Читать книгу Henry VIII: History in an Hour - Simon Court - Страница 4

The life of Henry VIII was extraordinarily rich and eventful, starting with high hopes but ending, as he himself would have seen it, in abject personal and therefore political failure, with the premature death of his only son and heir, Edward VI. We have been invited to view Henry’s life and personality as, in effect, a tragic ‘game of two halves’: the first starring the idealistic, athletic and ‘virtuous prince’; the second embarrassed by the bloated, disillusioned tyrant who had been corrupted by events which were largely outside his control. And though it may be expected that his personality therefore fundamentally altered for the worse, it is evident that the characteristics which comprised this complex, yet essentially coherent, man were present throughout his life, and the decisions he made. For, possibly more than any other English monarch before or after him, Henry VIII defined every aspect of political life during his reign: indeed we can say that his personality became political policy.

Henry was, to all outward appearances and certainly as portrayed by the court artist Hans Holbein, the perfect model of a successful king. Tall, well built and intelligent, he commanded the stage of his court.

Yet who was the real man those portraits depict, with his fleshy yet mean-lipped face? We will trace the diplomatic ambitions of the young prince, inspired by the ‘Arthurian myth’ of the English monarch and his empire, and desiring to emulate the military triumphs of Henry V to become King of France as well as England; and the consequences of his continued failure to produce a legitimate male heir, leading eventually to the permanent ‘break with Rome’ and the Roman Catholic faith. We will also see how his underlying insecurity led to an excessive attachment to his advisers who, once rejected, were brutally abandoned and often beheaded for their betrayals (whether real or imagined). We shall discover a man whose violence, self-righteousness and ruthlessness were certainly consistent with a severe egoist, and perhaps even – some have suggested – with a psychopath.