Warrior - Ep: 2 | Henry - Mind Of A Tyrant | BBC Documentary

[Music] on the 9th of May 15:09 King Henry the seventh was laid to rest in his magnificent Memorial Chapel in Westminster Abbey to the late medieval mind a king should be first and foremost a war leader and Henry Dooley have the funeral the verb warrior [Music] at the climax of the ceremony a knight rude into the abbey clad in the late Kings Armour monks unbuckle the armor piece by piece and placed each in turn on the altar symbolically divested of his Knightly attributes the King was laid to rest it still lies surrounded by the symbols of the medieval warrior aristocracy but Henry the seventh in the eyes of contemporaries had failed to live up to the Knightly ideal he had they said forgotten chivalry and being corrupted by avarice his reign to become a tyranny but now a new better reign had begun and the new young King Henry the Eighth aspired above all to be what his father had never been the perfect gentle knight who would win everlasting glory by feats of arms [Music] we think we know Henry the eighth's the fat tyrant with a blood-stained attitude to marriage but the archives hold many documents which reveals a very different Henry a devoted husband day by day to her inestimable virtues more and more shine forth flourish and increase a brilliant sportsman and scholar King Henry is a fine gesture speaks good French Latin and Spanish and a holy warrior it is to be feared that God should take high indignation against them exercising his terrible sword of Correction and dreadful punishment upon the French this is the story of the King Henry we forgotten the chivalrous warrior prince who had to fail and fade before the tyrant of legend could emerge Henry's reign began with an outpouring of public joy the very first description of the young king is a paean of praise high expectations captured an illuminated verse in this manuscript from the British Library it's a little book of Latin poems written by Henry's boyhood friend Thomas More to celebrate his coronation in it more dares to use the language of Scripture to present Henry as a new Messiah who will wipe the tear from every eye and put joy in the place of our long mourning his sword strikes the strongest blows his Lance hits home the hardest his arrow always finds its target and he's got a mind to match what couldn't someone like that achieve but the first impression of young Henry is also that he was a bit of a soft touch the new king found himself inundated with petitions from suitors seeking favors lands offices and titles partly in reaction to his father's meanness Henry signed away and each time he grunted what was requested henry was having fun giving people what they wanted too much fun perhaps and the council which he'd largely inherited from his father quickly moved to curb the young Kings impetuous generosity for Henry could only rule through his council who controlled the seals which made Royal grants official once the King had signed a grant a copy would be made by his secretary and sealed with the royal signet this was then passed to the Lord privy seal who drew up and sealed a second copy this in turn was passed to the Lord chancellor's office which made the third and final copy duly authorized with the Great Seal the so called course of the seals meant that Henry could do little without the agreement of his counselors the result in effect was to create a Regency Council behind the facade of a normally adult monarchy Henry used to doing what his father told him acquiesced at the time being at least but if in most matters of government Henry was still being treated as a minor there was one important exception with him weeks of coming to the throne the seventeen-year-old had married his Queen was Catherine of Aragon Catherine was the daughter of Isabella and Ferdinand rulers of Spain her lifelong Duty had been to maintain an alliance with England she'd married Henry's older brother Arthur in 1501 when she was 15 but only a few months later she was a widow author who died but the alliance between England and Spain lived on so just over a year later catherine was betrothed to henry of the treaty of marriage magnificently illuminated still survives in the archives at Samantha's but when Catherine's mother Isabel had died in 1504 Catherine's value as a royal bride was greatly reduced and of the seventh who knew the price of everything instantly cooled on the Spanish marriage he began to make difficulty over the huge sums of money that would do under the terms of the treaty he even ordered his son Henry to repudiate the betrothal though without telling Katherine this left Katherine who was still living in England in legal marital and diplomatic limbo [Music] but with hinder the sentence death all the problems suddenly seemed to disappear negotiations which had dragged on and on for years were settled within a week and Henry and Catherine were privately married a few days before their joint coronation why the rush to