Henry VIII's Health in a Nutshell (9 page)

The NPD theory does have some definite points in its favour. It is bolstered by Henry’s childhood. Like sociopaths, narcissism seems to be an acquired trait. It starts with a sensitive child who gets excessive praise or excessive criticism, leading the child to believe everything is all about him or her – either in a good way or a bad one. Children who are overindulged or told they have exceptional personal beauty may also develop NPD. Likewise, children who are overindulged by one parent and treated coldly by the other parent are at risk of become narcissistic. It is beyond doubt that Henry had a privileged, cosseted childhood and his beauty and intelligence could have done nothing but exacerbate his feelings of exceptionalism. Additionally, Henry was extremely close to his mother but appears to have had a chillier relationship with his more emotionally repressive father. Did Henry’s lauded personal charms, combined with his mother’s petting and his father’s harsh criticism, shape the future king into a narcissist?

An argument against Henry having NPD, at least prior to the 1530s is the fact that the king did not go off the rails at the slightest hint of criticism. People with NPD have hugely inflated egos, but like a hot-air balloon their ego’s huge size does not negate that it is fragile and lacks substance. Narcissists are terrified of any damage to the ego, because they fear that people will discover they are full of air and not much else. Thus, a narcissist dramatically overreacts to any kind of negative feedback, perceiving it as an attack where they are most vulnerable. Often they display “narcissistic rage” if they are questioned or criticized – blustering and projecting their own negative qualities onto others in order to deflect blame
¹²⁸
. Narcissists cannot ever admit to having been in the wrong or having committed an error. A narcissist can no more tender a sincere apology that they can fly to the moon by flapping their arms
¹²⁹
. While this describes Henry’s reactions from 1535 onward, it does not match Henry’s behaviour as a younger man. Before that watershed year, people who criticized Henry did not wind up with their heads on a chopping block for their audacity.

For example, in 1532 a priest named William Peto preached an Easter sermon in which he asserted that Henry, who was in the congregation
listening
, would meet his end just like the Old Testament tyrant Ahab
¹³⁰
. Peto warned the king that if he didn’t mend his ways, then dogs would lick his blood from the stones just as they had licked Ahab’s after his death in battle. Peto also strongly implied that Anne Boleyn was Jezebel reborn. Considering that Jezebel was conceptualized as the nadir of harlotry, an evil queen who had slaughtered prophets and replaced them with idol worshippers, this was a thundering theological condemnation of Anne. Henry was very angry, but he didn’t go berserk or have Peto’s head cut off. The king wisely looked for other solutions. First, he had one of the theologians who was on his side, a priest named Curwin, preach the following Sunday. Peto was away at the time, so it seemed like a choice opportunity to refute him. Things did not go according to Henry’s plans, however, since another friar named Elstow stood up from among the assembled listeners and began loudly refuting Curwin
¹³¹
. Unsurprisingly, Peto and Elstow were called up in front of the king’s council, where Henry and his chief ministers castigated the pair soundly. The friars stood their ground. When the Earl of Essex told them they should be stuffed into a sack and dropped into the Thames to drown, Elstow told Essex, “Threaten these things to rich and dainty folk who are clothed in purple, fare delicately, and have their chiefest hope in this world, for we esteem them not, but are joyful that for the discharge of our duties we are driven hence. With thanks to God we know the way to Heaven to be as ready by water as by land, and therefore we care not which way we go”
¹³²
. Despite thumbing their noses at the king and disputing his assertions, these friars were freed and sent into exile
¹³³
. They left England and settled in Antwerp, where Peto continued to needle Henry by publishing a book defending the legitimacy of Katherina’s marriage to the king.

Beyond a doubt, Henry’s behaviour in the last fifteen or so years of his reign can be described as a narcissistic, but up until that point the king had a swelled head, rather than NPD.

Insomuch as so many of Henry’s theoretical diagnoses mention his depression, questioning whether or not the king was clinically depressed, seems superfluous. Yet what about the type of depression that was once labelled “manic depression” and is now called bipolar disorder? Were the king’s radical personality changes due to the onset of this mental illness?

The National Institute of Mental Health explains that people suffering from “bipolar disorder experience unusually intense emotional states that occur in distinct periods called mood episodes. Each mood episode represents a drastic change from a person’s usual mood and behaviour. An overly joyful or overexcited state is called a manic episode, and an extremely sad or hopeless state is called a depressive episode. Sometimes, a mood episode includes symptoms of both mania and depression. This is called a mixed state. People with bipolar disorder may also be explosive and irritable during a mood episode. Extreme changes in energy, activity, sleep and behaviour go along with these changes in mood.”

Does this describe Henry? Like the other theories on Henry’s mental health, it certainly fits the profile of the ageing king, but does not match the behaviour of the king when he was younger. When the king first ascended the throne, and for the next twenty-five years of his reign, records show that Henry was consistently active and sought out pleasurable pastimes daily. There is no evidence that he was experiencing mania, which is marked by notable and excessive elation, agitation, restlessness and risk-taking behaviour. Henry liked to go hunting every day, but he didn’t try to jump over walls or have his hounds killed if the hunt failed. Nor did the king instigate drunken revels every night and indulge in orgies. He appears to have been cheerful, not hypomanic.

The biggest sign that Henry was not bipolar, at least until he was older than 40, is that to be bipolar, one must have “lows” as well as “highs”. Henry’s blue periods didn’t begin to strike until the king was a much older man. Even during his early frustrations with his Great Matter, Henry was more irked than depressed about the whole mess. His courtiers and physicians would have noticed depressive episodes in the young king, which would have been thought to be the result of too much black bile leading to melancholy, just as they noticed the bleak periods Henry experienced in his late middle-age, so it is unlikely that it would have gone unmentioned if he had been despondent for very long. Any depressive episodes would have needed to have been lengthy and profound to qualify the king as bipolar, since there is no such thing as a short, mild depression stage in bipolar disorder.

