Maddy Pelling (4:06)

Foreign hello, I'm Maddie.

Anthony Delaney (4:12)

And I'm Anthony.

Maddy Pelling (4:13)

Now, Tudor history is something, I think it's fair to say we've covered a lot on After Dark. We've done a recent. Yeah, we did a recent episode with Philippa Gregory on Jane Boleyn, which is very.

Anthony Delaney (4:21)

You may have heard of her, Gareth. I haven't even introduced the guest yet and I'm already talking to him.

Maddy Pelling (4:26)

You're already breaking the fourth wall. Yes. So today we're going to be talking about the poster boy for how messed up the Tudors could be. I think it's fair to say it's Henry VIII himself.

Anthony Delaney (4:36)

Oh, I thought you meant Gareth. I'm doing it again. I'm sorry.

Gareth Russell (4:39)

Go.

Maddy Pelling (4:40)

Do you know what we're joined by? Gareth?

Anthony Delaney (4:41)

Yeah, sorry.

Maddy Pelling (4:42)

We're very excited. Gareth, welcome to our show. Thank you.

Gareth Russell (4:44)

What a well maintained mystery.

Anthony Delaney (4:46)

I really appreciate it. It's showing my professionalism here.

Gareth Russell (4:49)

What a grand reveal.

Maddy Pelling (4:51)

Yeah, it's after lunch, guys. It is.

Anthony Delaney (4:54)

We've had our sandwiches.

Maddy Pelling (4:55)

It's chaos already.

Anthony Delaney (4:56)

Like, hey, Gareth's here.

Maddy Pelling (4:57)

Everyone okay? Gareth, tell me this. You spend a lot of time in the Tudor world.

Gareth Russell (5:02)

Yeah.

Maddy Pelling (5:03)

What is it that people love about the Tudors? Why do we keep coming back and back to them?

Gareth Russell (5:07)

I think part of it is it's a self feeding machine, to be honest, because I think once you become familiar with the names, you then can start to have a much more in depth reaction to it. So people, the six wives are the most famous in this group, but they sort of become avatars for what you see in your life. You know enough about them that you can start to construct a morality play. So, for instance, people will often pick a team between Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, or Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour. And when you ask them who their Catherine is, who their Anne is, you might be hearing about two very, very different people. So I think the familiarity sustains the industry in itself. It's sort of that Self generating thing. The other thing is that it is a little bit like the Titanic disaster. It becomes a grand and dramatic example of all of life's big themes with the dull bits cut out. So there's no such thing as a marriage going a little bit south in the Tudor Court?

Maddy Pelling (6:07)

They don't do it by half.

Gareth Russell (6:08)

No, no. There's no kind of like, do you know what? I wish you well.

Maddy Pelling (6:11)

Yeah, yeah. This is an amicable breakup. Goodbye.

Gareth Russell (6:13)

Yeah. When they go low, we go lower. That's the theme.

Maddy Pelling (6:17)

Right to the chopping block.

Anthony Delaney (6:18)

And there's something in that, you know, sometimes I feed into this when they go low, we go lower thing. I'm like, go on, let me see what that looks like. Yeah.

Gareth Russell (6:26)

I mean, sometimes.

Maddy Pelling (6:26)

That's Anthony's play.

Gareth Russell (6:28)

Sorry. Michelle Anne Boleyn did it. You know, like, the Duke of Suffolk made one bad comment about her and she was like, totally hear what you're saying, Han. I'm just intrigued about you marrying your son's fiance right after your wife's death.

Anthony Delaney (6:39)

You're ruined.

Maddy Pelling (6:41)

Whoops.

Gareth Russell (6:42)

So I'm just gonna thrive over here.

Maddy Pelling (6:43)

Yeah, we're all messy bitches. Is that so?

Gareth Russell (6:46)

I mean, if you could do a reality TV show, their confessionals straight to camera would have been absolute ghost.

Maddy Pelling (6:51)

Why has nobody done that?

Gareth Russell (6:52)

I want to do the Real Housewives of Hampton Court.

Maddy Pelling (6:54)

Oh, my God. Somebody commissioned that in me.

Gareth Russell (6:57)

Yeah. And I wanted to. You know, if you ever watch those shows, like real as reality tv, it's usually like, let's play a game that bonds us as sisters. Pick up the crossbow and fire it at whichever woman around this table has the ugliest child that's got always something like that.

Maddy Pelling (7:10)

He's thought a lot about that.

Gareth Russell (7:12)

I want it to be ambling being like, I would love us to play a bonding game. Ladies, let's drink. Whoever's child achieved the most. Catherine, Jane, Nothing cool. Just a drink for me.

Maddy Pelling (7:23)

Just for you.

Gareth Russell (7:24)

So I think, I mean, even the fact that you can joke about it, the fact that there's humor there, these are familiar enough tropes and people that you can buy into.

Maddy Pelling (7:30)

These are characters we've all spent time with.

Gareth Russell (7:32)

Correct. And I think it is something that even that joke there about reality tv, there's a modernity to it, but the other thing is that it matters. It is, I think, the moment, at least now, where we feel the modern age to begin. It moves into something recognizably modern, but still strange enough that it's an intellectual vacation to go there. So it has a lot of the ingredients. Ooh, intellectual vacation just came to me and I'm enjoying it.

Anthony Delaney (8:00)

That's pretty good. There's something very insightful in that, I think, because, yes, it's asking questions, you know, it's asking us to explore some of those things. But there's also escapism in the Tudors. We overlook that too easily, I think.

Maddy Pelling (8:13)

Yeah, I suppose as well. The historic tropes that we have is this idea that the medieval world is just bloody and it's people being bludgeoned to death and hacked to death and all of this. And then the Tudor court, yes, it has its brutality, but it has those machinations, that plotting. It has this cerebral element to it, which of course exists in the medieval world too, and any medieval historian will tell you that. But our perception is that that begins in the Tudor period.

Gareth Russell (8:36)

I completely agree. And actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I think absolute monarchy, or in this case, quasi absolute, is cleaner for us to invest in. So once you start to get into the 17th century, you start to get much more complex ideologies rather than factions. And by the time you'll know this, once you get into the 18th cent, it is really complex.

