Original subtitles

Divorced, beheaded, died,

divorced, beheaded, survived.

That familiar saying for remembering

the six wives of Henry viii

makes US believe that it was only the women in his life

who have defined him.

The fact that Henry viii married more times

than any other monarch in British history

has overshadowed his larger-than-life character

and turbulent reign.

But remarkable though his marital history is,

it's not what defines him.

Just as influential were the men with whom he was surrounded.

My name is Dr. Tracy borman,

and I'm chief curator at historic royal palaces.

This series will tell 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 their hidden history lay behind the tudor throne,

shaping the character, opinions, and image

of one of the most famous kings in history, Henry viii.

I spend my life researching and writing about Henry viii,

but more recently,

I focused on the men around Henry

who shaped his life and reign

to an extent that is all too easily overlooked.

In 1509, four days before his 18th birthday,

Henry viii was crowned king of england.

Gone was the frugal, cautious reign of Henry vii,

to be superseded by equal measures

of decadent opulence and gruesome brutality.

His father's attempts to mold him

into a king in his own image had failed,

overcome by the influences of the men around him.

The seeds had been sown over 20 years earlier.

By 1485, the wars of the roses had been raging for 30 years.

Two rival factions, the yorkists,

under king Richard III

and the lancastrians, who backed Henry tudor,

fought for control of the throne of england,

culminating in the battle of bosworth.

Henry vii wins an unexpected victory,

and the victory is complete

because he has Richard III's bloody body on the battlefield.

After the victory, Henry tudor seized

the throne of england as king Henry vii,

and by marrying Elizabeth of York,

united the two factions in the tudor dynasty.

The history of the fight,

which has lasted the better part of a century,

is that just as everything seems settled,

everything has tumbled down again.

Lauren the wars of the roses, the drama,

the political intrigue that had engulfed the country

for so many years, was still fresh in everyone's minds.

That hung over his reign.

He was surrounded by riots. He had rebellions from Scotland.

I think I'd be paranoid if I'd have been Henry.

As an usurper of the throne,

Henry vii was plagued by rival claimants to his crown.

What he needed most to secure his new tudor dynasty

was a male heir, and it wasn't long

before his new wife found herself with child.

On the 24th of September 1486,

the streets here in Winchester were lined with crowds

all desperate to catch a glimpse

of the most important baby in england.

Winchester cathedral had already hosted

the coronations, funerals, and marriages

of several English kings and queens,

but today it was to witness its first baptism of a future king

for nearly a thousand years.

The infant in question was the heir to Henry vii's throne.

The birth of a son had, at a stroke,

rendered Henry vii significantly more secure on his throne.

A priest anointed him here in this font

and announced his name to the assembled congregation,

and that name was Arthur.

His father had plucked his name from the midst of legend

by creating a questionable family tree

that linked his new dynasty back to Camelot

and the knights of the round table.

The legend of king Arthur was published

at the time of the wars of the roses,

so this would have been known to a wide number of people,

all these legends of Camelot, the round table,

the quest for the holy grail.

This myth of Camelot permeated the court,

and he decided to name his first son and heir Arthur.

He was going to bring about

the glorious age of Camelot once more.

And as if it wasn't clear enough,

at the time, Winchester was believed to be

one of the original locations of Camelot,

further cementing the link.

And so Henry's older brother, prince Arthur,

was heir to the throne, forged in reborn legend.

This was the shadow under which the future king Henry viii

was soon to be born.

There is only one surviving portrait of prince Arthur,

and it hangs in hever castle in the English county of Kent.

Well, tellingly, this is the only known portrait

of prince Arthur to survive,

but at the time of his birth,

the eyes of the nation would have been on him,

and certainly the eyes of his father, Henry vii.

All of his attention was on Arthur, on his education,

on raising him to be a future king

because it was this boy who would one day succeed him.

But Henry vii's new dynasty was still anything but secure,

and rivals were waiting around every corner,

anxious to take power.

In this age of high infant mortality,

what Henry vii needed in order to send a powerful message

to his enemies was another son.

