this time,

that he is actually grieving
himself.

He is able to almost put a full stop

on that child's life
and move on from it.

He has something intrinsic
within him that he can just be cold,

that he can shut down emotion.

Throughout their marriage,

Henry and Catherine will lose
a total of six children,

and Henry's anxieties
about having a son and heir

will intensify as the years go on.

The big "what if" of Henry's reign
is, had that young Prince Henry,

who was born on New Year's Day,
1511, had he survived,

everything would have been
different.

Henry would have had
that son and heir

from the beginning of the reign,
he would have had dynastic security.

Maybe he could have relaxed a bit.

When Henry lost his son,
Henry, Duke of Cornwall,

he was also losing the opportunity

to pass on his crown
to a legitimised male heir.

He must have wondered,
at that moment,

whether that marriage could produce
a male heir.

After five years of marriage,
Henry still doesn't have a son

and his new dynasty is beginning
to show signs of vulnerability.

To bolster his authority, he enlists
the talents of a cardinal

who has rapidly risen
through the ranks at court.

Cardinal Wolsey is a political
genius and a mastermind.

He's Henry's fixer,
and he does an incredibly good job.

Of course, Wolsey was the man
who would relieve him

of all the tedious
business of state.

He is the guy who's going to help
Henry fulfil his desires.

If the King wants it,
Wolsey will deliver it.

Wolsey is a churchman,
but let's just say,

he's not the sort of vicar

that you'd sit down
to tea and biscuits with.

He likes the finer things in life.

He insists on being served
on golden plates,

he surrounds himself by luxury,

and he also has a few mistresses

and he has
at least one illegitimate child.

Thomas Wolsey is somebody who's come
from a relatively poor background.

He is the son of a butcher

and people will make jokes
about this throughout his career.

He's risen up through the Church
to become somebody influential

who wants to make a difference,

and who is delighted to have
that opportunity in government

to put all his ideas into practice.

For Henry,
Wolsey becomes indispensable.

Henry has always loved
outdoor pursuits,

and whilst he hunts, jousts
and fights,

the Cardinal takes all matters
of state into his own hands.

Henry, in his 20s,

is often described as
the most handsome prince in Europe.

He was six foot one,
stood above the other courtiers,

and he certainly stood
above the general populace.

They could see him coming.

One of the really important things

about Henry and Wolsey's
relationship

is that Henry really does believe
that Wolsey is his friend.

They walk about together arm in arm
in the King's privy garden.

Wolsey can always walk in
to see Henry.

He doesn't need
to make an appointment.

Other ministers can't do that.

Wolsey, he sees a huge opportunity
for himself here and he takes it.

According to most courtiers, he has
absolutely no right to be there.

He is of lowly birth.

He's worked his way to the top,
which is highly unusual,

but Henry really doesn't have
that same snobbishness

that the rest of his court have.

Within a few years,
Henry raises Wolsey

to become his chief counsellor
and one of his closest friends.

Hidden away in the archives
of the Vatican library in Rome

is a remarkable account,

written by a 16th-century
Italian diplomat,

which reveals more about their
relationship than anything else.

The Vatican has never given
permission

for it to be filmed before.

Well, thank you so much
for showing me this work.

This is the first time, though,
that I've seen the original,

so it's an absolute privilege.

This wonderful work,
which is called Anglica Historia.

It is about the history of England

and the King himself,

Henry VIII,

Ariigo 8.

The wonderful thing is,
for a historian,

is that this is
an eyewitness account...

Yes, yes.
..of Henry VIII and his court.

One of the best bits
of his account is his description

of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey,
so Henry VIII's right-hand man.

I mean, my Italian isn't great,
by any means,

but I think,
in the page we have open here,

it says what good fun
Wolsey was as well. Yes.

He would sing. It talks about him,
"cantava, saltava", so, smiled.

"Giocava", he told jokes.

So, he would entertain
and tell jokes,

and you can see the appeal
of Wolsey for Henry,

I think, from this account.

At first glance, the document paints
a picture of Wolsey

as an entertaining member
of Henry's court.

But it's not what it first seems.

It reveals that Wolsey
has been manipulating Henry

from the moment they met.

This account is not at all
flattering about Cardinal Wolsey

and the methods that he employed
to manipulate his royal master.

He describes him as a "witty fellow"

who would "cling to the royal side,"

"strum the loot, dance, indulge
in pleasant conversation."

He's almost doing his business
by stealth.

Henry doesn't realise
all the things he's agreeing to.

And that, by these methods,

he would "inculcate, instil
and drum into Henry's ears"

all of the messages
that Wolsey wanted to get across.

My favourite extract comes
when he kind of lures Henry in

by showing him
a pretty jewel or a ring.

It's almost like he's treating Henry
like a child,

tempting him with sweets,
and Henry, then, just agrees

to whatever the Cardinal asks
of him.

Henry's weakness for flattery
and manipulation

allows Cardinal Wolsey to rise
to the highest echelons of court.

But in a few short years,

Henry will turn on his close friend
and adviser with a vengeance.

Henry VIII is worrying over
the future of the Tudor dynasty.

He still doesn't have a male heir

and he is surrounded
by potential rivals to the throne.

All his nightmares,
all his problems

haven't gone away.

They've just been, like good wine,
lying there,

getting stronger and more colourful.

As Henry gets into his 30s,

we see little glimmers of paranoia,

to the extent that he has started
to change his personality.

He's started to mistrust people
around him.

As his paranoia grows,

Henry increases the provisions
for his personal security.

There is a quite extraordinary
security service

surrounding this king.

His food is tasted
before he is able to eat it.

There's this elaborate ritual,

in order to put him to bed
each night,

where the covers are checked
for any knives in his bed.

What effect that must have had
on Henry,

because for all his confidence
and his sense of invincibility,

he's made very aware,
on a daily basis,

that, really,
he's incredibly vulnerable.

Henry's suspicions extend
to the servants

who surround him day and night.

The barber is
one of the very few people

who are allowed close proximity
to Henry.

To be the royal barber means
that you are holding

a sharpened blade next to
the King of England's throat.

If you make one mistake,

you've killed a king,
you've committed treason.

And so, therefore,
it's very clearly specified

how a barber should be behaving,

even what company they can keep.

These increasing provisions
come from his paranoia,

and they also start to feed it,

because every single part
of Henry's life was underscored

with this sense of unease
and suspicion

about the people around him.

Henry fears an uprising
from a rival claimant to the throne,

and he hears a rumour

that the Duke of Buckingham
is secretly plotting against him.

The Duke of Buckingham was

the highest-ranking nobleman
in England,

and he had royal blood,
and lots of it.

Henry is particularly suspicious
of Buckingham

because he doesn't make any secret
of his claim to the throne,

nor of his desire to be King.

Henry's suspicions reach
boiling point

and he writes a letter
to Cardinal Wolsey

that seals Buckingham's fate.

Henry's letter survives to this day,

and it's held here
at the British Library.

It's extremely exciting for me to
see this original letter by Henry.

There actually aren't
many of them

because, as Henry himself says here,

he finds writing
"tedious and painful".

He tends to entrust that task
to scribes.

So, the fact this is in Henry's hand
is hugely significant.

This letter was intended
for Wolsey's eyes only.

It's top secret.

So, Henry is instructing Wolsey

to "keep good watch
on the Duke of Buckingham".

He effectively wants Wolsey
to spy on Buckingham.

He is Henry's prime target.

He's the one he is most afraid of.

Wolsey soon uncovers
a whole raft of evidence

that's enough to condemn Buckingham
for treason.

He's plotting rebellion,

he's even stealing
some of Henry's own servants

and placing them in his household.

Also, the thing that rankles
most with Henry

is that a monk has prophesied
that Buckingham will be King.

Well, for a man
as paranoid as Henry,

that really is going to be
the nail in the coffin.

Wolsey's investigation produces
enough evidence

for Buckingham to be found
guilty of treason

and he is beheaded
by an inept axeman,

who takes three strokes
to cut through his neck.

Henry's treatment of Buckingham
is one of the earliest

and most vivid indications
of his brutality.

This caused shockwaves
across the kingdom.

He wasn't going to suffer
any hint of treason,

even amongst the highest nobles
of the realm.

Fearing further plots against him,

Henry's attitude to his noblemen
changes.

Henry starts to get rid of
some of those older courtiers

and counsellors who had surrounded
him for a long time.

He mistrusts
some of the old nobility

because the Duke of Buckingham
has demonstrated

that maybe they can't be
entirely trusted,

that they will have
agendas of their own.

He replaces them

with the promiscuous,
young aristocrats

he grew up with, men he trusts.

But with such a debauched entourage,

Henry's palaces are transformed
into houses of pleasure.

Even though Henry joins in
with all the fun,

at heart,
he's actually quite prudish.

You can almost picture Henry,
the morning after,

walking through this scene
of devastation

with food strewn everywhere.

There were people just sleeping
on the floor wherever they could.

Henry's a real contradictory
character in all of this.

On the one hand, he is encouraging
this quite wild party atmosphere,

but on the other,
he's quite fastidious.

I think, actually, today, we might
call Henry a little bit OCD.

For as much as he liked to project
himself as a party boy,

actually, he found it all
deeply unsettling.

The best evidence of Henry's
controlling behaviour is contained

in a little-known court document
called the Eltham Ordinances.

The Eltham Ordinances are
effectively

a great long list of rules that
were drawn up by Cardinal Wolsey

on Henry VIII's command
to reform the royal household.

But what's fascinating about them
is that they give us

an insight into Henry's psyche.

