Henry VIII’s secret book doodles show he was riddled with ‘anxiety’

From beheading two of his wives to waging bloody wars against Scotland and France, history has rightly portrayed Henry VIII as something of an ogre.

But a new study shows that in his later years, the king was vulnerable and “anxious” – and wracked with fear of God, probably because of all his misdeeds.

A copy of a prayer book once used by the Tudor king in the last years of his life has distinctive markings alongside particularly pious passages, researchers have found.

It shows that his mind was preoccupied with thoughts of “bodily suffering, sinfulness, and divine wisdom,” as well as God’s forgiveness, while his health was rapidly deteriorating.

The markings were made by Henry in a prayer book found in Wormsley Library near High Wycombe called ‘Psalms or Prayers’.

The book was published anonymously by his sixth and last wife Catherine Parr in 1544, three years before his death in 1547.

The new study was conducted by Micheline White, an associate professor of English literature at Carleton University, Canada, who thinks the markings will come as a surprise to many.

“It’s not what we’d expect,” Professor White said The times.

“We tend to think that Henry was very confident and exercised his authority with impunity, but in these particular annotations we see traces of a Henry who is quite fearful.”

Professor White studied two copies of Psalms or Prayers, one of which was already known to be in Henry’s possession in the Elton Hall Collection in Cambridgeshire.

The other, housed in the Wormsley Library, remains unknown to scholars to this day, but Professor White is convinced it once belonged to Henry.

In it are what are known as ‘manicules’ – handwritten marks in the shape of a hand with the index finger extended in a pointing gesture.

Markings in the book are similar to those in other books known to belong to the king – not only his Elton Hall copy of ‘Psalms or Prayers’, but also the 1530 collection of scriptural texts ‘Collectanea satis copiosa’ and Marulić’s theological compendium ‘Evangelistarium’ from 1487′.

“I show that a copy in the Wormsley Library also has markings, and I argue that there are good reasons to believe that they were made by Henry,” says Professor White in her study, published in the journal Renaissance Quarter.

In the Wormsley copy of ‘Psalms or Prayers’ there are eight manicules and also three trefoils – a pattern of three dots, used in the same way to mark notable sections.

One manicule was drawn next to a passage that reads, “Take thy plagues from me, for thy chastisement hath made me weak and weary.”

It continues: “For when you punish a man for his sins, you cause him to slowly decay and languish.”

Another manicule was etched by the king next to the words, “Turn your anger away from me, that I may know that you are more merciful to me than my sins deserve.”

Meanwhile, an ink shamrock crafted by the king marks a verse in which the speaker worries that his sins will “cause God to forsake him.”

It says, “O Lord God, do not forsake me, though I have done no good in your sight.”

According to Professor White, these markings indicate certain sections that the King wanted to keep in mind from 1544 and “obviously resonated with Henry’s predicament physically.”

The king was obese for most of his life and during his last years he suffered from chronic headaches, leg ulcers, gout and physical disabilities.

In May 1544, the Imperial Ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, told the Holy Roman Emperor that besides his “age and weight,” Henry had “the worst legs in the world,” but that “no one dares tell him so,” says Professor White.

Henry may have been coy about his medical problems in front of his subjects and military allies, but in the margins of Parr’s book he went head-on with some unpleasant facts.

“He was the divinely ordained monarch of England, but his aging, sinful body was ‘weak and enfeebled’, and while he believed his actions were just, he also believed that God sent sickness as punishment and might forsake him would let.

“By highlighting these verses in Parr’s book, Henry confronted both the ugly truth and himself as an exemplary monarch by responding to the crisis by begging God to ‘turn away’ his wrath and bestow mercy.”

Deluxe copies of Parr’s ‘Psalms or Prayers’ were given out as gifts as part of Henry VIII’s war campaign against France.

Reading Parr’s book at this time of international and domestic conflict, Henry is said to have felt it was “absolute” to call upon God for “wisdom and guidance.”

After Henry’s death in January 1547, Parr married a former lover, Thomas, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, who was Admiral of England from 1547 to 1549.

Sadly, Parr died in September 1548 shortly after giving birth to a daughter, Mary Seymour, while Seymour was convicted of treason and guillotined the following year.

Seymour is said to have had a fling with the teenage princess Elizabeth while the future monarch was in his care and Catherine’s care – and while his new wife was pregnant.