Original subtitles

By April 1510,

Henry viii had been king for a year.

So what had he done in those first 12 months?

Well, the chronicles are revealing.

He went hunting, Hawking, practiced archery

and took part in tournaments...

Anything that gave him pleasure.

But what about the affairs of state,

his duties as king?

Well, he didn't really do those.

Rather than agonizing over the minutiae of government

as his father had done,

Henry viii was going to prioritize his own pleasure,

and the weighty affairs of state

would be delegated to the king's men.

I'm Dr. Tracy borman,

and this the story of england's most famous monarch

not through the king's wives, but through the king's men

who influenced him throughout his life.

Some well-known, others mere footnotes in history.

But as Henry elevated these men,

making them the most powerful in england,

little did he realize

that they would soon start making him.

A little over three years after they were married,

Henry viii's second wife, Anne boleyn,

was found guilty of adultery and treason and was executed.

Just how did the once fun-loving prince Henry

evolve into a brutal king

who would execute the woman he once passionately loved?

On the 19th of may 1536,

Henry had his second wife, Anne boleyn,

beheaded here at the tower of London.

It was one of the most brutal acts of the reign

and has been seen as a sign of his tyrannical nature

that he executed one of his wives

for failing to give him a son and heir.

But that's not the whole story.

In fact, Anne was partly framed

by the men surrounding Henry for their own personal gain.

The conditions for this to happen

were created by Henry himself.

His desire to pursue his own pleasure

led him to have an unconventional relationship

with his government

and created opportunities for the king's men

to acquire great power.

His court grew into a hotbed of division and intrigue.

Nigel in contrast to his father, Henry vii,

the young Henry viii did not really relish

spending laborious hours and days with his council;

he preferred Hawking, hunting, jousting, music.

He preferred all those things. He was a lusty young man.

The business of government was undertaken

by the men of the privy council.

But since Henry didn't want to deal with them directly,

a vacuum was created right at the heart of power.

It was a gap for somebody

who would serve the needs and facilitate the lifestyle

of a pleasure-loving king.

The man who filled that gap was Thomas wolsey.

Thomas wolsey was the son of a butcher

in Ipswich in Suffolk.

He took the career path

of many intelligent and bright but low-born boys in his day

and entered the church.

Due to his innate abilities,

wolsey Rose quickly, and soon after ascending the throne,

Henry appointed him as his almoner,

responsible for the king's charitable giving,

but his power soon grew.

What's important about it

is that it gives him a seat on the royal council,

and it's from that position that he begins to have an influence

and play an important role in Henry's reign.

In contrast with much of the council,

wolsey was far more willing to facilitate Henry's demands,

however controversial they were, and as the pair grew closer

the king stopped dealing with the council directly

and used wolsey as a go-between.

Wolsey is able to use

this apparently convenient position

to become at first an interlocutor

between what the council advises and what the king is suggesting,

but pretty quickly he becomes able to understand

what it is the king wants.

Wolsey had relieved Henry of his duties,

but he soon began to seize the opportunities

his new position had brought him.

Henry was intelligent and well-educated,

but he also had a short attention span

and was easily bored.

This meant that he was easily manipulated.

Wolsey got the measure of his king pretty quickly.

He could go to the council

and tell them his own opinions

as if they had come from the king himself.

He could then go back to the king

and tell him what the council had decided

but twist things to his own advantage.

If he secretly disagreed with the council,

he would explain to Henry why that was an unwise decision

and suggest his own personal alternatives.

But Henry was satisfied

because wolsey was content to overrule the council

and deliver what the king most desired.

Inspired perhaps by the books he'd read as a child

about Henry v and his glorious victories in France,

Henry wanted war.

Henry was always chomping at the bit

for glory in Europe

and he wanted to take it to the French king.

By 1512, 1513,

wolsey was in the background making this happen,

organizing the troops and all that was needed

to get the English army over the channel to the continent.

In 1513, Henry invaded France

and achieved victory at the battle of the spurs.