One of the things
that's really clear here

is just how bossy Henry is.

He instructs here that the people
in his privy chamber

"shall be loving together
and of good unity and accord".

So, in other words,
go about your work with a smile.

And, perhaps more importantly,
"keeping secret all such things

"as shall be done or said
in the same privy chamber".

I mean, this is basically
a gagging order.

If you're working for the King,

then don't speak about what you see
or hear in the privy chamber.

But for Cardinal Wolsey,

the Eltham Ordinances serve
another purpose entirely.

Wolsey had an ulterior motive.

He wanted to control the people
who were getting close to the King.

He wanted to ensure that other
people couldn't bend his ear

and, as it says here, not
intermeddle "of causes or matters".

In other words, the people
who were close to the King

should not be talking politics

and they shouldn't be trying
to move up in the world.

So, this is really something
of a political coup,

at the same time
as it is a book of rules

for how the household should behave.

The Eltham Ordinances helped Wolsey
to become

the most powerful man in England,
other than the King himself.

But there are signs that Henry feels

the Cardinal is getting
too big for his boots.

Wolsey runs a court

that is spectacular.

When he holds parties
at Hampton Court,

there are hundreds of people there
for dinner.

But it's also getting to a point

of almost competing
with Henry himself,

and that's a bit of a problem.

Henry starts to look more closely
to what people are doing for him,

and that includes Wolsey.

He's contradicting Wolsey
from time to time.

They have the odd little clash.

Henry was always in charge,

even when he was just leaving things
to other people.

A real indication of Henry's
growing unease with Wolsey's status

comes over the issue
of Hampton Court.

Wolsey knows that Henry is
a bit jealous of it,

and when he realises that he is
starting to lose Henry's favour,

he makes this very symbolic gesture
of giving it to the King.

BELL CHIMES

As his relationship with Wolsey
begins to unravel,

Henry's marriage to Catherine
of Aragon is falling apart.

One of the deep-seated things
in Henry's character

is that if something goes wrong,
it's always somebody else's fault.

And so, Henry does start
to blame Catherine.

After the birth of the
Princess Mary, their only child,

there are no more living children,
and then, of course,

Catherine is almost six years older
than he is

and she's going to enter
the menopause, and that worries him.

Throughout his reign,
Henry has this problem,

which is that he is King,

he is meant to be in charge
of everything,

he's meant to be able to decide
his own fate.

And yet, there are so many places
in his life

where he then discovers
he's not in control of things.

He's not in control
of whether his wife has a son.

A queen is there for one principal
purpose and that is to produce sons.

Catherine is not doing that

and, therefore, Henry,
he's bound to look elsewhere.

Henry's attentions are turning to
a young woman at court, Anne Boleyn.

He's had affairs before, but
this time, things feel different.

Anne plays things
slightly differently.

As soon as it becomes apparent
that Henry is considering

the validity of his marriage
to Catherine of Aragon,

she starts positioning herself
as a potential future bride,

and Henry is quite happy
to go along with this.

And so, they start on this attempt

to get Henry's marriage to Catherine
declared invalid.

Desperate to end his marriage,

Henry starts searching
for a way to divorce Catherine.

Once Henry's decided that he wants
to marry Anne Boleyn,

he goes all guns blazing
to research this himself.

He gets it into his head
that the reason he has no sons

is because he has transgressed
that biblical rule in Leviticus

that you must not marry
your brother's widow.

The thing about Henry is,

once he has his mind set
on a particular course,

he can be extraordinarily cold
and ruthless in achieving it,

and anybody who gets in his way,
well, they need to watch out.

Henry tasks Wolsey with securing
permission from the Pope

to end his marriage.

With the divorce, Henry gives Wolsey
an impossible job to do.

Divorce isn't unheard of,

but for a king to set aside a wife

to whom he had been married
for 20 years, that doesn't happen.

There is no way
that the Pope is going to agree,

and Wolsey must be thinking,
"I've got the boss from hell here.

"I just cannot deliver this.
What am I going to do?"

Wolsey's attempts
to secure a divorce are failing.

Losing patience, Henry takes matters
into his own hands

and he initiates a very public trial
of his marriage to Catherine.

From Henry's point of view,

the divorce trial should have been
a way to sort things out

and get a legal ruling
to get his own way.

But the Queen comes in.

She gets down on her knees
before Henry

and she makes this extraordinary
plea to her husband,

asserting her role as his wife,

pleading for her rights
to stay in the marriage.

He doesn't react. There is nothing.

He is not at all swayed
by all of this emotion.

This is an indication
of that coldness

just coming to the surface
in Henry's character.

It's almost like when he's decided

that somebody is no longer useful
to him,

that's it, he cuts them out.

He moves onto the next thing.
It's almost pathological.

The divorce trial ends in failure

and Henry blames his chief minister.

Wolsey has genuinely tried to get
Henry the divorce he wanted,

and it's not really Wolsey's fault
that this has not worked out.

I mean, the big balance of power
is against him.

And yet, in Henry's mind,

Wolsey has failed
in the most significant diplomacy

that Henry has ever asked him to do.

There was this invisible line
which Henry drew,

and once you crossed that line,
you'd pay the penalty for doing it.

There's no going back.
You can't rub out history.

Once you have annoyed Henry,
once you have damaged his ego,

you will pay for it,

and Wolsey knew
his days were numbered.

Henry VIII has turned his back
on his wife

and his closest adviser,

and strange quirks are emerging
in his character.

If you actually met Henry VIII,
it would be important

not to fix your eye upon him
for too long

or stare straight in the face,
cos he really didn't like that.

It was said of him
he couldn't hold somebody's gaze.

He felt uncomfortable.

This is one of the strongest kings
of England,

and yet, there is
a certain personal insecurity,

even when he's at his most secure.

Henry has this tendency to turn
on his most trusted advisers.

He puts them

in impossible positions,

giving these incredibly
difficult tasks,

and when they fail,
as inevitably they must,

they get all the blame, not Henry.

Henry banishes Cardinal Wolsey

for his failure to secure a divorce
from Catherine of Aragon.

Once the King's
most powerful subject,

Wolsey is stripped of his post
as Lord Chancellor

and his property is seized.

For Cardinal Wolsey, who always
saw himself as Henry's man,

to have the King say
that he didn't trust him

was completely crushing,
and from that moment on,

we don't ever really see him
regain Henry's trust.

He's just slowly sliding inexorably
towards his ultimate fate.

Wolsey sends Henry a letter
begging for his forgiveness.

This letter,
held in the National Archives,

gives an insight
into Wolsey's desperation.

Wolsey is appealing
so completely submissively

to Henry in this letter,

that it starts with,
"I, your poor, heavy

"and wretched priest do daily pray,
cry and call upon you..."

and then ends with,
"Your most prostrate poor chaplain,

"creature..."

Creature - I mean, not even
a human being any more,

just a sort of beast
of King Henry VIII's.

It could not be more clear in this

that Wolsey is lowering himself
in Henry's eyes.

It really is quite heart-wrenching,
I think,

that he was reduced to this.

The Cardinal's letter fails
to win the King over.

I find Henry VIII quite challenging
because time and again,

Henry can't admit himself
that he's made a mistake.

He is completely certain that
he is in the right at all times,

and so, as a result, the person
who gets scapegoated is Wolsey.

Henry issues orders
for Wolsey to be arrested

on charges of treason
and sent to the Tower of London.

But he will never make it there.

After arriving at Leicester Abbey
to spend the night, he collapses...

..and dies.

In the aftermath of Wolsey's death,

one of his servants goes
to see Henry

to try and persuade him
to look kindly on his old servant.

This is when we see
Henry's contradictory nature

because Henry declares,

"If I could lay out £20,000
to bring back the Cardinal,

"I would gladly do it."

In the next breath,
he reminds Wolsey's servant

that his master had died
whilst owing him £1,500.

After Wolsey's death,
it becomes clear

that the Pope will never grant
Henry a divorce.

But Henry is so determined
to marry Anne Boleyn

that he will stop at nothing
to achieve it.

The next few years will see Henry
make the cataclysmic decision

to break with the Pope
and the Roman Catholic Church.

He didn't want to be

responsible to the Pope.

He wanted to centralise power
to himself.

It was the only way

he would get a divorce.

It was the only chance
of having a son and heir.

Henry has started
to radically change

the course of English history.

He transformed every aspect
of his kingdom -

religious, political -

but he's developed
into a very different man.

He's moved from being someone
who is a bit anxious and uncertain

to someone completely convinced
of his own rightness,

the justice of all of his decisions.

He was willing to change
the entire country,

even the entire map of Europe,
in order to get what he wanted.

In the next episode,

Henry turns on his new queen,
Anne Boleyn.

The English court is a nest
of hissing snakes.

Absolutely nobody is safe.

This reads,
"Her crimes were so abominable.

"Anne is the most wicked queen
in history."

And Henry's paranoia begins
to creep into England's politics.

Henry VIII comes down on opponents
with murderous force.

You were either with him
or against him,

and if you were against him,
you paid for it.

You might think you know everything
there is to know about Henry VIII.

You'll know he married six times and
had two of his wives executed.

But the truth about our most famous
king is much more complex

and far more compelling.

This series tells Henry's story over
six of the most tumultuous decades

in English history, separating
the real man from the myth.

To some, Henry was a cruel bully.

He wanted the fear of punishment to
be perfect.

This is what happens when you
defy Henry.

This is what traitors get.

To others, he was a charismatic
and successful ruler.

He jousts, he rides, he sings.