He was therefore overjoyed when news arrived that his wife

had been safely delivered of a boy

on the 28th of June 1491.

This was the future king Henry viii.

In contrast to Arthur, the time of the birth was not recorded.

It was only deemed necessary to record the date,

and even that had to be corrected.

At his baptism, the boy was named Henry after his father,

who now had the spare heir he wanted.

But once the ceremony was over,

Henry vii became a distant figure

and prince Henry's upbringing

was supervised by his mother, Elizabeth.

He spent much of his childhood away from the royal court

at eltham palace near London.

Today only this great hall survives.

Although there are few records of Henry's early years,

we do know that he enjoyed a comfortable,

even indulgent, childhood here.

The staff of the royal nursery were mainly female,

but there was one significant male influence in his life

from the very beginning,

his mother's illegitimate half-brother,

Arthur plantagenet.

Arthur had a reputation

for being a man of integrity, of intelligence and education.

He was a gentle soul by all accounts.

Elizabeth could trust Arthur to actually help influence Henry

and nurture him as well.

Arthur plantagenet would shape the prince

into a very different man from his father.

One of the pastimes his uncle

almost certainly introduced him to was the sport of jousting.

I've come to historic equitation

in the English county of northamptonshire

to meet with horse trainer and jousting expert Dominic Sewell.

So, dom, where did Henry's love of jousting begin?

Dom Sewell: I think it was imbued with him

from a very early age.

He'd always been surrounded by the glamour of jousting

and these kind of celebrity jousters

being around him at the time,

so that being a big influence

on what he wanted to do as a young man.

They were the celebrities of their time

and very famous in their day.

Some people may never have seen these knights,

so they were quite legendary, really.

As a young boy, he would have been desperate

to be able to join in, to mount his pony,

pick up a Lance, and go charging at the list,

running at the ring.

It's definitely something that he wanted to do very much.

As king, Henry viii would continue to pursue

the interests he'd picked up from his illegitimate uncle,

Arthur plantagenet,

and display many of his qualities,

much more so than those of his own father,

whom he rarely even saw.

Henry vii led an itinerant court,

moving from place to place,

trying to shore up his uncertain rule.

What little time he had for family

he spent with his older son.

Prince Henry and prince Arthur were destined

from a very early age

for different roles in life.

Arthur was the elder son, he was the heir,

he was being trained for kingship.

Henry was destined for the church,

and he was given a much more scholarly education.

It's reasonable to assume that, like any young boy,

prince Henry would have wanted to see

and spend time with his father,

but that was something that rarely happened.

Susan it's possible that he felt deprived

of love and attention

as a spare heir.

It's possible that he felt,

someone who lacked confidence.

It was very usual for royal children

to have little contact with their parents.

But Henry and his family were to be reunited,

and firsthand accounts of the event

survive to this day in the British library,

and they reveal that it left a huge impression on him.

Well, among the many treasures here at the British library

is this wonderful account of the young prince Henry

being made a knight of the bath and Duke of York.

This happened in 1494, so he was just three years old.

This magnificent occasion would stay in Henry's mind forever.

It was a really important moment in his childhood,

his first major public appearance,

and we know that he remembered it

because many years later, he came back to this manuscript,

and you can see how he's altered it, he's edited it.

Clearly, they hadn't got some of the details right

according to his own memory.

Henry was even given the honor of holding Henry vii's towel

for him while he ate,

finally giving him personal contact time with his father.

It really meant a lot to him.

This prince, who'd been living in the shadows

for the first part of his childhood,

had enjoyed an all too brief moment in the spotlight.

Glenn Richardson: All the tudors seemed to be quite adept

when very young at putting on public performance,

and Henry viii is no exception to that,

so it would have been very interesting for him to be

drawn out from, as it were, the women's side,

the nursery side, into the world of men and politics.

And, and from the start, he seems to have, you know,

cut quite a dash, even as a three-year-old.

Although he had relished his moment in the sun,

for Henry, it was over all too soon.

Henry was escorted back to eltham,

and his father's attention was once more on his elder brother.

