The Tudors are one of the best-known dynasties in world history.
They took England from raging civil wars and the brink of ruin
and transformed it into a powerhouse on the world stage.
From their romances to their health,
the fate of the country was closely linked to their personal lives.
We've seen how Henry VII loved and lost
and how the untimely death of a young prince
created one of the most notorious kings in history.
But what really went on behind the closed doors of their palaces?
In this episode, we look at the life of King Henry VIII -
his gargantuan appetite for food, sport and women,
his endless quest for an heir
and, of course, the horrific leg injury
that plagued most of his adult life.
Welcome to The Private Lives of the Tudors.
Make way, make way! The King, the King!
(MAN CRIES OUT IN PAIN) Come on!
Oh, no! Aaaagh!
King Henry VIII had been on the throne for 27 years,
but on the 24th of January 1536,
his reign very nearly came to an end at a tournament in Greenwich,
when he suffered an almost fatal accident while jousting.
Henry, in full armour, fell from his horse,
which, in turn, fell on him.
One report said he was unconscious for two hours
and there seemed to be no hope for him.
Make way!
Aaagh! Be careful!
But true to form,
Henry did regain consciousness.
The Henry that emerged, though,
was very different from the Henry
before the accident.
Contemporary accounts recorded a marked change in his personality.
No longer the happy, generous and athletic king,
he was now depressed, paranoid and plagued by health problems.
This was the beginning of Henry the tyrant.
A lot of people thought that he was going to die
and it does seem to have possibly changed his personality.
MAN: He's capable of being quite brutal the whole way along.
Personally, my own view
is that Henry was always capricious.
He was always capable of making
a very hard and basic calculation about people
and he was completely unsentimental.
When you were eaten up and you were useless to him,
he spat you out and threw you away.
Henry had always been a fit and handsome man,
renowned for his fine calf muscles
and his pretty, rounded face.
But after the jousting accident, his health had begun to deteriorate.
He was no longer able to take part in the sports that he had loved
and his leg had become painfully ulcerated.
It was a problem that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
MURPHY: There's no question that the accident in 1536
opens up an old wound,
and it...and it...it causes a second injury in the other leg,
and the injuries on his legs undoubtedly.
But that's eventually what's going to kill him
because there are no antibiotics, so these are re-infecting wounds...
(HENRY CRIES OUT) ..and they must have been very painful.
HENRY: No!
As he becomes more sick, physically sick,
I'm sure his temper becomes shorter.
Well, whose wouldn't?
And I'm sure he can be more, um, unpredictable.
His explosive temper and volatile mood swings
were a constant source of fear to his ministers at court.
On several occasions, it was reported that he become violent,
lashing out at even his most trusted confidantes.
MURPHY: As he becomes more house-bound, chair-bound, bed-bound,
he loves to frighten people
and he enjoys that whole business of tormenting people.
And he likes the fact that they find him unreadable.
Aah! Aah!
The ulcer on his leg would have been very painful
because they believed in keeping it open
to allow the pus to keep coming out
because they thought that would stop the ill humours
building up in his body.
The other problem was, of course, it was very ugly,
and this is a man who has prided himself on his appearance.
This was a time, too, when the health of the king
is considered very important
because the king is, after all, the leader.
So, it was very difficult for Henry
to be less than the fantastic specimen of manhood
that he had once been.
Ill-tempered and racked with constant pain,
Henry had to be regularly attended by his personal medical team.
These Tudor physicians were something only the very wealthy could afford,
charging around 10 shillings for their services,
which was out of reach for the vast majority.
But despite their large fees,
they were still limited in terms of their medical expertise.
Most of what they knew had been based on ancient writings
from the likes of Aristotle and Hippocrates,
or old wives' tales that had been handed down through generations.
Tudor medicine was based on the idea of the four humours -
so, basically hot, cold, wet and dry.
The idea was that those four elements
should be in perfect balance in your body,
and when they got out of balance, you got ill.
If your doctor considered that the reason for your illness
was that you were too hot and dry,
he would prescribe things that would make you colder and wetter.
He might well prescribe you all sorts of changes to your diet.
