The Supposedly Strange Funeral of Henry VIII

Picture Henry VIII.  Fat guy with a beard, right?  I always picture Robert Shaw from the movie, A Man for All Seasons (a movie I highly recommend, even if the depiction of Henry as he is trying to divorce Catherine of Aragon is a little off).

At the time, Henry was clean shaven, slim, athletic, and rather tall.  No one is exactly sure how tall, but when his skeleton was measured in the early 19th century it measured 6’ 2”, while his custom suit of armor used for jousting was made for a man 6’ 4”.  That is just one of the many misconceptions about Henry.  Take that beard for instance:  There is a persistent legend that frequently shows up in history books that Henry, perennially short of money, imposed a tax on beards in 1535–a tax that Queen Elizabeth later tried unsuccessfully to increase.

Great story, but it never happened.  There are quite a few more completely false legends about Henry.  Take the one about his being fat.  (Well, late in life he had a 52” waist and easily topped 300 pounds, but that certainly wasn’t the case for most of his life).  Henry spent so much time playing tennis, hunting, jousting, and engaging in other athletic pastimes that he was forced to turn over almost all affairs of government to his advisors, chiefly Cardinal Wolsey.

In 1536, the king was jousting when he took a hard hit from a lance.  Not only was the monarch unseated, but the horse fell onto his legs, badly injuring them.  For the rest of his life, the king’s physical activities were greatly reduced.  Unfortunately, he continued his other great hobby:  consuming over 5000 calories a day.   

If you search the web, you can find quite a few sites that will inform you that Henry VIII killed all, or almost all, of his six wives.  This is a blatant exaggeration, for the kindhearted king only had two of them executed.  There is pretty good evidence that he even loved at least two of his wives (although not the ones that he had beheaded, of course).  There is a handy rhyme to remind you the eventual fate of his wives: divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived.

Supposedly, on his deathbed, Henry muttered, “Monks, monks, monk” as his dying words.  This was supposedly indicative of a guilty conscience for all the monks and priests the king had executed after he banished the Catholic Church.  (As if a man who had married his brother’s spouse and had two of his wives beheaded had a conscience).

In reality, as Henry lay dying of renal failure, a physician told the king that he would likely die soon.  The king asked to see the Archbishop of Canterbury, then said, “I will first take a little sleep and then as I feel myself I will advise on the matter.”  When the archbishop arrived, the king was asleep and never woke up.  As dying words go, those suck.  (My favorite dying words come from Pancho Villa.  After being ambushed, he lay dying in the street, but still had the presence of mind to say, “Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something important.”)

Of all the nonsense myths about Henry VIII, the strangest and most persistent is about his funeral.  According to the legend, his burial was so delayed that during the funeral, his rotting corpse exploded due to the hot weather, and feral dogs lapped up part of the bloody mess.  Evidently, the moral of the story was that even the high and mighty among us eventually still end up as worm food.  (Or, in this case, Alpo).

The legend is nonsense, of course.  Henry VIII died in January, when it certainly was not hot.  His body was embalmed and sealed in a lead coffin with a wax likeness of the king placed on top of the casket.  In accordance with his will, he was placed in a vault alongside his deceased wife, Jane Seymour.   The king’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, the Dowager Queen, loyal to the end, attended the funeral.   Henry’s will allocated enough funds from his estate for masses for the late king to be held daily in perpetuity.  About a year after his death, the government found other uses for the money, evidently deciding that if the late king hadn’t made into heaven yet, it was a lost cause.

Henry’s will also stipulated that the vault containing both his body and that of Jane Seymour was to be only a temporary resting place and that eventually, both bodies were to be placed inside a magnificent memorial and chapel that Henry had helped design.  A brass statue bearing the king’s likeness was cast and polished and golden candlesticks were made in preparation.  Unfortunately, after the King’s death, the country was more or less constantly at war with somebody (usually France), so the treasury was always short of cash and construction of the memorial was delayed repeatedly.  Eventually, the statue was melted down for the money and the golden candlesticks were sold to a church in Belgium. 

Over time, due to the limited space in the church, other bodies were added to the vault, including that of King Charles I and one of the children of Queen Anne.  Somewhere along the line, the church just forgot where Henry’s body was located.  After the Battle of Trafalgar, the marble sarcophagus (originally meant to hold Cardinal Wolsey but appropriated by Henry) was removed and used as the base of Lord Nelson’s tomb in St. Paul’s.  About a decade later, the church realized just who was in that vault, and the coffin of King Charles was relocated.  Finally, a bronze slab was laid over the vault indicating both King Henry VIII and Queen Jane Seymour were located there.  