Maddy Pelling (8:57)

And there's not the same monarchical shorthand, Right, in terms of. If you're explaining to any kind of public audience, there's not the same, oh, George iii, people might know, oh, yeah, the Mad King or Lost America, but there's not the same. If somebody say Amberlynn or Henry viii, people are like, yep, I know exactly what that rule looked like. Who is.

Gareth Russell (9:14)

What is a wig? What is a Tory? What is it?

Maddy Pelling (9:16)

Yes, correct.

Gareth Russell (9:17)

And I think even if you talk about periods in the 18th century that are really famous, like the French Revolution, and you're having to say, actually, a royalist and a monarchist aren't quite the same thing. And then there's a Jacob and Azure, like it, all very complex and it's much more internecine. And I think with the Tudors, it is morally complex but politically simple. And that's what I think allows that investment.

Anthony Delaney (9:37)

You should consider talking about the Tudors more.

Maddy Pelling (9:39)

You're quite good at this.

Anthony Delaney (9:41)

One of the things that I am intrigued by, we're kind of touching on it, so let's go straight to it, is this idea of the world into which a man like Henry VIII can become king. What is that Royal Gareth? What does it look like? Why is this all set up to favour him on the throne?

Gareth Russell (9:58)

I think there is a sense of fatigued relief that the wars of the Roses or whatever term they were using then is over. And there is that kind of cross community feeling with Henry and his siblings, that they are the children of both the last sprig on the Lancastrian family tree and Henry vii and also the brightest bloom of the York family tree. And people ultimately do want peace. They want this to work. And you know, in many ways that the kerfuffle between Edward V and Richard III has swept the board. There isn't a lot of choice left for the Yorkist. There's not really that sense of, let's keep this going for honor's sake. So in that sense, he is a child of peace and people are happy about that.

Maddy Pelling (10:44)

Oh, the irony.

Gareth Russell (10:45)

Oh, the irony. But that actually cuts to it, I think, because one of the big defenses of Henry that I think is an inappropriate, or at least in my view, an unsustainable defense, is that at least the country didn't slide into civil war, which is true.

Maddy Pelling (10:59)

It's a low bar.

Gareth Russell (11:00)

It's. It's really low. It's like, you know, after. Like, imagine White Star Line after the Titanic, advertising every voyage being like, it.

Anthony Delaney (11:07)

Didn'T say, chances are this one will be okay.

Maddy Pelling (11:12)

Statistically, you're fine.

Gareth Russell (11:13)

Like, the bar is that low. And also, if you go to the people of the north in the 1530s or Carrickonnel in the south of Ireland also in the 1530s, and ask them to tell the difference between a civil war and what he's done to them, I mean, it's not really going to be that different. In fact, they probably suffered more than they would have under the Civil War, because the Civil War tended to target the upper classes in terms of its body count. I think that cuts to why there is such relief when he comes to the throne in 1509, because it's the first since 1422 that has been completely uncontested. That's a long time. Almost certainly there is no one alive who can remember Henry V becoming Henry vi. So it is the last time the English monarchy has worked as it is intended to work. So Henry VIII almost seems to be bringing back those halcyon days of Henry V and Edward III and the glory days of the monarchy passing pieces, as it should. Whether that was accurate or not is, by the by, that's how it is perceived. And then from Henry VI onward, it's been sort of past the parcel almost when it happens. And so Henry VIII comes to the throne on a wave of adulation and relief and also money. So Henry VII is a very astute businessman and probably overly astute, but he also. He is clever in using a lot of the financial advisors of Richard the Third and Edward the Fourth to create fiscal and financial continuity. So the monarchy is solvent, which is pretty much every Tudor monarch and all of the Stuarts will discover is no small task to achieve. So he's rich, he's young, he's good looking, he's of uncontested legitimacy. So he arrives ostensibly as Prince Charming. But what I think. I mean, everyone has their view on this. I think that creates another chimera. I think that's another mistake, because I think we sort of treat Henry VIII a bit like the French Revolution. The years of light, the years of dark, everything's going really well, and then it isn't. And it's the fall from the horse in 15. I do not believe that is correct.

Maddy Pelling (13:19)

Yeah, we have these kind of slightly mythological beats in his story, don't we? Yeah. Taking this idea that he's this kind of charismatic Prince Charming, though, at the beginning, and whether or not he has other traits within him at that moment that already exist, how do we go? This is no small question from this hopeful new monarch that everyone is excited for, that is bringing this idea of the sort of golden days that have passed and all this, and bringing all these potentials to the throne. How do we go from that to someone who is weaponizing the tools of the state for his own purposes? That's a pretty remarkable transformation. And if we don't have those traditional beats like the fall from the horse, in your view, what does that look like? That narrative arc, I suppose.

Gareth Russell (14:08)

Yeah. That's a great way to put it. It's an arc. I don't think there is a Rubicon or a Berlin Wall or however you want to phrase it. I don't think there's a point where the light becomes dark and the sun sets. I think we're watching. I don't think the sun's ever that bright, to be honest. Under him. I think you only have to look at some of the warning signs really early on. So the first in 1510, within a year of becoming king, is the execution of two of his father's most unpopular advisors, Epsom and Dudley. And they were not fuzzy and cuddly men, and they had been knee deep in Henry VII's increasingly unjust taxation policies, but they had been following orders from Henry vii, and Henry VIII throws them to the wolves to bolster his popularity. I mean, what they had done were his father's orders. And he sort of absolves the dynasty by sacrificing these two men. So the propensity towards legally questionable savagery is there from the get go. The other thing that I think is a wound he carries is that he is played like a fiddle in the first five years by his father in law, King Ferdinand, and by the Habsburg Emperor Maximilian, who are more intelligent asleep than he is awake. And they kind of trick him into very expensive wars in the Continent. He gets involved, he thinks it's going to be the second coming of Henry V. And what they do is they make him bring the English army in, use it as a distraction, get what they want out of France, and then leave him to face the cost and ruin alone. And it's really not until this brilliant Oxford graduate, Father Thomas Woolsey, rises through the ranks in one of those wars and becomes his chief minister that we see a wall being built around Henry and one where he becomes a lot more careful about who he trusts. But also, I think he doesn't take the right lessons from having been played by his father in law and Emperor Maximilian. I think he always wants to prove that he actually was cleverer than them. And you see, the wrong lesson is taken from it. We should be starting to see us stripping away those mythological beats that you mentioned, one of which is his first marriage and this idea that it was a blissful romance and he was so in love with Catherine of Arab. And people will tell this story of him dressing a sir loyal heart and, you know, jousting in her honor. He was one of a cast of seven. They all had names like that, and they all picked ladies to joust for. There's not actually a huge amount of evidence that he's ever besotted with Catherine of Aragon. It's that she's the perfect queen for this period. She's very elegant, she's internationally connected, she manages to weather pretty competently the storm that comes when her father humiliates her husband. But to be honest, I think he's, from the get go, prickly about his reputation, reactive, impulsive. And also, I don't think he is anywhere near as bright as I think he's an averagely intelligent person.

