Channel 4 - Henry VIII The Mind of a Tyrant (2009) Part 4 Tyrant 1533 -1547

Historian and broadcaster, Dr David Starkey, follows his acclaimed series Monarchy with this gripping portrait of England's best-known king. In 1509, Henry VIII's accession to the throne was greeted with wild rejoicing. Tall, athletic and handsome, he filled the nation with hope. Yet, by his death 38 years later, Henry VIII had earned the reputation of a tyrannical and ruthless monarch. Dr David Starkey reveals how this glamorous prince became the nation's most notorious tyrant. From the young man who became heir to the throne at the sudden death of his brother to his establishment of the Church of England and the bellicose quest to become a major player in Europe. The series reveals the truth of the King's relationships: the beautiful Anne Boleyn; the machiavellian Cardinal Wolsey; Thomas More, the lifelong friend he beheaded and, of course, the bloody cycle of marriage, divorce and execution. It tells of a ruthless King, infatuated with power, who released an orgy of iconoclasm and sadistic revenge on those who rebelled against him. This compelling series brings this fascinating monarch to vivid life, shows how he influence our very sense of identity and nationhood and tells one of the strangest and most dramatic stories in history.

Part 4: Tyrant 1533 -1547

The final programme in the series examines how Henry, having inherited a chronically weak English crown, forged it into an instrument of unprecedented power, and then wielded it to change forever the nature of England and the English. The courtiers who had helped Cromwell dispatch Anne Boleyn hoped that the schism with Rome would now be reversed. They were soon disappointed. The destruction of the monasteries proceeded apace, with the loot flowing into Henry's coffers. But such unprecedented actions caused isolation abroad and rebellion at home. Henry's response showed him at his most duplicitous and ruthless. He lured the rebels' leader to London with the promise of talks and then had him hung, drawn and quartered. Meanwhile, Henry's private life was hardly less turbulent. The death of Jane Seymour robbed him of someone he was genuinely fond of, and who had given him the male heir he craved. His marriage to Katherine Howard briefly rekindled the flames of desire, but her adultery (real, this time) made her another victim of court intrigue. David Starkey's archival research has revealed the full story behind her tragic fate. But as Henry grew older, more ill and more dangerous to all around him, he was busy forging a fiercely independent England, where coastal fortifications and an expanding Tudor navy gave tangible expression to a new sense of national destiny.

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