Historical Documentary: Henry Courtenay was the grandson of a king, the cousin of Henry VIII, and the owner of Okehampton Castle in Devon. In 1538, his cousin – and childhood best friend – had him beheaded. The charge was treason. The conspiracy was half-baked. But Henry VIII’s paranoia was very, very real. This is the story of Fat Henry, the last gasp of the Wars of the Roses, and what happens when you’re related to the wrong man at the wrong moment in history.

Be sure to watch The Extra section for more bonus, gory details!

*In this episode:*

• The civil war that made Henry VIII who he was
• The jousting accident that made him worse
• The half-baked Catholic plot to restart the Wars of the Roses
• The torture that produced a confession — of sorts
• The execution of a king’s cousin on Tower Hill
• What happened to the eleven-year-old boy left behind

*Further Reading:*

• Desmond Seward, “The Exeter Conspiracy of 1538: The Extermination of the White Rose,” History Today, Vol. 61, Issue 1, January 2011.
• J. P. D. Cooper, ‘Courtenay, Henry, Marquess of Exeter (1498/9–1538)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, January 2008.

Secret Bonus Facts for Viewers Who Get Lost in the Description:

1. The 1536 jousting accident that scrambled Henry’s brain wasn’t actually his first. In 1524, he’d tested a newly designed suit of armour — of his own invention — against his brother-in-law Charles Brandon. Henry forgot to lower his visor. Brandon, half-blind inside his own helmet, couldn’t hear the crowd screaming “Hold!” He hit Henry full in the open face, shattering his lance and filling the King’s helmet with splinters. Henry laughed it off, ran six more courses to reassure the crowd, and blamed nobody. Twelve years later, he wasn’t so lucky — and considerably less forgiving.
2. Edward Courtenay wasn’t the only child swept up in the arrests of 1538. Henry Pole the Younger — teenage son of Lord Montagu, grandson of Margaret — was also thrown into the Tower. Unlike Edward, he was given no tutor, no company, and no lessons. The Crown kept paying for his food until 1542. Then the payments stopped. He is never mentioned again. He was not executed, not released, not exiled. He simply ceased to appear in the record. He was somewhere between fifteen and twenty-one years old.
3. To secure Margaret Pole’s conviction, Thomas Cromwell produced a tunic embroidered with the Five Wounds of Christ — the symbol carried by the Catholic rebels during the Pilgrimage of Grace. Damning evidence. Except that Margaret’s house had already been thoroughly searched at the time of her arrest in November 1538. The tunic was “found” six months later. Modern historians consider it a plant. Cromwell had Margaret executed on fabricated evidence. He was then himself executed the following year. History occasionally has a sense of humour.

You’ve scrolled too far. There is nothing down here.

But… since you’re here… Margaret Pole holds a distinction that tends to get lost in the more dramatic details of her story. She was one of only two women in sixteenth-century England to hold a peerage entirely in her own right — the Earldom of Salisbury — independent of any husband. It made her one of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country. It also made her, in Henry’s eyes, exactly the kind of person who needed to be watched very carefully indeed.