As Arthur grew up,

Henry increasingly tried to mold him in his own likeness,

as a future king.

The very weight of the tudor dynasty

rested on Arthur's shoulders,

and so, of course, his entire day-to-day living

was micromanaged by his father.

He began the art of kingship almost immediately.

Prince Henry, however, had a very indulged childhood.

He was doted on by his mother and his grandmother.

I feel that he didn't really have a purpose

in his early years because, of course,

he was just destined for the church.

But in preparation for his ecclesiastical future,

there was one thing Henry was not short of... books.

And the men who wrote them

would help shape how he would later rule.

He was influenced by the chivalric romances

that he read about, the history of kings like Henry v.

And in addition to that, I think what influenced him

were men like erasmus.

Erasmus was the most famous

international scholar of the age.

His writings on humanism and the ability of an individual

to raise themselves through education

were a great influence on renaissance Europe

and the worldview of Henry.

The prince himself met erasmus when he visited eltham palace.

The two of them were supposedly and probably

impressed with each other,

so there was that personal relationship

as well as reading some of the works of erasmus

that had an influence on Henry.

Henry would never forget the meeting,

and the pair would strike up a lively correspondence

that would shape and stimulate the prince's intellect

for many years to come.

Arthur, meanwhile, was shaping up

to be the very image of his father.

Soon, Henry vii began planning ahead to find a suitable bride

to provide the next generation of the tudor dynasty,

and eventually a match was found.

To double-check her suitability, Henry vii met the bride-to-be

on her arrival in england in October 1501.

They had a pretty awkward first meeting,

given that neither of them could speak the other's language,

but nevertheless, he was satisfied.

She was just shy of her 16th birthday,

exquisitely pretty with strawberry blond hair

and a smooth, pale complexion.

And her name was Catherine of aragon.

She was the daughter of the power couple

of the Spanish empire,

Isabella of castile and ferdinand of aragon.

She was an incredible catch,

and the tudor period needed a good catch.

Nearly eight years later,

Catherine of aragon would marry king Henry viii,

but first she was betrothed to his brother Arthur.

On their wedding day, thousands of londoners turned out to see

one of the most dazzling processions in royal history.

It was not only the bride who wore white,

prince Arthur was similarly attired,

perhaps as a symbol of his youth and purity.

For Henry vii, this was the perfect union he desired,

cementing the links between england and Spain.

And for prince Henry,

it was another chance to be at a public event.

Anna prince Henry was ten

at his brother's marriage to Catherine of aragon,

and perhaps like any little brother at a wedding,

certainly a ten-year-old

and certainly a precocious young boy like Henry,

he decided that he wanted some of the attention,

and he did steal the show.

It was a huge stage, of course.

The eyes of Europe were looking on england at this point.

Henry presented a stark contrast to his brother Arthur,

who soon tired of the festivities.

Richardson: Not sure Arthur would have been, you know,

that delighted having his younger brother...

Um, the royals and, you know,

older and younger brothers we know in our own time

can sometimes want to outshine each other,

and that was certainly the case with Henry as a young prince.

Arthur's wedding had temporarily propelled

his younger brother into the spotlight,

but it would have a far more lasting impact

on Henry than that.

Not long afterwards, when Arthur and his new wife Catherine

had taken up residence at ludlow castle in shropshire,

the prince fell dangerously ill.

Confined to bed, Arthur deteriorated within days.

He had most likely contracted tuberculosis.

There were even suggestions that Catherine, too, was ill.

But while she would survive, prince Arthur would not.

On the 2nd of April 1502, he died.

He was just 15 years old.

Henry vii was utterly devastated.

Not only had he lost his son, but also the heir to the throne.

I think this really reflects the precariousness

still of their reign.

They hadn't just lost their son; They had lost their heir.

This was the boy that Henry had invested in.

Everything had depended on Arthur.

Now they'd have to start again.

In life, his elder brother

had exerted little influence over Henry,

but his untimely death

would have the most profound impact imaginable.

The ten-year-old prince Henry was now heir to the throne.

Henry vii had painstakingly brought Arthur up

to be a future king in his own mold,

but with Arthur gone, the future of the tudor dynasty

now rested with prince Henry.