What more could you want from this
perfect prince?

But Henry's personality,
his innermost thoughts

and his motivations have
remained elusive.

When somebody is no longer useful to
him, that's it - he cuts them out.

It's almost pathological.

Once Henry has his mind set on
an idea,

he will stick with it
no matter the consequences.

Now, a team of Tudor experts have
come together to investigate

who the real Henry was.

Here are Henry's insecurities
written in black and white.

They'll unearth never before seen
documents, including some

from the Vatican's archives.

Thank you so much for showing me one
of the greatest prizes

in Tudor history.

And they'll go backstage at Henry's
court to unravel a murky world

of power, plots,
and petrifying ambition.

Henry VIII comes down on
opponents with murderous force.

Henry's growing
increasingly paranoid.

He's starting to lose his grip
on reality.

Henry has got older,
he's got more tyrannical.

His reign has got bloodier
and he's more determined than ever

to get his own way.

Henry VIII is now 41 years old.

His first wife, Catherine of Aragon,
has failed to provide him

with a longed for son and heir.

And he's becoming increasingly
anxious about the future

of his dynasty.

He's banished Catherine from court
and is embroiled in an attempt

to divorce her and marry his
long-term mistress Anne Boleyn.

The way in which Henry's treating
the two women

in his life could not
be more different.

On the one hand, you have this
great chivalrous love play

with Anne Boleyn,

and on the other there is
the incredibly cruel, heartless

rejection of Catherine of Aragon,
the wife who served him loyally

for more than 20 years.

It's interesting to think what it
was about Anne Boleyn

that made her so attractive
to Henry, but also so enigmatically

attractive to so many people.

Her education in France may have
been a factor.

She had a style and a glamour that
other people didn't.

But also her intelligence,
her ability to argue with scholars

and theologians about religious and
moral issues.

Henry, the scholar who
flattered himself

as being the philosopher prince
saw in her, I think,

a consort who shared some
of those values.

But as their relationship develops,
Anne puts pressure on Henry

by refusing to sleep with him until
their wedding is in sight.

Her own sister had been discarded
as Henry's mistress.

She wanted more for herself
than that.

She wanted to be Queen.

So for seven long years
she keeps him at arm's length,

giving him a little bit of
encouragement and then destroying

his hopes the next.

That speaks volumes about just how
much Henry was in thrall to Anne.

Henry's love letters reveal
his obsession with Anne.

They survive to this day,

and are held deep within the
Vatican library.

Regina, thank you so much for
allowing us to film here

and for showing me what has to be
one of the greatest prizes

in Tudor history.

These are the original letters
from Henry VIII

to his great love Anne Boleyn.

You're very welcome,
and we are happy to show people

in Great Britain these documents so
precious to you and to us.

Precious for, I think, all mankind.

Henry's letters are written
in French,

the language of courtly love,

and are filled with
romantic gestures.

You see that in French,
"To my mistress"

there at the top of the page.

"Mistress", he wishes!

And you know, he talks about
being struck by the dart of love

or "dart d'amour".

Now, this is very famous, isn't it?
The love heart.

It's very romantic that he draws a
love heart

around Anne's initials and then
either side or his own initials.

And even though we don't have Anne's
responses, we can sense

that she's the one in control
because it's all Henry

making the effort and trying
to woo her.

Yes. And she's remaining just out of
reach, which I think was part

of her genius, actually. Yeah.

The letters demonstrate just how
desperate Henry is.

The longer Anne holds him off,
the more insecure he becomes.

This is probably my favourite of the
letters because I think

it's the most revealing of
Henry's state of mind.

You sense his insecurity in a way
because he talks

of how he's been in a great agony
since receiving Anne's last letter,

not knowing how to interpret it.

Here is a man who has showered his
love with affection,

with letters, with gifts.

He's had very little back.

One of the naughtiest letters in the
whole collection is this one

here where you REALLY get a sense of
Henry's frustrated lust.

He writes to Anne,
"Wishing myself especially

"of an evening in my
sweetheart's arms."

Here's a man in TORTURE
through this unrequited love.

Anne's not giving him much back.

Henry doesn't know where he stands,
and it's sending him crazy.

Anne Boleyn's behaviour and the
desire for a male heir

have provoked Henry into making one
of the most monumental decisions

in English history.

Breaking with the
Roman Catholic Church.

Eventually, free
from the Pope's authority,

Henry divorces Catherine of Aragon.

And marries Anne Boleyn.

But all of this comes
at the highest imaginable price.

Henry's break with Rome was probably
the most devastating political

and religious and social event
for 500 years.

I mean, to suddenly decide that
England was not part

of Catholic Christendom,
to reject the authority of the Pope

and everything that
that represented was something

which disoriented and
terrified everyone.

The nation was traumatised.

Henry then declares himself head of
his own Church of England.

For Henry to claim to be the head of
a church was unprecedented.

It's very hard to imagine the
radical,

shocking nature of that claim.

A layman, not someone trained
in the church, not a bishop,

not someone in holy orders.

Henry believes this makes him second
only to God.

On the one hand, you need
to have quite a big ego

to deal with that.

On the other hand, it's a great deal
of responsibility.

Henry, who is already trying to
manage a kingdom, is now trying

to manage a church as well.

So, at the point that Henry breaks
with Rome,

I don't think anybody quite knows
what is going to happen next.

Henry might have got his wish to
marry Anne Boleyn,

but this revolutionary decision is
about to catapult England

into chaos and damage Henry's
reputation with his people.

England is in turmoil after Henry's
decision to break with Rome.

But despite opposition, he is now
ruthlessly forcing the new religion

on his Catholic people.

To push his religious revolution
through, he has a secret weapon

in the form of his new chief
adviser, Thomas Cromwell.

Thomas Cromwell is nothing
less than a genius, talented lawyer.

He's a property developer,
a moneylender, trader.

But Cromwell is very different
to the noblemen

that Henry's surrounded by.

Thomas Cromwell was the son
of a lowly person in Putney,

just down the river from London,
and he had this unique ability

to annoy people, particularly
the rich nobility of old England

who regarded him as a common upstart
because he wasn't

from the great and good families.

Men like Cromwell owe everything

to Henry his readiness to put them
in place.

So, they really suit Henry cos
they're going to be loyal to him.

Henry is really drawn to Cromwell.

He's got a cheeky sense of humour.

He's not afraid of Henry.

And as a natural bully, Henry
is actually rather disarmed by that.

He was ruthless,
ambitious and quite happy

to tread on anyone
who got in his way.

Cromwell seizes the opportunity to
win favour

and hatches a plan
to make Henry rich.

He's worked out that England's
monasteries possess millions

of pounds in untapped wealth.

Thomas Cromwell said,
"I'm going to make you rich.

"I'm going to dissolve
all these monasteries

"and it's all gonna
go straight into your pocket."

Kings are always short of money,
and that was music to Henry's ears.

Henry wanted to be the richest
king in Christendom.

It's all about his image for Henry.

He wants to have the most
magnificent court

to put one over on his rivals,
such as the king of France.

I'm not sure Henry's greedy.

I think that Henry feels that
as king, it is his right

to be in charge of everything.

To justify this moneymaking scheme,
Henry and Cromwell

start a slanderous
propaganda campaign

against England's
Catholic monasteries.

If you're gonna dissolve
the monasteries,

you have to have an excuse to do it.

So, Cromwell and his agents go round

and they start drawing up lists
of things

that the monks and nuns
are doing wrong.

Monasteries were always
controversial places.

These were houses of celibate men
living on their own,

often in remote,
inaccessible places -

who knew what they were doing?

Protestant reformers are saying not
only are these places of idolatry,

but they're places of sexual sin.

They're superstitious,
they're monsters.

It's quite astonishing that the
first piece of explicit legislation

against sex between men comes
in 1533,

precisely in the context
of this campaign.

They find it useful to say,

"You know what's going on in these
monasteries?

"This is why we need a crackdown."

And so they use this not just to
attack the monks,

but to close down the
institutions altogether.

They say things have got so bad,
they've all got to go.

Under Henry's orders,
hundreds of monasteries

across the English countryside
are pillaged and destroyed.

Henry closed in the region
of 563 monasteries.

That's an enormous amount.

These buildings had dominated the
English landscape for centuries.

They were almost like the social
services of their day, fulfilling

the role of hospitals,
a charitable function.

And, so, of course their loss
had a huge impact on Henry's people.

There's one report that suggests
there was 20,000 monks and nuns

wandering around the
country homeless.

That just gives you an indication of
how much of a shake-up

of society this was.

Henry had pledged that all of the
income from these religious houses

would be invested in creating new
reformed religious establishments.

He didn't keep his promise.

He gave away a lot of the riches,
a lot of lands to his nobles,

and he kept an awful lot
for himself.

25 years into his reign,
Henry has come close to destroying

the Catholic Church in England,
and made a fortune in the process.

But remarkably, in private,
he's still clinging

onto the traditional Catholic
beliefs that he grew up with.

There's a real contradiction in
Henry's attitude

towards the religious changes.

While in public he's outlawing all
sorts of things,

such as going to mass in private,

that's exactly what he's doing.

The Catholic mass is at the heart of
Henry's religious beliefs

and really at the centre of
his life.

And he attends mass every
single day.

We know he crept on his knees to the
cross at Easter.

These are in the views of most
Protestants superstition.

But Henry was convinced
they weren't -

superstition were the things
the other people did.

These things were true belief.

Because in his heart, he was
performing them in the right way.

There is an enormous double standard
with Henry.

