Why Henry VIII’s Corpse Became A Royal Problem

Henry was a vigorous athlete in his youth as a prince, so it’s somewhat pathetic that he became so fat in his later years. He also had long-standing issues with his legs, so physical activity would not be the answer. No official diagnosis has been made for what killed him, and the exact circumstances of his final hours remain unclear.

Henry passed away in Whitehall Palace on January 28, 1547. His death wasn’t revealed immediately because officials wanted to focus on securing the transition of his nine-year-old son Edward VI to the throne. So, England was effectively pretending he was still alive. Finally, when Henry’s death was declared, the full weight of the royal funeral machine began to roll.

Funerals in Tudor times were anything but a simple process; they were major political and religious events that required extensive planning. In Henry’s case, that meant embalming his body to last long enough for all the services and travel to Windsor, which is why he wasn’t actually buried until February 16, 1547, some three weeks after he died.

In accordance with custom at the time, Henry’s corpse was treated with various aromatic or preservative agents to slow decay.

Henry’s embalmers sealed his embalmed corpse in lead to preserve him, and because his bloated body was so large, Historic Royal Palaces says the lead by itself weighed more than half a ton. His already enormous body became even larger, yet somehow it had to make it to Windsor. Henry was now essentially just very expensive Tudor freight.

Henry’s body was never actually seen. His body stayed in the coffin the entire time. Officials just put an effigy on top of it, made from wood and wax, dressed up in splendid clothes, even with the Imperial Crown. That way, people would have the idealized public image of the monarch in mind, rather than look at the corpse. The body under the effigy was slowly rotting. Out of sight, out of mind.

Like I mentioned before, royal funerals were grand productions, and there was absolutely nothing subtle about them. Henry’s funeral hearses were constructed at Whitehall, Syon, and Windsor and embellished with heraldry, textiles, candles, waxwork, and iconography. The Windsor hearse may have been around 35 feet high.

Henry’s coffin and effigy were loaded onto an elaborate many-wheeled chariot that was drawn by eight horses along sixteenth-century roads toward Windsor. It’s hard not to feel sorry for those horses. It wasn’t just a body they were hauling along the road; it was a massive lead casing, the coffin itself, an effigy on top, and layer after layer of ceremonial decoration.

The procession stopped overnight at Syon Abbey on its way to Windsor, keeping watch over the coffin and effigy, but nobody knows for sure, not even the most devoted of historians, what occurred that night.

Apologies in advance if you were eating when you realized that what you were about to read was disgusting: putrid or bloody liquid began to leak from Henry’s coffin as it rested overnight at Syon, later reports claim. Decomposition releases fluids and gases, so a leak from a coffin that wasn’t properly sealed or was damaged during transport wouldn’t really come as a shock.

Modern retellings of this story often describe Henry’s corpse literally exploding in the coffin. But it points more to a leak, or maybe a failed lead seal, instead of an actual explosion. Of course, decomposition gases could theoretically build up pressure inside a sealed container, but that doesn’t mean anything burst. I understand, however, why “Henry’s corpse exploded” was a much more compelling narrative than “his lead case may have cracked open.”

And I know the leaking of bodily fluids is gross, so I’m extra sorry to mention this one: a dog allegedly ate some of it. According to Gilbert Burnet, a 17th-century bishop and historian, whose account was written over a hundred years after Henry’s death, this happened, and he says he got the story from an earlier manuscript, so it isn’t just him making stuff up off the top of his head. But again, it’s still a much later version of events.

Years before Henry died, a friar named William Peto called him out in public and likened him to King Ahab, from the Old Testament, whose life ended with dogs licking his blood. Peto is said to have told Henry he would meet the same end. Then, after Henry’s death, the story begins circulating about a dog licking up fluids from his coffin. Coincidence? Not really.

Henry broke from Rome, dissolved the monasteries, killed anyone who defied him. A great king reduced to a decaying corpse, dripping fluids onto the floor for a dog to lap up, was just too perfect a symbol for the chroniclers who despised Henry. The comparison to King Ahab, whose blood was licked up by dogs, turned ordinary decomposition into supposed divine punishment. Note: Burnet, the historian who recorded the dog story, was himself a Protestant, so this wasn’t merely Catholics taking revenge on Henry.

Putting this story to one side, the rest of Henry’s death is a lot simpler. The body was taken to Windsor and he was interred in St George’s Chapel on February 16, 1547, next to Jane Seymour, the wife who gave him his surviving legitimate son. Unfortunately, it did little to quell the rumors about the dog and the leaking coffin.

Henry’s plan was for a giant monument in St George’s Chapel, made of all the things he had taken from the tomb of Cardinal Wolsey, his disgraced former chancellor (marble, gilt bronze, statues, a chantry chapel, and so on), and the will of 1546 explicitly said that he wanted it continued after his death. Since he could not control what was done with his body, he would control what was seen over it.

Spoiler: it never really worked out. Work carried on for a while during Edward VI’s reign, then stalled again under Elizabeth I, and parts of the proposed monument were either sold, lost, or relocated. In the end, Henry wound up in his vault, with none of the monumental tribute he had dreamed up for himself. One of the most lavish English monarchs, and he received a rather lackluster farewell.

That massive black sarcophagus made for Henry was actually used, a few hundred years later, for Admiral Horatio Nelson’s grave in St Paul’s Cathedral. At least it was useful for something.

The vault was first breached in 1813, revealing that Henry’s coffin had been severely damaged, and a watercolor made during a later 1888 reopening shows the extent of the decay, with the coffin resting directly beside those of Jane Seymour and Charles I. The coffin damage is sometimes cited online as proof that the rumored ‘explosion’ at Syon (the leaking-coffin story from earlier) really happened, but I’d be careful not to overstate this. The coffin being damaged is indisputable. What caused the damage remains speculation.

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There are a few theories about how Henry’s coffin was damaged, but none are proven. Perhaps the foundation under his tomb gave way. Perhaps the coffin was damaged in transit or in the vault itself. To add insult to injury, Henry’s final resting place was later marked by a rather meager nineteenth-century floor tablet, quite a letdown from the impressive monument he had commissioned.

This content was created with the help of AI.