the altar did Henry's counsel want to seal an alliance with Spain or was it simply that Henry wanted Catherine perhaps this letter holds the clue in it Henry tells his new father-in-law Ferdinand of Aragon about his recent marriage as for that entire love which we bear to the Most Serene Queen our consort day by day to her inestimable virtues more and more shine forth flourish and increase so that even if we were still free is she nevertheless that we would choose for our wife before all other Henry had chosen a wife now he would choose his friends he selected them from men just like himself young highborn high-spirited and with them he turned his court into a new Garden of Eden a second Camelot life was a perpetual pageant bold brilliant and colorful Henry wrote the scripts devised the settings on the costumes and played the leading parts himself [Music] one day he burst into the Queen's Chamber dressed as Robin Hood and complete with his band of merry men another he paraded a Turk magnificently an exotic Lee dressed and brandishing his scimitar in in-between he found time to hunt dance and write music and verse though some say that youth doth rule me I trust an age to tarry God and my rights and my duty from them shall I never vary though some say youth rules me I pray you all that a Jayde be how well did you your youth carry I think some worse of each degree there in a wager later I though some say youth doth rule me pastime of youth some time among none can say but necessary I hurt no man I do no wrong I love true where I did Mary though some say youth doth rule me then soon discuss that hence we must pray be to God and Saint Mary that all amend and here and n thus says the King the eighth Harry though some say that youth doth rule me some say the youth doth fool me but did you through did Henry himself still age barely eighteen really rule or did others rule on his behalf [Music] the crowning of a new king of England wasn't just of interest to the English the eyes of Europe are upon Henry the eighth's especially in Italy where the northern European powers had discovered that the Italian city-states were rich and easy pickings in particular Venice was imperiled menaced by French army which had crossed the Alps and taken Milan the Venetians were in the urgent need of allies against France this is the chamber where the council that dealt with Foreign Relations met to hear dispatches read aloud from their ambassadors abroad and to send them instructions in turn virtually every word was recorded and deposited in the State Archives there they remained forgotten and undisturbed for three and a half centuries until an English antiquarian Rawdon Lubbock brown rediscovered them in the 19th century he was one of the first to realize the importance of the Republic's diplomatic correspondence and he spent 50 years translating and transcribing the Venetian archives [Music] the result the so-called Calandra state papers venetian is a Bible for English historians my own copy is well thumped but I've never seen the original documents on which it's based they're worth looking at for nothing else as the power to bring the past so vividly to life here is Rawdon Browns summary in the Venetian calendar the crucial dispatch written on the 30th of May 15:09 that's only a month after Henry's accession in which the Venetian Senate instruct their ambassador in England to play on the young Kings vanity and incite him to make war on France that's the calendar but this is the original and the pleas of the Republic with France at her throat ring through with fresh urgency nonsense er extrema passione not without extreme passion or fear they right do we hear the sweeping French conquest of our territory you are to see the King beseech him no longer to delay England being well supplied with brave and able men whilst the Kings all endowments also furnish all the requisites for such an enterprise Kindle and encourage him for war Henry have been brought up on the values of chivalry to believe that a prince should be a warrior [Music] so in proposing war against France England's traditional enemy the Venetians should have been pushing against an open door but the Ambassador soon discovered that things were not so straightforward an envoi from the French King he reported to the Senate had arrived in England to thank Henry his letter promising peace between the two countries but this apparently was news to Henry and the King reacted with outrage who wrote this letter I asked peace of the king of France who dare not look me in the face still let's make war on me [Music] Henry the Ambassador inferred was not the one in charge of Foreign Affairs that seemed to be in the hands of his counsel still pursuing the same peace policy as they had under Henry's father the council was led by clergymen like Bishop Fox and Archbishop Wareham they formed a peace party which objected to war on grounds of cost risk and also for moral reasons at the opening of Parliament and in Henry's own