Henry VIII's Jousting Accident Probably Didn't Change his Personality

People citing this supposed jousting accident as changing Henry VIII into a tyrant is one of my PET peeves, y’all. It’s what everyone who knows just enough Tudor history to be dangerous and also WRONG cites. I originally wrote this as a long response to a comment referencing the accident on Ask Historians, but since I’m basically correcting someone with this entire thing, I won’t post a direct link to it. I’ll share it with you if you really want though.

Detail showing Henry VIII jousting in front of Katherine of Aragon, College of Arms (Westminster Tournament Roll), by Thomas Wriothesley, 1511

So about that jousting accident. The story of that accident actually comes from only three sources of various trustworthiness. This accident isn't mentioned elsewhere, although you would think that an accident resulting in the king losing consciousness for a long period of time would have definitely been reported by many many people.

• Eustace Chapuys, the famous ambassador of Charles V, reported in January 1536, "On the eve of the Conversion of St. Paul, the King being mounted on a great horse to run at the lists, both fell so heavily that every one thought it a miracle he was not killed, but he sustained no injury."

• The English chronicler Charles Wriothesley wrote, " …it was said she [Anne] tooke a fright, for the King ranne that tyme at the ring and had a fall from his horse, but he had no hurt; and she tooke such a fright with all that it caused her to fall in travaile, and so was delivered afore her full tyme, which was a great discompfort to all this realme.”

• In March 1536, Dr Pedro Ortiz, Charles V's ambassador in /Rome/ (not England), said "Has received a letter from the ambassador in France, dated 15 Feb....The French king said that the king of England had fallen from his horse, and been for two hours without speaking. “La Ana” was so upset that she miscarried of a son."

(Thanks to the brilliant Anne Boleyn files blog for compiling these sources so well - https://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/24-january-1536-serious-jousting-accident-henry-viii/ )

So as you can see, the sources in England at the time of the incident said that it was a very hard fall but that Henry VIII was in fact, not injured. Although Wriothesley might have glossed over an injury to the king's head, Chapuys certainly had a vested interest in conveying completely accurate information to the emperor - so we can trust that his reports of "no injury" are likely to be true. The only source that claimed that the king didn't speak for two hours after his accident was a man who had heard the information second or third hand and was in a completely different country at the time.

It does appear that this jousting accident was bad enough to burst an earlier leg ulcer, leaving him with lasting, constant pain in both of his legs for the rest of his life. This likely made him very cranky. But there is no sign that he actually suffered from any brain injury.

In addition, although people DO often cite this as the source of his "changing personality," in fact, there are actually numerous examples of Henry VIII’s brutality before 1536 as well.

Specific incidents indicating his brutality prior to this:

• Shortly after taking the throne, Henry VIII executed Edmund Dudley and Sir Richard Empson for "constructive treason" in their financial dealings for the previous king, even though both men had just been doing the bidding of his father Henry VII.

• He brought down Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, a man who essentially ran the country for him from 1515-1529, just because he couldn't convince the Pope to give him an annulment. Wolsey was stripped of his government office and all his property and was later arrested for treason, but became ill and died in November 1530 before he could be tried. He reputedly said " if I had served God as diligently as I have done the King, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs."

• He had Thomas More, his former chancellor and a man who had worked closely with him since 1517, executed in 1535 for refusing to sign the Oath of Succession which repudiated the authority of the Pope (and outlined the new line of succession, which he did not object to).

• He treated Catherine of Aragon, his companion of 21 years, shamefully for refusing to accept the invalidity of their marriage. After she was banished from court in the summer of 1531, Catherine was moved from estate to estate and forced to live in increasingly poor lodgings and with fewer and fewer servants. Her friends were not allowed to visit her and she was not allowed to see her daughter for the last 4-5 years of her life, even when Mary was very sick and when Catherine herself was actively dying in January 1536. Mary was also forbidden from attending her mother's funeral.

To claim that his personality changed significantly after this supposed jousting accident is to ignore these many examples of his tyrant like behavior beforehand.

