This April, it will be 500 years since Henry became king. BRITAIN previews the events which celebrate the anniversary of this complicated monarch. By Sally Varlow.
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| King Henry VIII is the most famous monarch this country had ever had |
Have fun with Henry at Hampton Court Palace," says a poster at the local station. Fun might not be quite the word his six wives would have used but you know at once who it refers to.
King Henry VIII is the most famous monarch this country has ever had: instantly recognisable from Holbein's portrait of him as a great fat figure, hands on hips, shoulders padded, legs wide, hat tilted over his broad, bearded face. He is Britain's answer to Bluebeard; a monster who married six wives, divorced four and executed two on charges on adultery. He is the tyrant who caused the break with Rome and sent saintly Sir Thomas More to his untimely death.
Yet, ironically, this king who changed our history wasn't meant to be king at all. His elder brother, Arthur, was the heir to the throne. But Arthur died aged only 15, leaving Katherine of Aragon a widow and Henry to ascend the throne when their father, Henry VII, died on 22 April, 500 years ago.
It is an important date for palaces and places connected with Henry and Hampton Court, for one, is holding a year-long celebration, titled Henry VIII: Heads and Hearts.
"We've been planning this for two years," says the palace's PR Vikki Wood, as she leads me though the freshly-cobbled courtyard; past a new heraldic garden, complete with eight "King's Beasts", hand-carved and gilded; and along the processional route to the Tudor rooms in this sprawling palace which has grown over the centuries into a Thames-side village.
Henry's state apartments have had an extensive makeover in readiness for the anniversary, and they are swathed in lavish hangings and filled with more furniture, "to capture the feel of Tudor times". In the Great Hall and Watching Chamber, the king's prized tapestries have been repaired, and his Council Chamber is open for the first time, with an exhibition about ‘Henry's Women'. It is a poignant, often sad, display showing portraits of the six queens who were "Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived"; and objects each one owned, such as Katherine of Aragon's precious prayer book and a love letter from young Catherine Howard to Thomas Culpeper.
The original owner-builder of the palace was Henry's lord chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey, who wisely handed it over when Henry made it clear how badly he wanted it. But if the cardinal imagined he'd bought Henry's undying support, he severely miscalculated. Four years later Wolsey was on his way to the Tower of London, while the king, with barely a backward glance, made it his principal home. Here his son, Edward VI, was baptised. Here he divorced his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves; learned his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, was committing adultery; and married his last queen, Katherine Parr, in the Chapel Royal in 1543.
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| Sir Thomas More and Henry VIII's fifth wife Catherine Howard were both beheaded |
It is this last wedding - the only one without a tragic ending - that Hampton Court is recreating for the anniversary. Come to the palace from Easter onwards, Vikki explains, and you can be a wedding guest, don a Tudor cloak, meet the "king and queen", join in activities and wander through the vast kitchens while cooks prepare the wedding feast. "We want everyone to experience what Court life would be like," Vikki adds. And to make sure everyone has "fun with Henry" there are weekends devoted to Tudor music, jousting, falconry and fencing, plus a water-pageant (20-21 June), to mark the mid-summer day when Henry was crowned, aged 18, with his bride, Katherine of Aragon, beside him.
Until then, Henry had grown up at the royal palaces in Greenwich (his birthplace), Eltham and Richmond, not far from Hampton Court. Greenwich and Richmond palaces are long gone, though Richmond museum has a model of the palace and the park nearby still covers much of Henry's hunting ground. While everything you want to know about the prince's early life can be found in a special anniversary exhibition, Henry VIII: Man and Monarch, at the British Library, beside London's St Pancras station.
Devised by Dr David Starkey, one of Britain's most popular historians and doyen of television history programmes, it charts Henry's life from gilded youth to monstrous old age, using the king's own books, maps, portraits, plates, jewellery and other treasures on loan from international libraries, including documents never before seen outside the Vatican.