So, where did the urban legend of Henry’s body exploding and being partially devoured by dogs come from?  Surprisingly, it started while King Henry was still alive.  When the Pope declined to give the king a divorce from his constantly faithful first wife, Catherine, Henry broke with the Catholic Church establishing an independent Church of England.  This started a religious civil war within the country, pitting the pious against the opportunistic clergy.  

On Easter Sunday in 1532, a Franciscan delivered a sermon denouncing the King’s lack of faith, using as his text chapter 22 from 1st Kings.  The story from the bible recounts how King Ahab died from wounds he received in battle and was buried in Samaria.  His battle chariot was then washed in a pool where the prostitutes bathed and dogs licked the king’s blood as the chariot was being washed.

From this single sermon, the legend grew and over time was embellished endlessly.   Finally, the “official” version of the event was created by Agnes Strickland when she published her twelve volume magnum opus, “The Lives of the Queens of England” in 1848.  According to Strickland, a buildup of gases within Henry’s coffin burst the coffin open and a plumber was called to repair the breach in the lead plating.  While the Church waited for the plumber, blood and gore oozed from the coffin, being lapped up by feral dogs.  

It's not too late to build that memorial for Henry VIII.  It’s been 475 years since the government of England stole those funds from the king’s estate.  With interest, that should amount to quite a sum by now if the treasury were forced to pay it back.  While there are no living direct descendants of Henry VIII, King Charles III claims to be distantly related to the Tudor royal family.  Since he has no apparent real job, he should take up the family cause and finish the memorial.

Lost At Sea

After spending the last week on Oahu, I’ve been thinking about the hazardous nature of shipping cars to these islands.   Mostly I’ve thought about this because I had to mortgage my first born grandchild to rent a Jeep Pickup for a week from a Turo, a service that does for vehicles what Airbnb does for homes.  At the rate I paid, the guy who owns this truck will have it paid for in a year. 

Note.  I was looking forward to trying the new Jeep Gladiator Pickup, it looked interesting.  Now that I’ve driven it….I don’t want one.  Pickups should have at least a six foot bed, preferably 8 feet.  This truck was fun, but basically, it was an overpowered car with an open trunk—essentially neither a good truck nor a good car.  If the Jeep people ever wise up and give it a real bed, a standard transmission, and a smaller engine, I might be interested.  With its present configuration, it is not half the truck my old 1963 Ford was.

 

From what locals have told me, shipping a car from the mainland here costs about two grand and takes about a month for a vehicle to leave the mainland and make the more than 2000 mile trip to Hawaii.  And with my luck, the shipping container containing my vehicle would be the one blown overboard. 

 

This, of course, got my mind wandering to all the great cars that have managed to be lost at sea.

 

Any discussion about great cars lost at sea has to start with the Felicity Ace, a car carrying vessel that was basically a floating parking garage filled with a little over 4000 high-end cars, including Bentleys, Lamborghinis, Porsches, and Audis.  On its journey across the Atlantic, just south of the Azores, the ship caught fire.  The various auto makers were quick to point out that the fire might have been caused by a cook’s carelessly leaving a rag on a hot grill.  Indeed, the fire might have been started by any number of ways, and it would be recklessly premature of you to think the fire was most likely caused by one of the lithium battery  powered vehicles in the ship’s hold.

 

Whether or not those highly problematic batteries caused the fire, the deadly fumes they put out was certainly the reason firefighters could not extinguish the ship as it furiously burned for weeks. The ship finally sank in March 2022, so that those hundreds of millions of dollars worth of luxury cars are two miles underwater—sufficiently deep that by the time we develop the technology to salvage ships at that depth, all that will be left will be the tires.

 

If your Porsche went down with the Felicity Ace, you will be sad to learn that the company who charged you a couple of grand to ship your car will only refund a measly $750 of your shipping fee.  Evidently, you get a partial repayment because your car did make it partway across the Atlantic.  Perhaps you can take solace in the fact that your loss is far from novel:  similar losses have occurred more frequently than you might expect—eight such ships have either sunk or lost their cargo in the last twenty-one years.

 

Of all the cars lost at sea, the most famous has to be the 1912 Renault Type CB Coupe de Ville that went down with the Titanic.  You know, the car that Rose and Jack made famous in James Cameron’s 1997 movie.  (Yes, it has been that long and, in reality, the car that was featured in the movie was the next year’s model, but it was close enough).