So, for example, young animals
were considered to be hotter than older ones,
so you might be told to eat meat from young animals
rather than older ones,
which would sound rather strange to us today.
But from the way they thought, it was perfectly sensible.
Astrology and horoscopes also played a big part
in determining Henry's health and how he should be treated.
It may seem strange,
but from birth, Henry's star sign
was closely monitored.
Doctors maintained that the King,
who was born under the astrological sign of Cancer,
was governed by the maternal cycles of the moon.
Henry's horoscope suggested that he'd be vulnerable to such diseases
as smallpox, rheumatism and even kidney stones.
To this day, Henry's astrological clock remains here at Hampton Court.
Designed by the King's clockmaker, Nicholas Kratzer,
it shows all 12 signs of the zodiac, the cycles of the moon
and the position of the sun.
His birth chart had cast him as a cheerful and happy child
who would grow up to become a man of action.
He would be ill-tempered, eat and drink to excess,
sensitive to criticism
and have a healthy libido.
Maybe there was something in it after all.
But there was one thing, above all others,
that continued to worsen Henry's ailments -
his love of excessive eating.
I've come to the kitchens at Hampton Court Palace
to see food historian Marc Meltonville.
So, I understand this is one of your favourite parts of the palace?
I love the Tudor kitchens here.
I think you get more of a sense of how the court operates here
than in any other part of the palace.
But you're the food expert. You talk me through it.
I like to think of this as sort of
the beating heart of the palace.
I mean, yes, you've got the courtiers upstairs,
swishing around in their posh dresses.
But this is where over 200 people are sweating away,
producing meals twice a day, for 400, 500, 600 people.
It's just fantastic.
It's a production line and over your shoulder there, a familiar sight.
The pies! Is that all they ate?
No. Shame it's not.
This entire room is dedicated to the roasting of meat,
so roasted beef and mutton.
The pies are secondary, really.
They're through the hatch there, waiting to go up to the great hall.
Well, lead on through. What do we have in the next chamber?
This is our favourite. This is our veritable cathedral to food.
Amazing.
During Henry's reign, the royal court was constantly increasing in size,
which meant that there were a lot of mouths to feed.
So, in 1529, he had the palace kitchens extended
to meet the demands of his hungry courtiers.
At its height,
the great kitchen comprised 55 rooms spanning over 3,000 square feet,
where its 200-strong staff were tasked with
serving 600 meals, twice a day.
We're here, in what probably was
the biggest and busiest kitchen in the world,
and this is the heart of it.
What would have gone on here?
Whose food would have been cooked in this part of the kitchen?
Well, obviously, everyone thinks this is the kitchen for the King,
'cause why wouldn't you?
But the King had his private or privy kitchen.
His meals were served to him and his inner circle
and cooked in a much smaller space.
What we're sat in is basically the work's canteen,
but it's so much more than that.
They must have got through a gargantuan quantity of food
every single day.
Yep, on time, no excuses.
This is like a modern hotel - everything works like clockwork.
One of the myths about Henry VIII
is that he was very uncouth when dining.
You know, there was the throwing of the chicken legs,
and it was all a bit raucous.
But it wasn't really like that at all, was it?
No, we don't think so, because we have a couple of cookbooks,
but we have even more manners books survive from that period,
so we know how you were supposed to dine politely,
and someone like Henry VIII, he's been trained from birth
to behave properly, to behave like a king,
and the one thing they didn't like
was the idea of you eating like an animal.
"We're not animals. We are Man." And you don't chew on bones.
What would have been a typical meal?
Would it have been three courses?
Um, did he choose from different dishes?
Here it gets complicated 'cause the answer's yes,
but when we think of a course, we think of a plate of food.
So, if I say three courses for you for dinner,
you're thinking of three separate things.
A course in Tudor times,
in fact, through most of British history, is a buffet -
a small buffet for you, me and two others, referred to as a 'mess'.
So, we'd sit here and a selection of food is brought before us
and that's showing the wealth of your host.
It was tailor-made for fussy eaters, wasn't it, really?
If you didn't like one dish, you could just choose another one.
That's the point. No-one leaves a royal table dissatisfied.
Roasted meats were available at almost every meal at court.