Musical Monarchs and Music Distribution During Renaissance Times

Pictured with Will Sommers- Royal MS. 2 A XVI, Henry VIII’s Psalter, British Library-London.

Apparently I answer Tudor and Shakespeare questions in way too much depth on Reddit for fun now. I’ve had trouble writing or revising fiction since the pandemic and self-isolation began, but researching and writing about history calms me down in a way nothing else does. And AskHistorians on Reddit has a wonderful supply of various questions that haven’t been answered yet.

So here ya go.

Original source of the question, which had several parts, indicated in italics below.

Christian and Muslim playing lutes in a miniature from Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso X

Was composition an expected skill of a monarch?

Musical knowledge, at least, was an important part of every noble's education in late medieval and renaissance England; royal children would have been given private lessons in various instruments, singing, and musical theory from a fairly early age. All of the Tudors, in particular, were interested in music and were highly trained. There are numerous records of Henry VII and his wife Elizabeth of York purchasing musical instruments both for themselves and their children. Henry VIII's children Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward were all described as excellent musicians during their lives. Mary and Edward were proficient at the lute, while Elizabeth was apparently quite good at playing the virginals.

At least two of the King Henrys were definitely musical composers, as we have some of their surviving music!

-There are two pieces in the collections of the British Library attributed to "Roy Henry"; scholars now seem to think this author was actually Henry V.

-Henry VIII's love of music stood out even among all the music lovers of his family. He played numerous instruments - at one point, records of his property showed that he owned 78 flutes, 76 recorders, 10 trombones, 14 trumpets, and 5 bagpipes! We also know that he played the organ, other keyboard instruments, viols, and lutes.

p 161 of the Old Hall Manuscript, ~1410-1420

The Henry VIII Songbook from ~1518.

"Twenty songs and thirteen instrumental pieces" attributed to "The Kynge H. viij" were compiled in the 1518 Henry VIII Songbook, which also included 76 pieces from other court musicians. Although some of the songs by Henry were arrangements of previously existing pieces, many of them are originals. 

However, despite popular belief, Henry VIII did NOT write Greensleeves, which was partly based off of a romanesca, an Italian style of musical composition that did not reach England until after Henry VIII's death. 

His daughter Elizabeth I was also a composer, although only one of her songs has survived to this day. This paper explores Henry and Elizabeth's compositions and musical education more in depth. 

Detail of the Ghent Altarpiece, Chapel Cathedral of Saint Bavo, Ghent, Belgium, Hubert and Jan Von Eyck

What's more, how did the song become popular? Did the King simply compose it, order every musician to have a copy of the manuscript and play it a certain amount of times a week? How did compositions from the royal court reach the masses?

- Although Henry had at least 60 musicians on his staff when he died, he couldn't possibly have ordered every musician in the country to play it, and the fact that not of all his songs were big hits seems to support this. Based on the information I've already shared about the Henry VIII songbook, it seems likely that "Pastime with Good Company" was distributed around the country in written form. There are records indicating that it was actually popular in Scotland and even long after his death.

Finally, say I am at the median of medieval class society - your average joe - what would have been my likely interaction with this song, if any? Was music mostly an indulgence of the elites at that time?

Everything I've read and referenced throughout this answer so far indicates that music was popular at every level of society, although the level of musical education and the specific form of the music, of course, varied. While "Pastimes" may have been performed in Henry VIII's court by 60 musicians and a choir in four part harmony, it was also likely performed in villages and at fairs by solo minstrels accompanied only by a single instrument or small groups.

In addition, under Henry VIII, with further development of the printing press, more and more printers began to publish music, often in the form of single sheet broadsides that could be sold very cheaply.

 (SIDENOTE: jstor is now offering free accounts that allow you to read up to 100 articles a month, due to COVID-19 shutting down all the libraries. This makes me SO HAPPY)

These single sheets continued in popularity through to Elizabethan times, and even make an appearance in Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale," Act 4, Scene 4 - in which the con artist/minstrel Autolycus touts various ridiculous sounding ballads for sale at a local festival.