Anthony Delaney (16:59)

I totally agree. So we're gonna come to the whys and we're gonna come to some of the ways in which Henry's leanings or limits actually based on what you were saying, influence, attack, shape the histories of these women. But before we get there, let's talk about. About the Reformation, specifically.

Gareth Russell (17:17)

Yes.

Anthony Delaney (17:18)

Give us some Background about what is the Reformation on the ground in England at this time? How is that taking place? And then who are some of the casualties beyond the wives? We'll come to them separately, but wider societally, religious institutions, etc. Who are the casualties under Henry at this time of that Reformation?

Gareth Russell (17:35)

Well, to Mali's earlier point, I actually think, if I'm looking for the moment, the fall from the horse for me is actually the Reformation. That's interesting. I think all of those ingredients that we've talked about are there. And I think at his core, he cannot handle disobedience or embarrassment. And after 1531, 1532, really, he embarks upon a policy that is guaranteed to generate a substantial, indeed unprecedented amount of disobedience and pushback. And that's when you start to see the body count really beginning to rise. And it's before the fall. I mean, it's really the Carthusian monks who start to pay the most brutal price early on. One of the most exciting books I think, that has come out recently is James Clarke's History of the Dissolution. And it's a tome, it's a chunky book. But one of the things that he exposes in this is almost more blood chilling than the official narrative, which is that there was never a plan to shut all the monasteries down in one go. It was an engine that no one was driving and it just gathered. That's more worrying, absolutely terrifying. And that, yes, there were people around him, like Thomas Cromwell, who rises to sort of have replaced the defunct Woolsey, but who were keen on the dissolution of the monasteries, to put it mildly. You have a second wife, Anne Boleyn, who turns very strongly against them, but that almost corroborates further the theory that it just becomes again a self fulfilling machine. So the Reformation initially starts with being presented not as a revolution, but as a restoration. This suggestion that the Vatican had usurped the authority, that the so called Donation of Constantine, the first Christian emperor that had given the Vatican supremacy over the other parts of Church and over kings, was a forgery, which in fairness it probably was. And that in fact, if you went back to the early days of Christianity, the alliance between throne and altar, church and monarchy, monarchs had played a huge role in it. Constantine had gone to the Council of Nicaea, Justinian had been involved in Chalcedonian Christianity. So the argument put forward is actually incredibly conservative, or at least reactionary, which is very, very clever, very, very clever, which is actually, we're not Protestants, we are restoring. And that's A theme that runs through Christianity, restoring the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And that is something that they present themselves as doing. But once the legislation goes through and the Pope is sort of demoted to simply being a bishop, the Bishop of Rome, and the King is in nominal control of the Church within England, Wales and Ireland, then it becomes open to what is the Church of England. And initially it does seem to be that the plan is for it to be Catholic and the first victims are, to use sort of modern parlance, on the right of the Catholic Church. In England, it's the Carthusian monks who cannot in good conscience accept that Henry has the right to usurp the headship of the Church. And the other two victims of that are the former Lord Chancellor, Thomas More, and more Cardinal John Fisher, who had been very close to Henry's grandmother and to his wife. And interestingly, if you look at Thomas More's personal private writing, he has no problem accepting the King's marriage to Anne Boleyn. He excuses himself from the coronation, probably on the grounds of the Archbishop's schism with the Vatican, but he does refer to her as being really anointed queen. And he prays for the safe birth of her children. So it's less about the demotion of Catherine of Aragon and more for the truly devout that they cannot accept, or the break with Rome. Initially, though, there is not. If you look at 1533, 1534, there is no uprising in the Pope's favor. The behavior of the faithful is, well, we'll get on with it. And actually, relinquishing the Vatican is not a totally unpopular move. It's when it starts again to mutate and change. And this is what you will see going through revolutions and progressive causes throughout history. There are points at which people will go, actually, this is as far as I ever wanted to go. It's going to far. And you start to see that with the attack on the monasteries. And there are certain elements that are much more popular with the people. So that the two that really seem to be points of no return are veneration of the Virgin Mary and prayers for the dead, but just below that, transubstantiation and the monasteries. And if you go to places like fountains, you'll see just what an enormous social and cultural unit they were.

Maddy Pelling (21:52)

Were.

