Hi history lovers and welcome or welcome back to the channel where I bring you new videos
on all aspects of history every Friday. Today on History Calling we’re asking, what happened
to Henry VIII’s body after his death? Did his corpse really explode in his coffin, as
it’s often rumoured to have done? Was his blood licked up by dogs and did this actually
fulfil a prophecy made to him 15 years earlier? Stay tuned to find out and at the end of the
video, I’ll also share with you two additional gruesome dead body stories relating to two
other English Kings. Before we get started, why not hit the subscribe button along with
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will take you there in the description box below, along with some suggestions for books,
movies and TV shows all about Henry’s life.
It’s Easter Sunday, 1532 and Henry VIII is attending a sermon at Greenwich Palace
given by Friar William Peto. This sermon is a little different to those usually given
before the King however, for Peto takes him to task over the impending annulment of Henry’s
marriage to Catherine of Aragon and intended marriage to Anne Boleyn. According to the
Imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys:
They say that the King was much displeased with the sermon owing to the Provincial having
alluded, though in general terms, to the fact that the excessive affection of princes and
false counsellors often precluded the knowledge of truth. And I hear that the King himself,
happening to converse privately with the said friar after the sermon, heard from his lips
what was not much to his taste, for the Provincial spoke openly to him about the royal marriage
in contemplation, telling him in plain words that if he did not take care he would be in
great danger of losing his kingdom, since all his subjects, high and low, were opposed
to it.
Writing over 20 years later, Nicholas Harpsfield, who was Archdeacon of Canterbury during the
reign of Henry and Catherine’s daughter, Mary I, would go further, stating that Peto
referenced the Biblical story found in 1 Kings, chapter 22 about King Achab, or Ahab. This
was the husband of Jezebel and like his wife, he is presented in the Bible as a great sinner
who allowed his Queen to negatively influence religious policy, just as Anne Boleyn was
blamed for the religious policy in Henry’s reign which culminated in the break from Rome.
The section of the Bible relevant to this story first describes Achab’s death in his
chariot after being wounded by an arrow. It then says:
So the king died and was brought to Samaria, and they buried him there. They washed the
chariot at a pool in Samaria (where the prostitutes bathed), and the dogs licked up his blood,
as the word of the Lord had declared. Calling on this story, Peto reportedly said
to Henry: ‘I beseech your grace to take good heed least, if you will needs follow
Achab in his doings, you incur his unhappy end also, and that the dogs lick your blood
as they did his’. As we know however, Henry would go ahead with the annulment and with
his second marriage. Peto meanwhile, ended up in exile on mainland Europe soon after
this incident, only returning to England during Mary’s reign.
We now move to 1547 and to the death of Henry VIII in the early hours of 28 January that
year at Whitehall Palace. As his final resting place was to be next to his third wife, Jane
Seymour, in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, the body had to be moved, but this
was not done right away. Instead Henry’s remains were embalmed, placed in a coffin
and lay in state in Whitehall’s presence chamber. It was only on 14 February that they
began their final journey and this is where things reportedly got gruesome.
According to Harpsfield, on the first night of the journey (so the night of the 14th into
the 15th of February), the convoy transporting the corpse broke their journey at Syon Abbey,
which Henry had suppressed as part of the English Reformation and where, five years
earlier, his fifth Queen, Katherine Howard, had been held prisoner before her death. Harpsfield
continues:
At which time, were it for the jogging and shaking of the chariot or for any other secret
cause, the coffin of lead, wherein his dead corpse was put, being riven and cloven, all
the pavement of the church was with the fat and the corrupt putrified blood dropped out
of the said corpse foulie embrued. Early in the morning those that had the charge of the
dressing, coffining, and enbalming of the body, with the plumbers, repaired thither
to reform that misshape, and loe suddenly was there found among their legs a dog lapping
up the King’s blood as it chanced to King Achab before specified. This chance one William
Consell reported, saying he was there present and with much ado drave away the said dog.
