by Henry VIII
I then petitioned the Pope myself and when that didn’t work, I simply did my own Brexit. Told the Pope and his entire network of lies and Popish poopery to piss off.
In February 1531 with the rubber stamp of the English clergy and later by Parliament – thanks, chaps – I named myself head of what I wanted to call The Glorious Church of the Super Amazing and Wonderfully Virile Henry VIII, but was talked out of it. For the best, I suppose. Eventually it became the succinctly named Church of England. I sent around a very impressive piece of vellum that all monks, priests, abbots, and holy persons needed to sign that agreed with me on my being in charge of this new religion. And being the person who got to wear all the related sparkly bits and the special hat and so forth. Those who did not sign were presented with a menu of options, the most pleasant of which was starving to death in prison. The other choices got exceedingly nasty from there. I was forced to behead non-signers including Thomas More and Bishop Fisher to finally win their support.
Well, it’s human nature. People hate change. Even good change. So the Unleash Your Inner Tudor leadership hack embedded here is if you want to get loads of people readily joining you on any journey – and not fighting you at every turn – it’s best to have a handful of them hanged, drawn, and quartered. #InspiredLeadership
To complete this church business, I needed a “Primate of All England,” a title which makes plain my intention to install a monkey as Archbishop. When I couldn’t find a suitable creature, I gave the job to the Boleyn family chaplain Thomas Cranmer, who worked out nicely.
I then began to plunder all of the Pope’s property in England enriching myself and the crown with lands, gold, silver, gems and other nice bits. And then I began to purge the land of Papists by having them burnt.
At last, all was in readiness to have sex with Anne.
What We Have Learnt in Chapter 21
- Only the best and brightest turn a break-up into a moneymaking venture
- Don’t call it plunder, call it reformation
- It might be a red flag if you have to work this hard to get a lady to have sex with you #JustSaying
Chapter 22
On Finally Making Rumpity Pumpity With Anne Boleyn Following a Wait of Six Years
Tudor Love Tip: Good things do come to those who wait. But unbelievably horrible things come to those who wait, too. So, waiting is not a guarantee of quality.
Now that I was supreme head of my own church and could clear my name and hers of sin, Anne and I were free at last to pound our pancetta.
And so it was whilst on holiday/a business trip in France, in the town of Calais in 27 October 1532, we got drunk and did it.
Of course it was in every way different from any noodle-doodle you have known. I am king, after all.
Oh, bloody hell, who am I fooling? How was sex with Anne Boleyn, you ask? With all those spidery elbows and slashing shoulder blades and those collar bones smashing me in the face like bronze knuckles? I swear by Christ she had more bones than the average person and all of them sharpened at the tips. It was like trying to impregnate a box of pencils.
She, on the other hand, clearly thought she was in the midst of carrying out a thing of universe-shattering magnificence – throwing her arms about and squishing her eyes shut so the skin went micro-wrinkled and white and barring her overlong teeth. Painful. Like watching Richard III think.
At one point I am certain Anne was on the point of bursting into song and she looked at me in a side-eye, checking-the-temperature-of-the-room sort of way and I just said, “Don’t”. I would have involuntarily thrown her through the window. Anyway, it ended. Thank merciful God.
What do you do when you’ve finally gone all the way and it’s simply a two or three on the one-to-ten scale? Maybe a four. If you’re me at this point in my life you hang on to a tiny spark of hope, a shiny bit of youthful optimism deep down in your soul, shining like a candle in the wind, thinking, “Perhaps this will get better … surely this is not the Promised Land sweet Anne has promised lo these many years whilst I was tortured by thirst and hunger in the sexual wilderness”.
But after six years, I may have built up too much resentment, bewilderment, and outrage to find Anne’s booty pleasures enjoyable. After all, what sort of person could have sex and doesn’t? Who allows even a single day of life pass without choosing joy?
As I see it, we each of us have two trees that grow within the gardens of our lives. One is the Tree of Joy heavy with its succulent, honeyed fruits of pleasure dangling from its aromatic branches. The fruit includes binge eating, seducing ladies, buying new clothes, invading France, wine, jumping up and down on one’s bed, roast beef, cheese, reckless pie eating, plundering monasteries, writing amazing poetry, more pies, and yes obviously sex, etc.
Then there is the Tree of the Mundane, which has no fruit at all, only a scattering of dry, shriveled leaves. These limp, tasteless leaves include toil, not eating cake on a daily basis, getting out of bed too early, not having a mistress, dreary hours not shouting at people who ought to be shouted at, having your children around all the time, accounting, and not having sex.
Anne had for the past six years chosen the Tree of the Mundane over the Tree of Joy even while the Tree of Joy stood well within her reach.
Who does that?
It’s clearly someone who does not understand the shortness of life on this Earth (and in the 16th century this was very brief indeed). Or it’s someone for whom having a good time is not their idea of having a good time.
In addition, there is a difference between not having sex and withholding sex. Not having sex is typically the result of lack of opportunity. Or a health issue such as a bad back or a dodgy sausage. Withholding sex, such as Anne had done, means that one is perfectly capable of it but for a variety of ugly and indecipherable reasons elects not to.
