This may be of interest to you Tudor fan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..Y2pKQbecjo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..toBfVMv0e8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..DobH-K3wWc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..055c6XhoPY

I hope these links work for you, if they don’t the programme is called Henry V111 mind of a tyrant, can be found on You tube.

You’re welcome,. I found them very interesting.

Starkey at times can be very self opinionated and brutal but he knows his stuff that’s for sure, and certainly he is very straightforward in what he says about H8. I do enjoy his programmes very much, there is another programme of his on You tube call patron or plunderer or something like that. I think it focuses solely on the dissolution of the Monastries. I not watched it yet so I might be wrong.
Anyway enjoy the rest of them, and I look forward to reading your opinion on what made H8 such a git.

I think his fall in the tilt yard in 1536 didn’t help things either, I actually wonder if he didn’t have a injury to his brain during that fall, I’ve read somewhere that he seemed very different to the man who had ridden out on his horse that afternoon, when he came too. He was plagued ever afterwards with headaches too, so I wonder if he had a blood clot or a fracture to his skull, which was pressing on his brain.
I think Wolsey’s death made him realise just how hard the man actually worked to keep the kingdom running, and that Wolsey did a lot to keep the leeches and users away from him. Once Wolsey was dead there was no one to stop these people from taking advantage of him.
I sometimes feel that H8 must have felt very lonely even through there were always people around him, no one really wanted to be with him just to be with him, they were with him just to get power, position or wealth and usually all 3.
Charles Brandon, although his freind when he married Mary H8’s sister it must have seemed to him that he had only married her to get something from him, he was given the Duke of Suffolk title, but that wasn’t because he earned on his own merits but rather because he had married the King’s sister.
Nearly every person who he had shown any form of favourtisum towards had somehow betrayed his trust, and that must have been a hard thing for him to swallow. At times, in fact probably impossible to swallow.
You can understand why he got angry and lashed out at people, but that doesn’t excuse his tryranical behaviour solely, most of his problems were self inflicted, he was sometimes th maker of his own misery, and when he could handle the guilt of his own misery, he looked around for a victim to take the blame, which ultimely led to a vicious cirle of chopping people up, just to try and make himself feel better about his self.
K.P was perhaps the closest he came to having a true freind but even she sailed closed to the wind at times, and very nearly lost her head for it too.

Thank you Sharon, and yes Charles was really the only freind he could truly call a freind, but even so at times I think Charles rather pushed his luck with with Lardarse. Charles was possibly the last link to his childhood as well, which up until Arthur’s early death he probably quite enjoyed.
I do feel that after Charles’s death Lardarse became even more tyrannical. They may not have always seen eye to eye, and as daft as this may sound perhaps Charles was the only one brave enough to stand up to Lardarse and tell him what he really thought about the decisions Henry was taking.
Everyone else basically said “well done old boy, good call” even if they felt that what Lardarse was doing was wrong.
I suppose in someways Lizzy and Cecil’s relationship was like that too, he often told Lizzy off over some of her planned ideas, and got a mouthful for doing it too, but she kept him by her side (wouldn’t even let him retire) so she must have felt something for him, if you know what I mean.

I believe Charles was happy enough to wait to return to England before marrying Mary, but as you rightly say Mary saw through Lardarse’s ruse, and begged Charles to marry her there and then. If he hadn’t I believe Lardarse would have been busy arranging another match for her the minute she was halfway across the channel and the deal would be signed and sealed before she had even set foot in the court. She may have even not got as far as Dover if Lardarse had managed to marry her off quickly enough, all her ships would have been turned around in the harbour and be heading off into the sunset towards some forgien shore.

You could be right though Olga. Empson and Dudley were executed purely to pander to the populus, but were they? or were they executed purely so that he could get his hands on his dad’s money?
I rather think Empson and Dudley would have limited his spending habits if they had been allowed to live. 3 years to spend his father’s treasure trove sid a lot to me of just how frivilous he could be. Buckingham’s death? what exactly was he executed for? did he raise a rebellion against Lardarse, from what little I’ve read the answer is no. Lardarse was having an affair with his sister, but then so was William Compton.
Buckingham blustered and strutted about but then didn’t Lardarse do that too. I personally think Buckingham’s death came about because of pure jealously on Lardarse’s part nothing more. There was a book by someone called Guy, printed in 1988 which states that Thomas More said that Buckingham’s conviction was based purely on hearsay and I think he’s right. Buckingham knew what happened to people who played with royal fire, his father learn’t that lesson too late. Young Buckingham and his brother had to remain in hiding during the rest of Richard’s reign, and probably the rest of their lives, if Henry Tulip hadn’t of won Bosworth.
The same with young Surrey nowt to do with traitorous behaviour, all down to jealously.
Lardarse wanted to be an all powerful Sod I mean God, he wanted all the people of England to worship him and him alone, and give him what he wanted when he wanted it. So thinking about it SOD is the right word for him.