 

William Carter, a native of Pennsylvania, fell in love with the luxury car when he took his family to Paris.  Sitting there in the showroom, the black car with large white wheels, gold spokes, and red velvet interior was beautiful.  Carter could well imagine sitting in the glass enclosed rear while his chauffeur, exposed to the elements, steered the powerful car with its 25 horsepower motor up to the dizzying speed of 35 miles per hour.  How could any American resist?  Carter bought the car for the incredible price of $5000  (roughly $140,000 today).

 

Cameron took a few liberties with the facts.  Besides using a later model car, Cameron ignored the fact that the actual Renault was packed in a giant wooden crate, then was stowed into a packed forward cargo hold of the doomed ship.  I guess torrid lovemaking in a packing crate doesn’t sound as romantic.  (You can take solace, perhaps, to learn that at last report, Rose’s handprint left on the window of the car in a moment of passion is still visible.)

 

To date, the Renault has not been located among the wreckage of the Titanic.  Since the bow is largely intact, and the car was supposedly securely crated, it is remotely possible that someday the car might actually be recovered.  Cars in worse condition have been restored, so we might someday see that car again…or at least parts of it.

 

Of all the cars lost at sea, my favorite was lost during my lifetime and is more valuable than any of the vehicles listed above.  On July 25, 1956, the Andrea Doria was sailing to the United. States when it collided with the Stockholm  While most of the passengers of the ship made it safely off the sinking ship, 51 passengers went down with the liner.  Also sinking to the bottom, securely held in a cargo hold, was the only Chrysler Norseman ever produced.

 

The designer of the car was Virgil Exner, who incorporated all the modern innovations that Chrysler intended to introduce into its car line over next few years—features like disappearing headlights and vanishing door handles.  The most noticeable feature was a completely cantilevered roof rising from the rear of the car.  With no front pillars to block the view, the newly designed, specially hardened windows wrapped around three sides of the car.  Car collectors today say the car could easily bring over a million dollars at auction.

 

There is only one way to describe the car:  sleekly beautiful.  Powered with a V8 engine, the car had been hand-built by famed Italian coach-builder Carrozzeria Ghia, to be the star of the 1957 car show circuit.  Since the entire project was kept under wraps, few photos were taken.  Not only was the ship lost before the designers ever got to see it, but to this day, no one is sure what color the car was painted.  The B&W photo at right has been colorized.

 

Since the Andrea Doria sank, divers have descended the 200 feet to the wreck several times, and what remains of the Norseman has been located.  Shortly before the cargo hold containing the vehicle collapsed, a diver reported that what little remained was nothing but a totally rusted pile of unrecognizable metal.  Identification would have been impossible but for the four tires still waiting to drive their first mile.

What If?

Tantalizing as it might be, historians should never start playing the “what if” game.  (You know, that alternative history game in which you change one little fact and then try to speculate how much that would have changed later events).  If the Democrats hadn’t split the ticket in 1860, would the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, still have been elected?  If George Washington had been killed in the French and Indian War, would the United States have lost the Revolutionary War?  My God!  We might be speaking British today!

I have nothing against alternative history, and for a lot of people, it is harmless speculation.  Harry Turtledove has made a profitable career writing some wonderful novels about alternative history.  Alas, historians simply know too many obscure historical links, chance meetings of historical figures, and strange coincidences—too many variables.  If a historian starts thinking along those lines, there is simply no stopping point.  Before long, the poor historian is up in the middle of the night, wondering if his Aunt Sally would have been a tea cart if she’d had wheels.…or if fish ever get thirsty….or why they call it “life” insurance?

Unfortunately, even though I know the risks, I have one of those nagging little “what if” questions I can’t let go of.  And like every good historian, I’m going to start at the very beginning.

England has had male preference primogeniture since the Norman invasion in the 11th century.  Male preference primogeniture means that royal titles and entailed estates are inherited by the first-born male heir, if one exists (although, failing that, the first-born female heir can inherit).  Curiously, the law doesn’t mention who inherits if one of the ancestors is a horse, which seems clearly the case for the current British monarch, King Charles III.  

For centuries, the male heir to the throne had first rights, even if his older sister was brighter and more capable (as they quite often were).  The rule was obviously sexist, it was frequently self-defeating and it lasted far longer than it should have.  And when the law was finally changed, it was, of course, for even more self-serving reasons.

