Original subtitles

NARRATOR: London at the dawn of the 16th century.

By a twist of fate, a teenage prince inherits the throne.

- This pampered, resentful little boy,

contemptuous towards women.

All of these things are setting a really dangerous scene

for somebody who then comes into a power unforeseen.

NARRATOR:: In a battle with the Pope, the notorious Henry VIII

obliterates hundreds of monasteries and persecutes any who oppose him,

plunging his country into chaos.

- There are so many lives wrecked. It's estimated 30, 40, 50,000 people

are up in arms against the Kng, and there are mass executions.

NARRATOR: And in his maniacal pursuit for a male heir

to continue the Tudor dynasty, no-one is immune

from losing their heads.

- This golden boy, this glorious man of youth,

this heroic, chivalric figure had turned

into a paranoid, murderous monster.

NARRATOR: But can medical science shed new light

on Henry's rabid behaviour?

- Henry has a very bad jousting accident.

- He might have had an injury to the frontal lobe of his brain

from repeated blows, which would have caused

his personality to change.

NARRATOR: Using groundbreaking AI imagery

to revisit the world of Henry VIII, we separate facts from legend.

Monarchs rise and fall,

but what legacy will the sands of time leave behind?

Henry VIII: is he no more than a product of the times,

or truly... a killer king?

(dramatic music)

From a long line of English and Welsh nobility,

the House of Tudor's most infamous son, Henry VIII ,

has fascinated and horrified us in equal measure.

- It's estimated he may have killed upwards of about 70,000 people

during his reign.

NARRATOR: Burning, boiling, stretching, crushing,

decapitating: all become the stuff of his legend.

- You can be hanged in Henry VIII's England

if you steal goods worth more than a few pence, for example.

Henry also makes witchcraft a felony for the first time,

which means that many more witches are hanged or imprisoned.

NARRATOR: But are there more layers to this bloated, bloodthirsty,

temperamental wife-killer?

- He was a polymath. He spoke several languages.

All of those things are a sign of great mental acuity.

NARRATOR: So who is the real Henry VIII?

What is the true picture of this complex man

and seismic monarch?

Henry's story begins in southeast London.

- Henry was born in 1491. He was the spare heir,

so his parents had an elder son, Prince Arthur.

- I think Henry's background really set the whole stage

for what was to come.

Henry VIII was never destined to be king.

- Arthur, who was raised separately in his own household

as Prince of Wales, Henry probably didn't really know Arthur that well.

He won't have spent very much time with him.

NARRATOR: His father, Henry VII, has big plans for brother Arthur

when he inherits the throne.

But Henry is pretty much an afterthought

and needs to be kept out of the way.

- Henry was sent to live with his sisters,

and was the star of his household, because Arthur wasn't there.

- Now, what this meant was that he was brought up

in a very female household.

It meant, I think, that he was very pampered.

He was somebody treated as terribly important,

cosseted, and he was a prince and rather a beautiful young boy.

- So I think you get a sense

that he saw himself as possibly more important than he was.

- Somebody who, in this rich female environment,

became overly familiar with female attention,

leading, I think, to no small degree of contempt towards women.

NARRATOR: Henry might have enjoyed his pampered life

in relative obscurity had fate not intervened.

- His brother, Prince Arthur,

dies suddenly of the sweating sickness,

which is a uniquely Tudor illness that carries people off

really within hours, some sort of influenza perhaps.

Immediately the future Henry VII, only 10,

is promoted to heir to the throne.

I think you do get a sense that he starts to see it

as his destiny. This brother has cleared the way for him.

- This is somebody who has been brought up

in the shadow of Arthur, brought up with a festering resentment,

feeling that he was less significant,

and now here he is, given the chance to step into his shoes as monarch.

NARRATOR: On April 21st 1509,

when his father dies of tuberculosis,

Henry's star can truly shine, as he becomes King of England

to a tumult of public acclaim.

- He comes to the throne when he's 17,

and there is this anticipation. People are excited. He's young,

good-looking, sporty. - He was so beautiful

that ambassadors described him as having a face that would please

a pretty woman. We're talking about Hollywood actor,

heartthrob, teen idol-level beauty.

He was six foot two. He could pull the Welsh longbow

with his Welsh longbowmen. He could ride, hunt, joust.

NARRATOR: Henry is so young and energetic

that he can tire up to ten horses a day.

- He was athletic. He was all that a king should be.

