num_pages: 160
description: Henry VIII was almost never alone. He was surrounded, twenty four hours a day, by the small group of intimates and personal attendants who made up the staff of his Privy Chamber. They organised his daily life, kept him amused and acted as the landline between the king and the formal machinery of government. These men, intermarried, interbred and close knit even in their mutual feuding, were supremely well placed to rig politics and patronage for their own benefit. Their influence was important and sometimes decisive: factions in the Privy Chamber destroyed Anne Boleyn, they frustrated the Catholic reaction of the 1540s, and, by doctoring Henry's will, prepared the way for the full blooded Protestantism of his son's reign. The Reign of Henry VIII is not so much a book about Henry VIII. It is about the great game of politics over which he presided.
language: English
title: Reign of Henry VIII: Personalities and Politics
titlecomplete: Reign of Henry VIII: Personalities and Politics
characters: Jane Seymour, Catherine Howard, Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII of England, Catherine Parr, Anne Boleyn, Catherine of Aragon, Anne of Cleves
genres: British Literature, Historical, History, Tudor Period, Biography, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 329
publisher: Vintage