And even apart from the printing press, people regularly wrote down any songs they liked and passed them around, much as you might have written down song lyrics to songs you heard on the radio so you and your friends could sing them together later back in the 80s or earlier. :)

FINAL NOTE: The best thing I learned while researching this whole answer was that Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey had rival in-house choirs and had a competition to see who had the best one. When Cardinal Wolsey’s choir won, he wisely “gave” one of his best singers to the king for his choir.

Hope y’all enjoyed that!

Did Henry VIII Ever Pull a "Cask of Amontillado" ?

(If you don’t understand the reference, go read Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”)

Apparently I answer Tudor and Shakespeare questions in way too much depth on Reddit for fun now. I’ve had trouble writing or revising fiction since the pandemic and self-isolation began, but researching and writing about history calms me down in a way nothing else does. And AskHistorians on Reddit has a wonderful supply of various questions that haven’t been answered yet.

This one was a particularly out of left field one but I had fun figuring out how to answer it!

So here ya go.

Original Question on r/AskHistorians - Is there any evidence of Henry VIII walling his enemies in buildings?

I've never heard of any English monarch pulling a "Cask of Amontillado" before, and I've been obsessively reading about English history between 1400-1620s for several years now. I dug into this a bit more to see if I could find an answer, but I could not find any sources that indicate that there have been any bodies buried in walls in England. However, as we all know, just because there isn't a source saying it DID happen, doesn't mean it definitely /didn't/ happen.

Human bodies are commonly found buried all around London and England in general, but honestly, that's true of most cities with at least a couple hundred years of history under their belts. It's just something that happens when a place has a very long history dating back before modern regulations on where bodies can be buried. If a house was unknowingly built on top of a burial site, the bodies may be found in the cellar You can read more about that in Smithsonian Magazine here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/dead-beneath-londons-streets-180970385/

I think it's very unlikely that Henry VIII in particular would have engaged in this practice though, for a few specific reasons:

Woodblock by Michael Wolgemut (1434 – 1519) of A Danse Macabre.

-Henry VIII was quite notoriously terrified of illness and sickness, and specifically the Sweating Sickness, likely due to his brother Arthur's death from it in 1502 ( https://www.history.com/news/the-mysterious-epidemic-that-terrified-henry-viii ). He studied medicine and tried to make his own potions to protect him against disease. (http://cms.herbalgram.org/herbalgram/issue42/article546.html?ts=1586114679&signature=51f561c9c7014194d1a849cdaac3de68 ) He also founded the Royal College of Physicians in 1518, made improvements to England's public health services, and ushered in legislation regulating the licensing of medical practitioners (Source: Publishing and Medicine in Early Modern England, by Elizabeth Lane Furdell).

At the time, the miasma theory was one of the dominant theories of disease, which basically said that bad smells cause disease ( http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/techniques/miasmatheory ); decaying corpses, rumor has it, smell pretty foul. Given his obsession with medicine and health, not just for himself, but also for his people, it seems unlikely that Henry would have approved of interring a body into the walls of any building or structure in England.

- He also was a very religious man, who heard mass 3-5 times a day and even wrote a theological argument against some of the teachings of Luther in 1521 ( https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/rulers/henry-viii.html ). There were numerous religious rites around death and dying, which require last rites, funeral rites, a vigil for the deceased, and ceremonies by the graveside. Thus, it also seems unlikely that a religious man like Henry VIII would have approved of such mistreatment of a body after death.

"How Accurate Were Shakespeare's Histories?"

Lithograph depicting a scene from Henry V.

Apparently I answer Tudor and Shakespeare questions in way too much depth on Reddit for fun now. I’ve had trouble writing or revising fiction since the pandemic and self-isolation began, but researching and writing about history calms me down in a way nothing else does. And AskHistorians on Reddit has a wonderful supply of various questions that haven’t been answered yet.

So here ya go.

Original source of the question

“How accurate were Shakespeare’s histories?”

Shakespeare's English history plays were based on a variety of historical sources, so he made /some/ attempt at having /some details/ correct, but he certainly also embellished some facts and highly simplified or deleted other facts to increase drama and simplify plot. His sources themselves were often very biased toward a version of history that supported Tudor legitimacy (although I'm unclear on whether that bias was widely known in Shakespeare's time or not). He also definitely shaded some facts and characters one way or another in order to keep the political leaders and censors of his time happy.