NARRATOR: There's brains behind the brawn too

- He could do engineering with his engineers.

Not only was he smart, he was known to be able to hold his own

debating luminaries like Erasmus and Thomas More.

NARRATOR: The Dutch scholar Erasmus is widely celebrated

as one of Europe's leading thinkers.

Fellow intellectual Thomas Moore had tutored Henry as a child.

- They praised Henry for his ability to logically work things out.

He was considered this great hope,

and people were still being influenced

by an older sort of Greek belief that outward beauty

would reflect inner beauty.

NARRATOR: Barely weeks into his reign,

Henry is under pressure to consider an heir to his throne.

- One major factor for him in being King

is to produce heirs to the Tudor dynasty,

because they're not a very fecund family.

He doesn't have any surviving brothers. His father

doesn't have surviving brothers either.

The whole line rests on Henry.

NARRATOR: He has an eye for the ladies:

even his brother Arthur's widow is fair game.

- Catherine of Aragon arrived from Spain in 1501

to marry Prince Arthur. That marriage

obviously didn't last very long, he died,

and she was almost immediately betrothed to the young Prince Henry

because her parents didn't want to lose out on the dowry

or the alliance. Catherine's mother, Isabel, the Queen of Castile,

who's an independent,sovereign in her own right, dies,

which debases Catherine's worth. The future Henry VIII

is told to disavow his betrothal, to break his betrothal,

but he does make a free choice to marry Catherine.

I think that's really key to their marriage.

- it speaks of some degree of spite

that he would take the widow of his brother.

He'd experience no small degree of malice in doing that.

NARRATOR: It's not just the personal satisfaction

of taking the bride meant for his brother,

there's also a decent financial upside in it.

- By the time he marries her.

his father-in-law, Ferdinand of Aragon,

has effectively taken over Spain.

So Catherine does bring this alliance with Spain.

NARRATOR: In a lavish ceremony at Westminster Abbey,

Henry and Catherine are formally crowned

King and Queen of England.

- They immediately attempt to produce heirs to the throne,

really to shore up the succession, but also to silence any claims

that someone else has a better claim to the throne,

or there should be a different dynasty on the throne.

- Henry wants, above all else, a male heir.

I think the degree to which he requires a male heir

is more than simply to do with royal protocol

and ascendancy, I think he has a real contempt towards women

even at this stage.

NARRATOR: Barely a year into his reign,

the teen king starts getting tough.

- There are hints at times of some ruthlessness.

He has Empson and Dudley,

his father's two effectively closest servants executed,

because he knows it will bring him popularity. He does it for likes.

It is a sign that perhaps Henry VIII isn't necessarily going to follow

the letter of the law, and they certainly are judicial murders

by any modern reckoning.

NARRATOR: The fledgling monarch has flexed his muscles.

Are these flashes of teenage exuberance,

or a harbinger of evil to come?

- For somebody to have the emotional emptiness

to be able to do this hints very strongly

that we're looking at somebody who has a psychopathic tendency.

NARRATOR: In the early years of his reign,

Henry VIII wastes no time in cementing his reputation

as a battle-hardy warrior.

He personally leads a charge into northern France,

capturing the towns of Tournai and Therouanne.

Henry also imprisons high-ranking French nobility,

to the delight of his subjects.

- He would have been incredibly popular,

a rock star of royalty.

- He loves going to war, he does what kings traditionally do

in England: fight the French.

People quite liked him in general.

NARRATOR: Whilst Henry is overseas,

his Spanish Queen holds the fort as Regent.

She repels an invasion by the King of Scotland, James IV,

and victoriously claims his scalp in the Battle of Flodden.

Catherine even sends her husband the King of Scots' bloodied cloak

as a souvenir.

But back in the bedroom, all is not well:

still no sign of Henry's Tudor heir.

- Catherine of Aragon's pain was unique

in that she lost her babies at the end of her pregnancy.

Sometimes they're recorded as stillbirths,

sometimes they're recorded as having died after birth.

Almost half of all children were lost by the age of five.

It was a horrific time to have to be a parent.

NARRATOR: At last, Queen Catherine has a child

that survives the fragile first weeks of life.

But King Henry is left wanting: it's a girl, Princess Mary.

Henry talks to the Venetian ambassador

after Mary's birth.

ACTOR AS HENRY VIII: We are both young.

if it was a daughter this time,

by the grace of God sons will follow.

- This is somebody who's very egocentric, very proud.