Gareth Russell (21:53)

It's one of those things that is so omnipresent, the monasteries, that you don't notice how much they're there until they're not. Yes. So when that starts to change, then you begin to see massive fracture lines and the executions that he's ordered in 1534 and 1535, I can understand why Catholics regard them as martyrdoms. They are points of religious principle. More and Fisher are beheaded. The Carthusian monks are publicly torn limb from limb by being hanged, drawn and quartered. So those are notorious and tragic, but they are contained. It's really after 15:36 when you start to see a geographical bend coming to this, and the north, in particular of England saying, this is too far for us and we're not going to support the ripping apart of the monasteries, that you begin to see massive, massive pushback against his policies with the Pilgrimage of Grace uprising. And that's where the numbers begin to really rapidly rise. And I do think you see by his own standards, what Henry does is morally appalling because he lies through his teeth. You know, he summons the leaders to court and says, I really want to hear everything that you're. Let's talk about this. His third wife, Jane Seymour, is wheeled out as sort of the charming first lady to trick them. Whether she knew or not, we'll never know. But certainly the charm offensive was put on at Christmas 1536. The rebels disperse, thinking they're being heard. And then Henry sends on a flimsy pretext, his men north to brutalize it. And it's that and the Kildare rebellion that you see in South Eastern Ireland at the same time that you see Henry send out genuinely unprecedented orders, which is kill the women and children as well. You read the letters he sends the Duke of Norfolk and Suffolk and the letters he exchanges with Lord Grey, I think Lord Grey and he becomes the Lord Deputy in Ireland and they're bone chilling. I mean, it is unprecedented the lengths he goes to when those big rebellions, one in Ireland and one in the north, that rise up against him. And of course there are multiple motivations in them, but ultimately, at their core, they are religious in motivation.

Maddy Pelling (23:52)

What is the reaction to those at court around Henry, his advisors, the people who he's giving orders to, who are then going and carrying out these atrocities? How do they view him as a monarch in this moment? Are they reading those letters thinking, excuse me, what? Or are they just thinking, that's the King, we're going to do what he says, this is all fine. This is, we have religion and morals on our side. This is, okay, what's the situation there?

Gareth Russell (24:18)

That's a great question. I suppose the answer is unknowable, but it does tap into something broader about how does he hold on to the throne. So the scale of Lord Kildare's rebellion in Ireland and the Pilgrimage of Grace in the north of England are massive. Particularly in the case of the Pilgrimage of Grace, it's the largest rebellion against the Tutors by quite a distance. And ordinarily it should have been enough to push the Monarch office through.

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Maddy Pelling (27:37)

Can I just say, this is so interesting to me that we don't discuss this when we talk about the Tudors. We're so focused on the romances and the court and all of that that this doesn't register.

Anthony Delaney (27:47)

It's really hitting home with me as well as. Not as a Tudor specialist, but going, actually, this is why I should be interested in this more than I'm led to believe. Yeah.

Gareth Russell (27:57)

Well, that's interesting that this is sort of anecdotal, but I rem about 20 years ago, was it there was a two part miniseries that came out about with Ray Winston as Henry vii.

Anthony Delaney (28:04)

Oh, yeah.

Gareth Russell (28:05)

And it had Helen the Bottom Carter assembly and Emily Blunt as Catherine Hart. It's very good. They're excellent.

Maddy Pelling (28:09)

Great casting.

Gareth Russell (28:10)

I know that was her first big role, Emily Blunt. But they had Sean Bean as Robert Ask. And I think it was episode two. Yeah. Amberlynn was episode one. So episode two, it was the first one recently that showed the Pilgrimage of Grace. And one of the reviews said, I've read many Tudor books and they just made up a rebellion. That's how little it got reported on. Wow. And so the Pilgrimage of Grace and the Kildare rebellion in Ireland, they are huge. They're really, really big. And I would say the Kildare rebellion deserves, I mean, its own book because it's the first of Ireland's sectarian tensions. It's the first time you see that taking precedent with the Pilgrimage of Grace in the north, the reason why he is not nudged off his throne, or at least clipped in the way, say Henry III or Henry VI had been. Rebellions is the aristocracy don't break rank. Or if they do, it's individually. So it's Kildare kind of acting on his own. The Earl of Warmund doesn't get involved. It's some of the minor lords in the north. It's not the jubilant.

Maddy Pelling (29:12)

And it usually doesn't end well for them.

Gareth Russell (29:13)

Correct. So had the aristocracy broken rank, this could be a very, very different story. So then you go into hypotheticals or maybe just sort of whimsical wonderings, what is it? And we're back to. I think this is so speculative on my part. I'm sure listeners and viewers will align me.

Maddy Pelling (29:30)

We're always on this podcast. It's fine.

Gareth Russell (29:32)

I think the most unquantifiable thing in history is charisma and you cannot explain it. I Remember Jack Scarsbrick, who wrote a brilliant academic biography of Henry vii? He said, you'll never really understand Anne Boleyn except to understand that she obviously had charisma seeping out of her fingertips.

Maddy Pelling (29:48)

She had written.

Gareth Russell (29:48)

Yeah, that's it. She had you. Some people have it. Henry vii I do think must have had it, or whether it's Stockholm syndrome, whatever it is. There is something in these people at court that they don't break rank and they are aware that he's not this myth that generates itself that he was incredibly popular. I mean, when I wrote a book on his fifth wife, I had a. I love doing this with the politics, the start of the 1540s and the 1530s, because of what you said, which is that we don't hear about it. It's really messy and it's fascinating. But a lot of the reports that the Privy Council were receiving were saying some things like if the King knew men's thoughts about him, his heart would quake. So the informants coming into court are saying there are jokes about the royal family. So the Prince of Wales, the future Edward vi, they're saying, oh, he'll grow up to be just like his father because he murdered his mother by being born. So like the first murder, they're all these quite dark jokes. And English politicians, or Privy Councillors, I should say, who are abroad when Henry VIII dies are ones in a pub in Italy. And you don't expect in deepest Catholic Italy, Anne Boleyn to have become a folk heroine, but they're coming up to him and saying, he slaughtered poor Queen Anne. He's become notorious throughout Europe. So the world beyond the palace walls, I think sees him in one way and the world within sees him in a very different way. And it's this sort of bone chilling obsequiousness that they all have. And again, there's that. You see this even in, you know, some regimes throughout history where it's sort of. I mean, I'm being really pseudo flippant here, but it's a bit like an abusive relationship where he gives them enough. I mean, they're falling over themselves to win his approval and he can turn like that. There's almost something pathetic about the way they live for his smiles and his charm and then they live in terror.