But his plan to push on and take the rest of the country

was scuppered when his allies abandoned him,

wanting peace rather than further war,

and so wolsey came up with an alternative:

To make an ally of the enemy.

Wolsey decided, well, hang on, if everybody

is now in favor of peace, let's be in charge of it.

In other words, if you can't make magnificent war,

then make peace in a magnificent way.

And so wolsey concocted an alliance

between the old enemies england and France,

sealed by the marriage of Henry's sister Mary

to the French king, Louis xii.

Wolsey encouraged Henry to view himself

as the powerbroker of Europe.

But less than three months later, Louis died.

His successor, Francis I, was a very different man.

There was huge rivalry between the two men.

It began probably as soon as Francis I came to the throne.

If you look at the two famous portraits

of Henry viii and Francis I,

you can see a great similarity in the two men.

They're both very broad shouldered,

they're very athletic-looking.

They present, as it were, power

in their expressions and their stance.

Immediately there was a great personal rivalry

between this slightly younger king and Henry.

Francis' achievements on the battlefield

had also made Henry jealous,

so there's no doubt his next endeavour

must have left the English king green with envy.

Francis ordered the construction

of one of the greatest palaces the world had ever seen:

Chateau de chambord.

Set in grounds as vast as inner Paris,

chambord was the embodiment of modern renaissance architecture

and a bold statement from the new French king.

Henry is very conscious of Francis,

not just as a military figure

but also as a patron of architecture and art.

And he's very much aware

of the palaces and the chateaux that Francis is building,

particularly the chateau of chambord.

The reason that Henry knew about chambord

was because Francis made sure of it.

He showed Henry's ambassadors around,

knowing that the king's men

would tell Henry of the magnificence

and make his English rival jealous.

It worked.

But Henry fought back in the only way he knew how:

On the tournament field.

He shows off to other ambassadors,

for example, the venetian ambassadors

who are in england at the time,

he wants to joust in front of them very spectacularly

because he knows that they will go back to France

and give reports of him to Francis I.

Francis, the man who was so well-connected

he had the Mona Lisa in one of his palace bathrooms,

had really got under Henry's skin.

But if the English king didn't want to be outdone in France,

he certainly didn't want to be outdone at home.

One man was about to test that.

32 miles from London

is the country estate penshurst place,

where Edward Stafford, the third Duke of Buckingham,

lived in opulent style.

But Buckingham was a man

whom Henry would grow to see as a rival,

especially after an incident at a banquet with the king

in August 1519.

Today the heir to the estate is Philip Sidney.

The place would have been full of people;

not only the retinue of Buckingham

but the retinue of Henry himself.

It would not have come cheap.

And Buckingham's accounts for 1519

also show two tumblers, two Egyptians,

and four French actors doing a dumbshow.

And so it was quite a shindig.

Buckingham's magnificent banquet

may have been intended to impress the king,

but it would turn out to have the opposite effect.

He made a series of errors,

whether they be calculated and deliberate ones or not.

So, for example, one of his servants

wore Buckingham's own livery in the king's presence

when in fact the servant

was a member of the king's household,

so in other words he was displaying apparent allegiance

more to the Duke of Buckingham than to the king himself.

By dressing the king's servant in his own colors,

Buckingham was crossing the line.

But he hadn't merely made a mistake;

something else lay behind it.

What do you think Buckingham was like as a character?

Well, he was called the proud Buckingham,

which gives US a clue as to the sort of chap he was,

and his aristocratic lineage

meant that he had something of a chip on his shoulder.

The reason was simple.

Buckingham was descended from Edward III

and so had a claim to the throne,

a claim that some would have considered

stronger than the king's own.

The Duke of Buckingham

was increasingly frustrated, perhaps, in his own ambitions.

He knew of course that he did have this claim to the throne

and that he was the preeminent noble in the kingdom

and he should be treated as such.

He felt threatened

by not only the new tudor family but also upstarts like wolsey,

the new men that wolsey was surrounding the king with.

Buckingham is part of the old aristocracy of england.

He wants to cement his status.

He wants to prove himself as a powerful man.