"There were two Henrys," Dr Starkey explains, as we sit in the champagne bar within the gleaming new international station. A few feet away, trains slide in and out, heading for France in journey times Henry could never have imagined as he rode off to Dover, first to invade France and win the so-called Battle of the Spurs in 1513, and again in 1520 to celebrate peace and joust at the legendary Field of the Cloth of Gold.
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Hever Castle was the childhood home of
Anne Boleyn |
"Because he was the ‘the spare', not the heir to the throne, Henry grew up in a household of women, with his mother and sisters, until he reached his early teens. That's quite extraordinary for a Tudor boy," Dr Starkey points out. And unlike his later image, "he was considered the ideal prince - handsome, heroic, musical, moral, athletic, amorous, virtuous, visionary. Above all, well educated and well read, in Latin."
Henry's own books are the core collection at the British Library, and the centre-piece of the exhibition, stunningly displayed in the new Paccor Gallery. "Henry was incapable of reading a book without writing on it," says Dr Starkey. "So we can penetrate his mind, see how his books became an information pool for the royal think-tank," and helped him make his case for a divorce from Katherine of Aragon when she failed to give him a son and heir.
Henry became not so much a depraved philanderer as a man seeking happiness - and a son, Dr Starkey claims, and he examines the king's personality change in both a new biography and a TV series screening in the UK from April. Filming has covered many historic houses and castles famously linked to Henry: Anne Boleyn's moated Hever Castle and neighbouring Penshurst in Kent; Katherine Parr's pretty Sudeley, in Gloucestershire; Leeds Castle, his stopping place en route to Dover; Eltham Palace, his boyhood home. And York, where he went on progress with Catherine Howard, as C J Sansom describes in his recent, award-winning novel Sovereign.
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| Katherine Parr's Cotswold home of Sudeley |
But it is the lesser-known locations that stand out, especially his new chain of coastal forts. Henry carefully mapped the whole coastline from Hull to Milford Haven - you can see it in the British Library exhibition - and worked out where each fort must go, to defend these shores from invasion by Catholic Europe. Dover already existed, but others, like Pendennis and St Mawes in Cornwall, Walmer in Kent, and Southsea on the Solent, were built to his Tudor-rose design.
"It was a task sensationally well done," says Dr Starkey. Many of them did sterling service for centuries and now, preserved by English Heritage, attract thousands of visitors. English Heritage is also custodian of dozens of abbeys and religious houses ruined during Henry's Dissolution of the Monasteries, such as Rievaulx, Byland and Fountains, and it plans a country-wide programme of events for Henry's anniversary.
"There will be something for everyone, from finding out more about the life and times of Henry from costumed interpreters, to witnessing the jousts (Pendennis joust 30-31 August) of which Henry was such a fan," says Emily Burns, head of events for English Heritage. "We will be recreating some of his favourite pastimes throughout 2009."
Henry was actually watching from Southsea Castle, in July 1545, when his favourite warship, the Mary Rose, sailed out to attack the French fleet - and sank. He had commissioned her as soon as he came to the throne and she'd been in service ever since.
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| The Tower of London |
But on that fine summer day she suddenly heeled over and went down, with almost all her 500 crew. Why? No one knows, and she stayed on the seabed till she - and hundreds of Tudor artefacts - were raised, in 1982, and housed in a ship hall in Portsmouth's historic harbour. Later this year she will be withdrawn from view while a new home is built (due to open 2012) within Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. But before she goes, and because it is her 500th anniversary too, Portsmouth plans a Mary Rose pageant, and the city's summer arts festivities will be themed on Henry and his Tudor navy.
It is "Henry the warrior, Henry the king, and Henry the sportsman" who comes to life in another spectacular exhibition, Henry VIII: Dressed to Kill, at the Tower of London. Set up jointly by the Tower and the Royal Armouries, it claims to have gathered together, for the first time since the 16th century, the largest number of objects that belonged to Henry. They are all displayed in the massive White Tower, with new lighting, and exciting audio and visual material. It makes a fitting climax to a tour of Henry's England - not least because a few yards away is the site of Anne Boleyn's execution.
She was buried close by in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, and every year on 19 May, the day she died, an anonymous bouquet is sent to the Tower and placed on her tomb.
