Time Travel To The Court Of Old Henry VIII : Henry’s Infatuation and the Religious Earthquake! By Mr A.N.Muggins (Sir Alfred Muggins, soon to be Lord Muggins!) Part 2

     Alfred watched over the next few years as Henry’s romance with Anne turned from a harmless flirtation into the biggest issue in European power politics of those times, as Henry found his influence over the Pope and the other Catholic powers of Europe to be far less than he had envisaged. Anne refused to let him into her bed for anything short of a marriage ring. Henry’s dutiful and popular Queen Catherine was to be cast aside in favour of the younger woman, who would presumably now be more fertile and be able to have the princes Henry needed to assure the succession of the Tudor Dynasty.

     You may have heard this story before of course. I do not wish to bore you, as it is an extremely well told tale, having been dramatized and documentarised, and written about in fact and fiction a very many times! So why, you may ask, am I Alfred Muggins outlining the whole exciting and very sorry story to you again? Well, it is mainly because I Alfred Muggins, and my wife, have actually been to the Court of Auld King Henry, and have actually seen the beauty of the Lady who became Queen for ourselves. So we can confirm all these events of history really did occur, and are not just the fantasies and made up fairy tales of other historians. I have seen it all with my own eyes (and I nearly lost my head on more than one occasion myself!)!

     Henry was getting a little short of Ministers by the end of it all. He threw Cardinal Wolsey to the wolves, and cruelly put his new top Minister Thomas Cromwell to do it.

     The King usually managed his Kingdom through his leading Ministers of the time, but there were times when he drew on the more casual advice of ‘friends’ or ‘courtiers’, such as Alfred. (After Thomas Cromwell’s downfall some years later, after failing to find him the wife he really wanted, then Alfred’s advice was looked on with even more favour. Cromwell’s biggest mistake was in finding him Anne of Cleves, whom he did not fancy and did not want, and it basically cost him his head! Alfred was in no position to prevent the King’s anger against Cromwell at the time, but did find he had a bit more influence on the King afterwards, probably due to the shortage of able advisors and Ministers!)