Posts Tagged 'Bloody Mary'
Quintessential Leadership Analysis of Henry VIII – Pt. 3 – 1536 – 1547
Posted: March 21, 2013 in Examples and Analyses of Lack of Leadership and Unquintessential Leadership, General Things about Quintessential Leadership, Myths and Misconceptions About Management, Quintessential Leadership, Quintessential Leadership is an Art
Tags: Anne of Cleves, Archibishop of Canterbury, Bloody Mary, Building Trust and Being Trustworthy, Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr, Catholicism, death, deception, edward seymour, Edward VI, Elizabeth I, English reformation, France, Henry VIII, illness, instability, Jane Seymour, madness, Mary I, mass executions, McLeod neuroacanthocytosis syndrome, quintessential leadership, Rebellion, Scotland, Spain, Thomas Cranmer, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Culpepper, Thomas Seymour
This last post analyzing the quintessential leadership of Henry VIII will cover the last 11 years of Henry's life. We will pick up here where we left off at the end of Quintessential Leadership Analysis of Henry VIII – Pt. 2 – 1525 – 1536.
After having Anne Boleyn executed in early 1536, Henry VIII married Jane Seymour. Jane was perhaps, if such a thing existed for Henry VIII, the love of his life. Jane brought all the qualities of quiet submission, calming influence, virtuous dignity, and careful circumspection that Anne Boleyn lacked to her marriage and to the throne. Her family, as Boleyn's had been, became ensconced at the royal court once Jane became queen.
While Jane's character seems to be beyond reproach, the same cannot be said of her two brothers, Edward and Thomas Seymour (who was executed by the Privy Council two years after Henry VIII's death on charges of treason). The longevity of the Seymour brothers being installed at court shows how mercurial both they and Henry VIII were. Edward and Thomas were good at eliminating their competition, blaming others for mistakes, and twisting things to appeal to increasingly-mentally-unstable Henry VIII. They had no ethics, unlike Jane, who seems to have been quite ethical, much like Catherine of Aragon.
Jane was able to accomplish several important things during her brief tenure as queen. She worked hard to bring Mary I back to court regularly, which enabled Henry VIII and Mary to develop a stronger familial bond. Most importantly, she gave birth to a healthy, live male heir – the one thing that mattered most in the world to Henry VIII. However, the labor was difficult and prolonged, and Jane died on October 24, 1537, twelve days after giving birth to Edward VI.
There are two pieces of evidence that support that Jane Seymour held a special place in Henry VIII's life. One was that Henry mourned her death for an extended period of time and did not remarry – although Thomas Cromwell was almost immediately searching for marriage prospects for Henry after Jane's death – for three years. The second was that Henry was buried according to his wishes beside Jane after his death in 1547.
Thomas Cromwell pretty much ran the country during Henry's period of mourning, and it was in this capacity that he both overreached his abilities and made old enemies greater enemies and made new enemies as well, including the Seymour brothers.
Cromwell was a true religious reformist and saw an opportunity to further the English reformation and strengthen the crown's coffers by taking over and shutting down monasteries throughout England. A lot of these monasteries had financial and physical assets that made them wealthy, and Cromwell saw an opportunity to both push the religious reform and confiscate those assets for the crown. He assured Henry that there was little to no opposition to it.
Cromwell, aided by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, began a systemic pillaging campaign against all the monasteries. There was organized opposition when the campaign got to the northern part of England, but it was quickly and harshly suppressed by mass executions sanctioned by Henry at Cromwell's suggestion.
Thomas Cromwell's undoing came as a result of the marriage he arranged between the German Anne of Cleves and Henry in January 1540. Cromwell touted the beauty of Anne to Henry, while hoping that an alliance with Lutheran Germany would truly bring reform to the English church, but he clearly misread the fact that Henry was thoroughly a Catholic in his dogma and, in true unquintessential leadership fashion, was just using the church and reforms to achieve his own ends and serve his own interests.
The Anne that Henry met was not the Anne that Cromwell had described to him, and, after failing to find a way to void the marriage contract, Henry relented to marry her. However, the marriage was never consummated and was annulled in July 1540.
Henry VIII was generous with Anne of Cleves (she fared the best in life of all his wives) after the annulment, and gave her estates and an income for the rest of her life. Anne and Henry also became good friends and Anne had very close relationships with both Mary and Elizabeth. Anne was instrumental in Henry's decision to reinstate both daughters in the legitimate line of succession after Edward VI, and she lived to see Mary I crowned in 1553, after Edward's death.
Henry blamed Cromwell for the marriage fiasco and the enemies that Cromwell had accrued at court saw their opportunity to get rid of him.
