Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Born as the eldest son of the Duke of Norfolk, Henry Howard was privileged from the very beginning. Actually, Henry Howard was a descendant of kings on both his maternal and paternal side: King Edward I on his father's side and King Edward III on his mother's side. He was born in the time around 1517.

Henry Howard was placed at Windsor with Henry Fitzroy (the illegitimate son of Henry VIII) and became quite close friends with the King's bastard son. Henry inherited his father and grand-father's military skills and was renown as a very good soldier who became "Lieutenant General of the King's Land and Sea".
But the privileged Henry Howard had a temper. Once he was arrested for striking another courtier and was arrested again after having walked through a town, breaking the windows of the sleeping inhabitants. But every time King Henry VIII came to his rescue.

How No Age Is Content

This poem is written by Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey who was the last to be executed during the reign of Henry VIII.

Laid in my quiet bed, in study as I were,

I saw within my troubled head a heap of thoughts appear

And every thought did show so lively in my eyes

That now I sighed and then I smiled as cause of thought arise

I saw the little boy, in thought how oft that he;

Did wish of God to'scape the rod, a tall young man to be;

The young man eke that feels his bones with pains oppressed

How he would be a rich old man to live and lie at rest;

The rich old man that sees his end draw on so sore,

How he would be a boy again to live so much the more.

Whereat full oft I smiled to see how all these three,

From boy to man, from man to boy would chop and change degree;

And musing thus, I think the case is very strange

That man from wealth to live in woe doth ever seek to change.

Thus thoughtful as I lay, I saw my withered skin

How it doth show my dented chaws, the flesh was worn so thin,

And eke my toothless chaps, the gates of my right way;

That opes and shuts as I do speak, do thus unto me speak:

"Thy white and hoarish hairs, the messengers of age,

That show, like lines of true belief, that this life doth assuage,

Bid thee lay hand and feel them hanging on thy chin

They which do write two ages past, the third now coming in.

Hang up, therefore, the bit of thy young wanton time,

And thou that therein beaten art the happiest life define."

Whereat I sighed and said: "Farewell, my wonted joy.

Truss up thy pack and trudge from me to every little boy

And tell thus from me their time most happy is,

If to their time they reason had to know the truth of this."

Did the King have syphilis?

One of the longest-lasting rumours that has surrounded Henry VIII for centuries is related to his physique. Because did the infamous womanising King have syphilis?
Since the King was notorious - even at his own day - for his many casual liaisons with many different ladies it is possible that he had caught a disease. The rumour even states that Henry's syphilis may have caused the miscarriages of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn and that the ulcer that plagued Henry throughout his life was a sign of the STD.

However, today the theory is no longer considered to be likely mainly because of the lack of evidences to support the statement. Also, syphilis was a well-known disease in the Tudor age and even if the King had had it, there would have been a cure.

So this is a rumour that we can quite safely say is untrue.

Henry VIII - Quotes

Despite the notorious life of Henry VIII, not many of his quotes have survived but those that have tells us a thing or two about the King's personality:

The Boleyn Cup & Table Fountain

The Boleyn Cup belonged to Anne Boleyn herself and carries Anne's falcon (with it's crown) placed on a tree stump. The cup was made out of silver and gilt. After being in Anne's possession it actually went on to her daughter, Elizabeth I, which is special when you consider how few of her disgraced mother's possessions Elizabeth received. Elizabeth gave it as a gift to her physician, who decided to give it to the church. Today, the cup is still in the possession of the church and can be seen at St. John the Baptist Parish Church in Gloucestershire.

The drawing is of a table fountain designed by Hans Holbein and was designated as a New Year's present to Henry VIII from Anne Boleyn in 1534. Her falcon is engraved into the fountain - one can only imagine what Henry did with it after Anne's execution.

The Ugly Truth?

This is an engraving of Henry VIII not longer before he died. When this was made the King was married to Catherine Parr. Does the picture show the truth? If that is the case then Holbein obviously beautified the ageing King in his last portraits of him

Henry's Medical Paranoia

Henry VIII was extremely paranoid on many different areas and one of them was medicine. He distrusted his doctors and during his reign, he began mixing his own treatments which included a cure for ulcers - probably inspired by the nasty ulcer he had on his leg. The King even used the prescriptions he came up with for himself.

Henry was very afraid of illnesses and every time there was an outbreak of plague, sweating sickness or the like, the King would run away till one of his more secluded castles where he felt safe from the horrible diseases.

Henry had a fear of germs which led to another point that separated the king from the rest of his court: he enjoyed regular bathing and was - unlike his fellow Tudors - convinced that bathing was an effective way of keeping away the germs he feared so much. His fear of diseases where transferred to his son, Edward. When Henry finally had the son he had wished for, the King ordered that the child's apartments should be scrubbed down regularly and the boy himself was to be washed on a daily basis. Perhaps this overly attention to cleanliness combined with a world that did not share his point of view on this point and was notoriously filthy, a part of the reason for why Edward would be so sensitive to influenza later on in life. 

Henry VIII's Astronomical Clock

King Henry VIII ordered this astronomical clock for the decoration of Hampton Court Palace in around 1540 - right after Cardinal Wolsey had fallen from power and Henry VIII began to rebuild his newly-acquired palace. Within the clock there are three bells of which the oldest is from 1478. The clock is very complicated compared to the clocks we use today and it shows:

• The hour 
• The month
• Day of the month
• The position of the sun in the ecliptic
• The twelve signs of the zodiac
• The number of days that have elapsed since the beginning of the year
• The phases of the moon
• It's age in days
• The hour in which it crosses the meridian which means that it tells the time of high time in London

Since Henry VIII often used to travel by barge to Hampton Court Palace it was practical to know when it was high tide and thereby the best time to travel by. 

The earth is centred in the middle of the clock because the clock was made before Copernicus and Galileo began to doubt the heliocentric world-image (where the sun is the centre of the universe). The minor circle is the sun that was said to circle around the earth at the time. 

The King's 26 Ladies

After the discovery of Katherine Howard's adultery, Henry VIII was furious and embarrassed. He felt that Katherine had made a fool of him by cheating on him not only with a man he liked but with the knowledge of other courtiers! So at the end of January, while Katherine awaited her execution, the King decided to cheer himself up.

The King decided to throw a ball - inviting only twenty-six ladies to dine with him and thirty-five to dine at a table near by. No gentlemen were admitted to the ball. Even at the time it caused quite a scandal.

It can only be assumed that Henry wanted to surround himself with beautiful women to make himself forget the embarrassment he felt over the one he had locked up in the Tower. Since Katherine had always helped him to feel young again, it can be assumed that the elderly King wanted young and beautiful women (no less than 61 in total) could help to restore that feeling of youth - and in that case it would only be annoying to be distracted by the presence of other men.

The dinner party as it was depicted in "The Tudors"

Henry's Woman in the Woods

During Henry VIII's reign a strange rumour started about the King. Based on a complaint made by a William Webbe that claimed that he and his mistress had come across the King while riding near Eltham Palace in the middle of the day. The King allegedly stopped and immediately liked the woman that was travelling with William Webbe. The King then pulled her onto his horse and rode off, leaving William Webbe behind. Apparently Henry took the woman the Eltham Palace and "ravished her" and kept her for some time there with him.

Allegedly the story took place in the late 1530's after Anne Boleyn's execution. The incident is portrayed in the show "The Tudors" but in the series it takes place during Henry's marriage to Anne.