The Amazing, Appalling, Exploding Henry

Jan Adkins

​The Explainer General

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Henry VIII gets a lot of bad press notably for his seven wives and a regrettable habit of chopping off heads. But there were two Henrys: early and late. Early Henry was a humdinger.

He became king at age 17 in 1509, a big (over six feet) handsome lad. He was broadly educated and well-read in English, Latin, and French. He played the lute, organ, and harpsichord, composed music, and sang well. He loved a party, and he was a ferocious sportsman. Henry played excellent tennis, was a skilled wrestler, hunter, and jouster.
His love of jousting may have been his undoing. This was not a battle skill but a royal game: on huge horses, in heavy armor, opponents rode at each other with blunt lances to knock each other out of the saddle. But in 1536 Henry left his face-covering visor up during a joust, catching a lance on his forehead. His majesty went down under his horse. His legs were crushed and he lay unconscious for two hours, apparently a serious concussion.
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Henry changed radically. The broken long bones in his legs healed poorly and developed infected ulcers, which had to be drained using red hot probes. Ouch. Walking became difficult and painful, and finally impossible. The smell from his infected legs was awful. He became angry, paranoid, and irrational. No longer active, he ate and ate, bloating from around 210 pounds (95 kg) to 400 pounds (181 kg). This was late Henry: obese, dangerous, and smelly. His altered mental state and his constant pain surely contributed to his marital difficulties and to steady employment for head-choppers. 
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A mental, physical wreck, Henry VIII died at age 55 in 1547. Court embalmers replaced his innards with sawdust, resin and herbs to preserve the body, but Henry was already rotting from the legs up. The royal corpse was placed in a sealed lead coffin. An enormous regal procession set off from Whitehall Castle to Windsor Castle. The funeral parade halted the first day at the old Syon Abbey. In the middle of the night, the lead coffin exploded!
Or did it? Some historians suggest that it simply broke because Henry was too fat and the roads were bad. Yet contemporary morticians insist that gasses of decomposition can blow open even a modern sealed coffin. The coffin was soldered shut and the parade hustled on to the burial at Windsor, an untidy end for a wonderful and terrible king.

Contrasting eighteen-year-old Henry VIII after his coronation in 1509 to a Hans Holbein-style  portrait of him in 1542 shows a man who has led a very hard life.  Above:  Unidentified painter  via Wikimedia Commons  Right: After Hans Holbein via Wikimedia Commons.

Henry VIII’s vault now lies under the choir loft at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, about 20 miles west of London. His coffin, the center one, has been badly damaged over the years and has broken apart in places. Wikimedia Commons

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Jan Adkins is not only an author but also a talented illustrator.  His Bertha Takes a Drive:  How the Benz Automobile Changed the World  tells of how Karl, Benz  invented the prototype of the Benz motorwagen. But the German government declared the vehicle illegal, and the church called it the devil's work. Unbeknownst to her husband, Bertha Benz steals away with her two sons and drives nearly one hundred miles to prove just how amazing the motorwagen is.  The remarkable mother/son road trip reduces global concern about moving vehicles.