Most people of the time, if they were lucky enough,
would have eaten preserved meat.
But fresh meat year-round
was a sign of wealth and opulence.
Roasting was hugely expensive,
not just for the cost of the fuel
but because you had to pay someone called a spit boy
to constantly attend it.
There is no meal without the roasted meat
and within the roasting kitchens, there are six fires like this,
um, four spits on each.
We reckon at least 100 pounds of meat needed on every fireplace
just to get the whole court fed.
And we've only got two pieces on here
because this is just choice for you.
And what do we have here? What's the meat?
I've got the two most common meats roasted here,
'cause everyone expects a deer or a boar.
Yes, they ate those, but, um, every day, there is fine roast beef,
the best of England,
and fine roast mutton.
Mmm.
And there is quite a lot of skill involved, isn't there, Robert?
It looks like a fairly monotonous job.
Certainly a very hot job. Yes.
Um, but how skilled were these spit-turners?
Well, you have to keep your wits about you.
You have to examine the meat, make sure it's not overdone.
It is not the most... job with the most variety,
but it's an important job
'cause this is a really extravagant way of cooking,
probably the most extravagant way of cooking ever invented.
Ridiculous!
You're burning a tonne of seasoned oak per fire, per day.
Outrageous.
So, all of this is making me pretty hungry.
Do I get to try some of this meat?
You do, and in true Tudor fashion, we can't tell you what to have.
You get to chose between a fine piece of English beef
or the slightly more rare mutton.
I think I'm going for the rare mutton.
That sounds delicious, thank you. Good choice.
I'll just let Robert come to a halt.
Thank you very much.
And...cut some of this off.
Well, I'm gonna be like Henry VIII,
take a fairly delicate piece to begin with.
That is absolutely delicious.
I think that's the best mutton I've ever tasted.
People always think it's gonna be really dry
'cause they see it go around the fire and going quite dark,
but that's actually all the juice cooking on the outside.
It's really, really moist.
With all that food,
the courtiers needed something to wash it down with.
Henry had three large cellars in his palace, and with good reason.
An incredible 600,000 gallons of ale were consumed at court every year,
and wine imported from Gascony was held here in over 300 oak casks.
At any one time, there would have been 15,000 gallons of it available.
The King himself certainly had a taste for wine
which, in Tudor times, was incredibly expensive.
And that made it all the more impressive
when Henry marked festivals and special occasions
by ordering the construction of lavish wine fountains,
like the one on display here at Hampton Court.
Revellers would have been greeted
by these remarkable Tudor drinks dispensers
and allowed to help themselves
to the seemingly endless supply of wine that flowed from their spouts.
He certainly knew how to throw a party.
(LAUGHTER)
All that food and drink meant Henry was growing in size,
which certainly kept his tailors and craftsmen busy.
As king, Henry didn't have to lose weight
to fit into his clothes and armour -
he simply had new ones made.
Three suits of armour kept here, at the Tower of London,
reveal just how much he grew in size over the years.
The most skilled armour makers of the time were German,
so Henry had some of these craftsman brought over
and established at a workshop in Greenwich
where they spent their whole time making the king's armour.
He had been greatly impressed
by the eye-catching and beautifully intricate armour
worn by the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximillian I,
and Henry didn't want to be outdone.
When Henry came to the throne,
he wasn't that impressed with the armouries of England.
There were very few of them.
There was definitely one in London,
um, but it wasn't making armour of the quality he wanted.
So he imported armourers
from where would now call Germany and the low countries
and he formed what still is the Royal Armouries.
And they were there specifically to make
high-quality armour for the king.
The Greenwich armour produced by the Royal Armouries
was of the highest quality and distinctly decorative in fashion.
But most of the armour that Henry had made
was not intended for the battlefield.
It was for the tournament.
Henry loved to compete in the joust
and that meant he needed the proper protection,
because the fact he was king
didn't mean his opponents would let him win.
You can't cheat with jousting.
Nobody going up against Henry was letting him win.
They were giving as good as they got.
It's like a big game of chicken.
There's no defensive moves in jousting.
You simply sit there and say, "Hit me, because I'm gonna hit you."