Important Sources for Shakespeare:

Basically every English history play - Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587 - 2nd edition) - This was a highly dramatized version of English history that is apparently just really inaccurate in a lot of places. I really need to read it someday. [also a source for Macbeth and King Lear]

Richard III - Thomas More's History of King Richard the Thirde (1513) - More's portrayal of Richard III as deformed, to the point of causing his mother a particularly troublesome birth, is probably the most famous bit that Shakespeare took from that source. In actuality, though Richard III's skeleton showed that though he had significant scoliosis and likely had visibly uneven shoulders, he wouldn't have had a hunchback.

Simplification -

Shakespeare HIGHLY simplified a lot of the events of the Wars of the Roses in his Henry VI Parts II and III. And honestly....you can't really blame him. I made a simplified timeline of the main events of the Wars of the Roses in November and it's still incredibly complicated (and honestly, it took forever). You can see it on my blog here - https://www.rachaeldickzen.com/blog/2019/11/11/the-wars-of-the-roses-a-timeline-of-main-events

Examples:

- In Henry VI Part 3, as soon as the Earl of Warwick discovers that his protege Edward IV had secretly married Lady Grey (Elizabeth Woodville) while Warwick is off trying to organize a French alliance and marriage for Edward IV, he joins forces with Margaret of Anjou, marries his daughter Anne to her son Edward, and frees Henry VII. This all happens in the space of two acts.

IN ACTUALITY, Edward married Elizabeth Woodville in 1464, but Warwick didn't rebel against Edward IV until April 1469 (rebellion #1). He joined forces with Edward's brother George, Duke of Clarence, and actually captured Edward IV, but eventually released him when it became clear that Parliament wouldn't cooperate with his plan to rule the country through Edward. He and George/Clarence rebelled AGAIN in July 1470 (rebellion #2), but this one didn’t go so well and their plan quickly falls apart. Warwick flees to France, plots with Margaret of Anjou (rebellion #3), marries his daughter to her son Edward, and goes back to England in October 1470 to put Henry VI back on the throne.

I mean. It's easy to understand why Shakespeare cut out a few rebellions there, just for the sake of time and to keep things from being super confusing.

- Richard III portrays Richard marrying Anne Neville immediately before the death of his brother Edward IV and becoming king not too long after. In actuality, Richard and Anne married in spring 1472, Edward IV didn't die until April 1483, and Richard III didn't become king until July 1483.

"Plucking the Red and White Roses in the Old Temple Gardens" after the original 1910 fresco painting by Henry Albert Payne (British, 1868-1940) based upon a scene in Shakespeare's Henry VI.

Dramatic alterations:

Various examples:

- Henry IV Part 1 - Sir Henry Percy (Hotspur) is portrayed as a young man the same age as Prince Hal, but in reality, Hotspur was actually three years older than Hal's dad Henry IV. This increases drama by placing pressure on Hal to behave more like the ambitious leader Hotspur.

- Henry V - In the play, it's stated that the English had fewer than 30 casualities while the French had 10,000! In actuality, about 112-600 of the English and about 6,000 of the French were killed.

- Henry VI Part 1 - The famed "roses" of the Wars of the Roses are a bit of a Tudor invention, which Shakespeare expanded on. Although the Yorks did use the white rose as a symbol from early on in the conflict, the Lancastrian red rose wasn't used until after Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. These two roses were combined to form the "Tudor Rose," a symbol of the unity of the two houses.

In addition, it also just isn't accurate to imagine that only one symbol was used by each noble family. Just among the York brothers alone, in addition to the white rose, Edward IV used the sun in splendor, a falcon, a black dragon, and a white lion (among several others), while Richard used a white boar and "a white falcon with a virgin's face holding a white rose." But again, portraying that in a play would make things very confusing (and Shakespeare’s histories are already confusing enough when it comes to names, since he often refers to characters by their titles, which often change!).

