The Resting Place of Henry VIII

I never believed that the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, was guilty of the charges of adultery that led to her death. She loved to flirt, but she was also very intelligent and knew how dangerous it would be for her to commit adultery. However, at this point the two formerly ardent lovers who had been together for several years were not feeling the same as before, and Henry was disappointed in her losing the son he wanted more than anything. Did he really believe that she had been unfaithful or did he just want to get rid of her? Maybe both, but we shall never know for sure.

In all of his portraits King Henry exudes a very masculine and fysical kind of power so being made a cuckold would turn him into a most vengeful demon. That's exactly what he did when he had his wife executed on such slim evidence.
He wanted to marry a woman who was the very opposite of Anne, namely the tender and meek Jane Seymour. Not only did Henry have Anne killed, but also some of her friends and supporters. One of these was her beloved brother George whom I find just as innocent as her of Henry's accusations of incest.
I see it as some kind of poetric justice that King Henry VIII's body ended up in this tumbledown vault which also was forgotten for ages. Not only was his coffin badly damaged, but when the grave was found someone tried to steal one of his bones to make a handle for a knife. However, the coffin of Jane Seymour was intact as was some coffins of royal babies.

A Y Nutt’s watercolour of Henry VIII’s vault

Another coffin in the same vault contained the corpse of King Charles I who ended up losing his head in 1649 because he quarrelled with the Parliament of England. The problem with Charles was his haughtiness - which in some ways resembled that of Henry VIII. Both believed in the divine rights of the king and behaved according to this belief.