He's very self-satisfied.

So for somebody like Henry VIII,

a male heir will have been an absolute obsession.

NARRATOR: Despite Henry's hopes, no more children follow,

and by 1522 Henry has grown tired of his queen's perceived failures.

A new arrival at the royal court catches the King's wandering eye.

- Anne Boleyn is a maid in Catherine of Aragon's household,

and Henry is used to drawing his mistresses

from amongst his wife's maids.

Catherine of Aragon just closes her eyes and ignores it.

That's probably what he first wanted from Anne Boleyn.

But unlike other women at the court Anne says, no, absolutely not.

I'm not going to be your mistress.

We can follow the chart of their early relationship,

because Henry pursues her with love letters. He talks about

being struck with the dart of love. HENRY VIII: Let me know expressly

your whole mind as to the love between us two.

It is absolutely necessary for me to obtain this answer.

I promise you that I will take you for my only mistress,

casting off all others besides you out of my thoughts and affections,

and serve you only.

I beseech you to give an entire answer to this, my rude letter,

that I may know on what and how far I may depend.

Written by the hand of him who would willingly remain yours,

H. R.

NARRATOR: The lovestruck king stalks his mistress

with 17 ardent letters over the next two years.

HENRY VIII: Mine own sweetheart, wishing myself,

especially an evening, in my sweetheart's arms,

whose pretty duckies I trust shortly to kiss.

Written by the hand of him that was, is, and shall be yours

by his own will, H. R.

- He talks about wanting to fondle her pretty duckies,

which is slang for breasts. So they've clearly got

some level of physical relationship. But she's very much holding him

at arm's length as much as she can.

Eventually, he offers to make her his official mistress at court,

so to give her an official role. She says no. He offers her marriage.

NARRATOR: But there's one big problem:

Henry's already married and bound

to one of the most powerful Catholic families in Europe.

So Henry orders his Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey,

to ask the Pope to annul their marriage.

- Cardinal Wolsey had been the key figure in Henry's reign.

He really runs the country, but he can't get Henry his annulment

from Catherine of Aragon. NARRATOR: And Catherine

has big backers, who put pressure on Pope Clement VII.

- The problem for Henry is her family in Spain.

Her nephew is the Holy Roman Emperor,

Charles V. He rules across Germany. He rules parts of Italy.

He rules the whole of Spain, the Netherlands.

He is the most powerful man in Europe at the time.

The Emperor was already incredibly offended

that Henry would think about discarding his aunt,

surely it's an absolute honour

to be married into the imperial royal family.

NARRATOR: For the King's Chancellor, time is running out.

- Anne Boleyn hates Wolsey. The feeling's mutual:

he calls her "a serpentine enemy," or "the night crow."

They really dislike each other. Eventually, Wolsey is arrested

on quite trumped-up charges

NARRATOR: England's most senior cleric is apprehended near York

and accused of treason.

- He's actually tied to his mule as he's brought south.

He's clearly heading for the Tower of London.

As he's brought south, he dies at Leicester.

I think in many respects Wolsey does escape what was coming to him:

undoubtedly, he would have been executed.

No chance he could have survived. (crow caws)

NARRATOR: The following year,

Henry brings in a new law, making high treason punishable

by boiling to death. The Tudor king is turning vengeful.

But it's the battle to win Anne Boleyn's hand

that will have a cataclysmic effect on his kingdom.

- He can't get an annulment from the pope.

He attempts it for six long years.

Eventually, he breaks the English church away from Rome.

So he breaks the English Church from the Pope.

He says, the head of the Church is me.

I can give myself an annulment.

NARRATOR: Henry declares himself

Supreme Head of the Church of England.

As a stroke, he completely changes Britain's status and destiny.

- At this time to go against the Church in this way

is hugely significant.

The sense of superiority meets with the actual power

that now sits in his hand,

and we see someone who believes he is utterly autonomous,

that he is utterly omnipotent.

He is somebody who believes he is above anything and everything,

including the Church. (bells ring)

NARRATOR: In early 1533,

the hellbent Henry finally seals the deal.

- He marries Anne Boleyn in January 1533,

when she's already in the early stages of pregnancy,

and that September she gives birth to a girl,

which is a bit of a disaster for Anne and for Henry.

NARRATOR: The infant Elizabeth would become the future queen,

but Anne hasn't produced the son that Henry craves.

- She has at least two other pregnancies, but doesn't produce

a surviving child.