How does that feel, Your Majesty?
Are you able to move properly? Yes, yes.
It would have been a real... a real thing
to go and see the king jousting.
Don't forget this is not a sport for the faint-hearted.
This is dangerous, this is brutal.
The king could and was injured on several occasions
when he was jousting.
From a young and healthy prince
to a dangerously overweight middle-aged king,
Henry's armour gives us an almost completely accurate account
of his growing size.
Well, we're quite lucky in the fact
that we've got quite a lot of Henry's armour left.
Almost from when he's a teenager, right up until his later years -
the last armours he wore when he invaded France.
Um, what you could do, in fact,
is you could put plaster into the armour, pour plaster in,
and you'd have a very good record of how his body changes over the years.
He's young and fit
and then obviously he becomes older and fatter
as he exercises less and eats more,
so you'd actually be able to see from those casts
you could take from the inside of the armours
how his girth grows.
As Henry's size and weight started to increase
so too did his number of illnesses.
But despite best efforts, Henry continued to suffer.
He regularly underwent a wide variety of treatments,
both conventional and experimental.
It was probably during a bout of illness
when he was surrounded by the physicians
who were trying to cure him,
that Henry himself became interested in the world of medicine.
He granted a royal charter
to establish the worshipful company of Barber Surgeons,
shown in this painting by Hans Holbein
which still hangs here in the Great Hall today.
One of the men depicted in the painting was Thomas Alsop,
who was among Henry's most trusted physicians.
Alsop was a skilled herbalist
with extensive knowledge of pharmaceuticals.
As such, the King granted him permission
to gather what he needed to make his medicines
from the Royal herb gardens,
like the one here at the Worshipful Company of Barbers.
Dr Tim Cutler is honorary curator of their Tudor physic herb garden.
There's been a garden on this site since about 1450.
It's that old?
The original hall had a garden and, uh,
we have records of the beadle buying plants for it.
With the same sorts of plants?
Yes, probably a few more added,
but we particularly commemorate John Gerard,
who was master of our company in 1607.
John Gerard was one of the first people in England
to record and publish how plants and herbs
could be used to cure various ailments.
His book, Gerard's Herball,
brought together the theories and remedies
that had been used by the likes of Thomas Alsop
when developing treatments for Henry.
Great botanist, surgeon, plantsman, gardener.
We have produced this garden in his memory,
really through his writings of Gerard's Herball,
which came out in 1597
and listed all the known medicinal plants of the time -
and plants that were useful in many respects,
both for medicine, both for scenting the air, uh, for dying clothes.
Many of the herbs used in Tudor medicine
can be commonly found in most kitchens today.
Sage, marjoram and parsley were widely used
in cures for common ailments, known as 'Simples'.
But the more complex the illness, the more outlandish the remedies.
For example, if you had jaundice
you would likely be prescribed a revolting mixture of lice and ale
to be drunk every morning.
How important were herbs to Tudor medicine?
Herbs were the basis of most medicines used at that time.
They'd been described 1,500 years earlier by Dioscorides and Galen
and nothing had changed much,
and it was not until Gerard's Herball came along
that the subject was expanded to include more plants,
but they were using the same herbs as had been used for generations.
Well, of course,
Henry VIII's major health problem was his ulcerated leg.
What sort of herbs would his doctors have used to try and cure that?
There were quite a lot of plants used for wound care at the time
and Gerard writes enthusiastically about them.
He writes about hypericum perforatum,
the St John's Wort, which we know about,
for use in mild depressive illness now,
but Gerard rated it as very important for wound healing.
He writes about alchemilla mollis, lady's mantle, the plant that...
Still here. Look, the dew is still on it.
Dew was regarded as having very magical properties
and dew gathers on alchemilla leaves
and so this was thought to be very special.
And the mandrake...
Ah, very well known still.
It's unchanged for 2,000 years.
I mean the history of the mandrake goes back to the time of Christ
and this contains the active ingredient hyoscine
that we now know about,
but it was known as a very effective source of pain relief in those days.
So his wound would have needed these dressings to encourage it to heal.
Henry's other preoccupation was of course the need to beget an heir.
