Free Great Tales from English History, Book 2 by Robert Lacey Page A

the Beaufort portcullis and with the double rose that would become
     the symbol of the Tudors, giving graphic shape to the healing, but oversimplified, myth that the warring flowers had been
     melded into a flourishing new hybrid. One of the chapel’s stained-glass windows shows a crown wreathed in a thorn bush, and
     later legend relates how Henry actuallyplucked his crown from such a bush at Bosworth. In fact, contemporary accounts of the battle made no mention of bushes — they
     describe the crown as simply being picked up off the ground. But it is fair enough to think of Henry as the King who redeemed
     England from a thorny situation.

KING HENRY VIII’S GREAT MATTER’
1509-33

    A FTER THE PENNY - PINCHING WAYS OF Henry VII, the profligate glamour of his red-blooded, redheaded son, the new King Henry VIII, exploded over England like
     a sunburst. Just seventeen years old, the athletic young monarch was the nation’s sporting hero.
    ’It is the prettiest thing in the world to see him play,’ purred an admirer of Henry’s exertions at tennis,‘his fair skin
     glowing through a shirt of the finest texture.’ When the young King, tall and energetic, joined the royal bowmen for target
     practice, his arrow‘cleft the mark in the middle and surpassed them all’. He was a superlative horseman, a champion in the
     jousts, an all-round wrestler — and when themusic started, he could pluck a mean string on the lute. Recent research has revealed that Henry may even have played football,
     a game usually considered too rough and common for the well born. In February 2004 a fresh look at the inventory of his Great
     Wardrobe discovered that alongside forty-five pairs of velvet shoes the King kept a pair of purpose-made football boots.
    The other side of bluff King Hal was evident within three days of his accession. With the vicious eye for a scapegoat that
     was to characterise his ruling style, the King authorised the show trials of Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, two of his
     father’s most effective and unpopular money-raisers. The pair had done nothing worse than carry out royal orders and line
     their own pockets. But Henry had both men executed — then promptly embarked on a spending spree with his father’s carefully
     hoarded treasure. He had an insatiable capacity for enjoying himself. Masques, mummeries, jousts, pageants — the festivities
     went on for days when Henry was crowned in June 1509 alongside his fetching and prestigious new Spanish wife Katherine of
     Aragon.
    Four years older than Henry, Katherine was embarking on her second marriage. Having married Henry’s brother Arthur in November
     1501, she had found herself widowed before that winter was out. Young Henry had stepped forward to take Arthur’s place both
     as Prince of Wales and as Katherine’s betrothed, and when he came to the throne he made their marriage his first order of
     personal business. The couple exchanged vows and rings in a private ceremony at Greenwich on II June 1509, and set about the
     happy process of procreation. When, after one miscarriage, a son was bornon New Years Day 1511, Henry’s joy knew no bounds. As bonfires were lit and salutes cannonaded from the Tower, the proud father
     staged a vast tournament, mingling with the crowds and delightedly allowing them to tear off as souvenirs the splendid gold
     letters‘H’ and‘K’ that adorned his clothes.
    But the baby boy, who had been christened Henry, died within two months, and disappointment would prove the pattern of Katherine’s
     childbearing. One daughter, Mary, born in 1516, was the only healthy survivor of a succession of ill-fated pregnancies, births
     and stillbirths, and after ten years of marriage without a male heir, Henry came to ponder on the reasons for God’s displeasure.
    He thought he found his answer in the Bible.‘Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife,’ read chapter 18 of the Old Testament Book of Leviticus