Maddy Pelling (31:39)

I think an abuser is a really good way of putting it. And I think something you said earlier, Gareth, about he's kind of middling intelligence, actually. And I think that's fascinating because I'm always interested in the people that we come into contact in the past, as historians we spend so much time with in the archives, whether it's a monarch or a lowly farmer or whoever it is, and actually being able to access who they were and what they would have been like to be in the room with. And I think Henry's one of those people where, because he's so contradictory and because we have such contradictory views of him as this monster, but also this charismatic, handsome young man who wooed all of these women and everyone was falling over themselves to get his approval. That really interests me, this idea that he is charismatic but not very clever and that. That actually is sort of a winning combination for a lot of dictators in history, actually a lot of men who are abusers, actually. That. That's. That's the combo.

Gareth Russell (32:37)

Well, yeah, I mean, he. That regime, the kind of government that he creates. You talked earlier about the weaponization of the apparatus of the state. And it is important that we, you know, I think that there can be a bit of presentist navel gazing where we try to make everything applicable. And, you know, he. He isn't. He isn't a tyrant. And the reason why I would say he isn't is that he really doesn't actually go over the boundaries of Parliament, which is one of the big litmus tests of it. Parliament, for their own reasons, I think, tend to be more obedient than they probably should have been. And when you have kings who don't have charisma, like James the First. Yes.

Anthony Delaney (33:16)

Literally, who's coming to mind?

Maddy Pelling (33:17)

Poor James.

Gareth Russell (33:18)

Poor James, he was like. And he makes this. I mean, I did a book on him recently and I remember.

Maddy Pelling (33:23)

Excellent.

Gareth Russell (33:24)

Thank you very. Thank you very much.

Maddy Pelling (33:28)

Great cover. Great title. Title. Fantastic.

Gareth Russell (33:30)

Thank you very much. But I sort of, at one point was like, I kind of am getting on the divine right of king side here, because essentially his complaint was, I am the first king in God knows how long he's had a family, so I have to pay for them. I'm spending just about as much as Elizabeth I did in herself. You not once asked these kind of difficult questions to Elizabeth, and certainly not to Henry viii. And they were more difficult with Elizabeth because she was a woman and they could press on the marriage point. You didn't really have to press that with Henry viii, but with Henry, they don't ask difficult questions about, well, how have you blown through all the money from your father and then all the money from the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and you're still coming to us for more. So there must have been a charisma there. But he also, to the middling intelligence point, he's not stupid, but he's not. He's certainly not as intelligent as his son or his youngest daughter. And I don't think he was as intelligent as his elder daughter either. I think the children were all more intelligent than he was. If you read Certio Septum Sacramentorum, his defense of the seven sacraments, it's fine, but it's sort of just regurgitating everyone else's views. It's not.

Anthony Delaney (34:35)

Yeah, it's quite transcriptive.

Gareth Russell (34:36)

Yeah, it is. It's. It's a really. It's like, don't make it look like you copied my homework.

Anthony Delaney (34:41)

Yes.

Maddy Pelling (34:42)

Changed a few words.

Gareth Russell (34:43)

Yeah. And, you know. And the Pope is grateful because it's useful, not because it's brilliant. I think with Henry, he's also, for a long time, masked by the people around him. So his first two wives were both charismatic and both very intelligent, and he clearly resents that. And they are. You know, he doesn't. You know, his sixth wife is extremely intelligent, but the next four are not on the same level when it comes to outshining him, which I think Catherine and Anne had done on more than one occasion.

Maddy Pelling (35:19)

Do you think those are deliberate choices by him?

Gareth Russell (35:21)

I do. Or as deliberate as the impulse to fall in love can be. There is a good piece of evidence, so that it's not too speculative, but there is a good piece of evidence from an argument he had with his third wife, Jane Seymour, when he said that his second wife had lost her head because she disputed too much over the affairs of the realm. So in that moment, he not only accidentally admitted that he knew Anne Boelyn was innocent, but that essentially she had been too clever and that he had taken matters into his own hands and she talked back. So I do think there's a good.

Maddy Pelling (35:52)

And what a chilling thing for Jane to read and be like, oh, I'll be quiet, then.

Gareth Russell (35:55)

Absolutely. Do you know what I mean? Keep quiet and hope for better days.

Anthony Delaney (35:58)

You've spoken about a lot that has got me thinking about the Tudors in a way. I haven't necessarily thought about them since probably my undergrad days, because actually, you forget the nuances. Especially once you enter into public history realms and you're talking about the Tudors, it can become very widely, because the.

Maddy Pelling (36:11)

Same stories are rehearsed all the time.

Anthony Delaney (36:13)

But actually, you know, I remember talking about some of these things at undergrad and being. This is why I love Tudor history at that time, actually, because the nuances and the complexities of art, they're all there. But you're talking about, you know, this idea of bone chilling. And I love that that is the way you phrased it, because I think it's very easy to say tyrant or evil or whatever it is, but actually to internalize that a little bit more and to then think about it in terms of the other wives that are following the first two and know what the stakes are. But what is striking me even more is that Henry comes at a point which James, sixth and first, doesn't benefit from this. Henry's coming at a point where there is this transition you talked about. We're coming into almost a sense of modernity or something we recognize. But there's also something of the medieval king about him here too. Right. You know, we're talking about fields of blood. We're talking about power through coercion, we're talking about physical violence. And these are threads that, although are not as present in Henry's reign, he still seems to use as threats or as things to. I can take your head off. Because they did. And that's not weird because this is the legacy that we come from. Whereas I think by the time we get to James, he doesn't have access to that medieval threat anymore. So I'm just wondering, we moralize around Henry a lot, don't we, where we go, tyrant, all of these kind of things. Do you think it's because there's anything in this idea of him sitting between these two periods and straddling them?

Maddy Pelling (37:45)

Is he the last medieval king?

Gareth Russell (37:47)

Yeah.

Anthony Delaney (37:47)

Is he the last medieval and the first modern? You know what I mean? Does that allow him a. Grace is probably the wrong word, but an elasticity that later kings are definitely not afforded.

