The Last Days of Henry VIII

Death, at last, was about to put an end to Henry’s crimes; he was now fifty-seven years of age, and had grown to such an enormous size that he could not pass through the doorway of his palace, and was obliged to be carried by servants up and down stairs. A deep-rooted sadness and remorse now seize him; all his crimes, sacrileges, and scandals stared at him in the face. To establish the sacrilegious doctrine of his primacy over the English church, he had put to death two Cardinals, three Archbishops, eighteen Bishops and Archdeacons, five hundred priests, sixty superiors of religious houses, fifty canons, twenty-nine peers, three hundred and sixty-six knights, and an immense number of both the gentry and people. Ulcers in one of his legs, together with fever, now plainly told him that his end was nigh. All dreaded his anger; and none was willing to brave the danger of death, by plainly telling him that his only chance of salvation was to repent of his evil deeds – to repair the scandal he had given – and humbly return to the church he had abandoned. One alone suggested to him that he ought to convoke a parliament…to set things right. He ordered, it is said, the secretaries of state to convoke it, but they feared they should be obliged to disgorge the plunder of the church, and put off the convocation, and thus he left the church in the greatest confusion; and soon, as we shall see, irreparable ruin overtook it.

Just before his death, he opened a church belonging to the Franciscans, and had Mass again said in it, but this was a little reparation for so much mischief … He caused Mass to be celebrated several times in his chamber, and wished that the viaticum would be administered to him in the one kind alone. When the viaticum was brought in, he received it kneeling, and when it was told him, that, considering the state he was in, that was unnecessary, he said: “If I could bury myself under the earth, I could not show sufficient respect to the God I am about to receive.” How could he however, expect to please the Almighty by such acts of reverence, after trampling on his church, and dying out of her communion? He endeavoured, by these external acts, to quiet that remorse of conscience he felt, but, withal, he could not recover the Divine grace, nor the peace he sought. He called for some religious to attend to him at his last moments, after banishing them out of the kingdom; he next called for something to drink, and having tasted it. He said to those around him, in a loud tone, “so this is the end of it, and all is lost for me,” and immediately expired.

(An extract from “The History of Heresies” by St.Alphonsus d’Liguori)