There were even reports that Buckingham dabbled

in suggestions and prophecies about the king's death.

Henry's suspicions were ignited.

The British library in London holds documents

that reveal Henry's paranoia about Buckingham

and his faith in cardinal wolsey.

Henry's trust for wolsey is revealed by this document

perhaps more than any other piece of evidence,

and it's a letter that Henry writes to him in about 1519.

And in it he instructs "mine own good cardinal,"

wolsey, "to keep close watch on certain men at court."

But the real target of Henry's suspicions

is the Duke of Buckingham, a man with royal blood.

Henry suspects he's conspiring for the throne,

and that's why Henry, really, appoints wolsey

to spy on Buckingham,

and it really shows just how close

the two men were at this point.

Clearly wolsey, the son of a butcher,

was never going to be a threat to Henry's position,

and so he was the perfect person to spy on Buckingham.

But fortunately for Buckingham,

Henry was about to be distracted.

Over in Europe, his French ally Francis I

was becoming increasingly concerned

about the new holy Roman emperor, Charles v.

Charles v is supposed to have once declared

"I speak Spanish to god, Italian to women,

French to men, and German to my horse."

And this actually encapsulates in a perfect way

the complexity of his inheritance.

He inherited Spanish kingdoms,

he inherited lands in Germany, the Netherlands,

he had quite an incredible royal pedigree.

Whereas Francis and Henry

are very enthusiastic and ebullient

and like to show off their physical strengths

and their splendor,

Charles is much more reserved.

But while Charles v

may have been reserved in temperament,

he was not so in ambition.

And with Francis I becoming increasingly concerned

about his growing supremacy,

he suggested that he and Henry meet to formalize their peace.

The summit was scheduled for June 1520,

in a field in neutral territory

in what is today northern France.

In theory this was a meeting at which Henry and Francis

could affirm their friendship,

and the end goal was to conclude an alliance

between their kingdoms.

But the real reason was clear.

Henry wanted to show off to the man whom he saw

as his fiercest international rival.

He therefore set wolsey to work

in creating a spectacular showpiece

known as the field of cloth of gold.

40 miles southeast of London is the magnificent Leeds castle.

A castle has existed here since 1119,

but it had been substantially remodeled by Henry

to become the favored residence

of his wife, Catherine of aragon.

I'm meeting the curator here, Catherine pell,

to find out more about the king's journey

to the field of cloth of gold

and the painting that captured the moment the king left Dover.

So this is Henry

and an entourage of nearly 6,000 people.

6,000!

6,000 people and 3,000-plus horses,

all their baggage, possessions

all going off on board these boats to go to calais.

And this is the first meeting, so it was a big occasion,

and Henry invited the whole court

to come with him pretty much...

The royal household, the peers, the barons, the knights.

It was quite an eclectic mix of people.

Henry clearly did not travel light.

It was on the 31st of may

that the events in the painting took place

as Henry and his vast entourage set sail for the meeting

with Francis and the French court.

The entire diplomatic side of the event

rested firmly on the shoulders of Thomas wolsey.

Five centuries ago, on these fields,

the most spectacular event of Henry's reign unfolded.

Hundreds of tents were assembled,

adorned with so much cloth of gold

that the event was named after it.

Wolsey was about to find out

if his careful planning had paid off.

The field of the cloth of gold

was tudor glastonbury.

It was a campsite, but not as we know it.

It was a campsite

of the most remarkable expense and scale, size.

Wolsey had stage-managed the whole thing,

and the opening was pure theatre.

With thousands of spectators from both sides looking on,

the two kings rode to the top of opposing hillsides

before descending into the valley below

and meeting for the very first time.

The encounter had got off to the best possible start,

just as wolsey had planned.

And soon the celebrations of this new alliance began

with Henry's favorite sport: Jousting.

The king even took part himself.

Henry did very well.

The score checks survive,

and it shows that he scored comparatively well

compared to the other knights.

But for Henry, winning the tournaments wasn't enough.

By now his French rival had really got under his skin,

in part because of his popularity with the ladies.