NARRATOR: For now, the king's ire is directed towards Rome

and the Pope. In 1535,

he takes a wrecking ball to England's monasteries.

In the coming years, 800 are destroyed,

their possessions plundered by the Crown.

Those who won't swear allegiance to the new head of the Church

risk their lives.

- He started solving all of his problems

with an axe and a sword.

On May 4th 1535, he ordered the execution

in a horrible way, a traitor's death,

the hung, drawn and quartered,

for four Carthusian monks and a Brigitine monk.

- He ordered the hangman to cut out their hearts

while they were still alive.

The sadism integral to this act is beyond comprehension.

But more than that:

following their deaths, Henry ordered

that their heads were placed on spears to act as trophies

to warn off any other possible dissenters.

NARRATOR: But the killer king doesn't stop there:

the axe falls on his most trusted advisers.

- Thomas Moore, he'd been Henry's Lord Chancellor,

a real mentor in his youth,

he wouldn't swear the Oath of Supremacy.

He wouldn't say the Boleyn marriage was valid. Henry has him executed.

Before that, Bishop Fisher of Rochester,

who's a saintly figure, was also executed by Henry

as he wouldn't agree to the annulment.

- They refused to declare Henry the head of the Church.

They were maintaining their Catholicism,

and that became unbearable to Henry.

He just couldn't stand for anyone to disagree with him.

It wasn't safe anymore to defy Henry.

NARRATOR: The monarch is now raging against all around him.

Even those closest to Henry are no longer safe.

What has triggered this man

who was once so popular as a king?

- They were not used to the King behaving this way.

It was so shocking, overnight he became a monster.

NARRATOR: Now in his 40s,

an angry and increasingly bellicose Henry VIII is flying off the handle.

- Henry's mental profile was his ever-increasing paranoia

and irritability. Before, when he was described

as being patient and gentle in debate,

that didn't happen anymore.

There was a point where he was even threatening to kill his own Fool

in the court. He was not the person he had been.

NARRATOR: What is the root of this relentless rage and paranoia?

The answer may lie in an incident recorded at Greenwich Palace.

- Many historians have already speculated

that Henry suffered a traumatic brain injury

in January of 1536. He was knocked unconscious

during a jousting match.

- He's knocked out cold for a time.

- His behaviour changed so drastically after the accident

that there's widespread support

that he would have had an injury to the frontal lobe of his brain

which caused a personality change, or caused his mental deterioration.

NARRATOR: Henry's accident would have immediate ramifications

on his relentless pursuit of a male heir .

As the King was lying prone and unconscious from the accident,

Anne's distress causes her to miscarry his baby son.

- She blames her final miscarriage on the accident.

NARRATOR: For Henry, it's the last straw.

- The injury certainly causes him significant pain.

It causes ongoing disablement. He'll never be the man that he was

physically after the accident.

Even if there isn't a head injury, and there may well be,

the fact that every day he's in significant pain

must have had an impact

on his character. - Once the physical disabilities,

the physical problems started to get their grip on him,

I think this spoilt, psychopathic personality

came to the fore and completely knocked away

this civilised, intellectual persona.

Henry behaves in a much more unsophisticated, barbaric manner.

NARRATOR: The King's fury is now directed towards his queen.

- By that stage, Henry is tired of Anne.

The relationship hasn't gone how he was hoping for.

What he wants in a mistress isn't necessarily what he wants

in a wife. And Anne is very fiery. By early 1536,

he's involved with another maid in waiting, Jane Seymour.

Really, he decides he wants a new wife.

Unlike Catherine of Aragon,

Anne doesn't have a powerful family. What can the Boleyns do about it

if Henry decides to execute her? And so he does.

NARRATOR: Anne is marched from Greenwich Palace

to the infamous Tower of London.

- She's arrested for adultery, and incest with her brother, George.

That would be treason in a queen. It's clearly trumped-up charges.

In fact, people who didn't even like Anne

don't tend to believe that she was guilty.

Nonetheless, she's convicted and then beheaded by sword

on the 19th May 1536.

(bells ring out) NARRATOR: Less than two weeks later,

at Whitehall Palace...

(bells ringing)

..wedding bells.

A heartless Henry marries his new flame Jane Seymour

and crowns her Queen

after slaying the so-called love of his life.

- The fact that Anne Boleyn does not provide a male heir

for Henry VIII sees him reacting violently against her.