presence Archbishop Warham the Lord Chancellor preached a powerful sermon on the benefits of peace and against the evils of war which he claimed could only be justified in the most narrow of circumstances but that was not a view shared by King Henry's young friends in his privy chamber they were keen jousters regularly displaying their martial skills in mock combat but what they really wanted was the real thing [Music] [Music] Henry would have liked to join them but jousting was dangerous and the council like his father in the past and forbidden him to take part so one day Henry decided to just in his guise alongside one of his closest personal servants only a few of Henry's intimates have got wind of the plan and all went well until as the chronicler relates one of the anonymous nights was flung heavily from his horse and knocked unconscious one person there was that knew the King cried got the key with that all the people were astonished and the King had to uncover himself to the great comfort of all the people it was now open knowledge that the young King begun to rebelled against his counselors where they must have thought would it all end fortunately counsellors Fox and Wareham had their own man inside the Kings Privy chamber a chaplain called Thomas Wolsey Wolsey was just the man for Henry he was no Stern unbending clergyman but enjoyed fun and games just as much as Henry and his young companions he was lowborn but hugely intelligent had been a stellar student here at maudlin College Oxford above all he was a fine teacher with the teacher's ability to read a student and Henry was to be his last and greatest pupil folks in Wareham intended that Wolsey should act like a good schoolmaster as a brake on Henry's water lust but would he at first Wolsey seems to have acted as his patrons wished in 1511 he wrote warning that Edward Howard one of the leading jousters seemed to be pushing the King towards war with Scotland Everett Howard marvelously and sends the King against the Scots by whose wanton means his grace spends much money and is more disposed to war than peace but Wolsey finally achieved human relations he was quickly realized that Henry's war must wasn't just the result of pressure from his young hot-headed companions war was something that the king himself wanted and passionate Woolsey quickly decided that the future his future lay not in trying to bridle Henry but instead in liberating him from his counselors the counselors power over Henry lay in the fact that they alone controlled the seals which made his decisions official but was this or a way to break the so-called course of the seals [Music] the requirement for every Royal grant to pass each of the three seals was a matter of convention not law and it couldn't withstand a direct royal command to the Chancellor so far however Henry who rather disliked direct confrontation had lacked the backbone to challenge his council head-on now Wolsey supplied the backbone for him this is the document with which Wolsey began to free Henry from the thrall of his councilors it's a sign bill granting a lincolnshire rectory in itself it's nothing the devil is in the rubric which instructs the Chancellor to make the grant of authority of the Kings signature alone with no need for authentication by the course of the seals this was to undermine the whole basis of the council's control of royal patronage and Wareham objected but Wolsey who presented the document in person smoothly responded that such was the Kings will this was unanswerable and all that Wareham could do was to add an acid little note here right at the bottom of the document Oh as Sarat dick toasts dominoes Wolsey so said the aforementioned master Wolsey Wolsey had now shown that he could get Henry what Henry wanted and what Henry wanted was war with Wolsey supplying the means or Henry liked was the opportunity it soon came when pope julius ii and king louie the 12th of france went to war over the italian states ruled by the papacy invoking the spiritual weapons of the church Julius excommunicated Louie and formed a holy League of sympathetic countries to wage a crusade against infidel France to entice England into the league he said Henery barrels of Italian wine a golden rose and a hundred parmesan cheeses Henry was now on the point of fulfilling his boyhood dreams of war he would do so under the banner of Holy Mother Church [Music] on the 28th of June 1513 King Henry and Queen Catherine arrived at Dover Castle before King Henry crossed the channel the following day to make war on lure the 12th it was a moment that both of them felt they'd been born for Henry and Catherine spent the night together here in the castle keep it was a fond farewell but there were no tears Henry at last was fulfilling what history and custom insisted was the right the meet the glorious role of an English King and leading his Nobles and people to war in France within a few days Henry was finally where he wanted to be leading an army besieging the