Here is an unquintessential leadership trait that Henry VIII possessed. He was always susceptible – perhaps because of his own declining mental health – to believing stories of treason, corruption, and general dishonor. Henry was persuaded by Cromwell's opponents that Cromwell was a traitor and Henry sentenced him to execution. Cromwell was beheaded, in what by all accounts was a botched execution that required several strokes of the ax before his head was actually cut off, on July 8, 1540.
Cromwell was the most capable, albeit ruthless and unscrupulous, chief minister that Henry VIII had, and Henry later regretted Cromwell's execution, accusing his ministers of bringing false charges to him about Cromwell to secure his execution.
This is an example of unquintessential leadership as well. Henry VIII consistently blamed other people when things went wrong. He never took responsibility as the ultimate authority in England for decisions that brought consequences he later regretted. We see this trait throughout his life and throughout his rulership of England.
After Cromwell's death, Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, and Edward Seymour became Henry VIII's chief advisers, with Seymour handling the duties of chief minister.
It was just after Henry's annulment from Anne of Cleves that he married Catherine Howard, the niece of Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk. Catherine was much younger than Henry VIII, which by itself made marriage difficult. But she was also flighty, indiscreet in all things (including her arrogant and contemptuous attitude toward Henry's children), and promiscuous before her marriage and had affairs during her marriage – most notably with Thomas Culpepper, Henry's courtier. These were the nails, so to speak, in her coffin.
She was executed by beheading on grounds of adultery on February 23, 1542. Culpepper had already been executed on the same charges in December of 1541.
After Catherine Howard's execution, Henry turned his attention toward foreign matters. He had become suspicious of the French and saw them as a contributing factor in Scotland's frequent insurgencies into the northern part of England. Convinced that Francis was reneging on the Franco-English alliance, Henry decided to break the alliance and form a new alliance against France with Charles V and Spain.
In 1543, Henry also married again. His new wife was Catherine Parr. Catherine and Thomas Seymour had been planning to marry, which Henry was aware of, so Henry sent Thomas out of the country before Henry and Catherine were married. Catherine seems to have been much like Jane Seymour in her circumspection, and she welcomed and was extremely close to all of Henry's children, taking the responsibility for ensuring the further education of Elizabeth I and Edward VI. She outlived Henry and died after childbirth in 1548 during her final marriage to Thomas Seymour (they married in secret about six months after Henry's death).
In 1544, Henry and Charles decided to invade France. England supplied the navy and Spain supplied the ground troops. Henry intended to regain the land that the English had lost previously to France in Boulogne. Conquest proved difficult and Henry's sieges were abruptly ended by Spain signing a peace treaty with France. Unable to sustain an all-out war, Henry and the English army returned home.
By this time, Henry VIII was in full decline mentally and physically. His gluttony and lack of activity since a wound in a jousting match that never healed and limited his mobility caught up with him and by the time he died in 1547, he weighed about 400 pounds. He became a virtual recluse and his mental health deteriorated further. It now appears that he may have suffered from a rare genetic disease known as McLeod neuroacanthocytosis syndrome, which may explain some of the severe physical and most of the severe mental decline Henry experienced as he aged. Whatever genetic factors contributed to Henry VIII's mental and physical problems, however, cannot be blamed for his intrinsic lack of good and right character.
The two things that consumed Henry, when he was well enough, the last two and a half years of his life were his son and religion. When he died on January 28, 1547, he left a son who would inherit the throne – although his reign would be cut short by an early death in July 1553, which would throw the English monarchy and England into utter chaos until Elizabeth I took the throne in January 1558 – and he left religious reforms – an English Bible, for instance – that paved the way for the English and their descendants to be able to read the Bible themselves and reject the erroneous idea that any human and any religious organization must be the intermediary between humans and their God, a fight still being fought today almost everywhere, although not always as overtly or as obviously as within the Catholic faith, in the world of religion.
On the whole, though, when we look at Henry VIII's life and reign, regardless of what physiological factors may have played a role, we see an unquintessential leader.
He lacked the ability to build trust and be trustworthy.
He never accepted his responsibility for anything, but instead blamed others when things went wrong.
He was arrogant and full of pride and made some very bad decisions in attempts to prove his superiority to his peers, both at home and abroad.
He lacked any self-control in his private life and his public life.
He had faulty discernment of other people, and allowed himself to be manipulated by every kind of deception and dishonesty at every turn, especially when it suited his needs, served his purposes, or otherwise fulfilled the selfish nature that characterized this man. For Henry VIII, the end always justified the means.
He truly, in the end, only cared about how people and things were useful to him. If they weren't useful, they ceased to exist (literally, by execution, and mentally in his memory).
