If A Lion Knew His Own Strength, Hard Were It For Any Man To Rule Him

“If a lion knew his own strength, hard were it for any man to rule him” ‘

Thomas More

❝ Henry VIII was ‘ever inch a king’ both physically and mentally; he was ‘no more vicious than many kings who have maintained a fair reputation in history’ and as for ‘the greatest and most critical of changes of his reign’, he himself was their ‘main originator’. The king, in fact, was ‘neither the puppet of parties nor the victim of circumstance, nor the shifty politician, nor the capricious tyrant, but a man of light and leading, of power, of force and foresight, of opportunities and stratagems and surprises, but not less of iron will and determined purpose ”

William Stubbes

“Henry [VIII] earliest encounter with the solemnity of death, occurred when was nine when Prince Edmund died. The warrant shows the household at Eltham was plunged into. Black clothes were ordered even for Jane Poppincourt and ‘The Lady Mary’s scolemaster’. Twelve months later the whole gloomy procedure was repeated at Arthur’s death, but Elizabeth of York was there to comfort and pray with her reamaining children. What Henry never forgot was his mother’s death. Four years after the event, on a January day in 1507, the adolescent prince was replying to a letter telling him the Holy Roman Emperor’s son, Philip of Castile, had died. Henry explained that he had already 'with great unhappiness the report about the death of the King of Castile, my deeply, deeply regretted brother…no less welcome news welcome news has ever come here since the death of my very dear mother’. He wrote from Richmond Palace, where the previous year Elizabeth’s apartments, closed since her death, had opened up for the visit of Philip and his wife Queen Joanna. Briefly Henry VII’s court, dreary since his wife’s passing, had sprung to life again. Prince Henry’s mind slipped back to the dreadful scenes where his mother had died in childbirth and his father’s grief was unrestrained. 'I was less enchanted with that part of your letter’ he wrote tersely 'it seemed to open a wound which time had healed’ Then the schoolboy prince remembered he was addressing the great Erasmus, mended his manners and praised his corespondent elegant Latin.”

— The Sisters of Henry VIII: The Tumultuous Lives of Margaret of Scotland and Mary of France, Maria Perry

This letter snippet is “Ma Maitress etc Amy” — My Mistress and Friend.

It is the first letter in the bound book of love letters at the Library.

(Courtesy of the Vatican Library)

“Tolerant, ruthless, hesitating, bold, intensely aware, and talented to the point of genius, he was always looking for the new and the original– and he found both in Anne Boleyn.”

— The challenge of Anne Boleyn (Hester W. Chapman), [ 1974 ]