4th September 2015
The Historical Writers Association surveyed a selection of historical writers to find their pick for the worst monarch in history – and the crown goes to Henry VIII. I'm rather inclined to agree. He's been regarded, until quite recently, as a sort of Falstaff figure – fat and with marital problems – but as I have worked on his life from his youth as a golden boy to his corrupt and sick old age I think we have to take seriously his moral decline. When he defeated the Pilgrimage of Grace – which I describe in The King's Curse – he offered a royal pardon to trick the rebels and then hanged them in their hundreds. In The Taming of the Queen I looked at his final expensive, unproductive war with France, and his dangerous bullying of his court and queen. The winner for best monarch was Elizabeth I, England's only unmarried queen. Do you agree? Any nominations to defeat Henry in the worst-monarch battle?
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/02/henry...
Image: Henry VIII c.1537–1547, after Hans Holbein the Younger's lost 1537 Whitehall Mural, Walker Art Gallery