You have to remember that Henry vii

had invested everything in Arthur.

He had been educated in the art of kingship.

Now eyes turned to the spare,

prince Henry, the indulged prince Henry.

How was this young boy ever going to be king?

Having virtually ignored his younger son for ten years,

the cold, distant Henry vii would now attempt to reshape

the carefree prince into a future king.

Despite their differences,

things seemed to get off to a good start.

Upon Arthur's death,

negotiations almost immediately started

with Catherine of aragon's father

to transfer her to prince Henry.

Henry himself seemed willing.

The idea of marrying a beautiful Spanish Princess

held a lot of appeal.

His father's next move was also a popular one

with the young prince.

He added more men to Henry's household.

Henry, by this point, was nearly 11

and gladly welcomed more male company

and role models to aspire to.

But if his father's first two actions

had proved popular with his son,

he was about to reveal his true colors.

In February 1503, two men from his father's court

arrived at eltham with devastating news.

Queen Elizabeth, prince Henry's mother, had died.

The fact that his father hadn't even told him in person

of his mother's death must have hurt the young prince,

and the pair's relationship was only going to get worse.

The news of his mother's death was broken to him

in such an impersonal way.

I think this speaks volumes about the relationship

and just how distant father and son really were.

The painting of this scene is the only image

of Henry viii that shows his vulnerability

as he cries on the bed at the death of his mother.

Elizabeth's death also meant that Henry vii

had lost his chance of having further children.

His paranoid nature was heightened

and so, too, was the attention that he paid to his son.

Everything now rests on this one person,

the dynasty rests on this one person,

the security of everything that Henry vii has fought for

rests on this one person,

and he probably feels more vulnerable

at this stage of his life than any time since bosworth

because the world is slipping away from him,

and prince Henry, the future Henry viii,

represents everything.

And soon prince Henry was to have little escape

from his father's attention.

When he came of age at 13,

Henry was ordered by his father to leave eltham

and join his court at Richmond palace.

Today only the gatehouse survives

of this once magnificent palace built by Henry vii.

But it was here that the pair lived together

for the first time.

This could have been the point where father and son's

shared grief at the death of the woman they both loved

brought them closer.

But instead of giving his son warmth and comfort,

Henry vii focused on the cold reality

of the survival of the tudor dynasty.

And increasingly in each other's presence,

their differences became all the more apparent.

Henry vii was a quite scrupulous,

very much an administrator.

He was a rigorous, diligent king

who had great attention to detail.

I mean, we know that he personally

signed chamber accounts.

His son Henry was in many ways completely different.

He was a show-off. He was attention-seeking.

He had a short attention span.

He found the rigorous work of administration boring.

The personality of prince Henry, as he is,

um, and his father are so different...

Chalk and cheese...

They couldn't be more different.

I honestly would wonder whether you could ever say

that they would have liked each other.

It wasn't only his father he had to contend with,

but also his father's men.

Among them were Richard empson and Edmund Dudley,

prominent councilors of Henry vii,

who enforced taxation.

Needless to say, they didn't hit it off.

Historically, they're regarded as dark characters.

One is a lawyer, and the other one

really is connected to the city of London.

They are both remarkably able at wringing money

out of the city of London and its citizenry

and the greater nobility.

They'd made themselves extremely unpopular

as tax gatherers, as enforcers of royal rule,

screwing every last groat and penny

out of a long-suffering population.

There was quite a long tradition in English history

of tax gatherers, enforcers of the royal will,

making themselves extremely unpopular

with the population at large.

Prince Henry knows enough of them

to know how important they are, but also he knows enough of them

to know that they've upset a lot of people.

Putting him together with empson and Dudley

was giving prince Henry new insight into the worst sides

of his father's reign.

But Henry vii would also inadvertently introduce him

to someone who would make a more positive impression on his son.

One of the men his father appointed to look after him

was Charles Brandon.

He was seven years older than Henry,

but so closely resembled him that some people referred to him

as the prince's bastard brother.