Six years of being denied a thing easily given builds up quite a sizeable wave of dark thoughts within one.
Beyond all that, I was now half a dozen years older and my loin-related tastes had changed. I found myself attracted to women with a good deal more pudding on their bones.
And yet, there was still this poisonous optimism inside me.
“Give it a go,” I thought.
And so I did what you do when you’re filled with sunniness and good thoughts, you go at it a few more times, in a few more places, until you realise that no, there is no reason to hope. None. It’s going to be bad and that’s all. You’ve waited six years expecting the moon and instead you’ve received a deformed octopus wrapped in a dirty napkin. And in spite of all evidence that this will not go well, you do still have a stubborn bit of sanguinity left within and you marry her anyway. You did start a church for her after all. You suffer through the daily trials of a soul-wasting relationship, your ex-wife dies and the doctors do an autopsy and find that her heart is black as tar (like I didn’t already know that) – not making this up – you gaze across the supper table at your one legit heir, a girl named Mary who seems not to like you one tiny bit, and yet still you’re too kind and sensitive and filled with poetry and predictability to know quite what to do. And then God steps in once again to give you just what you need – as a husband, father, boyfriend, and tyrant. And he does it at a joust.
What We Have Learnt in Chapter 22
- Six years is too long by about 28 centuries
- Acting like you’re amazing in bed and being amazing in bed are not the same
- As my dad once said “Patience is a virtue that will always hurt you”
- Choose joy
Expand Your Relationship Vocabulary, Enlarge Your World
Sistress:
When your wife’s sister is your mistress
Chapter 23
Leadership is inside you waiting to be unleashed through the magic of violent injury
Tudor Leadership Tip: There is the sort of leadership that relies on terrifying everyone and there’s the other kind. Can’t think what that one is.
God ha
s a plan for each of us.
His plan for you is, I’m going to guess, that you breed, pay your taxes in full, and work toward the interests of the ruling class in your principality or region.
In the case of monarchs, such as my glorious self, God sets a rather high bar. Like you, we are indeed intended to procreate. But unlike you we are also meant to look impressive and august on a balcony, tell people what to do, invade, plunder, smash bits of foreign countries, and look pretty incredible in gold underpants. In my case, however, God had set that already high monarchical bar miles higher. I simply couldn’t comprehend in my first 30 years of life quite how high it was, that it was in fact a higher height than any previous king had been asked to even dream of reaching. Eventually I would learn that the Almighty, in his wisdom and majesty, wished for me to become the obese, gouty, megalomaniacal, merciless tyrant that England, verily, that history itself, and various historians who host television shows, needed. And I clearly wasn’t getting there unaided.
The Lord’s gentle guidance first came to me in 1524 when at a jousting tournament I failed to lower the visor on my helmet and charged full speed at my opponent's lance taking the wooden tip straight to the face.
I recall lying amid sawdust and horse turds wondering what message our sweet Saviour and/or his dad was trying to send.
That didn’t do the trick so a year later, I was knocked senseless when I landed head first in a brook whilst trying to vault across it with a pole. As one does.
On that occasion I was rather upside down with a great wound shouting “Speak to me oh Lord for I am listening!” I was indeed trying to hear our Lord’s sweet whisperings but these kinds of events tend to stir up quite a lot of noise – footmen shouting for help, horses hooves from in-coming nobles, various babblings, cries of “The King Liveth!” and blah, blah, blah.
Still not quite picking up what Jehovah was laying down, a third incident occurred at a jousting tournament at Greenwich Palace on 24 January 1536 when I was on the receiving end of an incoming lance and was hurled from my horse in full armour. The horse, also in full armour, landed on top of me. I lay as one dead and everyone freaked out, believing I had gone off prematurely to be with Jesus.
This was God working his miraculous ways.
In my other-worldly, head-wounded semi-consciousness I could at last hear the voice of God and I felt cuddled and cradled by the singing of his dreamy, sweet song, “Lights will guide you home … And ignite your bones … and I will try to fix you …” (The words were later co-opted by Coldplay to lesser effect.)
When I blurred back to this world – to the astonishment of all who had already begun to fight about who would be the next king – I awoke to a completely different perspective on everything, thanks to Jehovah updating my brain’s operating system.
For the whole of my kingship I had been known for being intelligent, fun-loving, and even-tempered. I had been the cheerfully benign boss, the cool dad, the teacher who is more friend than adult and who buys you cannabis, takes you camping, and then does not try to have sex with you. And what had that gotten me?
NOT!
BLOODY!
MUCH!!
I’d been misled by one Pope about the validity of my first marriage and greatly arsed about by another regarding my urgently needed annulment. I’d been annoyed, deceived, and endlessly harried by France and Spain. I’d gotten nothing but mischief and knavery from Scotland.
I’d enjoyed historic and histrionic levels of disenchantment from one of the finest uteruses in all Europe (or thus it had been advertised by Spain) and now the English lady I’d taken up with was pulling me by the hand down a narrow, thorny path to a damp, melancholy little village, where our future together dwelt, called Sadness-Upon-Shittington.