Henry would, however, have depressive episodes later in life.

There has been one medical condition posited that would explain why Henry’s emotional changes and physical deterioration began shortly before his 40th birthday and then rapidly accelerated until his death. If the supposition that Henry had a Kell positive blood type is correct, then he may have developed a disease which is exclusive to Kell positive individuals: McLeod syndrome. The illness resembles Huntington’s disease and may operate in a similar fashion by causing the degeneration of the basal ganglia.
^134
135
Patients are typically healthy during their infancy and childhood
¹³⁶
, with the disease starting to put in an appearance around a person’s 40th birthday and then growing progressively worse over time
¹³⁷
. Although the majority of people with this illness don’t normally begin to show mental/psychological symptoms until after midlife, “there is subclinical affectation of muscle and peripheral nerve already in the third decade”
¹³⁸
, which would explain why the king’s athleticism was compromised after his mid-30s. McLeod syndrome would explain both the
specific
degeneration of Henry’s leg muscles and his sudden and increasingly large behaviour changes in the 1530s.

There are many different kinds of psychopathology exhibited by patients with McLeod syndrome including, but not limited to, deterioration of memory and executive functions, paranoia, depression and socially inappropriate conduct
¹³⁹
.
¹⁴⁰
This mental deterioration can become severe. In one notable case, a previously healthy man with a high degree of intelligence was hospitalized at the age of 39 with an initial schizophrenic episode
¹⁴¹
, and it was determined that the patient’s psychopathology was
actually
a symptom of his worsening McLeod syndrome
¹⁴²
. This demonstrates that “schizophrenia-like symptoms”, which include personality changes, anxiety, paranoia, depression and a host of other psychopathological conditions, can be the “prominent initial clinical manifestation” of McLeod syndrome
¹⁴³
. There is certainly substantial evidence to suggest that Henry underwent a significant personality change after his 40th birthday, in a manner consistent with the mental problems that are often linked to McLeod syndrome.

Henry would have received the genes to express McLeod syndrome from his mother’s family, probably via Jacquetta of Luxemburg, just as he would have received the gene for the Kell antigen. McLeod syndrome is carried on the X-chromosome and is inherited from the patient’s mother
¹⁴⁴
. Few, if any, females express McLeod syndrome because of the Lyon effect.
^145
146
However, women are able to pass the gene on to their children, where it can be expressed in
some
, but not all, Kell positive male offspring
¹⁴⁷
. The condition is rare enough that Henry’s Kell-positive maternal uncles and great-uncle may not have ever manifested McLeod syndrome themselves.

Conclusion

Considerable challenges face historians in their attempts to ascertain the truth. Piecing together the facts from the bits of information that survived for centuries is very difficult. Often information is gleaned from letters written about court gossip and that relay only second-hand knowledge. Additionally, the writers of those letters were not impartial. The court teemed with intrigue and factional jockeying for power. Those who were in the favour of certain ministers, or wives, of the king could view the same event very differently. It is even more difficult to make an accurate medical diagnosis using information gleaned from those same slanted historical records. While there are genetic markers for the suspected conditions and new techniques for extracting DNA from very old remains, so that if Henry’s body were exhumed for analysis a DNA test could prove or disprove beyond doubt many of the medical theories about the king, the funds to dig Henry up are simply not available – even if the current queen would give researchers permission to do so. Until such analysis is allowed, historical clues will have to suffice in the search for answers regarding Henry’s health and ambiguous reign.

Bibliography

Ackroyd, Peter. 2013. Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I. Macmillan.

Adamson, Melitta Weiss. 2004. Food in Medieval Times. Greenwood Publishing Group.

Baichoo, V. and Bruce-Tagoe, A. 2000 “Recurrent hydrops fetalis due to Kell allo-immunization” Annals of Saudi Medicine Sep-Nov; 20(5-6):415-6.

Berkowitz RL, Beyth Y, Sadovsky E. “Death in utero due to Kell sensitization without excessive elevation of the delta OD450 value in amniotic fluid. Obstet Gynecol. 1982;60:746-749.

Bernard, G. W. 2005. The King’s Reformation. Yale University Press.

Bowman, J.M., J.M. Pollock, F.A. Manning, C.R. Harman, and S. Menticogou. 1992. “Maternal Kell Blood Group Alloimmunization.” Obstetricas and Gynecology 79: 239–44.

Berkowitz RL, Beyth Y, Sadovsky E. “Death in utero due to Kell sensitization without excessive elevation of the delta OD450 value in amniotic fluid. Obstet Gynecol. 1982;60:746–749.

Caine, M.E., and E. Mueller-Heubach. 1986. “Kell Sensitization in Pregnancy.” American Journal of Obstertics and Gynecology January: 85–90.

Calandar of State Papers. 1862. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII.: Preserved in the Public Record Office, the British Museum and Elsewhere. Edited by John S. Brewer, Robert H. Brodie, and James Gairdner. His Majesty’s Stationery Office.

Calandar of State papers. 1864. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 2, 1515-1518. Edited by J. S. Brewer. Vol. 2. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol2/pp104-118.

Calandar of State Papers. 1875. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 4, 1524-1530. Edited by J.S. Brewer. Vol. 4. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office,.

———. 1896. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 15, 1540. Edited by James Gairdner and R.H. Brodie. Vol. 15. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

———. 1902. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 18 Part 2, August-December 1543. Vol. 18. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.