What about Francis Bacon?
In addition to being a philosopher and scientist, some theories suggest he was a screaming bender, too.
Mukade
Here’s the guy to tell you:
Henry’s life up to the divorce in 1527 is idyllic. But then he does become Dr Rude, and Dr Cruel, and Dr Horrible. It’s the carapace. He has to change this man who had been extraordinarily open and friendly but suddenly has to become profoundly secretive. He has to teach himself suspicion and, luckily, he’s a pretty impressive learner."
One thing Starkey is keen to emphasise about Henry’s bloodthirsty reputation. “Henry loved women; he literally could not live without them,” he explains, sitting at the head of a long wooden table that could serve a banquet of 16 merrymakers. “It does seem to me that there are only two reasons to get married six times. One is that you treat women utterly unseriously. The other is that you treat them too seriously. I think Henry is the latter.”
It is clear that Starkey is very fond of his subject, and his latest TV series is in part to help us understand the younger, happier Henry, and to understand how his decision changed the course of English history for ever. “I think, as a young man, Henry is immensely likeable,” Starkey expounds, a little bit of the lecturer still inside him despite moving gradually away from academia. “He’s a natural star. When he goes into a room, partly because he’s royal, partly because he’s very big, everyone pays attention. He has this ability, like so many successful people in that world – a little like Diana, I suppose – to break convention. At one court ball, he throws his gown off. That’s the equivalent of stripping nowadays.”
…He laughs. “If you read my Six Wives book, I almost deliberately exclude him,” he shakes his head. "It really is like the layers of an onion, as indeed was trying to get to the king in real life: you go through room after room and apartment after apartment until finally, in the middle, there he is.
“And I wanted to know why a young, conventional monarch should transform into this human tsunami that sweeps away medieval England, setting the stage for the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution and the rest of our history.”
And you’re saying it was the bad divorce that kickstarted is all? “It was Anne Boleyn,” he says firmly. “Catholicism was doing very well, Henry was a passionate believer. To break with Rome and get his divorce, he had to break with his faith, too. He has to perform an inner cauterisation, which also tears his family apart. His little sister Mary, to whom he’s so close, loathes Anne. His best friend hates her. Thomas More is contemptuous. To have to go through that and then lose her…”
I second the motion for Drake. He’s got that drum, after all.
And the hammock.
My fave Tudor is unsung literary genius and religious revolutionary William Tyndale, who invented modern english prose style, wrote the majority of the great phrases in the King James Bible, and got burned at the stake and then (almost) forgotten by history for his pains.
He was the first to translate the bible into english, bypassing the 4th century latin translation of St Jerome and translating from greek and then Hebrew. He was likely the first to publish anything translated from hebrew to english; he had to go to germany to find hebrew scholars and an OT text in hewbrew. Despite largely being done while on the run and in hiding in cities like Antwerp and Hamburg, Tyndale completed two translations of the new testament and one of the Pentateuch (first five books of the OT) and Psalms before being betrayed by a friend and burned as a heretic 1536.
Although his authorship had to be concealed, the committee which created the King James Version based their text on his, supplemented by the work of a near contemporary Myles Coverdale, which the committee then tweaked. It’s largely still Tyndale’s voice, and the vast majority of the great turns of phrase are all his:
Not only did Tyndale’s translations survive the book burners, but they live today as some of the most often-quoted words in the English language: "> Let there be light> " (Genesis 1:3), "> And the truth shall make you free> " (John 8:32), "> Am I my brother’s keeper?> " (Genesis 4:9), "> Let my people go> " (Exodus 5:1), as well as “> eat, drink and be merry> ,” “> the powers that be> ,” “> signs of the times> .” > [link]
Others include:
A law unto themselves…
Fight the good fight…
The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels…
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God…
etc. - literally hundreds more.
~~
And while doing all this, he was one of english’s greatest ever stylists; few have ever matched his command of the music in a line of prose. You could write a PhD thesis on the subtlety of his variation between “to” and “unto” for metrical effect.
Yep, Tyndale is a good 'un.
There’s no secret why Henry VIII was a evil tyrant. Look at his Dad, Henry VII. The smear story on Richard III was enough, but backdating the treason laws so that anybody on Richard’s side was automatically tried as a traitor to the crown - that was inventive. Number 8 was only following in Daddy’s footsteps.
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