Henry VIII: Mind of a Tyrant Part One with David Starkey

foreign [Music] boy sat on this chair in Westminster Abbey to be crowned King of England he would grow up to become the most infamous Monarch in history Henry VII is the only King whose shape you remember the Henrik is not simply an historical figure Henry is a myth he's the king who had six wives and beheaded two of them it's the best and the bloodiest Royal soap opera of them all but Henry isn't just soap opera he's also one of the most important and original monarchs ever to a sat on the throne of England Henry and I go back a long way I've been fascinated by him all my life now on the 500th anniversary of Henry's exception it's finally time to write his biography foreign behind the myth is a psychological enigma the 18 year old who was crowned here was a slim beautiful elegant musical poetical reasonable Charming sweet-tempered young man who'd married for love how does he turn into the Henry who is the horror the Henry who is the tyrant who in short was Henry [Music] thank you [Music] come on Henry VIII and his world are long gone or at least it can seem that way but hidden in the world's great libraries a magical objects that can bring that world vividly to life once more [Music] they are the books manuscripts plans and letters that Henry and his contemporaries read touched and root through them the dead can speak again never since the death of my dearest mother as they come to me more hateful news I will never be at rush to lay off and have letters from you he was incomplete complete objection to his father and his grandmother and never opened his mouth in public our King does not desire gold or Gems or precious metals but virtue Glory immortality it's in these original sources that I hope to find the real Henry thank you the very first mention of Henry comes in this document it's very beautiful and very precious it's one of the great Treasures of the British Library it's lady Margaret beaufort's book of ours lady Margaret Beaufort was Henry's grandmother and this book of ours that's an exquisitely illustrated Aid to personal devotion was already old when she got it the back there's a calendar and in it she notes important dates births marriages and deaths great events in her son Henry VII's life and here in the margin she's noted in heavily abbreviated Latin the birth of Henry but look the date is corrected did she get 1491 wrong wasn't she sure there it is entered twice now his own grandmother's blunder over the date of Henry's birth is a telling sign of his relative unimportance for Henry was only the Second Son it was his elder brother Arthur who was the heir baby Henry was just the spare the two brothers hardly knew each other for they had very different upbringings [Music] as was traditional Arthur the Prince of Wales was sent away with his own household of cuters and counselors to Ludlow castle in the Welsh marches to learn how to be a king little Henry stayed close to home in the palace his parents described as our Nursery [Music] in the 1930s this lavish Country House was built on the site it's a stunning example of art deco but down this corridor and through these doors [Applause] step back 500 years into Tudor England this is the Great Hall at Elton the sole surviving building from Henry's first home here he was brought up alongside his sisters Margaret Mary and Elizabeth [Music] that unusually for a royal Prince his mother Queen Elizabeth of York played a big part in his childhood the evidence lies here in Henry's handwriting Henry's handwriting has always been a bit of a mystery the wise with their little back Loop the R's which look much more like a zed in modern handwriting and the H's are quite unlike the handwriting of Henry's known teachers on the other hand it is rather like this and this is one of the very few surviving specimens of the handwriting of Henry's mother Elizabeth of York this book is mine Elizabeth the King's Daughter it says it's only eight words and 39 letters and yet it's characteristic enough in weight Rhythm and letter forms to prove conclusively I think that Elizabeth herself was the first teacher of her daughters and of her second son Henry [Music] it's a Charming picture Henry The Little Prince in a loving family of women it shaped him I think in ways unusual for a 16th century Monarch as King Henry would eventually come to place love above all other considerations with explosive consequences [Music] but Henry's childhood was also shadowed by Death [Music] when he was four his youngest sister Elizabeth died [Music] little Elizabeth was the first child of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York to die nevertheless they were all too well aware of just how transitory a child's life could be in the 15th century frick was the death of children or rather the unimaginable horror of their murder at the hands of a close relation that had paved their own way to the throne ah for the world into which Henry was born was scarred by hatred treason and betrayal for almost 50 years there'd been two royal families in England the house of York and the House of Lancaster and time and again their rivalry had erupted into bloody Civil War the so-called Wars of the Roses many of the darkest Deeds happened here in the Tower of London it was here that Henry VI the last lancastrian king had been bludgeoned to death with a heavy instrument here that the Lord Chamberlain of England was dragged from a meeting of the council and without any form of trial at his head hacked off on a log of wood but the blackest crime of all was a disappearance of the princes in the tower it had happened