Anne Boleyn ‘did conspire to kill Henry VIII’ reveals expert
Henry VIII was plagued by thoughts of physical suffering, sinfulness and fear of God towards the end of his life, new research has revealed.
A copy of the former Monarch’s prayer book includes markings to particular passages, highlighting his state of mind, the study has claimed.
Researchers have examined the book released just three years before the King died, when his health was in decline, and he was feeling both vulnerable and “anxious”.
Born on June 28, 1491, Henry had two out of six of his wives beheaded and broke with Rome, creating the Church of England, in order to divorce his first wife Catherine of Aragon.
Henry is often perceived as a bolshy, self-assured monarch but parts he highlighted in his prayer book will be at odds with his reputation in popular memory.
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Henry VIII was said to have the ‘worst legs in the world’ (Image: Getty)
Micheline White, Associate Professor of English Literature at Carleton University in Canada, identified that the etchings were Henry’s. She told the Times: “It’s not what we might expect.
“We tend to think of Henry as being very confident and he exerted his authority with impunity, but in these particular annotations we see traces of a Henry who’s pretty anxious.”
The markings were made by Henry in the book called “Psalms or Prayers” found at the Wormsley Library near High Wycombe.
The notes Henry made often looked like a pointing hand or “manicules”. These also appeared in other books owned by the King such as the 1530 collection of scriptural texts Collectanea satis copiosa and Marulić’s 1487 theological compendium Evangelistarium.
Henry VIII, famed for having six wives, famously had two beheaded (Image: Getty)
Writing in the study, published in the Renaissance Quarterly, Professor White continued: “’I demonstrate that a copy in the Wormsley Library also has markings, and I argue that there is good reason to believe that they were made by Henry.”
One manicule was drawn next to a passage which reads: “Take away thy plagues from me, for thy punishment hath made me both feeble and faint. For when thou chastisest a man for his sins, thou causest him by and by to consume and pine away.”
Another was etched next to a passage which said: “Turn away thine anger from me, that I may know that thou art more merciful unto me than my sins deserve.”
An ink trefoil, a Christian symbol, was put next to a passage where the speaker fears that God will “forsake him” because of his sins. It reads: “O Lord God forsake me not, although I have done no good in thy sight.”
The work was translated from Latin to English by Katherine Parr, his sixth and final wife (Image: Getty)
Professor White believes these markings show that certain sections of the book “resonate with Henry’s dire physical predicament” from 1544 onwards.
The book, published anonymously, was translated from Latin into English by Henry’s final wife Katherine Parr and was made in 1544 as a form of propaganda before the war with France.
Henry was over six feet tall and, according to the National Institutes of Health, weighed 28 stone by the time of his death in 1547.
By the time he was 44, he was already obese, requiring a hoist to get onto a horse and in later life he suffered from the likes of leg ulcers, gout, and chronic headaches.
In the study, Professor White recounts how the imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys told the Holy Roman Emperor that Henry had the “worst legs in the world” but no one dared to tell him.
Henry VIII depicted with Katherine Parr (Image: Getty)
But in Psalms or Prayers, it seems he confronted some hard truths.
Professor White said: “He was England’s divinely ordained monarch, yet his ageing, sinful body was ‘feeble and faint’, and although he believed his actions were just, he also believed that God sent sickness as a punishment and might forsake him.
“In marking these verses in Parr’s book, Henry both confronted the ugly truth and revealed himself to be an exemplary monarch by responding to the crisis by begging God to ‘turn away’ his anger and extend mercy.”
The Tudor King, who sat on the throne from 1509 to 1547, died from natural causes after suffering battling against disease and geriatric decay for some time.