He rapidly became one of Henry's favorites.

Charles Brandon's father had been the standard-bearer

at the battle of bosworth,

and he had lost his life in service to Henry vii,

so Henry was in the belief that Charles was loyal

and deserved also to receive his patronage.

And it was for that reason that he provided Charles

almost as a role model for, for Henry.

But Charles Brandon was not the man

that Henry vii thought him to be.

Perhaps the monarch did not realize

what sort of character Charles Brandon was.

He was a bit of a roisterer, he was a drinker,

he was a womanizer,

and he probably had, in medieval terms,

an unwholesome influence on the young Henry

because he was, if you like, his bosom buddy.

Henry vii did not know the true character

of Charles Brandon,

but far from being shocked by his scandalous new companion,

prince Henry seems to have idolized him.

Like any son with a controlling parent,

Henry wanted to push back against it.

It's also, you know, reasonable to assume that the young Henry

was a little bit frustrated that suddenly he was now

having to be man-managed by his father

and by those around his father

just because his brother had died

and now he was next in line to the throne.

Before long, Henry was staying up late with Brandon

and the other men of his household, drinking and dancing.

Unfortunately, his father soon got wind of this,

so he and his ministers decreed that the prince's activities

with his male favorites should be repressed.

Prince Henry's affinity with the finer things in life

has enraged his father.

Brandon would go on to play a key role

in the future king's reign,

but for now the prince was back under Henry vii's watchful eye.

The suffocating protectiveness of his father reached its peak

when he decreed that prince Henry

could no longer take part in his favorite pastime, jousting.

People who are rather good at it

tend to be risk-takers,

and Henry is a risk-taker,

so much so that his father bans him from jousting.

Arthur would have done as he was told

and seen the reason for it.

The young Henry is a much more tempestuous character

than his brother would have been.

Henry vii even considered marrying

Catherine of aragon himself to get his hands on her dowry,

as prince Henry was still too young.

The king was becoming increasingly unpopular

with his people, as well as his son,

and they were looking forward to a future without him.

By the time prince Henry was 16, his father's subjects

increasingly looked to him as the hope of the kingdom.

He presented a majestic and appealing alternative

to his dour father

and his grasping advisors, empson and Dudley,

who continued to strip money from the population.

Richardson: As Henry gets into his middle teen years,

so about the age of 16,

he's increasingly physically confident,

he's ebullient,

he's got that outgoing, charismatic characteristic

which he'll show throughout his reign.

His father, who's not by our standards particularly old,

but has sort of been worn out by the wearisome process

of trying to get england, you know, back under royal control.

He's thought of as miserly and suspicious.

With the relationship between Henry vii and his son

becoming increasingly fraught,

perhaps prince Henry was also looking ahead.

But at 11:00 at night on the 21st of April 1509,

Henry became free of his controlling father forever.

Henry vii died.

It soon became clear that the old king's attempts

to mold his son had come too late.

They may have shared a name, but there the similarities ended.

17-year-old prince Henry was now king Henry viii.

Over the next 37 years,

the gentle prince would gradually evolve

into a tyrannical king.

He would bring back the pageantry and splendor

of absolute monarchy, marry six times,

break the English church from Rome,

and order countless executions.

But what will become clear

is how crucial the king's men were in what was to unfold.

They would not only carry out his will,

they'd mold his views, shape his destiny,

and steer his turbulent reign.

He would promote them, trust them,

honor and reward them.

But when they'd outlasted their purpose,

he would utterly destroy them.

It would not take long for the gruesome side

of his personality to reveal itself,

and, once unleashed, it would gather pace,

leaving him the brutal tyrant he's remembered as today.

From the outset, it became clear that this new king

was not his father's man.

Empson and Dudley were thrown into the tower of London.

And a month after his father's burial,

he married Catherine of aragon.

The speed with which he marries the Princess dowager

is astounding.

All the hesitations are cast aside.

He just plunges straight ahead, marries her,

um, what is, at the time, a universally popular act.

This sort of illustrates almost immediately

that a new world order has been called into being.

