Here, ready for the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII's accession, is the first
volume of David Starkey's two-volume life of the king, which has been
eagerly awaited for at least 10 years. “The point is this,” he explains.
“There are two Henrys ... the one old, the other young.” The mature king,
the one everyone recognises from Holbein's spectacular paintings, is the
“hulking tyrant, with a face like Humpty Dumpty of nightmare”. The other
Henry is different: “young, handsome ... slim, athletic, musical and learned
as no English ruler had been for centuries”.
Writing with a mixture of tabloid verve and original scholarship, peppering
every page with pungent wit and yet never skimping on the detail, Starkey
warns us of the dangers of seeking to interpret the younger Henry in the
light of our knowledge of what was to come. To uncover the true story, we
have to begin at the beginning. And that means properly understanding the
Wars of the Roses, which didn't end with Henry Tudor's victory at the battle
of Bosworth in 1485, but with his son's accession in April 1509. A
by-product of this book is that it's the best political history of the reign
of Henry VII so far.
Henry VIII was born a second son: the “spare” and not the “heir” as long as
his elder brother, Arthur, lived. Rarely did his parents feel secure, since
pretenders to the throne won support at home and abroad. Starkey shows more
vividly than any previous historian that Bosworth's victor could never be
reconciled to the Yorkist rump whatever he tried to do, and that Henry's
doting mother, Elizabeth of York, saw her younger son as a crucial piece on
the chessboard. From the moment he was created Duke of York at the age of
three, she conditioned him to be a peacemaker. Court protocol, on which
Starkey excels, required the queens of England to keep separate
establishments, and until Arthur's death in 1502, Henry lived in Elizabeth's
household with his two sisters. He became a mother's boy: spoilt, extrovert,
competitive, over- defensive, overshadowed in every way by his elder brother
and father, whose achievements he would later try to beat.
Starkey investigates Henry's education and religious beliefs, and whether he'd
been earmarked by his father to be archbishop of Canterbury, which is
possible, but unlikely. There was, however, a revolution in Henry's
education when he became Prince of Wales after Arthur's death. His fussy,
old-fashioned tutor, John Skelton, was sacked and fresh ones hired with
connections to Erasmus of Rotterdam, the literary genius of the European
Renaissance. Thereafter, Henry could be found carefully annotating his Latin
copy of Cicero, jotting down the meanings of significant words and absorbing
definitions of “virtue” rooted in moral and philosophical values. For a
while, it seemed as if the next king of England might be a scholar. But
Erasmus's hopes would be dashed, for although Henry was capable of
prodigious bursts of enthusiasm for history, mathematics, music and
astronomy, he turned out to be a wayward and opinion- ated student, with a
short attention span.
In 1506, Henry met the Archduke Philip of Burgundy. Stylish, handsome and
gregarious, a brilliant jouster (and sexual predator) who loved to join in
everything, Philip was the very model of the young Henry's hero: his
grandfather, Edward IV. Starkey describes their encounters in eye-catching
detail: Henry wanted to be like Philip, and from then onwards he dreamt of
Camelot, not Cicero. Jousting (or more accurately until he was king, a
junior version known as “running at the ring”) became a craze.
Henry, meanwhile, had married Catherine of Aragon, although the ceremony
wasn't binding on a 13-year-old and had to be repeated as soon as he became
king. Starkey knows he will divide opinion over Catherine: he says she was a
liar, accepting long-disputed evidence that her previous marriage to Arthur
had been consummated, which she denied. This evidence, all hearsay with one
exception, first emerged 20 years later when Henry wanted a divorce. The
best of it came from William Thomas, a former groom of Arthur's privy
chamber, who said he'd often escorted Arthur in his nightshirt as far as
Catherine's bedroom door. Does that prove they had sex? Starkey thinks they
did, but nobody really knows. After her marriage to Henry, Catherine lied in
a letter to her father, Ferdinand of Aragon, about a miscarriage. Starkey
makes hay with this, but he's too good a historian not to tell us that the
two cases aren't alike. When she wrote to Ferdinand, Catherine was following
an official government communiqué to spare her husband (and herself)
embarrassment. When, however, she said that she was still a virgin when she
married Henry, she took a solemn oath.
Henry became king two months before his 18th birthday. His father's death was
kept secret for two days while his councillors, Kremlin-style, fought each
other over the corpse. Empson and Dudley, those most closely associated with
Henry VII's reign of terror in his final years, were sent to the Tower. The
young Henry began his reign with a flurry of grand gestures designed to win
popularity. Money flowed liked water as he showered gifts on his friends,
esp-ecially his Yorkist relations. Intoxicated with his power, he soon found
that his more sober and experienced ministers stepped in to curtail his
spending. A stalemate resulted, until the young king, using his crony, the
upstart William Compton, to do his dirty work, attempted to break free.
Compton, whom Starkey unmasks for the first time as Henry's backstairs fixer
and pimp, was partly successful at liberating Henry, but not successful
enough. Then, at 19, Henry was introduced to Thomas Wolsey, the butcher's
son who became his chief policy guru and hatchet man for the next 18 years.
Wolsey began as he meant to go on, teaching Henry how to overrule the lord
chancellor. And that was that. Once Henry had been freed of conciliar
supervision, says Starkey, his days as a “virtuous prince” are over, and his
mature years begin.
That, of course, departs radically from convention, which takes the watershed
to be Wolsey's dismissal in 1529 and replacement by the blacksmith's son,
Thomas Cromwell. Starkey's decision is bold: there are 36 action-packed
years of Henry's life to be crammed into volume two. For its extraordinary
insights into the smouldering embers of the Wars of the Roses, Henry:
Virtuous Prince is masterly. As a biography of England's most celebrated
king, it's an outstanding overture. The main performance is still to come.
Henry: Virtuous Prince by David Starkey
Harper Press £25 pp413
Available at the Sunday Times BooksFirst price of £22.50 (inc p&p) on 0870 165
8585 or here
Henry VIII: England's Pol Pot. Worst thing that ever happened to this country.
A.Newman, London , UK