We also have another account of this incident, taken from historian Agnes Stickland’s mid-19th
century book on the lives of the Queens of England. Stickland says that she is quoting
‘a contemporary MS among the Sloane collection’, which is a collection held by the British
Library, but to the best of my knowledge this document has not been found and so we only
have her word for this. She says it recorded that:
“The king, being carried to Windsor to be buried, stood all night among the broken walls
of Sion, and there the leaden coffin being cleft by the shaking of the carriage, the
pavement of the church was wetted with Henry’s blood. In the morning came plumbers to solder
the coffin, under whose feet – I tremble while I write it”, says the author – “was
suddenly seen a dog creeping, and licking up the king’s blood. If you ask me how I
know this, I answer, William Greville, who could scarcely drive away the dog, told me,
and so did the plumber also.”
Strickland takes this to mean that the body had been left unattended overnight in an unsecured
room to which a dog was able to gain access, but in fact neither the source she quotes,
nor Nicholas Harpsfield say this. Indeed, it’s hard to believe that Henry’s corpse
would have been left alone. In most cases the bodies of royalty and even common people
were watched over until they were in the grave. If you’ve seen my video on the funeral of
Anne of Cleves for instance, I mention the guards over her coffin there. To do otherwise
would have been a major breach of protocol. It’s possible though that a dog managed
to make its way into the chamber in the morning, when other attendants arrived to fix the leaking
coffin. Even with this plot hole cleared up however, how trustworthy are the two sources
we have and how believable therefore, are the stories of the 1532 prophecy by Peto and
the episode at Syon Abbey in 1547?
First, let’s look at Harpsfield in more detail, for there are all sorts of problems
with him as a source. First, he was writing during Mary’s reign, recounting events from
at least six and a half years earlier in the case of the Syon Abbey story and over twenty
years earlier in the case of William Peto’s supposed prophecy. We have to consider that
one or both anecdotes have been embellished, or that his memory was inaccurate. It’s
also suspicious that he is the first to mention the prophecy in writing and so long after
the event. Eustace Chapyus’ contemporary description of Peto’s sermon to Henry makes
no mention of it, though admittedly that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Chapuys you’ll
recall, said that Henry and Peto spoke in private after the service, so perhaps the
warning was given then.
Second, we aren’t told where Harpsfield heard the story of Peto’s prophecy. Was
this information doing the rounds at court in 1532 or later, or did William Peto himself
recount it to Harpsfield when they were both in England during Mary’s reign, which might
lead us to wonder if Peto invented it after the fact to make himself appear to be a prophet?
For that matter, could Harpsfield have made both prophecy and dog licking stories up?
He was a Catholic who was deeply opposed to the annulment of the Aragon marriage and therefore
heavily biased against Henry and anxious to show that the King’s actions were against
God’s will. Having the monarch’s blood consumed by a dog in one of the abbeys his
religious policies had suppressed certainly achieves that aim and with a degree of poetic
justice too. Nor would it be the only time lurid stories were made up about the Tudors.
To this day people are still repeating the lies fabricated by a disgruntled Catholic
exile in the 1580s that Anne Boleyn had six fingers and miscarried a deformed fetus. It’s
possible therefore that at least some of the stories regarding the fate of Henry’s body
are fictitious.
However, it’s also plausible that the prophecy never occurred, but that the incident at Syon
did. Even if Peto didn’t predict dogs licking Henry’s blood, it seems unlikely that he
or anyone else would later have said that he had, unless they knew that the incident
had ultimately occurred. After all, what would be the point in pretending two decades later
that he’d made this prophecy, if everyone knew it had never come to pass? In the end,
Harpsfield’s work would not be published until 1878, over three centuries after his
death, but had Queen Mary lived longer, it was surely his intention to have it in print
during his lifetime and at a point when Henry’s death and funeral were still within living
memory. Had he invented such an outlandish story, we can expect that he would have been
called out on it right away. The issue of this posthumous publication brings us to my
final problem with Harpsfield as a source, which is the subject of how his work has made
its way to us.