He needs somehow to restore the wounds to his pride.

NARRATOR: But can Henry's midlife crisis

really be pinned on that one jousting accident

months earlier?

Or are there other factors at work?

- It's not an excuse at all, because most people, of course,

who've had a head injury do not then

kill their nearest and dearest.

That may well account for some personality change,

although there are signs of difficulties earlier.

NARRATOR: Medical anthropologist Kyra Kramer

has been poring through the historical records

of Henry's ailments. She also questions the accident theory.

- In 1535, the year before his accident,

that's when he started killing people, like Bishop Fisher,

like Thomas Moore, like anybody who disagreed with him.

That change happened before.

I agree with the historians thinking that his brain was injured,

but I think it was from chronic traumatic encephalopathy

rather than one singular incident.

NARRATOR: Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, CTE,

is a brain condition linked to repeated blows

to the head. Later in life,

it can cause aggression and moodswings,

something certainly seen in Henry.

- You get repeated blows,

little ones that cause sub-concussions,

which eventually turn into a large bruise or bleed

in the frontal lobe of the brain, where you keep your personality.

He was an avid jouster. Now when you joust,

you're basically taking the force of a small car

behind a stick and hitting someone in the head with it.

We know he got hit in the head, because in at least one incident,

he forgot to have his visor down.

NARRATOR: Proof of this head trauma is found in 1524

when a chronicler of the day describes a duel

against the Duke of Suffolk.

- His helpers didn't put down his visor

and he got hit in the face with splinters,

which could easily have killed him. Everybody was waiting for this rage

to happen. But he was still a young man.

He immediately forgave not only the knight who hit him,

but he forgave the squire who had failed to lower his visor.

That is how even-tempered and logical and decent

Henry VIII was before he turned 40.

We know from incidents like that that not only was he

gentle-tempered, we know that he was getting hit in the head by sticks.

NARRATOR: As the damaged brain ages,

the symptoms of this illness take hold.

- The athletes who have this, they've done things

like suddenly kill their families.

So when I say that CTE can caus e a radical change in personality,

it can cause a lethal change in personality.

NARRATOR: And Kyra has come up with another theory

that could even blow apart the accident hypothesis.

- When we were first publishing our article

in the Cambridge Historical Journal, we were trying to figure out

a reason for Henry's personality to have changed so drastically.

From 1531 onward,

his 40th birthday, he became more and more erratic, paranoid,

until eventually he became the monster that everyone remembers.

When we were looking at illnesses that may have applied to this,

one of the contenders we thought was the strongest

was something called McLeod Syndrome.

NARRATOR: Mcleod Syndrome, an unforgiving genetic disorder

causing physical and psychiatric problems later in midlife.

Could this have afflicted the Tudor bloodline?

Could Henry have suffered from it?

- On the patient's 40th birthday. no-one knows why it is the 40th

that triggers it. their personality can change so drastically

that a few patients have been misdiagnosed with schizophrenia.

So we thought between that

and the fact his health was progressively going downhill,

as would happen with McLeod Syndrome,

we thought it might be a plausible answer.

NARRATOR: Whatever the cause of the King's torment,

just months after sending his wife to her death,

Henry even surpasses himself. His religious reforms

are causing a groundswell of discontent

amongst his largely Catholic subjects.

- In October 1536, a huge rebellion erupts against him.

It starts at Louth in Lincolnshire, and a group of townspeople

actually walk in procession behind their cross.

As they do, a rumour gets up

that Henry will dissolve parish churches.

NARRATOR: Rebellion spreads like wildfire,

leading to an insurgency, dubbed the Pilgrimage of Grace.

- They ring their church bell, as an alarm, and within weeks,

the whole of Lincolnshire and then the whole of Yorkshire

are up in arms against Henry, an absolutely enormous rebellion.

It's estimated 30, 40, 50,000 people are up in arms against the King.

He has an army of 8,000 at best that he's able to cobble together.

So he negotiates with the rebels.

He agrees with them that he will hold a parliament at York.

He says, go home, you'll be fine.

NARRATOR: But a vengeful King has other plans in mind...

..to make the traitors pay.

- These people have risen against the King,

but they've then gone home

on the basis that they'll receive pardons,

and at least an assessment of what their demands were.

Henry has no intention of doing anything he says.

He's furious with the rebels, biding his time until he can kill them.

NARRATOR: Following a rebellion in the north of his kingdom,

a tyrannical Henry VIII is seething.