Now, were there any herbal remedies that could have helped his libido?
Well, he might have tried the candied roots of sea holly,
eryngium.
That was marketed as an aphrodisiac
and that was certainly available in Tudor times,
so I suspect he tried that from time to time.
And given that he was king, of course,
with all of these great remedies at his disposal,
did he have any made especially for him?
The King's Grace's Ointment was his own prescription.
It was an ointment made from a plant we know well
called the yellow sweet clover.
If you pound it up you get a nice, soft, mushy mix,
that produces a very soothing ointment,
and it is written up in Henry's papers
that it was used to cool the inflamed parts of his anatomy.
We can leave it to your imagination
as to which bits he needed to put in on.
But there is was it was - it was his own ointment.
That's a fascinating insight into Henry's personal life.
The fact that Henry's health was in decline
didn't stop him from moving on to his third wife, Jane Seymour.
In 1538, within 7 months of the marriage, Jane was pregnant.
When word got out that the king's new wife was with child,
there were celebrations across the land.
Bonfires were lit, church bells were rung
and prayers were said in hope of a safe delivery.
However, it would be anything but.
Jane was forced to endure a 36-hour labour
which, in Tudor times,
would have been extraordinarily painful and tortuous.
WOMAN: Jane had a very long and arduous labour
and there weren't that many comforts available to her.
Modern pain relief as we understand it just didn't exist
and also the Church believed that women should experience
this full manifestation of original sin
and so they frowned upon midwives administering things like opium.
(BABY CRIES)
WOMAN: Prayers would be said
and the recitation of prayers and focusing on that
could act as some kind of relaxant,
but other than that, there was no ether, so there was no epidural.
Herbs were used
and some of them might have actually have had some sort of effects,
such as willow bark, which we know today that aspirin is made from,
so there may have been something like that.
It was common practice of the time
that the expectant mother would have taken to her chamber to give birth,
known as 'lying in'.
She would have been shut off from public gaze
and surrounded by only her female attendants,
usually close friends known as 'godsipps' or 'gossips'.
The labour would almost always have been supervised by a midwife,
and men were strictly forbidden from entering the room.
Jane Seymour's confinement in delivery was different
because, for the first time, Henry invited men into the chamber.
They were present during the time of delivery and afterwards
and we know this from a letter that survives
that they all put their name to,
including Henry's own physician, Sir William Butts.
This is quite interesting in terms of a departure from tradition,
because it indicates Henry was very concerned about Jane's delivery
and also about the survival of this child.
It's as if he knew that this child was his last chance
and he didn't want to take any risks with it
and so he threw all his available resources at it.
Henry may have had good intentions,
but it was a decision that would have fatal consequences.
Men, though, did have a more...detached knowledge.
They didn't have hands-on experience.
That was a very female thing.
And also there's a status problem
with men actually touching the queen's body,
so men were probably standing back and observing
while the women actually did the business of delivering the child
and then bringing some of their academic knowledge to bear
after the event.
Jane eventually gave birth,
giving Henry what he desired above all else - a son.
Henry was overjoyed.
But his happiness was short-lived.
Just 12 days after giving birth to Henry's heir, Prince Edward,
Jane tragically died.
She contracted what was known at the time as 'childbed fever',
which may have been caused by a retained placenta
or by the unsanitary conditions in the birthing chamber.
It's quite likely that the inclusion of men in the birthing room,
in Jane Seymour's case,
led to a conflict of interest.
As they were senior figures at court,
their opinions would have trumped those of the women
and so they probably had the final say when it came to Jane's care.
I think that Jane Seymour was deeply unfortunate
in having royal physicians rather than midwives looking after her.
The royal physicians just were not as experienced
and knew much less in relation to childbirth than did midwives,
so it would have been exhausting as well as full of pain,
and then, of course, she died afterwards
because almost certainly the placenta did not come fully away.
In the days after giving birth,
we know that there were some criticisms made.
This comes from a letter from Thomas Cromwell,
who commented that she was allowed to catch cold
and that she was allowed to indulge her fantasies
and eating unsuitable foods.