Here is one of the first pages from the book and as you can see from what is written at
the bottom, it hasn’t been transcribed from Harpsfield’s original document. Instead,
it seems that the manuscript was found and removed from the house of one William Carter
during Elizabeth I’s reign (so by March 1603 at the latest), by someone calling themselves
Topliffe. It was then copied by a Mr William Eyston over a century later in 1707, having
come to him via a Mr Francis Hildesley, then that copy was copied for publication in 1878.
There were therefore plenty of opportunities for alterations (accidental or deliberate),
to have been made. It’s also worth noting that the Stuart clergyman and historian, Gilbert
Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, repeated the prophecy story in his 1679 book, History of
the Reformation of the Church of England. We don’t know what his primary source was
for this, but it may have been Harpsfield’s original manuscript. Nevertheless, even if
we have a true copy of Harpsfield’s words, the other problems with his work are so numerous
that if it was the only contemporary or rather, near contemporary source for the posthumous
adventures of Henry’s body, I would be a lot more hesitant about believing him, but
- there is also Strickland.
As I’ve already said, we don’t know what source from the Sloane collection Strickland
was quoting when she discussed the incident at Syon Abbey and therefore we can’t judge
its quality, however her book was published in the 1840s before Harpsfield’s work and
yet doesn’t simply repeat it. In other words, it doesn’t look as though Strickland managed
to see Harpsfield’s manuscript, or a duplicate of it and copy out the details, as the two
stories, though very similar, do have some differences. In particular, there is the change
in the name of the witness at Syon from William Corsell to William Greville (neither of whom
I’ve been able to trace by the way). Instead, Strickland seems to have been looking at an
entirely separate source. It’s true that some other writer might have seen Harpsfield’s
work, written up a separate description of the incident at Syon and that that is the
source Strickland saw in the Sloane papers (meaning that Harpsfield is ultimately the
only real source we have), but this is a bit of stretch. Furthermore, when Strickland mentions
the prophecy, she also differs from Harpsfield, as she instead places the events at Greenwich
in 1533, rather than 1532.
So where does this complicated trail of evidence leave us? Well, you can let me know what you
think in the comments section, but for my part I’m undecided as to whether or not
Peto predicted that Henry’s blood would be licked by dogs, but I think that it’s
more likely than not that the incident at Syon did occur. That still leaves one of the
big questions I started this video with however. Even if we accept that Henry’s coffin leaked,
does that mean that the King’s body exploded?
The answer to this question is maybe. You’ve seen the sources I’ve seen and you’ll
note that none of them actually say that the coffin was opened up at Syon and the body
inspected, so there’s no direct evidence that his corpse ruptured, though the fact
that Harpsfield says that the embalmbers were among those who came back to the body after
the coffin was found to be leaking, might be taken as evidence that the corpse was inspected
and given further treatments. Bodies bursting after death is also most certainly a thing
and is caused by the build up of gases in the corpse as it begins to decay. Moreover,
if Henry did burst, he wouldn’t have been the first King to do so. A contempoary account
of the funeral of William the Conqueror, which took place in Caen in 1087, was written by
the English chronicler Orderic Vitalis who recorded that:
when the corpse was placed in the sarcophagus, and was forcibly doubled up because the masons
had carelessly made the coffin too short and narrow, the swollen bowels burst, and an intolerable
stench assailed the nostrils of the bystanders and the whole crowd. A thick smoke arose from
the frankincense and other spices in the censers, but it was not strong enough to conceal the
foul ignominy. So the priests made haste to conclude the funeral rites, and immediately
returned, trembling, to their own houses.
Embalming procedures (which remove organs and bodily fluids), should reduce the chances
of this happening and we know that Henry was embalmed, but techniques were less well developed
in 16th century England than in the modern era and he had been dead for two and half
weeks by the time he got to Syon, so some sort of rupture could still conceivably have
happened. Alternatively, the leakage may have been fluid derived from general (by which
I mean non-explosive) decomposition. Again, we have a tale of another King of England
who demonstrates this. This is William the Conqueror’s son, Henry I, who died in 1135.