just eight years before Prince Henry was born the princes were the boy King Edward V and his younger brother Richard Duke of York they were The Heirs of the House of York which had seemed had won the wars of the Roses but before Edward V could be crowned the boys were seized by their own uncle they disappeared into the Tower of London presumed dead and that uncle took the throne as Richard III [Music] but Richard III had overstepped the mark even in that age the apparent murder of two innocent Royal children was so shocking that it led to an unlikely alliance between disaffected Yorkies and the last survivor of the House of Lancaster Henry Tudor who was in Exile in France with the aid of a French army Henry Tudor invaded England and defeated and killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth field Henry Cuda became King Henry VII and then proceeded to marry the sister of the princes and the tower Elizabeth of York it was a union intended to heal a devastated and divided country and the births of first Arthur and then Henry provided Two Princes in whom flew the blood of both rival Royal houses but what would happen to Arthur and Henry if it turned out that the princes in the tower the true heirs to the throne were not dead after all thank you November 1491 cork in Ireland a mysterious and expensively dressed stranger is walking the streets to the roughly dressed locals it seemed he must be somewhat important and that's and one important it was decided by two Yorkies partisans was Richard Duke of York the younger of the Two Princes in the tower who disappeared in mysterious circumstances only eight years earlier and shortly after it was indeed as Richard Duke of York that the young man turned up here in the Netherlands fact his name was Perkin warbeck an 18 year old Fleming who'd gone to Cork to model garments for a Flemish Merchant once a mannequin for silk finery his backers hoped he could be turned into a puppet Prince rekindle the yorkist course and reignite the wars of the Roses his lodgings were hung with the Royal Arms of England with the Latin inscription the arms of Richard Prince of Wales and Duke of York sun and heir of Edward IV sometime King of England France and Lord of Ireland it was all too much for a couple of Englishmen loyal to Henry VII [Applause] but warbeck was no joke for his soon attracted the support of several European rulers hostile to the new Tudor regime Henry VII knew he had to take the threat seriously he was all too aware that with the backing of a foreign power even the most obscure claimant could seize the English Throne after all he'd done it himself so first he would expose Perkin warbeck as a counterfeit Duke of York by creating a real one his second son Henry and the ceremony would begin by making the boy Knight of the bath foreign [Music] ation of childhood is fared on Tales of knights and chivalry it was the same that little Henry 500 years ago [Music] now the three and a half year old Prince would live the fantasy for real and it would change his life foreign ceremony took place in the already ancient setting of Westminster palace as Darkness fell Henry joined his fellow Knights to be in the parliament chamber where richly decorated barns had been laid out he was ceremoniously undressed and placed in his bath then his father the king entered the Earl of Oxford read to him the solemn admonition or undertaking required of a night be strong in the faith of the holy church protect all widows and oppressed maidens and above all Earthly things love the king thy Sovereign Lord and his right defend unto thy power [Music] the king dipped his hand at the water and made the sign of the cross on Henry's shoulder and kissed it a second and higher baptism into the sacred row of night then Henry was dressed like a Hermit and kept vigil through the night [Music] early the next day Henry wrote a charger into the king's presence through the vast space of Westminster Hall here then his father dubbed him a knight a knight he had heard the tales told by his nurse of knights and Oaths of Maidens in distress of disguises and transformations of Hermits and Kings it was the world of chivalry and romance that he already inhabited in his imagination and dreams now he was part of it indeed he had swore the oath kept the vigil ridden the horse Touched By The Sword he was a knight [Music] punishingly life and look he's adding a word look at the r they are like a zed principal the ceremony was recorded by the court Herald in this document but when we went to film it at the British Library we made an astonishing discovery [Applause] here again yes we think this has been corrected by Henry look it seemed it's almost as though he's remembering uh here it's inserted and his verge of gold in his hand years later the adult Henry must have gone back and added these Corrections and additions which proves that the ceremony made an unforgettable impression on the little boy and all his life Henry would think of himself however badly he actually behaved as a chivalrous night [Music] but soon Prince Henry had another and much more disagreeable Unforgettable experience there was great fear in London and cries were made every man to harness to harness some ran to the gates others mounted on the walls so that no part was undefended Henry would have heard echoes of these cries here in the Tower of London his mother had gathered him up from his Nursery house at Elton and rushed him to London and the safety of the strong walls of the Tower [Music] Perkin warbeck the counterfeit Duke of York was on the March threatening to invade from Scotland whilst an army of cornishmen