Think You Know the Facts About King Henry VIII? Think Again.
Debunking four myths about England’s most famous monarch

There have been many famous kings and queens throughout history, but probably none more famous than England’s King Henry VIII. He has been the subject of countless biographies, documentaries, films, and even a wacky 1960s song by Herman’s Hermits. He was a giant in his own lifetime and has remained so for nearly 500 years. Yet what we remember about Henry Tudor, from a historical perspective at least, is mostly wrong. Let’s correct that by debunking a few of the myths about him; both Henry and history deserve to be remembered correctly.
1. Henry was fat. This is how everyone remembers him, and it is true that toward the end of his life Henry put on a lot of weight. A lot. He ultimately had to be lowered onto his horse using straps. At the time of his death, he had a 53-inch chest and a 52-inch waist.
This was due mainly to his greatly reduced physical activity (with no reduction in his 5,000 calorie a day diet), advancing age, and a fall from his horse during a 1536 jousting tournament in which his horse fell on top of him. He was unconscious for several hours and his leg was severely injured, so much so that two years later an ulcer on that leg became infected and nearly killed him. He was largely (pun intended) sedentary from that point on.
Prior to all of this, however, Henry was athletic, strong, and muscular. He constantly played tennis, jousted, hunted, and otherwise spent vast amounts of time on horseback, all of which kept him in excellent physical shape. While he was heavy at the end of his life, he was not that way for the majority of it. We remember him this way because the most famous portrait we have of him was painted late in life.
2. He executed all six of his wives when they didn’t produce male heirs. This may be the most enduring myth about Henry; in point of fact, he executed two of his wives, not all of them (not that this makes it better). The best way to remember the fates of his wives is using the old line “divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived.”
He divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, after unsuccessfully seeking an annulment from the pope; Catherine’s nephew was the Holy Roman Emperor and a crucial ally of the pope, so this was a futile endeavor from the start. But Henry had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn and also needed a male heir, so Catherine was sent away, still very much alive. Anne was not as fortunate, but not because she produced only a daughter (and that only daughter just happened to become Elizabeth I, perhaps England’s greatest monarch ever); it was Anne’s alleged infidelity that was her undoing.
Jane Seymour, wife number three, gave Henry the son he so desperately craved, but she died shortly after giving birth. His subsequent marriage to Anne of Cleves was an arranged one that Henry never wanted, and he quickly divorced her; they remained on civil terms. Catherine Howard was beheaded, also because of infidelity, real or imagined. Catherine Parr was queen at the time Henry himself died, and thus survived him. Henry wanted a son to continue the Tudor dynasty, but he didn’t kill off his wives to get one.
3. Henry was a Protestant who fully supported the Reformation. Given the fact that he did in fact break with the Catholic Church and established the Church of England with himself as its head, this one seems hard to call a myth, but it actually is. Henry was, of course, a Catholic prior to the Reformation, as was all of Western Europe. When the Reformation first began in Germany in 1517, he was a staunch and vocal opponent of Martin Luther. In 1521, four years after Luther wrote his 95 Theses, Henry wrote a treatise (with the help of Thomas More) called The Defense of the Seven Sacraments attacking Luther’s positions. For this, the pope granted Henry the title “Defender of the Faith,” ironically a title King Charles III retains to this day.
Henry’s break with the pope, though in his own mind not with the Church, came when the pope would not grant an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon so he could marry Anne Boleyn, who was indeed a Protestant and a devotee of Luther. Her actual role in moving England into the Protestant camp is debated by historians but she certainly spurred Henry in that direction, including sponsoring William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament and influencing the election of reformist bishops.
Henry, however, did not see himself as abandoning Catholicism, but as rejecting a corrupt papacy that among other things threatened his position as the leader of England appointed by God. He executed men like Thomas More and Cardinal John Fisher not so much for their fidelity to the Catholic Church as for their refusal to take the oath stating that he was the head of the Church in England, not the pope.
It seems obvious that this is a rejection of Catholicism, because to reject the pope as the head of the Church anywhere is to reject Catholicism, but Henry did not see it that way. This is evident in the way in which he retained nearly all the doctrines and rituals of the Catholic Church in his newly formed Church of England except for allegiance to the pope. To the day he died, Henry considered himself a reformed Catholic, not a Protestant, and a true defender of the Faith.
4. His final words were “monks, monks, monks.” There has been considerable debate over the centuries about what Henry’s dying words were, with “monks, monks, monks” being the most widely reported. The story goes that because he had killed monks and priests who defied him as he wrenched the church away from Rome, he was tormented on his deathbed by visions of revenge-seeking monks. A spooky tale to be sure, but not true. It first appeared in a book on the kings of England that wasn’t published until the 1800s, 300 years after Henry died (which, coincidentally, was on January 28, 1547, exactly 477 years ago today).
Another account says he cried out for Jane Seymour, his only wife to produce a male heir, but again there is no reliable record of him doing this either. It’s most likely that his final words were quite ordinary. When informed by his physician that he was not likely to live much longer (he was bedridden and suffering from renal failure), he reportedly said he wanted to see Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer but “I will first take a little sleep and then as I feel myself I will advise on the matter.” He did indeed then sleep, was unconscious when Cranmer arrived several hours later, and died the next morning without uttering another word.
Those are just four of the biggest myths about Henry VIII. Myths will always crop up around great historical figures, but we really don’t need myths about a man who truly was larger than life. With Henry, fact is always more interesting than fiction.
As a final side note, I highly recommend the Showtime series The Tudors to anyone interested in Henry VIII. It takes a few dramatic liberties with history but overall is very well done, and Jonathan Rhys Myers is an outstanding Henry VIII.
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