On October 10, 2010, Prince William and Kate Middleton became engaged and they were married some six months later.  Kate Middleton was attractive, articulate, and very popular.  And there was obviously a 50% chance that their first child would be female, resurrecting up for the first time in more than a century that old primogeniture law about shoving females to the rear of the royal bus.  The popularity of the British monarchy was already somewhat in decline, the Queen was old, and it was easy to see that the eventual coronation of (then) Prince Chuck would not be an overwhelming success.  Well, the law was changed in 2013 with the Succession to the Crown Act of 2013, just in time for the arrival of Prince William and Princess Kate’s first child, the current Prince George of Wales.  Since the royal tricycle motor was male, it turns out the rush was for nothing.  The next child was female, so technically, she is now third in line for the throne, beating out her younger brother.

But, what if that Succession Act had been passed earlier, say right after Queen Victoria married Prince Albert?  Queen Victoria was popular, and she had proven to be a good monarch, so why not stop the prejudice against female heirs to the throne?  

If the primogeniture law had been changed in the nineteenth century, upon Queen Victoria’s death in January, 1901, her son Edward would not have become king, instead her eldest daughter, Victoria, would have become the second Queen Victoria.  Unfortunately, Queen Victoria II would have ruled for only a very few months, before she passed away and the crown passed to her eldest son, Wilhelm.  Now, things get really interesting:   if Wilhelm had grown up to be the King of England, he would not have become Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.  

Note.  Queen Victoria, the first one, not the imaginary second one, managed to marry her children off to all the monarchies of Europe.  In the first World War, the King of England, The Kaiser of Germany, and the Tsar of Russia were all her grandchildren, thus first cousins.  The war was quite literally a grotesque family feud.

As Kaiser, Wilhelm was incredibly jealous of his uncle, Edward VII of England, and after Edward died in 1910, he was jealous of his first cousin, King George V, too.  Kaiser Wilhelm did not start World War I by himself, but he certainly pushed the rapid militarization of Germany that was copied widely in Europe.  He deliberately went out of his way to hike tensions between Germany and Great Britain.

Okay, I admit it: historians are deeply divided about whether the Kaiser was truly guilty of starting the war, and though the Allies wanted to try him for war crimes (particularly for the brutal massacre of Belgian civilians), the Kaiser never stood trial.  At the end of the war, he fled to the Netherlands at the invitation of a sympathetic Queen Wilhelmina.  Though the Allies tried repeatedly to have the Kaiser extradited, the Queen held her ground, saying that such extradition would violate the Netherlands’ neutrality.  The Kaiser spent the rest of his life living in a castle there, surrounded by his vast wealth.

The bottom line, however, is that the Kaiser was certainly partly at fault, and if he had been the King of England instead of the Kaiser, the war—had there been one—would have certainly been very different.  Perhaps his inferiority complex would even have been assuaged and the militarization of Europe would have never happened.  

If the first World War had never occurred, then the Tsar would not have been discredited by early military defeats and the entire Russian Revolution may never have happened.  Lenin would have been unable to come back to Moscow, the rise of Communism would never have happened, and there would have never been a Soviet Union.And if the First World War had never happened, then the horrible provisions of the Versailles Treaty would have never been imposed, thus—perhaps—leading to…no World War II?  And most important, if that one little law had been enacted when it should have been…. then none of us would have ever heard of Charles, his son Harry or Harry’s publicity-obsessed wife, Meghan.

Oh, and if you are interested in the continuation of the above thread, the current English Monarch would be Queen Friederike Thyra Marion Wilhelmine Dorothea von der Osten.  She is pictured at right (and, for the record, she is the one in the middle).  I have no idea what she’s like, but she has to be better than Charles, Harry, and Meghan.

Not Exactly Robocop

No one in the neighborhood ever learned exactly why it happened, but suddenly the local police department and the sheriff’s office decided to open up a can of whipass on my neighbor.  He lives at the opposite end of the block, and while we have never actually met, we knew each other well enough to wave as we drove down the block.

Suddenly, just before dusk, the house was surrounded by law enforcement cars.  And I do mean surrounded, since the cars went all around the block, shutting down a major thoroughfare.  My neighbor’s wife came out the front door to see what was going on and was immediately taken behind a line of cars while officers demanded to know where her husband was.  No matter how many times she told the collected officers that he wasn’t home, they refused to believe her.  Eventually, she was locked in the backseat of one of the squad cars and ignored.

More official cars came.  The sheriff’s office parked an armored personnel carrier in front of the house and the swat team was deployed, with one officer stationed on the roof of the house across the street as a sniper. All the while, an officer with a bullhorn implored the man in the house to come out.  