Possibly the academic knowledge triumphed over the experience
and Jane's death may have been the result of an infection
or possibly the fact that the men didn't know
that part of her placenta may have remained in her womb
and needed to be removed,
which would've simply been whipped out by a midwife by hand.
So the gender battle in the birth room
might have resulted in Jane's premature death,
which was possibly unnecessary.
Henry was devastated at the loss of his wife.
Writing of her death, he stated,
"Providence has mingled my joy with the bitterness of the death
"of her who brought me happiness."
Henry would not remarry for more than two years.
It would be the longest period that he'd be without a wife
throughout the whole course of his reign.
Henry was delighted to have a son at long last,
probably anxious about whether or not the son would live,
and he seems to have been distraught by the death of Jane Seymour.
She had delivered the child he had so much wanted.
He hadn't been married to her very long,
so she hadn't alienated him as Anne Boleyn had done
and he withdrew, rather as his father had
at the time of the death of Elizabeth of York,
from public view,
and mourned in private.
Henry was clearly grieved by Jane's death.
A letter he wrote on that day
said that she both given him this ultimate joy and ultimate grief
in the fact that she had passed away at the time.
However, Henry was rather pragmatic
and although he went through the period of mourning
and he didn't marry again for a couple of years,
he didn't stop looking at other women,
and marriage negotiations were already taking place
within months of Jane's death.
So although he did mourn her on a personal level,
he still knew he had a duty as a king to take on another queen
and possibly try and father even more children.
By the time Henry had reached the age of 50,
the once slender and athletic king had become monstrously fat,
with a waist measuring 52 inches -
a full 20 inches bigger than when he first came to the throne.
It was said that three of the biggest men at court
could fit inside the king's doublet.
He was so fat that he had to be winched on to his horse
and a special device had to be built to get him up and down stairs.
Partly it was due to his lack of exercise,
but mainly it was the rich and plentiful food
that was constantly on offer here at the palace.
(SHOUTS IN PAIN)
You would think that with his huge size and festering leg sores
that Henry would have been a little less choosy about potential matches.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
Arrangements are made for him to remarry
and it is suggested he chooses the daughter
of an influential German Duke - Anne of Cleves.
The artist Hans Holbein is dispatched to paint her portrait.
He is told to capture her true likeness and not to flatter her.
Upon seeing the painting, Henry immediately agrees to the marriage.
But when he meets Anne in the flesh, he is utterly revolted.
Not only is she ugly, with very little resemblance to her portrait,
but she's also said to have evil airs about her.
But the contract has been signed.
Henry has no choice but to go ahead and marry her.
Henry made no secret of the fact
that he did not find Anne pleasing to the eye,
so what was it that he was looking for?
What did Tudor men consider attractive?
The renaissance idea of beauty
was that a woman should be well-proportioned and graceful
and be not too much of one thing and too much of another.
So she shouldn't be too tall, she shouldn't be too short.
Everything was in moderation.
It showed harmony, which was the ideal.
Your figure needed to be... certainly not skinny,
because in Tudor times,
that suggested that you were poor or possibly ill.
and the big thing you wanted was for your future wife to be healthy.
Certainly you wanted lots of babies if you were an aristocrat,
and lower down the social scale, your wife had to be healthy
because she was going to have to work really hard,
carrying around pails of water and all that.
No good being a weakling.
So they were looking for someone with clear skin, with good teeth.
They were talking about particularly the smell of a woman.
They didn't want a woman who smelt of spices,
but a woman who smelt sweet,
and that might give an indication
that she wasn't suffering from any rotten teeth or sores
or anything unpleasant like that.
They were also looking for a woman who was well made
and was clearly built for giving birth to children.
So they wanted a fairly round, hourglass figure.
Someone who would be able to bear a child healthily
and go through the vigours of childbirth.
One of the Tudor ideals, though, was that of a very fair complexion
and there were steps that women did take
to try and lighten their complexions,
using things like lemon juice and other mixtures.
And also the Tudor red-gold hair was very famous.
It was very popular at the time
and quite rare, which increased its value.
There was no particular one type.
The idea was much more based on this notion
of being well-proportioned and being graceful.
Henry divorced Anne shortly afterwards.