Gareth Russell (37:57)

I hadn't thought of it that way, and I think you're right. So I think the history of the modern world is the push and pull to some extent. It is the story of the push and pull between government by the many and government by the 1. And also the curse, the benefit, the debate over strongman government that runs through the modern period as much as ideology does. And so Henry in many ways, is the avatar of the strong man. And a narrative was created around Bluff King Hal, which presented him as a great example of strongman government. And it fed into that myth, which is actually to make the omelet, you have to break a few eggs. There will have to be bodies in the wake in order to. For the greater good. And what is never asked is or seldom asked, I should say. Is. But were those eggs the ones he needed to break? So once you move away from him being the last of the first or the Avatar, and just go into that period with him, all of a sudden what it becomes is a fascinating, sticky, unnecessary mess. And all of the things that he did achieve, that is no civil war and preventing foreign invasion, or at least in the case of the Scottish invasion, defeating foreign invasion in 1513, all of those things that he achieved certainly could have been achieved with a much lower body count. So at that point, you step away from him as the strongman, or if you're still inclined to see him that way. It asks really interesting questions about the strongman in government, which is that his strength necessarily justified by savagery, or in order for someone to win, must somebody else lose? That's the question that I actually think Henry, in a strange way, does answer, which is this is how you don't do it.

Anthony Delaney (39:39)

Yeah. It's a tricky old mire, isn't it? He's a complex man, and of course he is, because it's one of the reasons, again, why he endures. If it was very black and white, he wouldn't endure.

Gareth Russell (39:48)

Correct.

Anthony Delaney (39:49)

But because of this complexity, he's.

Maddy Pelling (39:51)

There something that you said earlier, Gareth, about him, especially early on, feeling threatened or undermined or unmanned in some way, whether that's by the intelligent women in his life or whatever it is. I'm thinking about some of his other. The other casualties of his reign, I suppose, and particularly Boleyn and Catherine Howard, who are two wives that he obviously has killed. But also Cromwell as well, who's his very close advisor and sometime good friend. How should we read those? Are they people who ultimately humiliate him or threaten him in a way that makes him feel small and therefore it's reactionary to have them killed, Is it that he sees their behaviors as betrayals, and therefore that's how he legitimizes it in his own mind. In terms of Henry's own psychology, if we can ever access such a thing, what do you think is going on with those. Those. Those three in particular, who are. You know, they stand out as particularly brutal and. And tragic moments in the story.

Gareth Russell (40:47)

So that's interesting. I think I would actually start with a fourth that I think is a good introduction to those, because this person wasn't. These people weren't as close to him. But there's an element. There's a. There's a whiff of what Henry will do. And it goes back to what we were talking about with the Kildare Rebellion. So dashing Silken Thomas Fitzgerald, so called because he's the best dressed man in Ireland.

Anthony Delaney (41:06)

We grow up with him, by the way. He's one of the ones we know of.

Maddy Pelling (41:09)

Nice.

Gareth Russell (41:10)

So Silken Thomas leads the culture rebellion. And I think if memory starts each five uncles, I might have the numbers wrong one way or the other. I think 2 back the government and 3 back him, or 3 back the government and 2 back him. Anyway, Kildare is given the same deal, the Pilgrimage of Grace leaders are, which is all is forgiven. Come to London and explain yourself. And he brings the uncles and Henry then kind of ritually humiliates them because he has them all condemned to death for treason. But despite the fact that Silken Thomas is the Earl of Kildare and ass and earl should be beheaded, he is tied on a hurdle along with the cousins and dragged through the streets like a common criminal.

Maddy Pelling (41:51)

Henry's a petty bitch.

Gareth Russell (41:52)

Petty bitch and hanged alongside all of the uncles, the guilty and the innocent, the Loyalists and the rebels. And it is partly to decimate the house of Fitzgerald, which has been one of the great houses in Ireland. But I think the inclusion that the figures there are, yes, the humiliation of Silken Thomas, but the really interesting really are the uncles who backed Henry and they are still knocked over as collateral damage. And I think you can see that with people like Henry tells you so.

Maddy Pelling (42:20)

Much about who Henry is.

Gareth Russell (42:21)

That's why I always try and tell people, look at, look at Silken Thomas, not just because he's a great, horrible, overlooked example. And you can see this. It runs through everything. So when you go to the downfall of a second wife in 1536, how can Henry throw his best, one of his best friends, Henry Norris, to the wolves with her? How can he throw Thomas Cromwell, who has been a friend, who has been a close advisor. And why is it that when it comes to Catherine Howard, he is easier on Thomas Culpepper, who looks like he wanted to sleep with her after the marriage, but is more brutal to Frances Dereham, who had slept with her before the marriage. There is all of this culture of him humiliating and degrading and destroying before or after, so it isn't done to him. There's something there and psychology in every. We're all a messy bitch, but took face off. Excuse me, but I think, I mean, I know the Goldwater standard is an important thing and in my books I try not to, because I can't. I'm also not trained in psychology, but part of the joy of doing things like this is that you can you can get and you understand the viewer and listener's intelligence and allowing it to just be a thrown off theory. I know this word is tossed around far too much today, but there is something of a narcissistic rage attack there. Oh, yeah, I don't want it anymore. Yeah. So I am going to destroy it. And I think there's.

Maddy Pelling (43:41)

No one else has allowed it. It's my toy. It's going away.

Gareth Russell (43:44)

That's it. And I think when I, you know, Henry Norris, for instance, refuses to do what Henry wants him to do, which is admit that Anne had come on to him and that they had slept together, and basically provide the evidence, evidence they need to condemn Anne. So he says, well, you'll die with her then. So there's, you know, that's again the test of loyalty. And I think there's something, I don't know if this is the right phrase I have in my head, but something like an implicit truth, which I think a lot of narcissists have or manipulative people have, which is, I know Anne Boleyn deserves to die because she's disappointed me, but I know that you won't accept that reason, so I'll give you a reason why she deserves to die.

Anthony Delaney (44:21)

And it doesn't really matter.

