Henry VIII: man and monarch

Abstract

To mark the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII's accession to the throne, there is a major exhibition at the British Library in London.Important and rarely displayed items from the British Library's unrivalled Henry VIII collection are exhibited, including correspondence, key official documents, maps and books from the King's own library.The exhibition examines the extraordinary transformations -personal and political, intellectual and religious, literary, aesthetic and linguistic -that took place in the reign of Henry VIII.We could explore the beliefs and motives behind Henry's actions, telling the story of his reign from his own perspective, but I'd like to look more at his weight and health -the fact that he started out as a healthy, young man who did a lot of exercise and ended up very overweight.Henry's prescription book contains various receipts for treating ulcers and 'restraining humours', some of them by the royal physicians and some of them ascribed to Henry himself: 'An Oyntment devised by the king's Majesty made at Westminster.And devised at Grenwich to take away inflammations and to cease payne and heale ulcers called gray plaster'

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