Read Online THE WORLD'S MOST EVIL PEOPLE (True Crime) by Rodney Castleden - Free Book Online
Authors: Rodney Castleden
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supplied a Holbein portrait of Anne of Cleves that was far too flattering. Henry rashly agreed to marry Anne on the strength of the portrait, but found the reality unattractive. She was ‘not as reported’, he said; her breasts sagged, and she seemed generally in poor physical condition. Cromwell had made many enemies while in office, and those enemies were only too glad to exploit the king’s indignation at having to marry an ugly woman. This was the opportunity they had been waiting for. The Duke of Norfolk accused Thomas Cromwell of high treason and Cromwell was executed without trial in 1540.
Henry then divorced Anne, and next married Katherine Howard, who unwisely had affairs during her short marriage to the King, was found out and duly executed. In 1543, Henry married for the sixth time. Catherine Parr was lucky to survive Henry.
In Henry VIII, we have a different kind of figure, someone who was regarded by many of his contemporaries, the ordinary people of Tudor England, as an admirable king. He certainly looked the part. He was a fine big regal-looking man, who knew how to behave in public, and knew how to dress. We have inherited a view of Henry as a jolly, merry monarch with an eye for the ladies. He was scandalous certainly, but in a roguish, raffish, forgivable sort of way. The occasional beheadings we shrug off as lapses, and the monasteries – well, they were dens of corruption anyway and it was high time they went. The Hollywood and TV treatments of Henry have laundered his image several times over to give us the ultimate colourful costume drama king.
But Henry VIII was a very expensive king, extorting a great deal from his people in the form of taxes. He was also an asset-stripper of the worst kind. The elaborate infrastructure of the Church with its religious houses, hospitals, abbeys and priories had been built up and developed over a period of a thousand years. It had been a major force for good, in effect supplying social services for the poor and needy, offering many kinds of work, offering education for all, offering a route out of the poverty trap for aspiring young men and women, however low-born, and maintaining some sort of order even through major civil wars like the Stephen and Matilda War and the Wars of the Roses. Henry ripped all that apart for the sake of the wealth invested in it, and replaced it with – nothing. It is hard to imagine the distress that many ordinary people must have felt when they heard that the Pope was no longer the head of their Church, and when they saw the great and beautiful abbeys, like Glastonbury, Tintern and Rievaulx, torn down. Because of his pre-occupations with his foreign policy, his marriages, his acquisition of wealth, he also turned a blind eye to what was happening in the country, where unscrupulous ‘improving’ landowners turned people off the land by the thousand, disinheriting them and turning them into ‘vagabonds’ who could be disowned by any village they came to. With all this needless cruelty – evil by negligence – came the drift of country people into the towns hoping to find work. Henry knew these things were happening but did nothing at all to stop the landowners who were behind them.
As for the fat, jovial, lovable image – it is worth remembering that as he lay dying the news came that his life-long rival, the strikingly similar Francis I of France, was dead. And Henry VIII’s reaction to this news was – peals of laughter.
Suleiman The Magnificent
(1494–1466)
Suleiman I (or Soliman I) was the son of Selim I, and he became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire on his father’s death in 1520.
Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled from 1520 until his death in 1566, was the last great Sultan. In an age that produced many great and spectacular absolute monarchs in Europe and Asia, he was among the greatest. He was lucky to inherit a well-organized country, with full coffers and a well-disciplined army. To these advantages he
Henry then divorced Anne, and next married Katherine Howard, who unwisely had affairs during her short marriage to the King, was found out and duly executed. In 1543, Henry married for the sixth time. Catherine Parr was lucky to survive Henry.
In Henry VIII, we have a different kind of figure, someone who was regarded by many of his contemporaries, the ordinary people of Tudor England, as an admirable king. He certainly looked the part. He was a fine big regal-looking man, who knew how to behave in public, and knew how to dress. We have inherited a view of Henry as a jolly, merry monarch with an eye for the ladies. He was scandalous certainly, but in a roguish, raffish, forgivable sort of way. The occasional beheadings we shrug off as lapses, and the monasteries – well, they were dens of corruption anyway and it was high time they went. The Hollywood and TV treatments of Henry have laundered his image several times over to give us the ultimate colourful costume drama king.
But Henry VIII was a very expensive king, extorting a great deal from his people in the form of taxes. He was also an asset-stripper of the worst kind. The elaborate infrastructure of the Church with its religious houses, hospitals, abbeys and priories had been built up and developed over a period of a thousand years. It had been a major force for good, in effect supplying social services for the poor and needy, offering many kinds of work, offering education for all, offering a route out of the poverty trap for aspiring young men and women, however low-born, and maintaining some sort of order even through major civil wars like the Stephen and Matilda War and the Wars of the Roses. Henry ripped all that apart for the sake of the wealth invested in it, and replaced it with – nothing. It is hard to imagine the distress that many ordinary people must have felt when they heard that the Pope was no longer the head of their Church, and when they saw the great and beautiful abbeys, like Glastonbury, Tintern and Rievaulx, torn down. Because of his pre-occupations with his foreign policy, his marriages, his acquisition of wealth, he also turned a blind eye to what was happening in the country, where unscrupulous ‘improving’ landowners turned people off the land by the thousand, disinheriting them and turning them into ‘vagabonds’ who could be disowned by any village they came to. With all this needless cruelty – evil by negligence – came the drift of country people into the towns hoping to find work. Henry knew these things were happening but did nothing at all to stop the landowners who were behind them.
As for the fat, jovial, lovable image – it is worth remembering that as he lay dying the news came that his life-long rival, the strikingly similar Francis I of France, was dead. And Henry VIII’s reaction to this news was – peals of laughter.
Suleiman The Magnificent
(1494–1466)
Suleiman I (or Soliman I) was the son of Selim I, and he became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire on his father’s death in 1520.
Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled from 1520 until his death in 1566, was the last great Sultan. In an age that produced many great and spectacular absolute monarchs in Europe and Asia, he was among the greatest. He was lucky to inherit a well-organized country, with full coffers and a well-disciplined army. To these advantages he
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