French town of Te'o and [Music] he was busy with his men so Katherine kept in touch through the indispensable Wolsey I was troubled to hear the king was so near the siege of Terre one until your letter assured me of the heat it takes to avoid all manner of dangers with his health and life nothing can come amiss to him Katherine's anxieties were natural in a wife but behind them lay the higher concerns of a dynast for henry had departed for the front in france without leaving behind an heir in England Katherine had become pregnant quickly after the marriage but she'd miscarried then in 1511 she gave birth to a son and heir but the boy died within a few weeks that was a tragedy but Henry's energies were quickly diverted by the dashed war and Katherine approved a no less enthusiastic warmonger Henry and place great trust in his wife by making her his regent in England even though it was clear that the Scots would take advantage of Henry's absence to invade so Catherine too would have a water fight [Music] you are not so busy with the warrant erawan as I am encumbered by it in England we are all here very glad to be busy with the Scots we take it for a pastime my heart is very good to it and I'm horribly busy making standard Spanish and patches meanwhile in France the city of Tehran was close to being starved into surrender to save it the French sent up a detachment of cavalry the cream of their army to rebuild the city by throwing sighs of bacon over the city wall but they miscalculated badly on the withering far from the English archers the French Knights were forced to beat a hasty retreat shedding arms and armor as they spurred their horses into headlong light it was out route made worse by the English mockingly naming the action the Battle of the Spurs Henry was ecstatic and sent his wife the captured banners but Katherine had an even greater victory to celebrate under the command of the Earl of Surrey the English had destroyed the Scots army and killed their king she wrote to congratulate Henry for taking taro on [Music] to my thinking this paddle has been to your grace the greatest honor that could be the king will not forget to thank God for it I am sending a piece of the King of Scots coat in this your grace we'll see how I can keep my promise sending you for your banners a king's coat I thought to send his body unto you but our English men's hearts were now suffering news of Henri and Catherine's victories spread round Europe England was a great power again Henry even boasted that it was he who had liberated Italy from the French oppressor if I choose he proclaimed Louie the 12th will cross the Alps and if I choose he will not cross it was the fulfillment of all Henry's dreams he was now a warrior king to rival his great medieval predecessors Henry the fifth and Edward the third and Catherine his loyal queen was pregnant once again soon surely he would have a son and heir the jewel of Henry's French conquests was tore lay a rich city in its own right it was also the key to Flanders the wealthiest region of northern Europe in the Middle Ages England had had an empire in France now in tournay Henry said about laying the foundations the new English continental empire until I saw it for myself I'd never realized the scale of Henry's ambition amazing this really is Henry the eighth's Domus and Paul's it's built for strength it's a fortress but it's also strange way a thing of beauty it's stone and brick the way in which the ribs a stone contrasts with the beautifully cut and pointed red brick now this was originally one of four corner towers of a great fortress that Henry built to hold tournay it was strong enough to withstand the most ferocious attack but it's also built to impress and to last tournay says will be English forever but would it Henry's former mentor and correspondent the great Dutch scholar Erasmus was living in Queens College Cambridge war with France had cut off his supply of wine he contracted a stone which he attributed to drinking ale he had nothing about sarcasm these are the first fruits of what we should take as the famous war against the French Italy has been cleared of the French only to be ruled by another potentate and is now worse than before Erasmus saw nothing moral about the pope's so-called holy war and he mocked both Julius a second and Henry in his biting satire Julius excuses which could be loosely translated as shock horror Pope locked out of heaven in the citta Erasmus makes Julius boost of his powers of persuasion such is the magic of His Holiness the Pope claims but he can entice all nations into war and the English and Henry in particular are a soft target they were cocky and almost riotous because of their newfound liberty which they had finally acquired at the death of the most severe of Kings so that they could now easily be incited to any madness and to what I most wanted also to my advantage was this very young King boy rather who had recently acquired the royal power and was of a fierce and