It's all very well for him to
continue worshipping as he likes,

but his people have to toe a
different line.

They have to be part of
the new reformed religion.

But Henry's religious hypocrisy
is testing some

of his closest friendships,

to people like Thomas More.

Thomas More's relationship with
Henry VIII was as close

to a friendship
as a Tudor king could have.

They argued long into the night.

They talked about the latest works
of philosophy and religion.

They went up on the ledges
of the palaces and looked

at the stars and talked
about astronomy.

They'd first met when Henry was just
eight years old,

so More was a huge influence
on Henry,

and he rose and rose in
Henry's service.

He was Lord Chancellor of all
England's by the 1530s.

But Thomas More was acutely
religious, devout to the point

of wearing a hair shirt
under his clothes so that his flesh

was mortified by the irritant.

I mean, these were the kind
of extreme religious practises

that the most reclusive Catholics
would use.

As a devout Catholic,
Thomas More disagrees strongly

with Henry's decision to break with
the Roman Catholic Church.

And he's not the only one.

Growing numbers
of people are speaking out

against Henry's new regime.

These voices of dissent play heavily
on Henry's insecurities.

Some outspoken priests in Middlesex
said that Henry's private life

resembled a pig wallowing
and defiling itself.

A nun makes these prophecies saying
that she's seen a place reserved

for him in Hell.

For Henry,
this is all deeply personal.

Anyone who speaks out against
his reforms is criticising himself

and he can't take that.

Like his father before him,

Henry VIII comes down on opponents
with murderous force.

Hidden away in the
Houses of Parliament is evidence

of just how murderous
Henry is becoming.

Here I am in the
Parliamentary Archives looking at

the 1534 Treason Act, one of the
most extraordinary documents

in Henry's reign.

Here are Henry's neuroses,

Henry's fears, Henry's insecurities
written in black and white.

The 1534 Treason Act says it's now
high treason to "maliciously wish,

"will or desire, by words or
writing, or by craft imagine,

"and attempt bodily harm"
against the king or the queen

or their heirs apparent.

This document says that it's now
high treason

to "maliciously publish and
pronounce by express writing

"or words that the king is a
heretic, schismatic, tyrant,

"infidel or usurper of the crown."

The act is extraordinary
because it's not only governing

how people behave, but it's
governing how they think

and what they say.

Henry VIII believed that as far as
his subjects were concerned,

you're either with
him or against him.

And if you were against him,
you paid for it.

This document changed Henry's realm
into a land of fear.

Words spoken in jest or in drink
or in anger

could lead you to the scaffold.

This brutal act significantly widens
the scope of treason, and it marks

a turning point in Henry's reign.

That need not only to have people
obedient, but to believe absolutely

in the justice of what he was doing
was unprecedented.

No-one had asked this before.

That is intruding into everyone's
belief system,

into their consciences in a way that
no-one had tried before or since.

One of the first victims of Henry's
ruthless new regime

is his old friend, Thomas More.

Henry locks him in the Tower of
London because Moore refuses

to endorse his religious reforms.

More is very much a devout Catholic,
and that idea

of England breaking completely away
and defying the Pope

defying tenets of Catholic faith
is not something

that More can really live with.

More remains in the Tower for a
year, and during that year,

Henry does everything he possibly
can to persuade him.

He even says to him, "Believe what
you like in your heart so long

"as in public, you're with me."

I think Henry still had that deep
felt conviction that eventually

their friendship would prevail and
that More would be won over

by the sheer weight of argument and
the force of Henry's personality.

Tudor history is full of these
moments where people

who have been working together for
months and years

suddenly fall apart.

But I think it's particularly
traumatic when it comes to Henry

and Thomas More because of
that deeper intellectual connection

that the two of them had forged.

Eventually, Henry has had enough,

and he authorises his former
friend's death.

The Parliamentary Archives still
holds the document

that sanctions
Thomas More's execution.

This document says that Thomas More
is guilty of high treason by sowing

sedition, by obstinately,
contemptuously refusing to take

the oath supporting the succession
to the crown.

They are powerful words.

And later on, they describe the
ingratitude of Thomas More

towards the King.

It lays down Thomas More's crimes
and legalises his execution.

And to all intents and purposes,
it's his death warrant.

On July the 6th, 1535,

Thomas More is executed
on Tower Hill.

I can't help but wonder whether
Henry just had those moments

where he's looked at himself in the
mirror and thought,

"How on Earth have I come to this?"

Here he is ordering the execution
of some

of his closest friends and advisers.

He's caused turmoil in his kingdom.

Did he ever bring any of that back
on himself

and actually examine his own
motives, his own character?

I don't think Henry had a conscience
about what he was doing.

No, he's not a man who's gonna lose
any sleep over things like that.

He has an objective which he wants
to achieve, the continuation

of the Tudor dynasty, and nothing or
no-one is going to stand in his way.

He absolutely believed
in the righteousness

of his own conclusions,
and that's what drove him through.

There's definitely a sense at this
point in Henry's reign

that it's almost gathering a
momentum of its own.

There's no stopping Henry now,
and it's going

to get more and more brutal.

Little does Henry know that a freak
accident is about to alter

the future of his kingdom
and the fate of his second wife.

Henry VIII is now
44 years old.

And his break with the Roman
Catholic Church is beginning

to tarnish his reputation.

He's desperate to project the image
of a king

at the height of his powers.

In the middle of the 1530s,

Henry was a man increasingly
obsessed by his public image.

He would spend many hours getting
dressed by his men,

covering up all those signs of
weakness and projecting this idea

that here is the most magnificent
king ever to sit

on the throne of England.

Henry, from the beginning,
is very conscious of the importance

of the public eye,
but also he really enjoys it.

He loves performing to people.

Being the monarch,
you have to look the part.

And the Henry is particularly adept
at this.

He's really interested in fashion.

So, we have records of Henry
spending really huge amounts

of money on cloth of gold

and he buys about 175 pairs of shoes
in one single 12-month period.

Henry is the ultimate investor in,
dare I say, bling jewellery.

But beneath the royal clothing
is a king

who is far more vulnerable
than he looks.

Concerned he's losing the love
and respect of his people,

Henry's propaganda machine
goes into overdrive.

Having broken with Rome,
it was really important for Henry

to win some hearts and minds if he's
gonna avoid a big rebellion.

It involves a certain amount of
PR effort using print,

which is a pretty new technology,
to produce lots of pamphlets

and try to win back some of that
popular support.

It's not easy to get a country to
break away from a faith

that it had as a part of its way of
life for centuries beforehand.

So, that trauma of separating from
the Catholic Church is something

that Henry has
to respond to directly.

Whilst Henry hopes to escape
public unrest,

he can't seem to avoid
it in private.

Henry develops increasingly bad
temper because he's losing patience

with Anne and with this marriage and
also the fact

that he hasn't yet produced a
male heir.

And so he just now wants results.

Henry needs God to show him that he
approves of his actions

by giving him a son.

And yet Anne does not produce a son.

She has miscarriages.

She has a daughter.

It's as if his first marriage is
just repeating itself.

And that worries him.

"What's wrong about this marriage?

"Is this marriage cursed as well?"

As time went by,
there were more reasons for them

to dispute and argue
with each other.

Her inability to produce the male
heir was the grumbling resentment,

but also her commitment to
religious reform,

her willingness to argue with Henry.

These things were things that,

over time, became more
annoying than attractive.

The real turning point for Henry is
when Anne accuses him in public

of having an affair behind her back,
and Henry is angered

that she would dare question him in
public about his behaviour.

Henry responds to Anne by telling
her that she needs to turn

a blind eye to this behaviour as her
betters had done,

meaning Catherine of Aragon,
and that he could unmake her

just as quickly as
he had raised her.

There's another person causing
trouble inside the royal marriage.

Henry's adviser, Thomas Cromwell.

Henry's court has become like a
pressure cooker.

So at the centre of this we have
Cromwell and Anne

who are each other's rivals and
enemies.

Anne has her own faction behind her.

And Cromwell has his supporters.

And we see in the court these two
rival factions

fighting for Henry's attention.

Cromwell knew that Anne Boleyn was
intent on having his head.

So, he was very keen to act against
her, to strike first,

before he was attacked himself.

Anne has an ace up her sleeve that
she thinks will secure her position.

She's pregnant.

However, something is about to
happen that will shake both Anne

and Henry to the core.

When Henry takes part
in a jousting tournament,

he falls from his horse.

An account from the time reveals
that the accident is so serious

that Henry is knocked unconscious.

There's a report by Dr Pedro Ortiz,

who is the Imperial Spanish
ambassador to the Vatican.

He's picked up some gossip coming
from Francis I of France,

who's no friend of Henry VIII's...

READS ALOUD

So, here we have Henry lying
on the ground,

not speaking for two hours.

I believe that horse rolled on him.

It crushed him.

He suffered some kind of traumatic
brain injury.

Recent research has demonstrated
that such an injury

can actually cause
neuroendocrinal damage.

People suffering this very rare
disorder become depressed,

irritable, and very suspicious of
everyone around them.

In the latter years
of Henry's reign,

he was displaying
all those symptoms.

Henry's accident also has a dramatic
effect on his wife, Anne Boleyn.

What is absolutely certain is the
shock of hearing that Henry

had this accident caused Anne Boleyn
to miscarry a male child.

"Queen Anne was brought to bed and
delivered of a man-child

"before her time.
It was said she took a fright."

It was a 3-month-old foetus,
male child, perfectly formed.

And if the child had lived,

it could have been
Henry's longed-for male heir.