who'd flocked to his cause were closing in on London from the West could only be one Duke of York which would it be Henry or warbeck with the main English forces on their way North the British Rebels swept across Southern England unopposed but the Thames acted as a giant moot around the capital and the Cornish were on the wrong side of it meanwhile to the North Henry VII shadowed them and gathered his forces finally with the exhausted cornishmen reached black Heath just a few miles from the Royal Nursery at eltham King Henry was ready to give them battle the 17th of June he crushed them with clinical efficiency it was the beginning of the end for warbeck's Extraordinary Odyssey within a few months he too was in the tower but he never came out again [Music] while the counter Duke of York languished in the tower the real one was beginning his formal education under the tutorship of John Skelton poet laureate and one of the textbooks which Skelton wrote for his pupil still survives here in the British Library called speculum principis or a mirror for princes it's a kind of how to do it guide to wielding Authority the core of the text consists of a series of short pithy maxims about proper princely conduct the young Henry was probably required to memorize these and recite them by heart first of all it begins lose gluttony probably because it was already clear that little Henry was a Greedy Boy with the results that were all too familiar with then it continues known cease parkours do not be mean on a doctors honora medicos consult philosophers philosophers like this oh it's easy to smile at all this especially when Henry is solemnly warned do not deflower virgins do not violate widows but clear that Henry tended to take all this rather seriously and some of skeleton's advice would directly answered to his own experience especially when Skelton spoke about the fragility and the riskiness of the royal position [Music] [Applause] although you are of a famous family nonetheless remember that ruin and Exile are no more impossible for you than similar Fates were for your fathers but skeleton was not the only intellectual influence on the young Henry on the continent the Renaissance was in full flower led by men like the Dutch scholar Erasmus Erasmus believed that a prince should be more than chivalrous and Pious he should be a patron of learning and learned it himself in 1499 Erasmus was in England visiting his friend Thomas Moore the two men decided to drop in on Young Prince Henry's little court at eltham [Music] when we came to the hall all the retinue was assembled in the midst stood Henry aged nine already with a certain Royal demeanor I mean a Dignity of mind combined with a remarkable courtesy [Music] Thomas More then stepped forward to present Henry with the customary gift in his case some Latin verses that he'd written where was erasmus's gift to his embarrassment the young Henry teased Erasmus sending a note during dinner challenging him to write something for three days Erasmus labored to produce this collection of Latin poetry in Praise of England and its new Tudor dynasty it was the beginning of a remarkable relationship between the scholar and the prince in his covering letter Erasmus flatters Henry as a kindred spirit who understands that worldly wealth and position are fleeting and that it is the work of Scholars and Poets that alone confers immortality thus under the magic of erasmus's pen the little cue the prince had blossomed into the complete Renaissance Man [Music] how did Prince Henry the quick-witted Charming little boy turn into the Henry VIII of Legend the blood-stained tyrant [Music] um the more I study him the more I'm convinced that the answer doesn't lie at least to begin with in the seismic political and religious conflicts of his reign instead it came from closer Home in the conflicts in his own heart and family in the modern world politics is one thing whilst family life is or is supposed to be another but for the hereditary rulers of the 16th century politics and family were pretty much the same thing the resulting Fusion is called dynasticism in which family relationships of husband and wife parent and child are also power relationships whilst the marriage bed is the most powerful diplomatic instrument of all [Music] the whole of Henry's life would turn on the outcome of just such a dynastic marriage it was arranged before Prince Henry was even born in 1489 when English ambassadors came here to Spain to the court of King sudden and the Queen Isabella Ferdinand and Isabella were both monarchs in their own right he of Aragon she of Castile which is why their Thrones here are of equal height and dignity their marriage United the two principal kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula making Spain the new European great power and an attractive Ally for Henry VII of England so he instructed his ambassadors to negotiate a treaty that would marry Isabella and ferdinand's youngest daughter Catherine into the English royal family the marriage treaty between England and Spain was signed here a Medina Del Campo but Catherine wasn't intended for Henry who was as yet unborn but for his elder brother Prince Arthur Prince Arthur and Catherine were only three years old so the actual marriage would have to wait meantime Ferdinand and Isabella were Keen to keep a close eye on their future in-laws which means that strangely enough one of the best places to find out about events in Henry VII's court is here in the Spanish state archives that's in mancas which still hold the dispatchers sent to Ferdinand and Isabella by their Ambassador in England and they're