Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth 1 (The History of England, 2)

 

Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth 1 (The History of England, 2) by Peter Ackroyd

The second in a six-volume series, and the third one I’ve read overall. So far, this one has been the best of the lot. To contrast this one versus volume 1, two distinctions are quite obvious. First, this volume focuses on roughly 100 years of the history of England.  The first one, about 1,500.  Truth be told, the first volume only intensely focused on about 400 years, but that’s a lot of history to pack into one book.  Since this volume only focused on the Tudor dynasty (roughly the 16^th century), the book could breathe a lot more and the reader doesn’t have a parade of too many names, titles, and events that fly past them at an overwhelming pace.

The second distinction is that this book basically focuses only on history. People, places, battles, and religion.  The first volume took a lot of detours that educated the reader on all aspects of English life – the clothes, the community, the diet, the layout of the cities, etc. Not that any of that is necessarily bad, but as a history fan, I tended to view those diversions as a bit of a distraction.   Those aspects are kept to a bare minimum in volume #2.

For those who may not know, the “Tudors” essentially consisted of the infamous King Henry VIII and his two daughters.  His daughters were a disappointment to him because, well, they were daughters.  A 16^th century king wants male heirs. The fact that it took Henry VIII so long to squire one was arguably what let to his reign being one of the most barbaric of all time. Yes, there was a son (Edward VI), but he was very sickly and died quite young, so his reign almost serves as a footnote within the history of England.

The first 40% of this book or so details the travails of the Henry VIII reign.  We read about his six wives, how he ostracized one, killed two, and basically annulled his marriage to one of them because she “wasn’t as hot as she looked in her painting.”  I won’t detail the history here, it’s been documented elsewhere in many places, but the author does an excellent job hitting the highlights. Or lowlights.

We must not forget that religion was a major player in this tumultuous time in history.  When Henry wanted to annul wife #1 for not producing a male heir (and probably because it was “lust at first site” for eventual wife #2), the Pope told him “No.”  So Henry basically left the Pope and Roman Catholicism and started his own religion.  Since this was right around the time a disgruntled monk in Germany took advantage of something new called the “printing press”, there was already many cries of reform in the air.  So all of these events compounded and conspired to radically change how Christianity was practiced, and no one was ever happy unless it was practiced the way THEY wanted it practiced.

Well after Henry dies, and son Edward VI closely follows, this left one daughter from Henry’s “Catholic” wife, and one from his “Protestant” wife.  Since Catholic Mary was “first”, she ruled first, but those who were on the other side screamed she wasn’t, in fact, legitimate because of the circumstances of her mom’s marriage to Henry.  But I really don’t want to go into all that here.

Let’s just say that a lot…I mean a LOT….of this book is about the Catholic-Protestant schism.  This was a time when if you were on the wrong “side” and spoke your opinion, it generally warranted a change of quarters to the Tower of London at best, or a trip to the gallows at worst.  You literally lose track of all of the main players who end up with their head chopped off during this time period.

Most of this book seemed to focus on Elizabeth I (daughter #2), which was a bit odd since that timeframe was the least interesting.  That’s not to say things didn’t happen, but let’s just say that a miniseries on Elizabeth I probably wouldn’t get as high ratings as one about Henry VIII.  So the last 100-pages or so of this book felt a bit of a letdown and somewhat anticlimactic.  Still, though, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and appreciated the fact that we could read more facts about less people.  It was so much easier to keep the main players in focus since we “only” had about 100 years of focus.

As mentioned, there are masses of books out there about the Tudor dynasty, and many are probably better than this one depending on what the reader may want.   If you’re looking for a nice, detailed, yet somewhat compact history, though, you really would be challenged to find something better than what Peter Ackroyd provides us here.