The miscarriage is a
personal disaster for Anne,

because that possibility
that the male heir was finally,

at last, about to appear is taken
away again and she's damaged goods.

After his accident,
Henry becomes increasingly paranoid.

And at court,
things are now more dangerous

for Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell.

There is a diplomatic letter which
describes the English court

as a nest of hissing snakes.

There are eavesdroppers at
every corner.

Absolutely nobody is safe -
from the Queen

to the greatest statesman
of the country.

Around Easter 1536
we see a real shift now

between the relationship of
Cromwell and Henry.

Henry calls out Cromwell in front of
the whole court,

publically disgraces him.

And this now puts Anne
back on the chessboard.

And so she's removed Cromwell,
her rival.

And once again,
she's the centre of Henry's world.

Cromwell storms out and the first
thing he does

is to stop plotting
to get rid of Anne.

Cromwell has decided it's Anne or
him, and it's going to be Anne.

Secretly, Thomas Cornwell
launches an investigation

into Anne's behaviour.

As soon as he's left court, Cromwell
puts the word out that he's sick.

But Cromwell is far from sick.

He is using this two-week absence as
the perfect cover for him to start

plotting the downfall of his arch
enemy, Anne Boleyn.

Cromwell has this
incredibly sophisticated network

of spies and informants.

Among his network are a number
of ladies

from the Queen's own household.

Now, Anne isn't popular
with her ladies.

She's a fairly cruel mistress, so
you might imagine how willing

those ladies are to give Cromwell
little titbits of gossip information

that he can
slowly craft into a case.

One of the things about the early
modern court is that it is based

upon flirtation and it's based
upon the language of courtship.

So, at any point, those acts which
could have been perfectly normal

are reinterpretable
as much more culpable.

If you'd say you love the Queen,
what do you mean?

Cromwell began to find a lot of
evidence of people

saying inappropriate things.

Just two weeks later, Cromwell
presents his findings to Henry.

When Cromwell had to go and tell
Henry what he'd discovered, it must

have been the most terrifying moment
of his political career...

..to say that the king's wife,
his queen, was adulterous.

I mean, that's not news you can
slip in in a list of other things

as you're going through the
morning's business.

Cromwell's evidence accuses Anne of
conducting an affair

behind her husband's back
with not one, but five men.

He had to take control of that and
he took control of it

with a ruthless passion of rage,
that meant that it had

to be driven through
that there was no escape.

This is a man not in denial, but in
manic acceptance of the charge.

And I think that's what drives the
process from there on in.

When he wanted something to be true,
it became true.

And this was absolutely the case now
with his second wife's infidelity,

because her real failure,
let's be honest about it,

was not giving Henry a son.

That was the only way
she'd let him down.

I don't believe she was guilty for
one moment of anything else.

But Henry needed her out.

And, of course,
this was all too convenient.

In the archives of the British
Library is a letter that provides

a glimpse into Henry's mind during
this time,

as well as the man manipulating him,
Thomas Cromwell.

This is a letter by Thomas Cromwell
written in May 1536,

at the height of the controversy
surrounding Anne Boleyn.

This letter is undoubtedly one of
our best sources for understanding

Henry's perspective on Anne Boleyn.

Cromwell says here, "The
King's highness thought convenient

"that I should advertise you of
the same,"

I should tell you about what's been
going on,

about the case against Anne.

Really, what he's saying is the King
has instructed Cromwell to spread

the word about Anne Boleyn's crimes,
and they are all described here

in their full, gory detail.

This bit here reads,
"Her crimes were so abominable

"that I think the like was
never heard."

And there's some fairly graphic
language used here

to describe the Queen's
"incontinent living".

This is written for
an absolute purpose.

It's telling the world Anne Boleyn
is guilty of heinous crimes.

Anne is the most wicked queen in
history, according to Cromwell.

Alongside charges of adultery,
Cromwell's letter also accuses Anne

of plotting Henry's death.

At the bottom we have here talk of a
certain conspiracy against the King.

So, in Henry's mind, it goes beyond
just adultery, an unfaithful wife.

She's plotting treason.

This is a pure piece of PR on
Cromwell's part.

Cromwell manipulated, Henry.

And, in fact, he later boasted

that he had dreamt up the whole
scheme against Anne Boleyn.

Whatever the truth
behind the accusations,

Henry falls for them hook,
line, and sinker.

Once convinced that there was a
kernel of truth to it,

Henry's imagination knew no bounds,
and at one point, famously, he said,

"Well, maybe it's 1,000 men.
Who knows what Anne is capable of."

Henry VIII is a great
fan of good stories.

He's good at spinning them and he is
also taken in by them.

And the story that has spun around
Anne is the one of the wicked

woman, a woman with an insatiable
desire to manipulate men.

Henry orders Anne's arrest and she
is escorted to the Tower of London.

He will never see her again.

As Anne Boleyn awaits her trial in
the Tower of London,

reports suggest that Henry VIII
is becoming mentally imbalanced.

The Spanish ambassador reported that
Henry had collapsed in tears

about Anne Boleyn's downfall.

Henry VIII was always an
extraordinarily emotional man.

Tears were never
far from the surface.

Tears of joy, tears of grief.

But, of course, Henry always cries
only for one person

and that person is Henry himself.

For a Tudor man, not being able to
control your wife

is really is seen as the
cardinal sin,

and the biggest flaw
against your masculinity.

I'm sure that Henry did believe Anne
was guilty

because it was convenient for him
to believe that Anne was guilty.

And, it made him right.

He was the good person.
She was the bad person.

While Anne is under lock and key,

the investigation into her
infidelities ramps up.

This letter was written by Sir
William Kingston,

who was Anne's jailer at the Tower,

and Kingston had been set upon Anne
as a spy by Henry.

Henry wanted to know her every move,
her every word.

Kingston reports this overheard
conversation between Anne

and Henry Norris.

Norris was actually one of the
gentlemen who served the King,

but he was also a great favourite
with Anne and stood accused

of adultery with her.

"Anne asks Norris why he would tarry
before getting married."

Why is he waiting to get married?

And she says the following
throwaway remark,

"Did he look for dead men's shoes?"

Effectively, she's kind of teasing
Norris saying,

"Are you waiting for the King to die
so that you can marry me?"

The fact that such a throwaway
remark, harmless in itself,

was enough to condemn a queen of
England shows you just how febrile

the atmosphere was at Henry's court.

The King himself was growing
increasingly paranoid.

He's starting to lose his grip on
reality, and that is all reflected

here in this piece
of evidence against Anne.

Based on this evidence, Anne is
tried for treason

and quickly found guilty -
as are the five men accused

of sleeping with her.

Henry does not attend Anne's trial.

But he is heavily involved
in the plans for her execution.

He wanted the theatre of punishment
to be perfect.

He wanted the execution
to be exemplary.

This is what happens
when you defy Henry.

This is what traitors get.

Henry didn't ever like to associate
himself with death.

He wouldn't go to funerals.

He wouldn't be anywhere near anyone
who was mortally sick.

And he didn't want to be seen in the
same space

as Anne Boleyn ever again.

Her name was not to be mentioned.

All trace of her was removed
from his palaces.

So, of course, he's gonna be
nowhere near the Tower that day.

But he invited 1,000 people to watch
Anne Boleyn's head being struck off.

Those are the actions of a madman.

On the morning of
the 19th of May, 1536,

Anne Boleyn is executed.

But Henry has already lined
up his next wife.

The speed with which Henry moves on
to wife number three,

Jane Seymour,
is deeply disturbing, really.

The very next day,
they are betrothed.

They're married ten days later.

Now that is fast even by
Henry's standards.

He needs to get cracking because,
you know,

he needs to have a son
and he needs to live long enough

for that son to grow to adulthood.

So, he's not going
to waste time pretending

to mourn a woman who's betrayed him.

The following year, Jane Seymour is
able to give him what his two

previous wives have not.

A healthy son.
An heir to the throne.

Tragically, Jane herself dies only
two weeks after the birth,

leaving Henry once more alone.

But his reign is far from over.

The England of the late 1530s
is entirely different

from the England of a decade before.

We've got the monastery's
being dissolved.

We've got a dramatic change
of personnel at court.

All sorts of people
have disappeared.

Thomas More is gone.

Anne Boleyn has gone.

Jane Seymour has gone.

Henry himself has got older.

He's got more tyrannical,
his reign has got bloodier

and he's more determined than ever
to get his own way.

In the next episode,

age and infirmity start to catch up
with Henry VIII.

The pain that Henry got from his leg
was absolutely huge.

When the leg was really bad,
he could turn black in the face

and just sort of lie still,
hardly able to speak.

And he turns on his closest adviser.

Those less admirable traits that
we'd seen hints of early

in his life are now
front and centre.

This is Henry as a tyrant.

This is the beginning
of a totalitarian state.

You might think you know
everything there is to know
about Henry VIII.

You'll know he married six times,
and had two of his wives executed.

But the truth about our most famous
king is much more complex

and far more compelling.

This series tells Henry's story
over six of the most tumultuous
decades of English history,

separating the real man
from the myth.

To some, Henry was a cruel bully.

He's clever. What he likes to do
is to trap people.

He's a very skilful manipulator.

Henry's punishment was exemplary
in its brutality.

To others, he was a charismatic
and successful ruler.

He jousts, he rides, he sings!

What more could you want
from this perfect prince?

But Henry's personality,
his innermost thoughts
and his motivations,

have remained elusive.

Henry didn't take the blame
for his own mistakes

because that would not
have worked for him as a king.

