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the five accused men not to 'admit' wrongdoing with Queen Anne. This event marked a concrete shift in Henry's success at solidifying public opinion against his second wife, and a component of his increasingly tyrannical reputation as his reign progressed. Some often claim that Henry's irascibility and therefore tyranny increased as he aged, and it could be true, but it is also likely that some of his more unjustifiably horrible acts, that probably also increased in frequency as he felt more secure in doing so (after all he had murdered most of the competition already) interfered with whatever PR campaign that a monarch in the sixteenth century would have understood to be a part in his ability to maintain a secure hold on the throne. It is even the case that religious revolts started piping up later in his life, not because of a failure to understand how dangerous they would be, but because dents in his reputation like this served to motivate the capitulation of those with surreptitious tendencies.

Not exactly surprised by such details of Henry considering the overall image he has, I also know that negative reputations of historical figures are obviously sometimes undeserved. For instance, I have noticed that when academics or historians on TV documentaries refer to Victorianism, they often raise their eyebrows and add a certain tone to their voice when they say the word, as if their audience should understand how terrible things were in the reign named for Queen Victoria's. But Victoria was in fact not only a successful monarch, she was also even kind and beloved. Contemporaries told as many stories to that effect as Henry had to the contrary. She was just a chubby but comparatively benevolent German princess turned fairly boring English Queen, mother and wife (of only one husband, whom she adored). She might have been a bit stuffy; and perhaps, in our post-sexual revolution times, prudishness is something we can't abide. Maybe historians, who need a good story to tell, would choose random beheadings over something as silly as covering table legs for decency's sake (if that ever happened). So knowing that any judgment I might have of a historical figure might be comprised of rumors prejudiced by current values, I have continued to think I needed more facts to flesh out this famous Tudor king.

Not that he needed fleshing out by any means. By age forty he was so large (another area where his portrait image doesn't do him justice), that he needed crudely-rigged

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