- At the start of 1537,

Henry suddenly acts against the rebels.

He uses a smaller rebellion as a pretext

to go against all involved in the earlier rebellion.

He has Robert Aske, who's the rebels' leader,

executed at York, the centre of his rebellion,

and he also moves against many of the people

who are just minor figures in the rebellion.

Ttere are mass executions.

- Henry had over 200 everyday people eradicated,

obliterated, simply because they opposed his reforms,

one of Henry's most horrific offences.

- It really leaves a scar on the north of England

that will take decades to heal. - This disproportionate level

of violence is a key mark of a psychopath.

NARRATOR: Back at Hampton Court Palace,

barely months into his third marriage,

to Jane Seymour, the King seems to be getting itchy feet.

- He frequently told ambassadors or members of the court,

I see that pretty lady. I wish I'd seen her before I got married.

He was waiting to see if she got pregnant.

It would have been easy to divorce a minor country knight's daughter.

NARRATOR: The threat of the axe looms large over Jane,

until suddenly.... a miracle.

- She got pregnant and had a baby boy,

and then magically became the love of his life.

(bells ring out)

NARRATOR: To royal fanfare, Jane produces a healthy son

and heir to the throne, Edward VI.

- In Henry's eyes, she is the only valid wife,

and I think that's purely because she provided the male heir.

NARRATOR: 12 days later, Jane suddenly dies

from complications after childbirth.

The grief-stricken King retreats into mourning.

But within weeks the search is on to find a fourth wife,

with the help of his right-hand man.

- Henry doesn't like to get his hands dirty. In fact,

he tends to vanish if bad news is coming for somebody.

He uses other people. Of course, when we think about

Henry VIII's ministers, we think about Thomas Cromwell,

who is undoubtedly his chief enforcer.

Whatever Henry wants. Thomas Cromwell does it,

including the arrest of Anne Boleyn,

that's very much Cromwell's work.

NARRATOR: Henry is the hunt for a queen

who can give him his second son.

Cromwell looks to central Europe,

where they can forge a strategic alliance

with the Protestant German states.

- He arranges a fourth marriage for Henry

with German princess Anne of Cleves.

(bells ring out)

It turns out to be an absolute disaster.

Henry can't stand her. The feeling is probably mutual

NARRATOR: Nothing to report in the bedroom either.

- They're unable to consummate the marriage.

There's no hope of a second son for Henry,

who is absolutely furious Cromwell got him into this situation.

NARRATOR: The writing's on the wall for Cromwell.

Or maybe not. It seems Henry has decided, uncharacteristically,

on forgiveness.

- He actually creates Thomas Cromwell Earl of Essex,

which is a huge promotion for this low-born man.

It looks as though he's not too bothered

about Thomas Cornwell's role in the debacle.

And then suddenly, effectively the axe swings.

Cromwell goes to a Council meeting one day and he's arrested.

He's then taken to the Tower.

He's ordered to help the King annul his marriage

to Anne of Cleves, and then is beheaded for treason.

NARRATOR: Unlike Cromwell, Anne gets to keep her head,

even though her marriage had lasted only seven months.

- Cromwell can't have seen this coming. I don't think anybody did.

He is very, very loyal to Henry,

and if you want an example of judicial murder,

this really is it in Henry's reign.

NARRATOR: Now approaching 50,

the moods of the cantankerous and ailing King

are increasingly erratic. Henry's high life doesn't help.

His doctors implore him to cut down on the vast quantities of meats

and fine wines that he gorges on. The once-athletic monarch

can now barely walk.

- What I think is really key with Henry is,

for the last decade of his life he's in constant, agonising pain.

He has an ulcer in his leg, which won't close.

There's no painkillers that are effective in the period.

NARRATOR: The fact that his ailments are all likely

self-inflicted won't have occurred to the sybaritic monarch.

- He was very, very fond of hunting. in the 1500s, you're going flat out

over very rough terrain on horseback.

You land heavily.

One of the things that could have done

is jostled the long bones in his upper thighs.

And they can send off teeny, tiny microscopic-sized splinters

of bone, and the splinters of bone work their way up through

to the surfaces of skin, causing ulcers.

In modern times, osteomyelitis,

those are treated with a simple antibiotic.

or surgery if they really need to. Obviously, there were no antibiotics

at the time.

- Every morning he wakes up, he's going to be in agony.

I think that shows in his personality.