lively and thoroughly youthful temper that is restless and belligerent to Erasmus the glorious Henry was just the dupe of a scheming bellicose Italian priest did Henry see the Julius excuse us if so it would have made painful reading but Henry's more pressing problem was financial the war had cost somewhere between one and two million pounds consuming his entire inheritance from his father and more still worse the bill continued to mount with the garrison here at Tornai proving ruinously expensive to maintain to add to Henry's frustration when Catherine at last gave birth to a healthy child it was a girl not a boy [Music] meanwhile the aging king louie of france died and his heir was the youthful and aggressive Francis the first who quickly called Henry's bluff Francis invaded Italy and forced the Pope to come to terms with him with no money to mount another war Henry could no longer pose as the arbiter of Europe when Henry had a clear goal he could be all actions but when the way forward was unclear he tended to lose interest after all there was so much else to do like hunting justing and reveling and he was so good at all of them in short Henry for all his intelligence and ability and especially at this stage of his life was something of a butterfly as an acid adjusting yarn II noticed Henry the warrior came the turn back into Henry the playboy Prince King Henry is much handsomer than the king of France he's very accomplished and a good musician composes well is a capital horseman and a fine gesture speaks good French Latin and Spanish he is formed of hunting and tennis he devotes himself to accomplishments and amusements day and night he is intent on nothing else leaving business to the Cardinal of York the column was Thomas Wolsey Cardinal Archbishop of York thanks to Henry's favor Wolsey had climbed up the ranks of church and state a dizzying speed has caught a leg eight he was the Pope's representative in England as Lord Chancellor he was head of the Kings government just in yani reported wonderingly on was his arrogance in the exercise of this double Universal authority in England Wolsey rules both the king and the entire kingdom am i first arriving in the kingdom he used to say his majesty will do so and so subsequently by degree he said we shall do so and so then he reached such a pitch that he said I shall do so and so Wolsey was arrogant but he never forgot that his power depended on giving Henry the fame and glory that he craved more and proved too expensive amines and beyond England's resources but could peace be made equally glamorous and prestigious Wolsey with his genius at presentation saw how if Henry couldn't beat his enemies he could join them together in a Treaty of universal peace Henry the erstwhile warrior king would find fame at last as the great peacemaker so Henry gave tournay back to france in 15-20 the peace process climaxed in the most famous Summit Conference in European history the field of cloth of gold celebrated in this painting in the Royal Collection at Hampton Court the meeting took place in a windswept no-man's land between the English possession of Calais and France here a whole temporary city was erected complete with tents of cloth-of-gold fountains that flowed with wine a tilt ER for the inevitable jobs and the PSD lazy stars the temporary English Palace painted to look like brick and with crystalline windows that knocked the French efforts of magnificence into a cocked hat and here we see Henry with Wolsey beside him arriving to renew the treaty perpetual peace with the old enemy Francis the first of France but how long would perpetual peace last the Venetian ambassador to Cinco the sovereigns are not at peace they hate each other cordially [Music] King Henry of England and King Francis of France didn't have the European stage to themselves for long however as a new third player arrived he was Charles the fifth son of Henry's boyhood hero Philip the fair duke of burgundy at first it looked as though Charles would be the poor relation in contrast to the Magnificent kings of England and France he was a shy gorky ugly teammate but he was also heir to the greatest inheritance in Europe through his father Austria the Lu countries most of Italy as well as the not yet empty title of Holy Roman Emperor to his mother Juana who was Katharine of Aragon's sister spade and its enormous Empire in the new world but could Charles take possession of this vast inheritance in Spain in particular he was hated as a foreigner his accession sparked rebellion the Castillo de la mota in Medina del Campo still bears the scars the ferocious bombardment the Spaniards in revolt against their new king Charles himself didn't have the resources to put the revolt down instead he turned for help to Henry his uncle by marriage and his father's friend him his help was essential to Charles he lent the emperor money and just as important he kept the channel open to Charles's ships preserving the lines of communication between Charles's