According to the contemporary historian, Henry of Huntingdon, in the process of preparing
his body for burial:
The remainder of the corpse was cut all over with knives, sprinkled with a great deal of
salt [this’ll have been an early preservation technique], and wrapped in ox hides, to stop
the strong, pervasive stench, which was already causing the deaths of those who watched over
it. It even killed the man who had been hired for a great fee to cut off the head with an
axe and extract the stinking brain, although he had wrapped himself in linen cloths around
his head: so he was badly rewarded by his fee. He was the last of many whom Henry put
to death. They took the royal corpse to Caen, and it lay there for a time in the church
in which his father had been buried. Although it had been filled with much salt and wrapped
in many hides, a fearful black fluid ran down continuously, leaking through the hides, and
being collected in vessels beneth the bier [which is a stand that a coffin sits on],
was cast away by attendants who grew faint with dread.
As gruesome as the scene at Syon Abbey must have been, at least Henry VIII’s attendants
weren’t dropping dead while they watched over the coffin. Whatever condition the dead
King’s corpse was in by the time it reached Windsor Castle, he was finally laid to rest
next to Jane Seymour on the morning of 16 February beneath the floor of St George’s
Chapel and in the presence of his widow, Catherine Parr. Henry and Jane’s remains would later
be joined by those of Charles I and one of Queen Anne Stuart’s many children (see my
video on her heart-breaking childbearing record for more on that).
To finish with, there two codas to this tale from 1813 and 1888. The vault was accidentally
discovered in the first year, during work to open up a tunnel between the Chapel and
a newly built mausoleum and on 1 April it was examined by a selection of people, including
the Prince Regent. Here is what one had to say about Henry’s coffin:
The larger one [meaning coffin], supposed on good grounds to contain the remains of
King Henry VIII. measured six feet ten inches in length, and had been enclosed in an elm
one of two inches in thickness: but this was decayed, and lay in small fragments near it.
The leaden coffin appeared to have been beaten in by violence about the middle; and a considerable
opening in that part of it, exposed a mere skeleton of the King. Some beard remained
upon the chin, but there was nothing to discriminate the personage contained within it.
Those present surmised that the coffin had been damaged during the hasty interment of
the disgraced Charles I in 1649, though Queen Jane’s, lying right next to it, was in good
condition. Some relics from Charles I’s coffin were removed at this point, including
part of his beard, but in 1888 it was decided to replace these and the tomb was opened again.
According to a witness:
Henry’s coffin, of wood, was quite destroyed. The inner coffin of lead was all open at the
top so that we could see into it, and there lay the bones and the skull of the King as
they had been lying for 350 years. I did not see the whole of the skeleton as it was partly
covered by the pieces of the wooden coffin which had fallen across it, but I saw many
of the bones and skull.
A watercolour was also made at this point by Mr Alfred Younge Nutt, who was the Surveyor
to the Dean and Canons of St George's Chapel at that time. As you can see, for whatever
reason, whether shoddy workmanship, later damage or perhaps an exploding corpse, Henry’s
coffin was indeed in very poor repair, despite the fact that Jane’s leaden coffin, which
is slightly older, was still intact (though her wooden one had decayed).
And that, history lovers, brings us to the end of the story of Henry VIII’s body. If
you enjoyed this video, please remember to give it a thumbs up and let me know in the
comments section below which details, if any, of this story you believe. Do you think Henry
VIII’s body burst and do you think William Peto prophesised that the King’s blood would
be licked up by dogs, or is it just a good yarn made up by Henry’s enemies after his
death? I look forward to reading your thoughts. For more on Henry and the rest of the Tudors,
see my playlists on his six wives and on the Tudor monarchs. I’ll be back next week with
a new video, but until then, keep learning.