As I drifted back into consciousness I was not filled with the wonderment of being alive, but instead was bursting with the idea that to achieve my dreams from this moment forward I would need to sprout wings and power myself into the heavenly heavens by carbo-loading a new fuel called rage.
To conquer the dragon, one must become the fucking dragon.
As I recuperated in my bedchamber I began to try out the new tools for leadership that God had placed before me like so many prezzies on Christmas morning. These included explosive anger, implacable ill-temper, and irrational demands whilst dancing about from being impulsive to aggressive to impulsive again to neurotic to full-throttle bonkers. I even began to try them on in combination.
I would begin the day, for example, by shouting instructions to the Privy Council about one direction to head with Spain, watch them fly about executing my orders and then after lunch I would feign a complete change of heart and totally re-write my foreign policy. I would slather thick, delicious icing on the day by launching into an incandescent tirade about the foolhardy work they had done in the morning as though I’d utterly forgotten the orders I had given at breakfast. Haha.
Did I become a giant turd? A twat? A tyrant. Oh sweet Lord I did, I did, I did. And at the same time, I became effective. I got things done. Because one did not simply follow my orders, one praised them, licked their boots, nibbled lovingly at their necks and made sweet love to them – and repeated this performance when I called for orders that were utterly contradictory.
Leadership, in short, is about being volatile and scary and frankly, the more you have the ability to have people legally killed, the more they’ll listen to you, do whatever you say, meet deadlines, and say nice things to you.
What We Have Learnt in Chapter 23
- Those who you, sweet reader, see as evil despots see themselves as national heroes beset on all sides by traitors, time-wasters, numbskulls, and idiots
- If you’re not shouting, they’re not hearing you
- Being greedy, sex-addicted, sociopathic, and megalomaniacal are nothing more than basic leadership skills
- Brain trauma your way to success
Tudor Trust Exercise
Team-building is important in any era. A great exercise is to choose a partner and fall backward into their arms, crushing them under your weight.
Chapter 24
The Queen is Dead, Long Live the Queen
Tudor Love Tip: Treat your love life as a business. Have goals, strategies, and dangle the promise of sex with the boss as a means of advancement.
It was a new era; I was at long last on the path to perfection and there were problems to get sorted. Number one on my list: “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Anne Boleyn?” Which didn’t quite work as a song. Nor as a marriage.
Anne had managed, like her predecessor Catherine, to propel just one baby from her lady blowpipe and it was a girl – did I say it was a girl? It was a girl. Who we named Elizabeth and for whom I saw little future beyond marrying off to secure a fishing treaty with Norway.
So here I was in 1536 at the age of 45 and had not crossed a rather important item – in fact THE important item – off the list of king things I must do. You lot in your shiny wifi era think nothing of a successful man starting a family in his mid-40s. Well, dear modern persons, I faced very different facts.
My dad, Henry VII, who was careful about diet and exercise was dead at the age of 52. Overall the average lifespan of the King Henrys of England was 52.7 years, making dad distressingly ordinary. The average age of a King Edward was 45.4 years whilst that of a Richard was a paltry 34 (some of that skewed by my dad’s handiwork at Bosworth!!)
If we go by the Henry averages, I had at best seven years to sire man babies in order to keep England glorious via more Tudor throne magic.
I was under pressure – heir pressure, one might say – as never before. And Anne Boleyn’s hapless va-jay-jay wasn’t helping.
What now?
If you picture me as quite flummoxed and rather at a loss and sitting by a Hampton Court window staring out at grey Surrey clouds with tears in my eyes, then perhaps you should begin this book again because a Tudor always learns from his missteps.
Let’s begin w
ith ye olde traditional Tudor saying, “Give me a girl heir once, shame on you, give me a girl heir twice, shame on me.”
I had learnt brilliantly from the debacle of my first marriage and back in Chapter 21 had applied that learning to the second – but had done so in secret! (Though I sometimes shouted about it very loudly in my head.)
Now I found myself searching madly for that very secret to my possible escape amongst my books and papers, where I was sure I’d hidden it.
I tore through my personal effects until I found a small envelope closed with a wax seal with my face and some nice words in Latin. On the outside of the envelope I had written in quill, “In Case Things Go Badly with Anne B”.
I ripped it open and inside was written a short verse from the Bible:
– which I had jotted down and tucked away a full eight years prior
– because I am a brilliant strategist
– as we shall see!
Over the course of the next few days and weeks, I discussed this verse with any number of learned men, religious types just curious, obviously, if there were any possibility my marriage with Anne was as cursed as had been my marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
Turns out there was – according to the non-paid, non-compelled consensus. And my escape route opened before me.
To fully explore this brilliant marriage hack, we must journey back in time to 1528.
I had written to Pope Clement VII just to make sure it’d be ok Bible-wise and Jesus-wise to marry a woman (Anne) who was the sister of one of my mistresses (Mary)? I mean, should I ever want to. Not saying I’m going to. I was married already, naturellement. Just on the off chance, etc.