scattered kingdoms once Charles were secured Henry quite naturally expected a quid pro quo aid from this new European great power against Francis the first of France in a renewed war for Catherine to alliance with her nephew Charles offered the hope of fulfilling at last the dynastic logic of her marriage to Henry she had been unable to deliver Henry the long forced son and heir to the throne of England now perhaps through Charles she could deliver the still greater prize of the throne of France in 1522 the new alliance was sealed with a treaty which betrothed Charles the fifth to Henry and Catherine six-year-old daughter Princess Mary it signaled the start of an ambitious plan to attack Frances all science first an English army under the Earl of Surrey launched a lightning strike on France storming as far south as Agincourt but they were let down by Charles's Burgundian troops the advantage was thrown away and the army returned Henri was understandably furious with Charles but the emperor promised that in the next campaigning season he would commit significant forces next year the English army under Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk Victor of the Battle of the Spurs against wave through northern France even getting with his striking distance at Paris itself but once again Charles did nothing at the end of 1524 Charles yet again promised Henry that next year things would be different but the Spanish ambassador reported a hardened mood in England elegant walls he went on enumerate in the many infractions of the existing treaty which he alleged had been committed by the Emperor such as money borrowed and not paid in due time the pensions and so forth adding the king my master would have more reason to complain since after so much expenditure and trouble he gets such a room so Henry decided that this campaigning season he would sit things out it proved to be a costly mistake on the 9th of March 1525 Henry was awakened early by the arrival of a messenger come from Charles's army in Italy Charles had won a great victory at pavia and King Francis himself was his prisoner exultant Henry told the messenger you were like Saint Gabriel who announced the coming of Christ then he sent his ambassador two jars with instructions to arrange the final destruction and dismemberment of France it is to be feared that God should take high indignation against them exercising his terrible sword of Correction and dreadful punishment upon the French as for Francis his line and succession ought to be abolished removed and utterly extinct for centuries the kings of England had also styled themselves King of France for a moment it seemed that Henry was about to make good that ancient claim and win have a lasting glory but Charles already had what he wanted and he saw no advantage in making England a great continental power Charles Henry's erstwhile Protege had learned to stand on his own feet and play the brutal game of power politics as a master so coolly Charles challenged Henry to raise an army to share in the conquest of France and when Henry failed because his subjects weary of financing unsuccessful Wars threatened to rebel rather than pay the necessary taxation Charles through Henry over restored Francis the first and jilted Mary it was a humiliation for Henry but a disaster for Catherine [Music] her marriage to Henry but failed to produce a son or a lasting alliance it was both a dynastic and a personal failure she wrote in anguish to Charles I'm sure I deserve not this treatment for such her my affection and readiness for your Highnesses service that I deserve a better reward [Music] the aftermath of the Battle of Revere made everything cruelly clear the Charles the fifth and Francis the first the real action was here in Italy each was eager to recruit Henry's support in the eternal Wars to control the Italian peninsula but they were most reluctant to allow England a share of the Spoils and Henry wasn't strong enough to compel them [Music] Henry would never be the warrior king he dreamed off the time of chivalry it seemed was long past if Henry had died of the sweating sickness which struck England in the late 1520's we'd scarce to remember him he would be just another English king who tried and failed to emulate the great medieval conquerors of France Edward the third and Henry the fifth what events were about to take a wholly unexpected course Henry would launch his own siege of Rome he would fight with the pen not with the sword and he would win the immortality that he craved not as a warrior but as a man who would remake this world and the next [Music]

Channel: BBC Documentary

Views: 454,746

Rating: 4.7894735 out of 5

Keywords: bbc documentary, documentary bbc, bbc, henry viii mind of a tyrant episode 2, david starkey henry viii mind of a tyrant, henry viii, henry viii documentary, henry vii, henry viii and his six wives

Id: CiqYv1ybxIU

Length: 47min 25sec (2845 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 13 2019