But although her lack of physical attractions
has traditionally been blamed for the failure of her marriage to Henry,
did the fault really lie with her husband?
There is evidence that Henry was impotent by the time he married her.
This is corroborated by the story of his next marriage.
His fifth wife, Catherine Howard, was just a teenager
when she married Henry,
who was more than 30 years her senior.
Although he couldn't keep his hands off her in public,
in private, Henry failed to fulfil his husbandly duty.
By 1541, and within just a few months of their marriage,
Henry's health took another turn.
His leg ulcer had become infected
and there was serious concern that the King might not pull through.
Andrew Boorde, a physician who examined Henry at the time,
described him as hugely obese
and having enlarged arteries with pale and sweaty skin.
Aware that he was not looking his best,
Henry would refuse to see his wife for weeks on end.
It wasn't long before Catherine
started to seek sexual gratification elsewhere,
and she soon found it in the shape of Thomas Culpepper,
one of the king's closest servants.
But nothing remained a secret at court for long
and when the affair was discovered, Catherine went straight to the block.
A year later, Henry moved on to wife number six.
On paper, his marriage to Katherine Parr
seemed to be one of reason and practicality, rather than passion.
She was a wealthy 31-year-old widow
with wit, intelligence and an unblemished reputation.
But she also understood Henry as a person
and was attentive to the fact
that his disastrous marriage to Catherine Howard
had left him deeply lonely and unhappy.
She provided him with all the care and comfort of a loving wife.
Their marriage seemed to be set for success.
But by the summer of 1546, Henry VIII was dangerously ill.
His enormous girth and poor health
meant his mobility was so restricted that he could barely walk.
Only his closest body servants
knew the full extent of the King's illness.
They saw the suppurating ulcer on his leg,
the stench from which was enough to turn the strongest of stomachs.
The King was dying.
From the middle of 1546,
the king becomes less and less inclined to go out
and spends more and more time in the privy chamber.
He also is beginning to think about his plans for the succession
and the fact that he's thinking in these terms -
he's writing a will, he's talking about a council of regency,
which is a very unusual idea.
Henry started to make provisions for his death.
He had officially declared his son, Edward, as heir to the throne.
However he was still just a boy,
so the King appointed a regency council,
made up of 16 trusted men from his court
to help him rule until Edward reached the age of 18.
But Henry, knowing that he would not be there to protect Edward
and along with his ever-growing paranoia,
set about ridding his son of any potential threats.
He became convinced that members of his privy council
would try to seize control after his death.
Powerful men such as Bishop Gardiner,
Henry Howard and his father, Thomas,
were either excluded, imprisoned or executed.
By taking out those big men,
he thinks a group of smaller men will work better together.
Of course, he doesn't really calculate
on how ambitious the Seymours are.
Little did Henry know that his wife Catherine
would go on to rekindle her romance with Thomas Seymour.
Together, they will attempt to influence the court of Edward
when he becomes king.
The Seymours also have made a very practical alliance
with Catherine Parr, the last queen,
and between them, they control the privy chamber at this stage.
At the beginning of 1547, Henry moved to Whitehall Palace
and retired to his private apartments,
away from the prying eyes of the court.
There, on the 28th of January,
on what would have been his father's 90th birthday,
he breathed his last.
He had spent his last days bed-bound,
his doctors were unable to tell him he was dying
as predicting the King's death was an act of treason.
But with his room filled with the stench from his rotten ulcerations,
they probably didn't have to.
Henry summoned the Archbishop to hear his last confession
and absolve him of his sins in preparation for the afterlife.
But by the time he reached the King, it was too late.
Henry was 55 when he died and had reigned for 37 years.
Now it was time for his children, Edward, Mary and Elizabeth,
to take their turns as England's monarch.
In the next episode...
..we'll see how a phantom pregnancy
left Queen Mary a laughing stock at court...
..examine the unusual methods of contraception
practiced by the Tudor women...
..and look at how Elizabeth I's love of sugar and cosmetics
left her a bald and toothless shadow of her former glory.
Next time, on the Private Lives of The Tudors.
Captions by Ericsson Access Services (c) SBS Australia 2016