Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – ), King of England (1509 – ). Married to Anne Boleyn. Father of Mary Tudor and Henry FitzRoy.
“Let’s think of you astrologically, because your contemporaries did. You are a native of Cancer the Crab and so never walk a straight line. You go sideways to your target, but when you have reached it your claws take a grip. You are both callous and vulnerable, hard-shelled and inwardly soft.”
Hilary Mantel, notes on characters
The story so far…
Week 1: Across the Narrow Sea / Paternity
In 1527, Henry has been on the throne for almost twenty years with no legitimate male heir. He wishes to divorce his wife Catherine, who was previously married to his diseased brother Arthur.
Week 2: At Austin Friars / Visitation
In 1527, we learn from Liz Cromwell that the king may have bought an expensive ring for a lady who is definitely not the queen. She warns her husband that all women in England will be against him if he divorces Queen Katherine.
Week 3: An Occult History of Britain (Part 1)
In 1523, Henry has made Mary Boleyn his mistress. By 1527, he has charged his cardinal with finding fault with his marriage. By this time, he has taken Mary’s sister Anne as his mistress, but he has not taken her to bed. She desires to be his queen.
Week 4: An Occult History of Britain (Part 2)
1527, and the king is losing faith in his cardinal. He is convinced he is not married, but they are no closer to proving it. The king spends his days with Anne, ‘the gossip is that she allows him to undress her’, while she reads him scripture. He is sick with love, melancholy in the evenings, and full of hope by day.
Week 5: Make or Mar / Three-Card Trick
If Henry was going to try Wolsey with treason, the cardinal would be the Tower. So they reason. He will not talk about the cardinal, and maybe we get the sense he does not know what he will do next. Wolsey wonders who is in charge now. Henry, or the Boleyns?
Henry, Cromwell considers, is “a king who very much likes to be liked.” It is something to remember.
One morning before a hunt, Henry interviews Cromwell. The lawyer tells the king what he told Parliament in 1523: “No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war.” The king is angry, but perhaps he admires the face this man has. Cromwell says a prince must have fortitude: “The strength to live with what constrains you.” Henry does not mince his words. “Master Cromwell, your reputation is bad.”
They talk about him at Antonio Bonvisi’s house, that Spring of 1530. He allows his companions to be so familiar with him, as though you can be a friend to a prince. Thomas More believes this is impossible:
‘Yes, but friendship should be less exhausting … it should be restorative. Not like …’ More turns to him, for the first time, as if inviting comment. ‘I sometimes feel it is like … like Jacob wrestling with the angel.’
Cromwell to Bonvisi: “The king likes me.” Bonvisi to Cromwell: “The king is an inconstant lover.”
Week 6: Entirely Beloved Cromwell (Part 1)
He has been quarrelling with Katherine and fighting with Anne. “One could pity him,” says Mary Boleyn, “For the dog’s life they lead him.”
Henry: “Every day I miss the Cardinal of York.” He gives Cromwell a thousand pounds to help Wolsey on the road. “Ask your master to pray for me. Tell him it is the best I can do.”
In Holy Week, Cromwell finds the king in a melancholy mood. He misses the cardinal and everything he wants he cannot have. He only wants Anne. No, that is not true. He wants conversation and distraction. Cromwell gives it to him and more. It is a critical moment between them that may alter both their lives and the history of England. “Our history…”, the king says.
Week 7: Entirely Beloved Cromwell (Part 2)
When Cromwell meets Henry “alone”, Cromwell thinks: “The King does not know what ‘alone’ means.” They are in the butts. Target practice. Henry is the “winter king”, and his mind is on his conscience and pride. Anne says she will leave him, and his advisers say he should just marry her. “I will be unmanned by it.” He, Henry, pictures himself in disguise, scrapping with the grocers, the butchers, and vinters on Moorfields. It is a foolish, idle wish from a lonely, impatient king.
When George Cavendish finds the king at Hampton Court, Henry says: “I would not for twenty thousand pounds that the cardinal had died.” When Cromwell closes his palm, he thinks: “Henry, I have your heart in my hands.”
At Hampton Court, as Anne laughs at the cardinal being dragged to hell, Cromwell thinks the king looks afraid.
Week 8: The Dead Complain of Their Burial / Arrange Your Face (Part 1)
“I am good at telling people’s ages.” “I know who to send for. I always know.” What it must be like to have this self-confidence! The “monster-king” putting on his furs, going off to Mass. He believes Arthur, his brother, has come back to make him feel ashamed. “When I come to judgment, my brother will plead against me.” But Henry is like a child. He is like Gregory with his Merlin stories. Tell him one he likes, about how he is the once and future king. The prophecy fulfilled. And he will go to bed a happy man. Or: a happy king of England. For “the dreams of kings are not like the dreams of other men.”