Henry therefore challenged Francis to a wrestling match

in order to prove his physical superiority

over this young French upstart.

But things didn't go quite according to plan.

Henry lost.

The event was designed to unite england and France

against the might of Charles v,

but by the time the summit drew to a close,

the treaty was hanging in the balance.

What the field of cloth of gold shows US

is how deeply personal Henry's rivalry with Francis truly was.

He had spent a colossal amount

in trying to prove his superiority

over the French king,

and it had all been for nothing.

The pact with France was broken,

and wolsey forged an alliance between Henry and Charles v.

Wolsey's favor with the king was at an all-time high,

and he'd moved into a rather familiar palace west of London.

This is Hampton court palace,

the place most associated with Henry viii.

But it was in fact built for wolsey,

who by this point was the richest man in the kingdom,

after the king himself, of course,

and Henry was utterly reliant on him.

And no wonder.

Wolsey had brokered that alliance with Francis I,

delivered the field of cloth of gold

and successfully forged a new pact with Charles v.

And this butcher's son was now living in the lap of luxury

at Hampton court palace.

But he still had one more of Henry's issues to deal with.

Wolsey's view of Buckingham

I think reflects Henry's view of Buckingham.

They regard him all along as a danger,

and they're nervous, you've got to remember,

once again, about the succession.

There is no male heir.

Without a legitimate son,

the future of the tudor dynasty was in doubt,

and a man with a claim to the throne like Buckingham

was a very real threat.

On the 8th of may, wolsey had him pulled in for questioning

on trumped-up charges of treason.

Nine days later he was executed.

Henry's mind is known to wolsey,

and wolsey does what wolsey does best...

He delivers what Henry doesn't even yet know he quite wants.

Nobody was too close, nobody was too powerful,

to ultimately, if Henry feared them and saw them as a threat,

for them to lose their position and indeed lose their life.

With the Duke of Buckingham eliminated,

wolsey was riding high once more.

He'd been given so much power by Henry

that he came to be known as the other king.

But a storm was on the horizon.

Leeds castle was a great favorite with Henry,

and he and his wife, Catherine of aragon,

spent a lot of time here.

He clearly loved Catherine,

but the problem was she wasn't giving him the male heir

that he so desperately needed.

Catherine of aragon, who had borne Henry one child,

the lady Mary, despite repeated pregnancies,

never succeeded in carrying another pregnancy to full term

and giving birth to a healthy male heir,

which Henry desired most of all.

To make matters worse for his wife,

Henry had fathered an illegitimate son,

Henry fitzroy, with one of his mistresses,

so he saw Catherine as solely responsible

for his lack of a male heir.

I don't think Henry ever blamed himself

for the lack of male heirs,

but certainly the birth of Henry fitzroy

just helped cement that belief,

that deep core belief that he'd always had

that it could not have been his fault.

He needed evidence, and he got it.

Henry's troubles with Catherine

were common knowledge in the tudor court,

and one family in particular

thought they could use those troubles

to their advantage.

A little over 20 miles from Leeds castle,

the boleyns spied an opportunity

and began plotting here at hever castle.

This was the location where Henry's reign

took a new and bloody path,

for this was the home of Anne boleyn...

The woman who has gone down in history

for causing the break-up with Catherine of aragon

and the break with Rome.

The status quo both in the tudor court

and across Europe

was about to be turned on its head.

But how much of what was to follow was really down to her?

When we think of Anne boleyn and Henry viii,

it's Anne who is the one pulling the strings.

But in fact there was a great deal more to it than that.

Her ambitious father, Thomas,

her powerful uncle the Duke of Norfolk

and her brother George

were all making it happen behind the scenes:

Pushing Anne in the king's path

in order to enhance their own position.

George boleyn was already a favorite with the king,

but his father, Thomas, saw an opportunity

to increase his son's influence further through Anne.

Whether she realized it or not,

she was about to become a pawn for the king's men.

Thomas boleyn is not the father

that most daughters would desire.