He was so good at convincing himself
of what he saw as the truth.

Now a team of Tudor experts have
come together to investigate
who the real Henry was.

If you ever needed proof that
Henry was a bit of a megalomaniac,
this is it.

And they'll go backstage
at Henry's court

to unravel a murky world of power,
plots and petrifying ambition.

The English court is
a nest of hissing snakes.

No one quite knows who to trust.
There are spies and informers.

It's very, very clear
that behind this public facade

was somebody who was fundamentally
vulnerable and insecure.

Henry VIII has been on the throne
for 28 years.

And the once-carefree prince
has become a paranoid king,
suspicious of everyone around him.

He's divorced his first wife,

he's executed his second.

And his third wife has died
after the birth of his only son.

Now Henry is alone.

His controversial break
with the Roman Catholic Church
is making him unpopular

and there are rumblings of dissent
across his kingdom.

Feeling increasingly vulnerable,
Henry commissions a portrait

designed to promote himself
as a formidable ruler.

This is
the iconic portrait of Henry.

This is what everybody sees
in their mind's eye

when they think of Henry VIII.

The silhouette of that figure
could identify him just by itself.

It shows Henry sure-footed,
wide-legged,

staring straight at us.

He looks like a mighty emperor.

It's no coincidence
that the codpiece

is at eye level.
You can't fail to notice it.

It's sending out a message that
Henry is this great virile king.

Everybody knows all the problems
he's had getting a male heir,

but this painting
sets the record straight.
None of that was Henry'sfault.

The painting presents Henry
as a powerful monarch
in total command of his country,

but this portrait is a lie.

That picture is propaganda.

We know that it's been changed
to make his legs look longer,
to make him look more muscular,

but, in reality, Henry was slumping
into geriatric decay.

It's an image of Henry
that he wishes the world to see,
not the actual Henry,

the sick Henry,
the overweight Henry,

the Henry that's suspicious
about everybody

and that's also feeling the effects
of the infirmity of age

and the oncoming march of death.

Henry is suffering
from a painful leg ulcer,

which deeply affects
his state of mind.

Some time in the 1530s,
Henry suffered a jousting injury

which caused a terrible,
debilitating,

agonising disease in both his legs.

Tudor medicine was rather basic.

So his doctors advised
that his wound would be kept open,

which meant that he smelled,
that his bedsheets stunk,

his clothing stunk.

This is a man that you could smell
before you saw.

The pain that Henry got from his leg
was absolutely huge.

When the leg was really, really bad,

he could turn black in the face
and just sort of lie,

still hardly able to speak,
for several hours on the trot.

The infection had to be released,

which meant
the leg often had to be cut open

and pus drained
and ointment stuck on it.

There was a lot of decaying flesh,

and they wanted to remove that
by cauterising him.

Red-hot irons were applied
to these wounds in his leg.

It must have been
a living nightmare for him.

Henry's increasing infirmity,
his ailments, had a profound effect
on his psychology.

He couldn't cope with the knowledge
that he's no longer this kind
of thrusting young king he had been.

He's turned into
this incredibly vulnerable,

pain-ridden old man.

Henry's infirmity is laid bare

when you look at
his private household accounts.

So there are these primitive lifts
to move Henry between the floors
of his apartments.

He's wheeled about in a chair,

he has a whistle
to summon his attendants.

This is not the image
that Henry wants for himself.

Henry thinks that he knows
how to cure his leg ulcer
better than his doctors.

A 16th-century manuscript
contains 32 medicinal recipes

that Henry concocted himself.

Most of his recipes are concerned
with pain in the legs.

Here's a plaster
devised by the King at Oxford

to ease the pain and swelling
about the ankles.

I would not use
some of the ingredients today.

The King's grey plaster,
for example,

contains various roots,
flower buds,

garden worms, scraping of ivory
and powdered pearls.

And, finally,
it also contains red lead,

which is deadly poison.
Do not try this at home.

The exact nature of Henry's health
has been subject to speculation.

Recent research suggests that
he suffers from a rare condition
which affects his mentalhealth.

Down the centuries, people have had
lots of different theories about
what was the matter withHenry VIII.

I think Henry suffered
from an hormonal disorder

called Cushing's syndrome.
In 20% of cases,

it turns the victim
into a suspicious person,

wary of everyone around them.
They become melancholy,

depressed, anxious.

They can't take a decision,
or change their minds continuously.

Now all these symptoms
Henry displays

in the latter years of his life.

Other historians attribute Henry's
increasing paranoia to diabetes.

There's a lot to be said
for the view that as he became
more and more obese,

he got Type 2 diabetes.

It can start to affect your mind

and you can sort of develop
elements of paranoia.

Henry certainly has elements
of paranoia in these last years.

Whilst Henry's body and mind
are starting to fail,

his enemies are gaining in strength.

There are reports of a huge uprising
in the north of England

and Henry has to act swiftly
if he's to keep control
of his kingdom.

Henry VIII is now 46 years old.

His painful leg ulcer has
transformed the highly active King

into a man who struggles
to even walk without assistance.

This lack of exercise,
combined with massive overeating,
are making him obese,

and there are detailed records
of the enormous quantities of food
he eats.

Here we have an example
of what Henry would be eating

on pretty much
any given day of the week.

We have everything
from swan and custard

through to "rich, roasted baby kid"
or lamb, there's butter and eggs,

there's jelly and hippocras,

porpoise and seal
for the King's delight.

But it's been estimated
that King Henry VIII
would have been having

about double the number of calories,
bare minimum, that you would
recommend in the 21stcentury.

Because Henry was eating
so much meat, he inevitably suffered
severe constipation

and there's an account
in the letters and papers
of King Henry VIII

of how one of Henry's physicians
actually had to come

and administer a clyster,
an enema as we'd call it today,
to the King

in order to try and flush out
his system.

And the document goes on
to proudly report how the King
got up in the middle of the night

and had "a fair siege"
on the toilet.

Delightful for all those around him,
obviously.

Henry always saw himself
as that beautiful young prince
he had been once,

universally adored as a sportsman,
an athlete, a Renaissance prince.

I think he found it very difficult
towards the end of his life

as what he saw in the mirror was
no longer that handsome young man,

but instead, undeniably,
a sort of slightly hideous
sort of old creature.

It's three years since Henry broke
with the Roman Catholic Church

and declared himself
Head of the Church of England.

But now the repercussions
of his religious revolution
are catching up with him.

CROWD JEERS

This radical move
is extremely unpopular

and results in a religious uprising
in the north of England

known as the Pilgrimage of Grace.

This was the first major rebellion

against Henry's Reformation
and it shocked him to the core.

Because he was so good

at convincing himself
of what he saw as the truth, he
thought his people stillloved him.

This now changed everything.

The whole point of the Tudors were
that they brought peace and union
to England

after the divisions
of the Wars of the Roses.

And now you have division again.

This is an epic failure of kingship
and Henry understands that.

And he is extremely concerned.

But with no army at his disposal,
Henry is unable to defeat
the rebellion with brute force.

Kings of England
never had standing armies,

so they had to rule
with the consent of the people.

He realised that he was
in a very dangerous situation now

and he needed to act
tactically, politically,
and this is what he did.

Henry comes up with a plan
to deal with the rebels.

He offers them a pardon and invites
their ringleader, Robert Aske,
to a secret meeting.

Henry has this masterstroke.
He invites Robert Aske
and the leaders of the Pilgrimage

to court, and he entertains them
for Christmas.

He gives them gifts
and looks after them.

Aske went away very happy,
saying that he'd enjoyed
every sign of the King'sgrace,

of his mercy. "What a fantastic
king," Aske is essentially saying.

But it soon becomes clear that
Henry's show of mercy is a trick.

And he turns on the rebels
with a vengeance.

Henry was the sort of ruler
who would gull you along
and then basically cut you off.

He's clever, but what he likes to do
is try and trap people,
move them about on a chessboard.

He's a very skilful manipulator.

Robert Aske returns home

and Henry orders his arrest
and execution.

Henry's punishment of Robert Aske
was exemplary in its brutality.

This is a message to the people

that this is what happens
when you oppose Henry.

And, in fact,
he wanted to go much further.

He wanted people from every village
involved in the rebellion
to have somebody executed,

but the man who was in charge
of the retaliation simply didn't
carry out Henry's orders.

Henry's ruthless suppression
of the rebels marks
a turning point in his reign.

England had changed an awful lot
during this period.

It was no longer the Merry England
of Henry's early years.

It was now pretty much
a totalitarian state.

There were spies everywhere.

Suddenly, nobody was safe,
nobody could trust anyone.

There were neighbours
informing on neighbours,

so you never knew when there was
going to be that knock on the door.

People were now afraid to open
their mouths in any public place.

People were afraid to write letters
and express an opinion

because they were always looking
over their shoulder.

In the name of the King!

The man responsible for enacting
Henry's crackdowns is
his Chief Minister, Thomas Cromwell.

Cromwell has previously masterminded
the break up of the monasteries

and engineered the downfall of
Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn.

But now that Henry's people are
turning on him, he shifts the blame
onto Cromwell.

Henry didn't take the blame
for his own mistakes

because that would not have worked
for him as a king.

One of the purposes of good servants
was that they would take the blame
if things went wrong.

It was their advice.
With the Pilgrimage of Grace,

they didn't attack Henry so much,
they attacked Cromwell.

There is definitely a sense
in which Thomas Cromwell

is Henry VIII's scapegoat.

Henry could step back and say,
"I'm innocent of this.
I don't know what's going on.