Henry Viii. When Bishop Fisher is almost poisoned, the king is beside himself. “Poison is what Henry fears worse than Hell itself.”
Week 9: Arrange Your Face (Part 2)
We see Henry supported by a young Francis Weston and an older Thomas Cromwell, after drinking too much after a long day of playing at being Robin Hood. He tries to get his two councillors to make peace. “You and Gardiner, you must learn to pull together.”
Week 10: 'Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?' (Part 1)
The king approves of his good councillor Cromwell, working in Parliament against the disloyal clergy. He would get rid of his Master Secretary, Stephen Gardiner, but Cromwell tells him there is more honour in reconciling Gardiner to the truth, than breaking him.
In April 1532, Henry appoints Cromwell Keeper of the Jewel House. “Why should I not, tell me why should I not, employ the son of an honest blacksmith.” Honest?
At Easter, a friar calls him Ahab, bewitched by Jezebel. In May, the bishops submit to the supreme authority of the king. Thomas More hands in his resignation, and Cromwell recommends Mr Speaker Audley.
Cromwell drags Harry Percy into the king’s council, where he swears he was never married or pledged to Anne Boleyn. The king says “matters have gone so far” that Percy must swear on the bible. And then seal his oath in Holy Communion with the king.
Archbishop Warham tells the king: “I have seen you promote within your own court and council person whose principles and morals will hardly bear scrutiny. I have seen you deify your own will and appetite, to the sorrow and scandal of Christian people.”
Week 11: 'Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?' (Part 2) / Early Mass
The king moves in a mist of melancholic love. He makes his queen-to-be a Marquess in her own right, singing “Alas, What Shall I Do For Love,” with two other men — Thomas Wyatt and Mark Smeaton — who also love the lovely Anne Boleyn.
Other men are less besotted, and the king throws out Charles Brandon when he insults Anne in his presence. The King of France doesn’t seem keen either, sending Henry into a fury by suggesting Anne is met in France by his own royal mistress.
At Canterbury, he meets the Holy Maid and allows himself to be shaken by her words. “You will not reign seven months,” she says, if you marry Anne Boleyn. He tries to laugh it off, but she has also seen Henry’s mother “surrounded by pale fires.” Cromwell comforts the king as he did at Greenwich, two years ago.
When Cromwell gives him the ruby from King Francis, he says that the blacksmith’s son and the goldsmith will “put a higher valuation on it” and split the profit. “But I shall be liberal in the matter.” It is the first suggestion that the king does not entirely trust Thomas Cromwell.
‘Oh, you are not disappointing,’ Henry says, ‘But the moment you are, I will let you know.’
After the great feast at Calais, he grows jealous of the time Francis spends with Anne. And when they retire for the night, the two of them fight. “They like quarrelling.” But now, according to Mary, “She is in his arms, naked as she was born. She can’t change her mind now.”
At early Mass, he comes out of the church and puts on his hat. “It is a big hat, a new hat. And in that hat, there is a feather.”
Week 12: Anna Regina (Part 1)
25 January, 1533. Anne and Henry take their vows at a chapel at Whitehall. It is secret for now, while proceedings continue to annul Henry’s marriage to Katherine. But Anne can’t keep a secret, and it isn’t long before all of Europe knows.
Chapuys makes the king cry, suggesting he may never have an heir. It’s not great diplomacy on the part of the Imperial ambassador. “Am I not a man like other men?” says the King of England.
Henry prefers the company of the French ambassador. But de Dinteville is exasperated by the king’s company: “Do you wonder why I shake? Do you wonder I tremble before him? My river. My city. My salvation, cut out and embroidered just for me. My personally tailored English god.”
He makes Cromwell his new chancellor of the exchequer, following the death of Lord Berners. And in his state chambers, he tells Cromwell to go secretly to Katherine to make sure “she springs no surprises” over the matter of the annulment. He also tells Cromwell that Mary Boleyn will not marry Richard Cromwell. The implication is he wants her for himself. Cromwell can read between the lines.
“Sometimes it is a solace to me,” Henry says, “not to have to talk and talk. You were born to understand me, perhaps.”
Week 13: Anna Regina (Part 2)
‘Cromwell, did not my wife look well, did she not look beautiful?’ The king is enjoying his wife’s coronation. He sends Cromwell to her with a ring and a kiss, but his councillor chooses to deliver just the ring.
Later with the ambassadors, the king can’t quite get his head around the theatre of memory. Which is fair enough. It sounds like witchcraft, and aren’t there enough books already? He tells Cromwell that Gardiner has been sent to France and he, Cromwell, will take his place as Master Secretary.
The day Frith burns at Smithfield, Henry is writing love letters to Anne, without the hearts. Things are serious now. The sweating sickness is back and the king, “who embodies all his people, has all the symptoms every day.”