After a couple of futile hours, the sheriff’s office sent a tracked robot in through the back door while the police department sent a similar robot through the front door….And then nothing happened for a very long time (The entire standoff took up over five hours!).  Eventually, one of the officers stationed near my driveway confided to me that only after both robots were inside the house was it discovered that both devices were controlled by identical radio frequencies and that the mixed transmissions had caused both devices to lock up, refusing any further instructions.

Eventually, officers did finally search the house, discovering that the wife had been telling the truth all along—there was no one in the house.  The small army of law enforcement officers left and as far as I know, the story never even made it to the local paper.  Two days later, as I drove by, I waved to the neighbor as he replaced his front door.

The events of that night have piqued my interest in how the police might use robots better and more efficiently.  Law enforcement is obviously using them as mobile cameras (like they did in my unfortunate neighbor’s house) and we’ve all seen on the news the various ways that bomb squads have utilized robots, but other than that, I don’t see a lot more that such wheeled robots can do for police departments using today’s technology.  There are a lot of robots being used as security guards in warehouses and parking lots, but most of their actions are not really appropriate for police departments.

Aerial robots, or drones, however, have an incredible future in law enforcement.  I will confess that every time I thought of a ‘new’ way that these flying robots might be used, as soon as I searched the internet, I found that there was a small pilot program—pun intended—somewhere already implementing a vastly improved version of ‘my’ idea.  Such programs are rare today, but I suspect that in the very near future they will be common.  

A few years ago, my truck broke down in one of the few remaining remote areas in New Mexico in which there was no cell phone reception.  Since I was on an interstate, I pulled way off the road, raised the truck’s hood, tied a flag to it, and settled down with a good book while I waited for the highway patrol to find me.  That wait was over 10 hours, because the state police had been diverted by an emergency that had delayed their usual patrols.  But, if we have robot vacuum cleaners that can plug themselves in to recharge, why can’t we have drones monitor stretches of highway, watching for immobile vehicles?  The drone could fly for 50 miles then land to recharge, while a freshly recharged replacement takes its place.  A remote dispatcher could monitor the flights of several dozen such drones, responding to emergencies much quicker than having to wait for a phone call.  

There are a couple of intersections in this town that so routinely have crashes that it almost makes sense to keep a parked ambulance on hand.  Failing that, how about a tethered drone that hovers well over the intersection, with cameras that monitor the traffic?  Since it is tethered, it wouldn’t need periodic recharging.  Perhaps the presence of a monitored camera might just provide a little deterrence for reckless drivers, 

I live in New Mexico and the county that I live in is slightly more than 3,800 square miles—an area almost half the size of Rhode Island.  Out of that 3,800 square miles, more than 85% of it is made up of mountains, deep ravines, and a lot of desert out there, where people frequently get lost.  While the County’s Search and Rescue Team does a fantastic job, a lot more of that ground could be quickly—and safely—searched by drones with thermal as well as visual imaging.  

And here is the best idea of all:  Why couldn’t a dispatcher send a drone as the first responder to an emergency call?  No matter how fast a patrol car speeds to an emergency, a GPS-guided drone equipped with a camera and a powerful light could be there first, sending information back to both the dispatcher and the officer enroute.  

I’m sure that any fire department would like to scope out a fire before they actually arrive, possibly learning what additional assets might be needed to control the conflagration.  Before an officer arrives on the scene, a drone could begin recording the action on the scene with a night vision enabled camera.  When not needed, drones could patrol public areas like schools, parks, and busy streets.  Dispatching a drone first would make it safer for the officers when they arrive.

The technology to do this exists now, and the cost of two such sophisticated drones would be well under the price of a single squad car.  In addition, while the use of drones would not completely eliminate the use of police helicopters, it would dramatically reduce both the number of helicopters needed and the cost of operating them.  In Los Angeles, the cost of purchasing, maintaining, and operating a police helicopter is well over a million dollars a year for each of their 17 helicopters.  Ignoring the high purchase price and the high maintenance cost, the fuel cost alone of operating just one of those helicopters for a month would purchase four high-tech drones.   A quick survey found at least a dozen deaths among US law enforcement personnel from helicopter crashes in 2022 alone.  Deployment of drones instead of helicopters as “first first responders” could very well decrease that death toll—the human cost.

I’m willing to bet—pardon me—a doughnut that before too long there will be more police drones than police dogs.