Gareth Russell (44:22)

Matter doesn't matter because the truth, the implicit truth will get there, which is that she'll be dead. That runs through his reign. And when I worked on the biography of Katherine Howard, one of the things that I came away with so forcefully as an impression was there is no truth in the suggestion that Henry was bounced into making that decision. Henry pushed for her death even when the House of Lords were questioning in January 1542. We don't know if what Queen Catherine has done justifies the death penalty. Henry says that he wants to torture her to death with his own sword. Henry is the one who authorizes torture and Francis Deering to be used after he's condemned to get more information out of him. There is a kind of Gatling gun of depraved, humiliating tactics being fired against everyone. And the other one that I would say, where you see this, that doesn't end up with a body count, but it's is equally revealing of the mental inspiration behind it is his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. So if anyone has ever read the detail Henry goes into to justify the annulment of the marriage.

Maddy Pelling (45:30)

It's so humiliating.

Gareth Russell (45:31)

Her vagina's slack, she stinks, her breasts are droopy. He really is. It's vile and it is so unnecessary.

Anthony Delaney (45:39)

And even by the standards of the day, by the way.

Gareth Russell (45:41)

Correct.

Anthony Delaney (45:42)

It's vile and unnecessary. And the standards, people are embarrassed and.

Maddy Pelling (45:45)

It'S like, Henry, look to yourself.

Anthony Delaney (45:46)

Yeah.

Gareth Russell (45:47)

And also he has it read out in front of the ecclesiastical Tribunal consisted of 239 men who had to sit and listen to that poor Anne of Cleves. I mean, that is just humiliation on another level. And he does this. There is a humiliation kink I think that he has that pushes a lot of this stuff forward. So when you're looking at those executions that you brought up, I think it is Henry Smash. I think that's kind of. That's what he wants to do and he will do it.

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Anthony Delaney (48:05)

We recently did an episode on the. What was it? I think it was like the most evil kings of Medieval Europe or something like that. Henry doesn't quite qualify for that because of the time period. Nonetheless, we spent time talking about three different figures and it was, you know, it was pretty gruesome stuff listening to you Now, I think Henry is even worse than some people who had a much bigger body count, like Vlad the Impaler or something. But the kind of psychological approach, again, I know we're speculating around that somewhat, such as the want of a podcast. Again, to come back to this, I think it's so apt, this bone chilling thing, and it's so easily overlooked with Henry because again, you've said this before, Gareth, about this avatar like appearance that a lot of these Tudors take on, where they almost become those, you know, those fashion dolls you can cut out of things and stick the clothes on. They start to become that. The wives especially, but him too. And it's a bit like the king who beheaded his wives. And actually it's so much worse than that. That's bad enough, but it's so much worse than that when you kind of get down into it. We grow up and we are told and we're left with this impression of his daughter, his oldest daughter Mary, as Bloody Mary. And we've spoken about this before and we know that his body count is much higher than hers. But in terms of destruction, both of life and of institution and of moral and societal ways of being, how bad do you think is bad? The right word? How destructive do you think Henry is compared to the kings that went before and came after?

Gareth Russell (49:39)

Substantially, I think let's acknowledge his incompetence as well, which doesn't ever. There's this idea that he was a brilliant king apart from the wife murdering oops, which is just not the case. So when people talk, they'll try to justify. Ambulance should have kept her mouth shut. Catherine should have learned from Anne, which is interesting. Let's have a look beyond the palace walls at what he did. I love the story of his wives. I'm not one of those people who tries to say, let's not look at it. I think it's blanket A one of the history's most brilliant stories, but it's not the whole story here. So let's have a look at the economy with rampant inflation and the coin is being debased time and time again. The monarchy is hemorrhaging money. He leaves massive debts to his children. He's wildly extravagant. You have the letters from Thomas Cromwell saying, sir, we don't need 55 palaces. The upkeep is insane. He pushes and pushes Scotland into becoming an enemy, which it hadn't been at the start of his reign. He leaves England diplomatically isolated because he doesn't find relationships to replace the ones with Catholic Europe that He's lost. There is no stability in foreign policy whatsoever. He messes up the Crown of Ireland act, he forces through the surrender and regrant policy with the Gaelic nobility in Ireland. That arguably is the first scattering of the seeds that you and I were harvesting when we were born in the 20th century. So you have all of that. You then have this myth that he founded the navy and it all went super well. It's underfunded. That's the reason the Mary Rose is sitting in a museum, because like everything he did, rather than invest in proper long term solutions, the Mary Rose had too much stacked on top of it to make it look impressive. And then it capsized.

Maddy Pelling (51:24)

That's Henry all over there.

Gareth Russell (51:25)

It's the perfect metaphor. It's exactly. And then, per Catherine Parr sitting next to him, being like, this is going to be a rough couple of weeks. And also this sort of pseudoactive union with Wales and is handled badly as well. I don't see a competent king. I see someone who in many ways was saved by the sophisticated bureaucracy, the structure in the counties and the gentry and the love of stability. I mean, let's be very clear, there is one couple of threads that run through the English national character and one is an innate small C conservatism. And what I mean by that is, you know, even I would say people on the left in Britain are small c conservative. And what I mean by that is you have to really push them before they will willingly cause havoc or they will overturn stability. And that's why, you know, I sort of more critical of Charles I than I was when I started my career. Because I think you have to push the English to be mad. Mad. The English in particular are an excellent passive aggressive nation.

Anthony Delaney (52:23)

You could argue you're seeing that now.

Gareth Russell (52:24)

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I think that he is saved by the fact that his people don't really want to rebel. They're pushed to. And there's a massive one in 1536 and 1537, but the south stays pretty loyal and all of this around him, I think, endures despite his best efforts. He's not a disaster to himself in the way that, say, Richard II is or Charles I, but he is unnecessarily aggressive. He rips the monasteries out and doesn't replace them with anything either. I mean, there's a lot of Henry Smash, not Henry Build.

Maddy Pelling (52:57)

Yeah, there's no plan, it's just Smash.

Gareth Russell (52:59)

There's. That's in a nutshell, there is no plan. And so he's not really a Strong man.

Maddy Pelling (53:04)

That's the scariest thing about him.