The king has two bodies. The first exists within the limits of his physical being; you can measure it, and often Henry does, his wasit, his calf, his other parts. The second is his princely double, free-floating, untethered, weightless, which may be in more than one place at a time. Henry may be hunting in the forest, while his princely double make laws. One fights, one prays for peace. One is wreathed in the mystery of his kingship: one is eating a duckling with sweet green peas.
Week 14: Devil’s Spit / A Painter’s Eye
After hearing the news of the birth of his daughter, the king picks himself up like Lazarus and parrots his archbishop: “Believe me, God intends some peculiar blessing by this princess.”
Does the king know about his archbishop’s wife? “That is perfectly possible. He is a prince of very large capacities.” The king’s leg pains him. Lady Rochford says the flame has died already between he and Anne. He craves novelty. His eye is wandering.
The king struggles to believe his boyhood friend Henry Courtenay has betrayed him. He blames the wife. “She is fickle and weak like all her sex.” He and Brandon reminisce of happier days and snowball fights.
Henry wishes the pope dead. And Katherine also. “Is that wrong?” He hugs Thomas Cromwell, “shining like a star.” He hopes to have another child soon. And this time: a son.
Cromwell advises mercy and clemency towards the traitors in the old families. He counsels the king that he leaves Mary in the style of princess. “Do not give her cousin the Emperor a reason to make war.”
The king says he will not tell the queen this. It will put her in a passion and if she miscarries, he will blame Cromwell. “And I shall not incline to mercy!”
Last week, I was his brother-in-arms, this week he is threatening me with a bloody end.
Week 15: Supremacy
Henry is thinking about England’s treasure in the hands of the church. Cromwell has planted the idea that he, Henry, can get that treasure back.
In 1534 the only person who spends more time with Henry than Cromwell is Anne. So naturally, Henry is having ill-feelings towards Anne’s enemies and nay-sayers: Stephen Gardiner, John Fisher and Thomas More.
More’s name goes on to the Bill of Attainder and the king’s councillors have to beg the king to take him off. Meanwhile, Henry officially removes Gardiner from the position of Master Secretary and gives the role to Thomas Cromwell.
Week 16: The Map of Christendom (Part 1)
Henry tells him, “Cranmer bids me, listen to Cromwell, and if he needs a post, a tax, an impost, a measure in Parliament or a royal proclamation, give it to him.”
He makes Cromwell Master of the Rolls and Vice-Gerent in Spirituals.
The king loves to see Richard Cromwell in the lists. But he is increasingly in pain. “When he is in pain he is panicked, you can see it in his eyes, and when he is recovering he is restless.” He is a paranoid king and he sees death and Katherine’s cousin everywhere.
Anne accuses the king of giving her sister a baby. “Not me! Not me!” he yelps.
When Cromwell falls ill, the king visits. He talks about how he used to be afraid of his grandmother. He leaves a good impression on the household. Johane: “I had not thought him so tender.” But she also says: “Henry is frightened of you… You should have seen his face, when you said you would take your sword in your hand.”
Week 17: The Map of Christendom (Part 2) / To Wolf Hall
The king has cropped his hair to hide his baldness. It doesn’t help. But everyone else follows suit until half of England has barely any hair at all.
The “king is in his killing vein”, but in person, he is quiet and subdued. Only once he stirs into life:
‘Do I retain you for what is easy? Jesus pity my simplicity, I have promoted you to a place in this kingdom that no one, no one of your breeding has ever held in the whole history of this realm… I keep you, Master Cromwell, because you are as cunning as a bag of serpents. But do not be a viper in my bosom. You know my decision. Execute it.’
We leave Cromwell, plotting the king’s summer progress. “The object is to get the king back to Windsor for early October.”
Week 18: Falcons
On progress through England, Henry stops at Wolf Hall to visit the Seymours. On a day of hunting, he loses his hat and refuses to take another. At supper, he talks to Jane Seymour and when he falls asleep, it is Jane who wakes him. He defends his servant Cromwell and speaks fondly of Wolsey, until he says: “I should never have been in awe of him.”
The king looks down the table at him, Thomas Cromwell. He loved the cardinal. Everyone here knows it. His expression is as carefully blank as a freshly painted wall.
The next day, Henry walks with Jane in the gardens. Afterwards, he hardly pays attention to Cromwell’s news from the continent. “He looks stunned, like a veal calf knocked on the head by the butcher.”
Week 19: Crows (Part 1)
You cannot see Henry and not be amazed. Each time you see him you are struck afresh by him, as if it were the first time: a massive man, bull-necked, his hair receding, face fleshing out; blue eyes, and a small mouth that is almost coy.
The king sees Jane Seymour again at Elvetham. And that night he asks Cromwell how he can free himself from Anne.
Meanwhile, the king charges Cromwell with cleaning out the monasteries and bringing him the spoils. “It’s not a future, not for a king: not a king’s ransom.”