- He's moved from an entirely luxurious,

pampered physical reality

to one of suffering and pain,

moving from being adored for your physical beauty

to one of repulsing other people.

He would not have been able to keep pace with this psychologically.

NARRATOR: Despite his age and ill-health,

Henry makes a beeline for his soon-to-be fifth wife.

- Catherine Howard is a pretty young maid.

She comes to court as a lady in waiting to Anne of Cleves

and catches Henry's attention. She may be as young as 15

when she meets him in 1540. She's very young,

much younger than him. She's sort of pushed in his direction

when it becomes clear the King is interested in her,

and she is massively unsuitable to be Queen, no doubt about it.

NARRATOR: Catherine has a secret, scandalous history

of which the King is completely unaware.

- She has had previous relationships,

although they begin so early in her childhood,

one when she's maybe around 13, that they look quite abusive

in their nature. (bells ring out)

She's married to Henry VIII in 1540.

All goes well at first, but in 1541, word comes out

that she's had these previous relationships

when she was a very young child.

It then comes out that she has been seeing Thomas Culpeper,

a member of the King's household, in private,

with just Lady Rochford as chaperone. That looks very much

like adultery.

NARRATOR: By now an unstable Henry

is racked with paranoia. He sends his tee Queen

and her beau straight to the tower.

- Culpeper and also Francis Dereham, who is her lover

from her childhood, who obviously met Catherine Howard

before she became Queen, is also executed.

And then Catherine Howard is executed without a trial.

But actually, she's a teenager.

Henry had grounds to send her back home.

She looks very much like she's validly betrothed

to Dereham, so her marriage to Henry was invalid.

It is undoubtedly vindictive, and it's undoubtedly murder

to have killed Catherine Howard in 1542.

Arguably one of the worst things Henry VIII actually does.

NARRATOR: But all is soon forgotten by the ruthless King.

Barely a year later , once again... wedding bells.

(bells)

- His sixth marriage was famously to a widow, Catherine Parr,

but didn't result in pregnancy. NARRATOR: A mature Catherine

survives where many of Henry's wives do not,

perhaps mellowing the mercurial and fractious King.

- By that time, he had become so corpulent

and in such ill health that it was unlikely

he had consummated that marriage.

NARRATOR: But Henry coins Catherine his "sweetheart."

She acts as Regent during his final war against France

in 1544.

After promoting religious reform, Catherine even survives an attempt

by the King's ministers to get her arrested and executed for heresy.

Henry's final queen then nurses him through ill-health

until his death in January 1547.

- A few years after his death, people were really reminiscing,

wasn't it lovely under Henry?

NARRATOR: England enters a period of turmoil,

with a short succession of rulers.

Henry's beloved male heir, Edward VI,

lasts just seven years on the throne

until his death from tuberculosis at the age of 15.

Despite his father leaving a legacy of debt from failed wars,

and his numerous executions and purges,

Henry's subjects hark back to a golden era under his iron fist.

- He was surprisingly popular among the peasantry.

That's quite surprising, you know, the monstrous Henry VIII.

But actually, people quite liked him in general.

He's this larger-than-life figure.

That said, it is quite a dark time to live,

even among the lower levels of society.

NARRATOR: With an estimated 70,000 deaths to his name,

was Henry VIII a hard ruler

at a time of bitter internal conflict

and religious strife, or was he just plain bad?

How will the sands of time treat this killer king's legacy?

- I think it's arguable that Henry VIII

is one of the people responsible

for the most deaths in English history. Certainly,

no other English king was ever responsible

for executing two wives.

When we look at his record of the killings during his reign,

he is a serial killer. I don't think it's going too far to say that.

- My interpretation of Henry VIII is one of purely bad.

He has a psychopathic potential disposition, that's clear.

And it's a disposition that he chooses to fully express,

purely because he can, in the acts of sadism

that he commits in his later life that still shock us

down the centuries later.

- Obviously, you need to be able to think

to know what you're doing is wrong.

So the fact that Henry became more and more bloody and violent,

and paranoid and irrational,

it would have been consistent with his brain deteriorating.

So I think it would be unfair to call him a killer king.

He was a good person who became a killer

due to circumstances beyond his control.

- Of course, Henry VIII was a monarch,

so no-one was ever going to bring him to account or to trial.

But today, if he was hauled before a tribunal,

I think he would undoubtedly be charged with murder.

And I think it's highly likely he would be convicted.

(pensive electronic music)

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