A Tudor childhood

Press, 15 April 1978, Page 17

A Tudor childhood

The Making of Henry VIII. By Marie Louise Bruce. Collins. 232 pp. Notes, bibliography and index. $14.40. (Reviewed by Naylor Hillary) When Henrv VIII came to the English throne’in 1509 contemporaries greeted the event as the dawn of a new and glorious age. The 17-year-old king was handsome, sweet-tempered, religious, a patron of learning and a lover of peace. Lord Mountjoy wrote to the scnoiar Erasmus: “The heavens laugh, the earth exalts, all things are full of milk and honey and of nectar. Our king desires virtue, glory immortality.”

Posterity judged quickly that Henry did not live up to his great promise. Martin Luther remarked that “Junker Heintz will be God and does whatever he lusts.” Sir Walter Raleigh wrote:

“If all the pictures and patterns of a merciless prince were lost in the world, they might all again be painted to the life out of the story of this king.” Henrv changed the face of England; he transformed its religion and its legal system: he executed wives and friends: he received the title "Defender of the Faith” from the Pope, but he studied and practised the new arts of amoral government spelt out by Machiavelli.

Biographies of kings usually deal largely with their reign. This author de-ided the real making of Henry VIII be t an much earlier, in his hereditary and his upbringing. And so she has written a most unusual history — the tale of a Tudor childhood. The author attempts to explain Henry’s adult behaviour in terms of his childhood experiences. Her book begins with an account of Henry’s birth in 1491 and of the people who were most to shape his childhood: the cool, autocratic Henry VII who was determined to leave a stable kingdom to his heir: the kind b it passive Elizabeth, mother of Henry VIII, who seldom saw her son: ihe intense, intellectual schemer. Margaret Beaufort, grandmother to Prince Henry.

To these might be added Henry’s elder brother Arthur, intended to be king, first husband of Catherine of Aragon, and a constant reminder in

Henry’s early years that, at best, he could only hope to fill second place in the realm. And Catherine of Aragon herself, widowed while little more than a child, kept in poverty by Henry VII, and worshipped from afar, almost as a substitute mother, by young Prince Henry, who was five years her junior. Prince Arthur died shortly after marriage, pretenders to the throne were ruthlessly eliminated by Henry VII, and at the age of 17 Prince Henry found himself king. Almost his first act was to many toe unfortunate Catherine. Marie Louise Bruce ends her account at this point. She has written a prologue to Henry VIII’s reign, not an account Of his later dark and daring deeds. As well as being a thoroughly exciting history, well told, this book on the childhood of a prince is a mine of information on sixteenthcentury education, morals, manners, dress, toys and sports. Henry VIII will never look quite the same again after reading it.