- Henry VI Part 2 - Richard of Gloucester (the eventual Richard III), and his brother Edward (eventual Edward IV) are both portrayed as adults at the time of the first battle of St. Albans. Historically, Richard was only 3 years old and Edward was only 13 when this battle occurred.

- In addition, a TON of the events in Richard III are inserted for dramatic effect. There is zero evidence that Richard killed his wife Anne (she probably died of tuberculosis), and he definitely didn't seduce her at the funeral for her father-in-law Henry VI. Henry VI died in May 1471 and Anne and Richard didn't marry until the spring of 1472. There's also good evidence that Richard and Anne actually really had a lovely romance; he was determined to marry her and may have rescued her from his brother Clarence's attempts to hide her away. Anne and Richard were crowned in the first joint coronation in almost 200 years. But this doesn’t suit the Tudor propaganda need to portray Richard as a villain.

George Duke of Clarence is portrayed very sympathetically in Richard III, but in reality, he was kind of a jerk who rebelled against his own brother 2-3 times and continually tried to start up trouble. The play also shows Clarence being murdered by Richard's (hilarious) henchmen, but in actuality, Clarence was put on trial for treason, and privately executed on the order of his brother Edward IV.

The disappearance of the Princes in the Tower was blamed on Richard III at the time, but there's no actual evidence connecting him (or really anyone) to their deaths.

Propaganda Elements:

Shakespeare was writing and producing plays under Queen Elizabeth I and King James I, only a few generations away from the intense violence of the Wars of the Roses, so obviously, he needed to represent Elizabeth's famous ancestors as being on the right side of history. Even after her death, Elizabeth I remained incredibly popular with the people, so Shakespeare had to be careful with portrayals of her ancestors and lineage.

Henry VIII is perhaps the best example of Tudor propaganda. This play covers Henry VIII's break from Catherine of Aragon and joining with Anne Boleyn (Elizabeth's mother) and covers the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey, but strategically ends right at Elizabeth's birth and doesn't discuss, oh, Anne's downfall and beheading, or Henry's four other wives. The play is remarkably stilted and boring compared to all of Shakespeare's other plays, likely because he felt inhibited by the restrictions and expectations of the time (in fact, plenty of people have speculated that Shakespeare didn't write Henry VIII or wrote it with a co-writer because it's so different from his other plays). The play also ends with huge adulation of the baby elizabeth and what a blessing she will be upon her people; as the second daughter of the king who already had a bastard son (Henry Fitzroy) he was in the process of making legitimate, she was not expected to inherit at her birth so this is just obvious propaganda here.

Tudor propaganda elements are also obvious in Richard II, in which John of Gaunt is portrayed very differently than he is in Holinshed's Chronicles, Shakespeare’s primary sources for his histories. Holinshed didn't portray Gaunt in a terribly flattering way, but in Richard II, he's the wisest, most reasonable, and most patriotic character in the play. This is likely because Queen Elizabeth traced her lineage directly back to John of Gaunt. (Gaunt's characterization in the play is much closer to his portrayal in Froissart's Chronicles.)

Richard II is also an interesting play to look at, as it portrays the rebellion against and downfall of a king, who was believed to be divinely anointed by god as the country's leader. That's not the type of idea you want to put in your subjects' heads (The deposition scene in the play is missing from most printed editions of the play until the fourth quarto, well into the reign of James I). But the play is written to make it very clear that Elizabeth's own ancestors disagreed with the rebellion. It's an interesting tightrope to walk- as the next few history plays basically emphasize how awesome Henry IV and Henry V are, and just sort of strategically ignore that the only reason they were in power was because of Henry Bolingbroke's rebellion against the rightful king.

Richard III is portrayed as an outright villain in Shakespeare's histories for propaganda reasons as well. Queen Elizabeth's grandfather Henry VII killed Richard on the battlefield at Bosworth and took his crown by right of conquest. Since this was again, a divinely anointed sovereign, Tudor writers really wanted to portray Richard III as just the WORST of the worst to justify the Tudors' actions in overthrowing him. The Tudors' claim to the English throne was not terribly strong, so this propaganda against Richard III was also necessary to increase their own legitimacy.