"I don't know what my servants are
doing. Now that I've found out,
I'm absolutely appalled."

There had been warning signs
for Cromwell for a few years now

that actually his luck was changing.
There were arguments with the King

and, in fact, on a number
of occasions, the King was said
to have "beknaveth" Cromwell.

He was beating him up
in front of the court,

on one occasion, pummelling him
about the head as if he were a dog.

Cromwell must have been terrified.

As he starts to fall out of favour,
Cromwell is given the chance
to redeem himself.

It's been two years since the death
of Henry's great love, Jane Seymour.

And now Cromwell is tasked
with finding him a new wife.

He's now got the heir,
but he doesn't have the spare.

And Henry is deeply sceptical
about female monarchy.

He's not excited about the prospect
of either of his daughters
becoming his successor.

So he's looking for a new wife
to produce sons.

Cromwell strikes a political deal
for Henry to marry the German
noblewoman, Anne of Cleves.

And Henry agrees to marry her
based solely on seeing her portrait.

Well, he sees an image of a girl
who looks like a doll.

She's pretty, she's young,
she looks very unthreatening.

So Henry sees the portrait
and he thinks,

"She looks a bit of all right.
I'll go for that. Yep,
that seems...that's fine."

But when Henry meets Anne in person,
he changes his mind completely.

When Anne arrives,
she's put up in Rochester Castle

and Henry can't wait to see her,
so he goes in disguise with a gift
to basically have a quick peep,

but Anne doesn't really take
any notice of this rather obese
stranger who sort of pops by

and that's not a good start.

Poor Anne of Cleves was dressed
in the most hideous German costume,

sort of contrasting bands of fabric
and a sort of helmet

that looks like something
out of Star Wars.

And he was horribly disappointed.

Henry made his revulsion towards
Anne of Cleves absolutely clear.

He complained that there were
"displeasant airs" about her.

And there's a very lurid description
of their wedding night.

It gave him enough of a conviction
to declare that she was no maid.

Henry's smear campaign
against Anne of Cleves

actually reveals more
about his own personal insecurities
than anything else.

Henry has, for some time, been
suffering from bouts of impotence

and he finds himself
unable to consummate the marriage.

I think perhaps he has a bit
of a go, it doesn't work out

and then he decides,
"This is not my fault."

Really, it undermined
his masculinity that he couldn't
have sex with his own wife,

but he was not willing to
acknowledge that it was his problem.

As far as he was concerned,
it was her.

Henry's PR campaign against Anne
was so effective

that even centuries later, there's
a tendency to still refer to her

as the Flanders mare, the ugly wife
whom he was lucky enough
to get rid of quite quickly.

We completely overlook the fact
that actually there was probably
nothing wrong with Anne.Frankly,

Henry was no oil painting
by this time.

The Anne of Cleves marriage is
an unmitigated disaster

and Henry lays the blame
squarely at Cromwell's feet.

I don't think
Henry really turns against Cromwell
until the Cleves marriage.

When Henry feels
that somebody has disobeyed him
or has been working against him,

he feels that the scales have fallen
from his eyes and he's going to
do something about it,

so he will cut them off.
He's got this infinite talent
for turning loyal servants

into enemies of the state, and
Cromwell falls into that bracket.

Seeking to exploit the growing rift
between Henry and Cromwell,

Cromwell's enemies at court
start to plot against him.

Chief among these enemies is
Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk.

Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk,
is one of the most unpleasant men
in English history.

He was ambitious, vain, arrogant.

For Norfolk, Thomas Cromwell was
public enemy number one.

Norfolk thinks that Cromwell's
too big for his boots.

He's a self-made man,
he's not an aristocrat,

the country should be run
by people of noble blood,

the true counsellors of the King,
not these upstarts.

To remove Cromwell from power,
Norfolk starts a campaign
aimed at discreditinghim.

It doesn't take much
to stoke Henry's suspicions.

Norfolk claimed
that Cromwell was plotting
to marry the King's daughter, Mary,

make himself king. He pointed out
the fact he had this huge household

that could perhaps
turn into a private army
and take the throne by force.

There was literally no evidence
behind any of the charges,

but Norfolk knew Henry was so
paranoid that he would believe it.

Henry was thinking
if Cromwell has let him down,
he must have meant it.

He must in some way have been
acting cruelly to the King.

Henry's ego was particularly
precious and particularly vulnerable
where he thought he'd been betrayed.

For Cromwell, it's only a matter
of time before Henry turns on him.

Thomas Cromwell knew the end
was coming. He could smell it.

He must have constantly been
looking over his shoulder,
not knowing who to trust.

Henry finally gives the order
to strike.

And when Cromwell arrives late
at a Privy Council meeting,

the Duke of Norfolk
is waiting for him.

We don't know why he was late.
It might have all been
part of the plot,

but he thought it was just
a routine meeting,

and this is a man who has
this sophisticated spy network.
He knows everything.

He didn't know this.

When he moves to sit down,
Norfolk said, "Stop! That's not
the seat for a traitor."

Cromwell was frozen.

He must have been absolutely
terrified because he knows
where it ends.

When the guards rushed forward,
there was a cry of, "Traitor!"
and he was seized.

He was astonished and he said,
"Why are you calling me a traitor?
Tell me what the charges are!"

Nobody said a word because they
hadn't finished making those charges
up yet. They had no answer.

There's a moment
that's almost Shakespearean,

where the Duke of Norfolk rips
the chain of office
from around his neck.

This method of arrest
has been devised deliberately
to surprise and shock him.

He was dragged out and taken by boat
to the Tower of London
on that dreadful one-way ticket.

Henry VIII has been on the throne
for over three decades.

After ordering the arrest
of his Chief Minister,
Thomas Cromwell,

Henry's suspicions intensify.

After Cromwell's fall,
Henry is actually
a rather different character

because he starts to say
for the first time,

"I trust no one but myself."

He doesn't appoint
another Chief Minister

and people have said, "Oh,
these are years without a policy.

"No one was up to the job."
No, no, no, no.

Henry believed he was up to the job.
He was going to direct everything.

He was so sensitive
to any accusation

that he was being governed
by other people,

that other people were manipulating
him, that he was the plaything
of other people's ambitions,

that he did everything in his power
to try to assert himself as the
ultimate authority in the kingdom.

Even though Cromwell is now
his prisoner in the Tower,

Henry still needs
his former adviser's help.

Henry remains trapped
in his marriage to Anne of Cleves,

and he needs Cromwell's legal
expertise to get him out of it.

There's nobody else who can get him
out of this fiasco marriage

with Anne of Cleves, so Henry
writes to Cromwell, asking for help.

"Give me evidence
that the marriage was never valid,
that it could be annulled."

So Cromwell is working for Henry
to his very last breath.

I think that he believes
the King at some point

is going to turn around and say,
"Sorry, all is forgiven.

"This is a mistake.

"I'm going to release you.
Live out the rest of your years.

"We're going to find
a place for you somewhere."

But once the Anne of Cleves marriage
is annulled,

Henry has no further use
for his former adviser.

Someone like Thomas Cromwell
isn't a friend.

He's a human tool of whatever it is

that Henry wished to achieve
at any moment,

and so he will pick a tool up
and he will use it

and when it no longer serves
its purpose, he will cast it aside.

On the 28th of July, 1540,

Thomas Cromwell, once one of
the most powerful men in England,

is led to the scaffold
and publicly executed on Tower Hill.

With Cromwell out of the way,
his arch enemy, the Duke of Norfolk,

sees an opportunity to secure
greater powers for himself.

And he has a secret weapon
to help him -

his teenage niece, Catherine Howard.

The moment that Catherine Howard is
in the King's bed, Norfolk probably
thought he was made for life.

Norfolk was a cynical,
unpleasant career aristocrat.

His wife, he knocked her teeth out.
I mean, this was not a nice man.

So the fact that he was using women
as pawns in a political game
shouldn't surpriseus.

Do you like it here?

Norfolk's position is secured
when Henry takes Catherine Howard
as his fifth wife.

He seems to rediscover something
of his lost youth in her.

He adores her,

and is seen playing with her
in public.

So he feels himself to be
this young king again.

He wanted to prove to everyone
around him that he was a virile man

and I think that his caressing
of Catherine Howard, his constant
parading her about this place

as this young bride on his arm,
is just massive overcompensation.

He's old enough
to be her grandfather,

so they must have presented

this rather incongruous image
of Beauty and the Beast.

But Henry and Catherine's honeymoon
is short-lived.

After just 15 months together,

evidence emerges
that Catherine wasn't a virgin
when she married him.

On the 2nd of November, 1541,

Henry VIII was at mass
up in the King's Closet,

just above us here in the Chapel
Royal of Hampton Court Palace

and he was presented with a letter
from Archbishop Cranmer

that relayed the sordid details
of Catherine Howard's past.

And it explicitly says
in this account

that Cranmer didn't just
tell the King this information,
but instead put it in writing.

"He declared the information thereof
to His Highness in writing,"

because, as it says here,
"He had not the heart
to express the same to the King

"by word of mouth."

This account makes it very clear
that Henry was completely
heartbroken

when he discovered this news. It
says, "His joy was turned to sorrow.

"He wept bitter tears."

And you get this impression of
someone who really, really wanted
this marriage to work,

who was deeply in love
with Catherine Howard,

and whose world just came crumbling
down around him when he found out
the truth about her.

Several days later, the allegations
against Catherine intensify

and she is accused
of having an affair
during her marriage to Henry.

The moment he learns about this,

the moment he learnt that it was
true that she'd had an affair,
he left.