The regime established by Henry viii

would soon extend into the privy council,

the group of men who could advise the king,

but more often than not, simply carried out his will.

Henry replaced some of his father's councilors

with men that were more closely aligned with him,

such as the Duke of Norfolk,

who was also the uncle of a young girl called Anne boleyn,

his best friend Charles Brandon,

who shared his enthusiasm for war,

and the Duke of Buckingham,

who had served Henry's father

but would now have to adapt to the new regime.

Gradually the council starts to change.

These are men who are in sympathy

with Henry's style of kingship

as a war-like, magnificent renaissance monarch,

in a way that the older figures on Henry vii's council were not.

With the privy council shaped in his image,

the privy chamber, where the men took care

of the monarch's personal needs and well-being,

also underwent a transformation,

and as the reign wore on,

it would reach new levels of importance.

Henry viii literally turned

the privy chamber on its head

because it became a place that the king wanted to hang out.

It became the king's kind of den.

It was his man cave.

He wanted to fill it with young guys

who were similar in age to him

and liked the same kind of things that he liked,

like tennis, jousting.

While Henry vii kept the men who served him

in his chamber at a distance from his duties as king,

with Henry viii, this all changed.

Men like Charles Brandon,

who found himself in the council

and the chamber,

gained unprecedented influence.

So, we see emerging what's been described

as the politics of intimacy, this power that these guys had,

not because they had official positions,

but because they had the king's favor

and they had the king's ear,

so suddenly political intimacy and the politics of intimacy

really did define the court,

and really where it was at was really the privy chamber,

not the formal privy council as it had been under Henry vii.

It was a revolution.

Though what Henry would not yet know

is that as he made these men

the most powerful in the country,

they would soon start to take advantage.

Meanwhile, as his council and chamber took shape,

it was time for the first casualties of the new reign.

Empson and Dudley had been languishing in a cell

in the tower of London for over a year awaiting their fate.

Dudley had even sought to gain favor with Henry

by writing a treatise in support of absolute monarchy

called "the tree of commonwealth."

But it may never have reached the king.

In August 1510, Henry gave his first clear demonstration

that this charismatic and generous young king

had an altogether darker side.

His father's closest advisors, empson and Dudley,

were executed,

and those new men around him should have taken note.

Just as Henry had the power to make them,

so he also had the power to destroy.

But for Henry, it would take far more than two swipes of the ax

to escape the shadow of his father.

I think the execution of empson and Dudley

marked a watershed in the regime.

This change, this was Henry saying publicly

in the most dramatic and bloody fashion,

that this was going to be a new regime,

this was going to be a free-spending regime.

The meanness, the penny pinching of the old regime

was out of the window, if you like.

The puritanical values of Henry vii

was going to be replaced by a new magnificence.

But this new magnificence

was to be coupled with new priorities.

That carefree upbringing away from court had molded Henry

into a man who prioritized his own pleasure above all else.

Rather than working his fingers to the bone

as Henry vii had done,

he was going to enjoy life

and leave the day-to-day governing of his realm

to the men of the privy council.

The setup in Henry viii's reign

was very similar to his father's,

but there was one crucial difference.

Henry vii had attended as many meetings as he physically could

and had approved decisions on the spot.

Henry viii, being more interested

in life's pleasures, didn't.

Henry viii had been self-indulged his entire life.

He had never really had real responsibilities.

That had all been left to Arthur,

so when kingship was thrust upon him,

I don't think he was fully prepared.

He wanted to go out and hunt and hawk and joust and flirt.

He wanted to spend the money.

But since the council couldn't act without the king,

someone had to play the role of go-between

and secure the king's approval on state matters.

Enter Thomas wolsey.

But as we will discover, Henry would unload

more and more of his responsibilities to this man.

Wolsey would organize military campaigns,

forge alliances,

and shape the thoughts and views of the king like few other men.

But to keep the king's favor,

he would have to stay on the right side

of his notoriously fickle nature,

which could see a man executing the king's will one moment

and being executed the next,

for it would take more than one man

to make Henry what he would become,

and there were many men vying for power

in the brutal world of the tudor court.