as fresh as though they've been written yesterday theater of Court life births marriages and deaths in high places and above all acute pen portraits that Plumb the psychological depths of Henry VII and his family [Music] the king looks old for his years but young for the sorrowful life he has led those who have reached the greatest favors from Henry are the most discontented he knows all that by 1501 that's when an Arthur were 15 and considered old enough to marry their marriage would be celebrated by the great spectacle of the English Court the joust IC jousting was a way for the warrior aristocracy to show off the martial skills which were thought to Mark out a true leader tournaments were held for every great occasion and success of the tiltyard meant star status even political influence Prince Arthur's marriage joust would be an international competition and leading the english team was Edmund de la Poe Earl of Suffolk suffered personified the nightly ideal Brave to the point of recklessness in pulsive arrogant as Henry idolized him and his like but like most of the best jousters Suffolk had the blood of the Yorkies Kings Crossing through his veins and he felt that Henry VII of the House of Lancaster was not treating him with the respect he deserved shortly before the wedding disaster struck Suffolk defected abroad and sought Refuge with the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian once again Henry VII faced a challenger who claimed the throne still worse unlike The Pretender Perkin warbeck Suffolk had a genuine hereditary claim foreign [Music] there was treason in the air and King Henry who had his spies knew that there were very few in his kingdom he could really trust as a remarkable document in Britain's National Archives shows here it is an informer's report of a series of conversations amongst high-ranking officials of the strategically important English garrisoning Cullen I heard a nobleman say that the king's Grace is weak and sickly not likely to be no long-lived man and some of them spoke of my lord of Buckingham saying he was a noble man and would be a royal ruler others spoke likewise of the traitor Edmund de la Pole [Music] none of them spoke of my Lord Prince Arthur these men were vital to the security of the Tudor regime and yet amongst themselves they'd Talk coolly of the probability of the king's early death and what would follow it [Music] but in the event it wasn't King Henry who died in November 1501 Arthur and Catherine of Aragon were married at last in a lavish ceremony in Saint Paul's Cathedral then they left to live together as man and wife at Ludlow castle in the marches of Wales less than five months later however Arthur was dead perhaps of tuberculosis perhaps of testicular cancer Henry VII was Greece struck at the death of his beloved Elder son in whom he invested all his hopes for the future the King's first thought the recording Herald notes was to call for the queen to share his grief [Music] she was come in and saw the king her Lord in that natural and painful sorrow she with great and constant comfortable words besought his grace that he should remember that God had lent them yet a fair goodly Prince and they were both young enough to have more children [Music] after that in her own chamber that great loss smote her so sorrowful to the heart that those that were about her were feigned to send for the king to comfort her but there would be no comfort attempting to replace her lost son the 37 year old Elizabeth died in childbirth later that year [Music] Henry was not yet 13. he had grown up close to his mother what was the effect on him of her death for once the sources are silent but we can guess [Music] sometime in the summer of 1504 the 13 year old Prince Henry now heir to the throne left his childhood home of Elton and came to court that vast traveling circus of 600 courteous and their servants which continually move between the Royal residences at the Thames Valley Richmond Westminster Greenwich sadly these great palaces are all long gone instead the place that best gives an idea of these vanished splendors is no in Kent here there is still the Parkland setting the hugeness of scarecrow the texture of brick and stone and the labyrinthine complexity of the Palaces of Henry's Boyhood and the youth [Music] private apartment secret or privy chamber except that in our sense the privy chamber wasn't really private at all Kings LED their lives in public constantly attended by courteous even in their bed chamber Henry VII fearful of the yorkist treason which struck into the center of his court gave the privy chamber its own small confidential staff and barred its door to everyone else now it was secret indeed and here the Aging King sat with his account books his memoranda and his bags of coin a spider at the heart of a golden web of power [Music] King Henry VII had finally found a novel way to keep his rebellious nobility in check Financial Reign of Terror the law was used as a pretext to Levy ruinous fines which instead of being collected in full were held over the heads of Henry's subjects I'm looking at one of the account books of the king's chamber at the top there's the king's signature and here is the list of those who in 1499 to 1500 are going to be done everybody from a bishop to a lord mayor to a Duke to Leading lawyers to important Barons going right through the Royal household everybody is bound in obligation one that really leaps out is a certain sir Edward Bruff who is a great Lincolnshire I think it is uh at night on the margins of the nobility who's got into trouble and he has been sent to the fleet jail this was a