He's willing to lay down both of his daughters

and ruin their reputations for the sake of serving the king.

As Anne made her advances on the king,

her brother George found himself advancing in Henry's court.

In 1525 he was appointed

a gentleman of the privy chamber,

a position close to the king.

The boleyns' plan was working,

but they were starting to make enemies.

Their rise was coming at the cost

of Thomas wolsey's influence with the king.

So wolsey decided to fight back, coming up with a plan

that today survives in the UK's national archives.

Well, this enormous document here

is known as the eltham ordinances,

and it masquerades as a detailed reform of the royal household,

but it has an altogether different purpose.

Wolsey had the power to pick the men who would serve Henry,

and he used this power

in an effort to cut out the boleyns.

This was wolsey in an act of self-protection.

The ordinances were put into practice at the end of 1526,

but still his position and influence with the king

were on the decline.

Wolsey's insecurity, growing insecurity,

is marked by the fact that he feels he needs to do something.

And I think this marks a sense that both men have,

that the bromance is coming to an end.

Wolsey decided to make a dramatic gesture

to prove his loyalty to the king.

He gifted Henry his beloved Hampton court palace.

But it wasn't enough for Henry.

By now he had decided

he wanted his marriage to Catherine annulled

so that he could marry Anne boleyn.

Wolsey had no choice but to make it happen.

To help him, he enlisted the talents of Thomas cromwell.

Thomas wolsey and Thomas cromwell

are both from similar kinds of backgrounds,

artisan backgrounds.

One of course goes to university and into the church,

the other one, cromwell, goes through the law.

But both of them are intelligent, articulate men

who work well together when they meet in the mid 1520s.

Essentially, wolsey's plan was to secure

the pope's permission for an annulment.

This made a lot of sense;

the pope was, of course, head of the catholic church,

so he was in a position to give Henry what he wanted.

But the pope refused to Grant the annulment.

Wolsey was in a rather unfortunate

and uncomfortable position

in being both the king's servant and the pope's servant.

He was the papal representative

who was the pope's man on the spot

to represent him in england

at the time of the king's great matter.

Wolsey found himself caught between his two masters,

both of whom were refusing to yield.

So wolsey had to play it by the book,

and ultimately it was the pope's book.

Thomas wolsey,

the man who had always been able to give Henry what he wanted

had, for the first time, failed his king.

The boleyns seized the opportunity to get rid of him

and convinced Henry to have his faithful servant arrested.

Henry had certainly lost Patience

and increasingly lost confidence in wolsey's capacities.

Henry decided that, regrettable though it might be,

that he needed to move wolsey aside.

Despite years of loyal service and sacrifice,

wolsey's fall from grace had been rapid.

But on the 29th of November 1530,

before he could reach London

to discover what fate awaited him,

he died, reportedly of natural causes.

Henry had lost his right-hand man.

The story of wolsey

is one of the earliest and most dramatic instances

of Henry raising someone up only to later condemn them.

But did he regret it?

Well, in public Henry showed absolutely no remorse

at wolsey's death,

but in private it was a very different matter.

One eyewitness recorded seeing Henry

utterly distraught with grief.

I think it demonstrates

that no matter how close you are to the king,

no matter how indispensable you might appear to be,

if you disappoint him, he always remains in charge

and you can be got rid of, in one way or t'other,

quite rapidly, and it's Henry that remains.

But wolsey's fall had opened up an opportunity

for the man who had been his prot�g�

and would now be his successor: Thomas cromwell.

Cromwell had no ties with the pope,

and so he tried a radically fresh approach.

They sent agents through university libraries, archives,

to present a case that the pope was usurping royal power

in demanding to hear the case.

And in so doing, they came up with a new theory,

which was a theory of imperial kingship,

and that theory denied

that the pope had any jurisdiction in england.

So effectively, Henry granted his own annulment.

As well as freeing him from his marriage to Catherine of aragon,

this created unprecedented turbulence

in england's religious life.

So Henry's great matter was finally solved.

It had taken years and the efforts of the king's men

to push through the annulment.