Louise

No definitely to pander to the populace Bo, although I am sure getting his hands on his Dad’s money was also in Henry’s mind. he was very keen to distance himself from his father’s reign. Funnily enough everyone moans about Henry VII’s taxes while conveniently forgetting all the taxes Henry VIII tried to, and did in most cases, impose for his failed military escapades. I actually found an old newspaper article tucked in a second-hand book the other day on Henry VIII, I’ve just popped it in my drawer and haven’t read it, but the caption was “among his other virtues, he abolished a tax”. A tax??? What bloody virtues?

Don’t forget Buckingham’s lands. Henry got all of those too when he executed him. Buckingham was too rich and too powerful. I assume that is John Guy you are talking about? Good historian.

I think it is very easy to forget exactly how Henry treated KOA before Anne’s death. The shocking nature of Anne’s downfall kind of mutes Katherine’s plight. So all of Henry’s behaviour before Anne’s death, because it was his most shocking action at that point, gets glossed over. Oh and as for knocks on the head and blood diseases, none of that moves me at all. I don’t think he had any sort of brain damage, he was as sharp as ever mentally after his fall.

Actually Olga is very right. Thinking about the whole thing with H8 behaviour, being in constant pain (or being a constant pain) you can kind of understand why he acted as he did. However he wasn’t in constant pain when he treated K.O.A, Mary, The Cathusian monks, Thomas More John Fisher and Wolsey, etc like he did. His behaviour towards them was unpardonable, after his accident it certainly got worse, it was if the guilt he felt about how he had treated them maginified and with each act of brutality his behaviour got worse and worse. Everybody became a victim of the guilt he was feeling in a vain hope that their deaths would lessen they guilt he was feeling.
I often wonder how his attitude would be towards K.O.A if she had said “ok. have your divorce I won’t stand in your way” would he still trat her like garbage? I also find it very strange that his behaviour towards AOC was almost childlike. I know she had the good sence to see if she just accepted what he said and went along with it, despite whatever her personal feeling were about it, but he treated her with the upmost respect and treated her very differently to everybody else who had stood in his way (loosely worded) They became good freinds. Most strange..

Olga from what I understand about Pre contract it meant that you were married all bar the man in the dress waving his hands about, and saying I declare you, etc. Pre contract also meant that sex was allowed between the betrothed couple, which was something that perhaps could have saved K.H if she had said that she and Dereham were pre contracted.
In H8 case it was a load of b*****ks because if it had been true that AOC was still pre contracted to the Duke of Lorriane he wouldn’t have been allowed to marry Christina of Denmark either. Who as we know had told H8 to go do one.

His behaviour towards AOC was very strange though. Theorectically he could have sent her back to Cleves, and yet he didn’t, why was that?
If he had sent her back what damage could it have done to Britain?
Granted her brother could have declared war on Britain, but what would it acheive? If H8 had the evidence (ROFL here) to prove that her pre contract was still valid, the only people it would hurt is himself, and the Duke of Lorriane’s marriage to Christina of Denmark, which again would give Anne’s brother greif, more than anyone else.
However although H8 adopted her and did what he believed was the “right thing to do” by her, his “right thing” came at a price. She was more or less told to give up her real family, freinds, and her homeland. I believe every letter she wrote to her brother had to pass through H8 or one of his wizards hands to be edited/copied before it could be posted on to her brother. I sometimes wonder why she didn’t send for her sister Amelia to come and keep her company, well perhaps Lardarse wouldn’t allow her too. Although Anne was well respected by everyone I sometimes feel that she may have missed her sister and those of her household who had come with her when she came to England, and were sent packing shortly after.

In some ways Anne was treated no better really than K.O.A was, basically she became the forgotten and unwanted wife just as K.O.A was. She had money and land of her own, but what is that when you are more or less alone and with no freinds to call you’re own.