Gareth Russell (53:05)

That's the most. I mean, I remember working undergrad about the start of the First World War, and when I realized that both the Kaiser and the Tsar thought the war was a terrible idea, and I was like, oh, my God, there was no one in charge of this. Like, we got there and at least three of the heads of state involved knew it was a bad idea. And to me, that is Henry VIII in a nutshell, which is there was no plan. It was all impulsive and reactive and prickly and thin skinned. So I don't know where you would put him in the evil meter, but I certainly would not be putting him on the great meter. I don't think he deserves to be in the top 20 of the country's best monarchs by a considerable margin.

Maddy Pelling (53:45)

Gareth, this has been an absolute delight. I feel like we could talk for several more hours just about Henry viii. If people are living under a rock and don't know where to find your work, where can they do so, please?

Gareth Russell (53:54)

Well, my website's garethrussell.co.uk and I'm also pretty active on the holy gram, so.

Maddy Pelling (54:02)

Underscore Gareth Russell, you are very active on that. You do some great things.

Gareth Russell (54:05)

I know, but I wasn't, I was so bad.

Maddy Pelling (54:08)

Did you get told by an agent you need to pick?

Anthony Delaney (54:10)

We've all had to become good at it.

Gareth Russell (54:12)

Yeah. I think the best comment I got from someone I worked with was, sorry, do you have a camera on your phone?

Maddy Pelling (54:19)

Time to change my way.

Gareth Russell (54:20)

I was like, I promise that I will use it.

Maddy Pelling (54:22)

What?

Anthony Delaney (54:24)

Yeah, no, I, you know, I think it's a useful thing to let listeners and viewers on YouTube or whatever know that as part of being a historian now is being well enough versed in social media, like, to. Whatever.

Maddy Pelling (54:36)

Every single time I do anything, I forget to. I forget to take any pictures.

Gareth Russell (54:40)

Every time I film something, I'm starting to get better at it.

Maddy Pelling (54:42)

Are you?

Gareth Russell (54:42)

But I'm starting to like, come with me, like, do the weird come with me places. Because also it's nice to be able to see what we do or like the country. Also some of the places I get to go are really lovely and it'd be so nice to like let people see that. But also, I mean, I love what you did the other day about reacting to like off the cuff about costume.

Anthony Delaney (54:58)

Dramas, but here that can be really controversial.

Gareth Russell (55:01)

Oh, yes. Yeah. People care about. I'm like, people love their movies.

Maddy Pelling (55:04)

Did you not see when he said which Brontes would enjoy Taylor Swift and. Which would not.

Anthony Delaney (55:10)

But these are two of my biggest recent videos. Nothing about real history.

Gareth Russell (55:13)

Come on. Taylor Swift and the Brontes.

Anthony Delaney (55:16)

You.

Gareth Russell (55:17)

You mess with two religions there.

Anthony Delaney (55:18)

But I said the Brontes.

Maddy Pelling (55:19)

And there's a big Venn diagram crossover there. Right? Like, come on.

Anthony Delaney (55:22)

Yeah, I said they wouldn't be into that. But listen, look, we live for the controversy.

Maddy Pelling (55:26)

It's fine.

Gareth Russell (55:27)

Actually, I'm stunned.

Anthony Delaney (55:29)

I like to just stir it and walk away. It's like, guys, have a nice time.

Gareth Russell (55:33)

I was like, you're on your own, kid. On the way over.

Maddy Pelling (55:35)

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I commented on your video being like, you're so wrong. I can't even. And I still, to this day get notifications of, like, the 1,000th and 20th person has liked your comment.

Anthony Delaney (55:45)

And I'm like, I think that video is up to, like, 300,000 views or something.

Maddy Pelling (55:48)

It's wild.

Gareth Russell (55:49)

By the way. It's never the ones that you think, think. Never. Never.

Maddy Pelling (55:51)

Yeah.

Anthony Delaney (55:51)

We should finish this episode.

Gareth Russell (55:52)

Sorry.

Maddy Pelling (55:53)

Final, final, final question. Which Taylor Swift album would be most applicable to Henry? It's got to be torture poets, like Stop the Female Race because it's the best one. You don't understand.

Gareth Russell (56:05)

I like to think, oh, God, I.

Maddy Pelling (56:09)

Feel like Anne was singing Reputation.

Gareth Russell (56:11)

Anne might sing Smallest man who Ever Lived right in his face.

Maddy Pelling (56:14)

Perfect. She was like, can he be like, henry smash.

Gareth Russell (56:17)

Henry smash. And she was like, please, Henry, I don't want you to be intimidated, but I've actually memorized words of more than four syllables.

Maddy Pelling (56:24)

There's some big words.

Gareth Russell (56:25)

There's some really big words here.

Anthony Delaney (56:26)

Guys, can I just say this?

Maddy Pelling (56:27)

Here's a dictionary for you just to.

Anthony Delaney (56:28)

Draw those conversations together. I can hear our YouTube producer in there right now going, yes, this is the content. Taylor Swift, Henry viii, the Tudors, all of this. Put that at the start of the episode, and then they'll stay watching.

Maddy Pelling (56:40)

I think you better wrap up before we go. Thank you.

Anthony Delaney (56:43)

That is one of. There are conversations that we have on this podcast over the years now, a couple of years that stick with me. This is going to be one of those conversations. I don't just mean the Taylor Swift and, you know, social media conversations.

Gareth Russell (56:56)

Oh. At least one of my sisters will watch the show. So lady, cut that reference.

Anthony Delaney (56:58)

Well, yes. There you go.

Gareth Russell (57:02)

Thank you, Gareth. Once in a decade.

Anthony Delaney (57:05)

It's just. I think the new that we can bring to someone like Henry VIII is you forget that it's there. We're told it's there. We learn it underground. But actually, this has been a brilliant reminder, Gareth. So thank you for bringing this back into After Dark. Let us know what you thought of the episode in the comments on YouTube or give us a five star review wherever you get your podcasts. We're across so many platforms at this stage that you can't move, but for finding us, thank you for joining us. And join us again next time on After D.