And it had come at the expense of Henry's favorite, wolsey,

propelled cromwell into the heart of the king's favor,

and seen the boleyn family achieve their ambition.

Their pawn became a queen on the 1st of June 1533,

and the men of the family Rose in the tudor court.

Anne's intelligence and forwardness

had been attractive to Henry during their courtship,

but now they were married, she started to grate on him.

Two years into the marriage, Henry went on summer progress

to the country estate of the seymours, wulfhall,

and while there he spent time with Jane Seymour.

History was about to repeat itself.

The unraveling of Henry's marriage to Anne

was an open secret in the tudor court,

and the seymours spied their opportunity.

And so with Henry now falling for Jane,

Anne's position hung by a thread.

Anne boleyn had spent so much of her relationship

as the other woman.

She had had to be so interesting,

she'd had to be chased,

she'd had to lead Henry on for so many years

and keep him interested.

I think Anne struggled to make that transition

from mistress to wife.

Meanwhile, events at court took a dramatic turn.

On the 24th of January 1536,

the king fell heavily from his horse

while jousting at greenwich.

It left him with a wounded leg that would never heal,

and in time the injury would transform his character.

But for now, the accident served to remind Henry of his mortality

and intensified his need to secure the succession

with a son.

Five days later, Anne suffered a third miscarriage.

This time, the baby would have been a boy.

To Henry, this was god showing his hand:

He wasn't going to favor him and Anne with a son and heir.

Cromwell spotted an opportunity.

He and Anne had frequently clashed

on matters of state and religion,

but more than that,

he blamed her for the untimely demise of his mentor.

This was his chance for vengeance.

I think he wanted revenge on Anne

for the downfall of his patron and his friend, cardinal wolsey,

and Anne was held responsible in cromwell's eyes

for wolsey's death.

And in that respect Henry was manipulated.

The British library houses the original documents

that reveal how cromwell engineered

Anne's ultimate downfall.

When you think of Henry viii,

it's of a king in absolute control.

But this letter here in the British library

suggests otherwise, and it shows

just how much the men around him were pulling the strings.

So Henry might or might not have instructed cromwell

to get him out of his marriage.

I think it's likely he did.

But whether he had this in mind, I think, is more debatable.

Perhaps Henry was thinking of an annulment,

but cromwell was getting rid of Anne

rather more permanently than that,

setting up a case for adultery with not just one but five men.

That's why he calls it abominable here in this letter.

And this is what Henry himself is going on.

This is the evidence that cromwell presented to him,

and Henry seemed to believe it.

Certainly it suited him to believe it,

and therefore the order for Anne's execution went through.

This is really a piece of tudor fake news

on the part of cromwell.

Cromwell had constructed a case in less than a week

that had reduced Anne and the boleyn family's reputation

to tatters;

even her own father would turn against her.

Her name is to be dragged through the mud.

She's going to be accused of incest with her own brother,

and her father will sit on the commission

that finds her guilty.

On the 17th of may 1536, George boleyn was executed.

Two days later Anne boleyn departed her apartments

at the tower of London for the final time.

I think she really struggled with cromwell.

It had to be one or the other; Cromwell just moved first.

It was said by some that she looked very serene;

it was said by others that she looked nervous.

Ambition was the boleyn vice,

and ambition, in the end, brought nearly all of them down.

You don't know you're even playing chess with cromwell

until he takes your queen.

Anne boleyn, the king's second wife, was dead.

By making an enemy of cromwell and failing to give Henry a son,

her downfall was inevitable.

But she had given the king a daughter,

and he would never know that she was destined

to be the greatest monarch of the tudor dynasty:

Queen Elizabeth I.

Instead, his quest for a son continued.

The day after Anne's execution,

Henry was betrothed to Jane Seymour,

and her family gained new influence at court.

The first part of Henry's reign

had seen the king at his most malleable.

He'd been content to leave the weighty affairs of state

to the men around him.

But it was a dangerous game to play,

and as Henry entered the last decade of his life,

his men would discover that no one was safe.