HENRY VIII WAS A BAD MAN. I like to post about subjects about which over the last fifty years either received opinion or my opinion has changed—or both. An example of my changing my opinion that came early occurred in the seventies when I read Lacey Baldwin Smith’s biography of Henry VIII and realized that my history courses had not told me what a monster he was. Henry’s reputation is still doing better than it should. I just came across these observations by J D Cooper in a review in the TLS (September 12):
“Henry VIII was self-righteous, inconsistent, perennially suspicious, monstrously egotistical. The academics who work on him tend to dislike him.”
Cooper then asked the question that I have been wondering about for some forty years: “Why, then, does Henry obstinately remain the subject of such public admiration?”
Is he admired or is he merely an object of fascination?
The Id successfully getting its way more often than is generally
experienced? Larger than life, and unaccountable. Considering, though,
how events in life were often interpreted back then as signs from God, you would think his having to carry around one putrefying leg might have been seen
as a major symbol of the conduct of his life.