notoriously unpleasant prison so sir Edward escaped he broke out whereupon he is fine 3 000 marks in other words two thousand pounds but not only is he fined his Jailer is fine for letting him out for 500 pounds these are enormous sums the income of a baron is three four hundred Earls have a thousand to two thousand pounds a year these are vast sums millions in modern money I think there was a sense of a government that was becoming more and more fundamentally unjust it's taking a profound risk in cutting into the natural support for dynasty the natural support for any government Prince Henry II seems to have been kept firmly under his father's thumb at least according to the Spanish ambassador [Music] he was in complete subjection to his father and his grandmother and never opened his mouth in public except to answer a question from one of them but was Henry's silence obedience or sudden resentment then the sprought another king to his father's Court he was Philip the fair Archduke of burgundy driven ashore on his way to claim the Spanish Throne he just inherited through his wife [Music] Philip made the greatest possible contrast to his host Henry VII with young charming and a keen jouster here was a very different kind of King for Prince Henry to admire and that Ma Philip Henry did enough for Philip to be the recipient of Henry's first letter or at least the first one to survive most high most excellent and most powerful Prince it begins and then it continues rather touchingly I think by asking Philip whenever he found the opportunity to let Henry know of his good health and prosperity meanwhile Henry promised for his part whenever he could find a suitable messenger he'd do the same to Philip and let him know how he was getting on now the terms of course are formal and princely but it's almost as though the 14 year old Henry were asking the 27 year old King Archduke Philip to be his pen pal [Music] whilst the motherless teenager lonely he seems to have been genuinely upset when six months later he learned that Philip had died of typhoid fever caught in Spain as he wrote to Erasmus never since the death of my dearest mother has there come to me more hateful news foreign it was about this time that Henry took up Phillip's favorite sport jousting he wasn't allowed to compete himself that was far too dangerous but every day Henry was out in the tiltyard practicing the exercise known as running the ring spearing a ring with a lance whilst riding at Full Tilt but Prince Henry's Companions of the Tilt were the very people whom his father distrusted most the yorkist warrior nobility men who were also the resentful victims of the king's fiscal tyranny [Music] [Applause] foreign against the father then just after Christmas 1508 the king took ill and to his chamber by the 23rd of April 1509 the king hadn't been seen in public for weeks but then it seemed he was on the mend as the Archbishop of Canterbury was called in to speak to him foreign [Music] but behind the closed doors of the privy chamber King Henry VII was already communing with a higher authority than the Archbishop [Music] fact he died the day before but his son Prince Henry had not yet been declared King it was what the Yorkers conspirators had long hoped for udeta on the death of the Old King but Prince Henry wasn't one of the victims he was one of the conspirators instead the plot was aimed at those members of the old King's Council who were most closely identified with its policy of fiscal terrorism kept in the dark about the King's death for 48 crucial Powers they were outmaneuvered arrested and sent to the Tower Henry VII's death is now public knowledge because Henry VII has proclaimed a general pardon he has released many prisoners and arrested all those responsible for the bribery and tyranny of his father's reign people are very happy and few tears are being shed for Henry VII instead people are as joyful as if they had been released from prison [Music] long-threatened Yorkies Rebellion never materialized instead Prince Henry's accession was remarkably smooth the first bloodless transfer of par in England since the death of Henry V nearly a century before [Music] why should the yorkist nobility Rebel Henry had been brought up by his mother Elizabeth of York he looked like his grandfather Edward IV of York and as a teenager he'd hung around the tiltyard with the star yorkies jousters in short unlike his viscerally lancastrian father Henry was one of them the walls of the Roses were finally over and it was Henry who'd ended them for an 18 year old that was no mean achievement a few weeks later Erasmus received a letter from one of his favorite pupils William Blunt Lord mountjoy who described the mood in England the heavens love the Earth exalts and all things are full of milk of honey and of nectar avarice has expelled the country liberality scatters wealth of bounty as hand our King does not desire gold or Gems or precious metals virtue Glory immortality virtue Glory immortality it's easy to smile or perhaps bearing in mind what was to happen cry but either reaction I think would be mistaken for Mount Joy didn't get Henry is wrong as all that Henry's youthful innocence is burning desire to be good like fade almost as quickly as a summer flower but the ambition the determination to be great to make a mark in the world in a word to be famous never altered and then that at least Henry succeeded [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: David Starkey Talks

Views: 74,904

Keywords: David Starkey, History

Id: 7RjKG6gwmiE

Length: 47min 30sec (2850 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 22 2022