And that's what we see Henry doing
time and time again
in his relationships.

It's quite disturbing
that Henry has this capacity

to just sort of turn off
and move on from a person,

even one who clearly
he loved very deeply.

Catherine Howard's fate is clear
the moment Henry turns against her.

She is beheaded for treason
at the Tower of London.

Catherine was just a girl
who'd been taken advantage of by men
for most of her life,

who ended up dying very bravely,
but very horribly.

After Catherine Howard,
Henry's left with the reality

of an ageing man
who's losing his virility.

There is a sense of deep unhappiness
that this is now
what he has to livewith,

the wreck of the prince he once was.

Despite five failed marriages,

Henry only has one legitimate son.

So he embarks on his sixth marriage,
to Catherine Parr,

hopeful that she will provide him
with a spare heir.

But Henry's also increasingly
concerned about his imperial legacy

and for a Tudor king,
that means only one thing -

going to war.

He's trying to recapture
his lost youth

and he tries to do that
by going off to war.

He's going to be
this great crusading king again,
reclaiming parts of France.

Henry grew up on tales
of derring-do against the French.

Henry V, Agincourt, and
all those other famous victories.

Henry had always wanted
to have military glory
in his portfolio of achievements.

In this period, the English nobility
want to go smashing up the French,

just like 21st-century Tories want
to go around Northern France
on holiday.

Here at Windsor Castle
is a treasure that epitomises
Henry's image of himself

as a warrior king.

In the latter years of his reign,
Henry specially commissions
this suit of armour.

Here is the physical embodiment
of Henry's childhood dreams.

The symbol of chivalry
and the image of an armoured man.

Henry VIII's armour.

Now armour in the 16th century
was made to measure.
None of this off-the-pegstuff.

It provides us with the true image
of Henry as he would like
to be projected.

Of power and might and ruthlessness.
You can almost imagine
his little piggy eyes,

behind that visor,
glaring at us with contempt.

Despite the commanding image
that Henry wants to project,

his armour is actually enlarged
to accommodate his increasing size.

Here they're having to let in
5cm plates on each side
of his back plate

because of his expanding girth,
because he did weigh 28 stone.

Now,
in National Health Service terms,

his Body Mass Index
was way off today's scale.

He was a man mountain.

In order to make him feel
more comfortable

and to flatter him, his male
courtiers start to wear enormous
padded doublets and clothes

so that they appear
just as big as the King.

This also affected Henry's psyche.

I think he was really humiliated
by what he had become.

Henry's very aware
that his advancing years
and medical disorders

threaten to derail
his battlefield ambitions.

So, while he still can,
he personally launches an assault
on the French port of Boulogne.

His idea of leading his army
in person, of course,

means directing operations
from a safe distance,

inside a sort of wooden pavilion,
which is lined with fake marble
inside.

He is like a small boy

with lots of toy soldiers.

He is in his element.

He loves the siege,
he loves all these cannonades,
which fire day and night.

It was an attempt to gain glory
by conquering France again.

It was an attempt to resurrect
the idea that England would be
mighty by ruling over France.

Henry's attack on Boulogne
is a success

and he enters the captured port
as a conquering hero.

But his vanity project has a serious
impact on England's economy.

Henry painted the capture of
Boulogne as a great victory,

but it cost them
enormous sums of money.

And, in fact, England became
bankrupt by the cost of war.

Five years after Henry died, a Tudor
accountant was given the task

of calculating
how much the wars had cost.

He produced a 16-page account,
which showed that it cost
the poor English taxpayer

equivalent in today's money
of £1.87 billion.

And...it shows the burden
which his subjects had to bear

to pay for his hopes
of military glory.

Despite plunging England
into bankruptcy,

Henry's military ambitions
do have some benefits.

Henry's military legacy
was enormously positive.

Yes, he'd depleted
the Royal Treasury in the process,

but he'd created one of
the greatest navies in the world

and also an incredibly
impressive army as well.

He'd made England
a power to be reckoned with.

I think Henry understood
that all nations in the early
modern period were unstable

and so you had to maintain
the appearance of a strong king,

able to deliver justice,
able to lead the nation in war.

These were the things
that united the realm.

Henry would have been seen
as a good king

because a king who leads to victory
in a war is a good king,

almost regardless of anything else.

But just after Henry secures
the military legacy
he's always dreamed of,

his health takes
a turn for the worse.

As his health deteriorates,
Henry takes to shutting himself away
in his chambers.

The last years of the reign
are definitely tainted

by claustrophobia.
No one quite knows who to trust.

And, of course,
because of his immobility,

Henry's closeted in the secret study
at the far end of Whitehall Palace
and doesn't come out that much.

People think that, OK, he's sort of
switched off. This is not the case.

This is somebody
who is almost like in his lair.
He's checking up on everything.

A good way to view Henry would be
as a rather malignant spider

at the centre of everything
which went on within England.

All those lines of the web
all run through

and end up with him.

It's becoming clear to Henry's
courtiers that he's nearing the end.

In the last days of Henry's life,
the atmosphere at court
must have been pretty toxic.

There was a sense of fear,
of anxiety,

of uncertainty
for what the future would hold.

There was a real sense, I think,
that the end was coming

for King Henry VIII.

But no one is brave enough
to mention this to Henry himself.

A dying king is like a dying lion -
extraordinarily dangerous.

Everybody was terrified that Henry
still had the power to kill.

It was said that no one would give
him any official advice because they
were frightened of hisreaction.

Imagining the death of the King
was treason.

So in a capricious reign where
people had been charged with treason
for all kinds of offences,

simply telling the King
that he might die

is not something
that even the bravest counsellors
would be able to do.

The only thing to say to a king is,
"It's a scratch.
You're sure to get better.

"Tomorrow we'll go hunting.
Everything will be fine."

As Henry's health gets worse,

the finishing touches are put
on one of the most important
documents of his reign.

His last will and testament.

It reveals his attempts
to retain control over his kingdom
even after his death.

This, very excitingly,
is the last will and testament
of King Henry VIII.

Here you see Henry R, Henry Rex,
Henry the King.

This is Henry's last-ditch attempt
at controlling the future
of England.

If you ever needed proof that Henry
was a bit of a megalomaniac,
this is it.

An enormous proportion of this will
is taken up with the thing
that had concerned Henry

right from the moment
he acceded to the throne,

which is the succession
to the dynasty of the Tudors
after Henry died.

It's not a surprise that, of course,
what Henry most wants is his son
Edward to become King after him,

but perhaps because
he himself was a second son,

he provides for the possibility
that Edward might die.

In other words,
even on his deathbed,

Henry is still trying to claw his
way into control beyond the grave.

Even more extraordinarily,
given that Henry, as I say,
is dying at this point,

he provides for the possibility
that there might even be
another wife in his future.

"Any lawful wife
who I shall hereafter marry."

I mean, that is rank optimism
in the face of all possible
evidence, I would say.

I think there's something
almost tragic about this king,
on his deathbed,

who has striven for nearly 40 years
to have absolute power
over the people in hiscountry.

And now in his dying moments
he's still trying to do that.

He's still trying to maintain
control. And there's
something moving about that.

Almost admirable,
and also slightly repulsive,
if I'm completely honest.

Henry is growing so ill
that he's started to drift
in and out of consciousness.

When Henry was on his deathbed,
he must have felt that his dynasty
was coming to an end.

Henry wasn't in a position
to pass on his crown

to another stable, male monarch.

His son Edward was still very young.

When Henry knows
that he really is now going to die,
he must have been wondering

if he was going to end up on
the right side of things with God.

I mean,
he was Christ's deputy on Earth,

but he was also going to be judged
and Henry must have been wondering

whether actually he had
quite got things right.

Henry was now presiding over
a realm divided,

in which religion had become
an irreconcilable grievance.

Henry's lifetime as King had seen
the creation of a divided England

and that was a genie
he couldn't put back in the bottle.

Henry's courtiers finally mustered
the courage to warn him
of his approaching death.

There was a great deal of tension
in the court.

Who was going to tell the King
that he was about to meet his maker?

Eventually, the task fell
to Sir Anthony Denny,

who in life had fulfilled
Henry's most intimate needs
as Groom of the Stole.

Now he had one last service
to perform for his master -
to tell him he was dying.

He asked Henry,
effectively, if he wanted

to make his last confession.
"Should I send for Thomas Cranmer,

"the Archbishop of Canterbury?"

And Henry replied, and said,
"I will first take a little sleep.

"And then, as I feel myself,

"I will think on the matter."

They were the last words
he ever spoke.

On the 28th of January, 1547,
Henry VIII dies.

Henry VIII has gone down in history
as our most famous king,

probably because he's our most
married king, he's a kind of
larger than life character,

but it's very, very clear
that behind this public facade
was somebody

who was fundamentally vulnerable
and insecure.

The story of Henry VIII
has everything in it.

It has transition from young,
irresponsible being to someone
blighted later in life

by paranoia.

Henry was self-obsessed,
desired admiration.

He could never be wrong.
You cannot ignore Henry.

He put England in the centre
of European politics.

But he also gave the English
a sense of national identity.

England was never going to be
quite the same after Henry.

He'd broken with Rome,
he had centralised the kingdom.

Institutions like Parliament
and the Church of England
hardly changed

for another 400 years.

Henry was tremendously charismatic.
He knew how to be a king.

He understood the myth
of English kingship.

I think if you looked
at Henry VIII's reign as a whole,

you would have to accept
that it had been a reign

that changed the state of England
forever.