As quintessential leaders, we need to observe and evaluate ourselves in light of the unquintessential leadership traits we see in Henry VIII. We need to be brutally honest and ask some hard questions as we look into our own mirrors of leadership.
Does the end justify the means for us? Are we willing to do or allow our teams to do anything, regardless of the ethics, the rightness, the morality, to achieve an outcome we want? If so, we're being unquintessential leaders.
Do we practice or allow our teams to practice or allow ourselves to be influenced by any kind of deceit and dishonesty (presenting false information as true information, spinning information, angling information, omitting key or relevant information, or misinforming for any reason)? If so, we're being unquintessential leaders.
Do we manipulate, allow our teams to manipulate, or allow ourselves to be manipulated to achieve an outcome we want? If so, we're being unquintessential leaders.
Are our decisions made to serve ourselves or to serve others? Do we care about what we want more than we care about what anyone else wants or needs? Will we willingly and cavalierly sacrifice – or eliminate – anybody and everybody to satisfy our own wants and desires? If so, we're being unquintessential leaders.
Are we always blaming everyone and everything else when things go wrong or don't go the way we had intended or hoped, never taking any responsibility for our roles as leaders in making the decision? If so, we're being unquintessential leaders.
Henry VIII should make all of us, as quintessential leaders, take a long, serious, and totally honest gut check to see if and where we are guilty of any of his unquintessential leadership traits and behaviors.
It takes courage, which it seems is hard to find in today's society, to do a deep and honest moral inventory that actually looks at, actually admits, and immediately changes anything in our lives that reveals any unquintessential leadership traits and behaviors.
A lot of people in leadership positions today are cowards, much like Henry VIII was, who hid behind excuses, justifications, blame, and other people most of his life. Cowardice is the path of least resistance and a coward will find him or herself surrounded by plenty of company.
So I ask you, my fellow quintessential leaders, the same question I ask myself on a continual basis. Are you a coward or are you courageous?
Quintessential Leadership Analysis of King Henry VIII – Pt. 1 – The Early Years
Posted: February 15, 2013 in Examples and Analyses of Lack of Leadership and Unquintessential Leadership, Examples and Analyses of Quintessential Leadership, General Things about Quintessential Leadership, Myths and Misconceptions About Management, Qualities of a Quintessential Leader, Quintessential Leadership, Quintessential Leadership is an Art, Team Building & Development
Tags: Anglican Church, Anne Boleyn, Archbishop of Canterbury, Bloody Mary, Catherine of Aragon, Christopher Columbus, Demi Moore, Edmund Dudley, Edward VI, Elizabeth I, English Protestant Reformation, Ferdinand and Isabella, France, Ghost, Henry Cranmer, Henry VII, Henry VIII, Jane Seymour, Martin Luther, Mary I, Patrick Swayze, Pope, Prince Arthur, Renaissance Man, Richard Empson, Roman Catholic Church, Spain, Thomas Cranmer, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Wolsey, unquintessential leadership, Vatican, Whoopi Goldberg
This begins the series of posts that will do quintessential leadership analyses on historically-significant people in leadership positions. Today's post will look at the early years of King Henry VIII of England.
And just to get the levity out of the way, while I was thinking about this and refreshing my memory on some of the details, I was amused by how many times the scene from the movie, Ghost, where Patrick Swayze sings "Henry the 8th" to Whoopi Goldberg until she agrees to help him, drifted in and out of the serious research I was doing. It's a very funny scene, and obviously, quite effective from a cinematic standpoint.
But on to the the real Henry VIII and the quintessential leadership analysis of the first part of his life.
Henry VIII was born in 1491, one year before Christopher Columbus, under the patronage of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, would begin the series of voyages that would change North, Central, and South America, and the Caribbean islands forever…and not for the better.
He was the second son born to Henry VII, the first monarch in the Tudor dynasty. Henry VII came to throne after defeating Richard III (whose remains were recently discovered) in 1485 during the Battle at Bosworth Field. As a side note, one of my favorite Shakespeare plays is The Life and Death of Richard the Third. It, however, must be read in the context of when it was written – during Elizabeth I's reign – so the portrayals are very favorably skewed toward the Tudors and very harshly skewed against the Plantagenets, of which Richard III was the last ruler.
Being the second son of Henry VII, who by all accounts was the exact opposite of Henry VIII in every way except the obsessive paranoia that plagued both men (Henry VII seems to have always been very paranoid, while Henry VIII became more paranoid in the last half of his life), Henry VIII started life with the prospect of being a simply a prince, since his older brother, Arthur, was heir to the throne.
In many ways, in hindsight, it's because of Henry VIII's birth order that his formal education included so little government and economics, consisting primarily of what we now call liberal arts: languages, literature, music, and art. That is also what probably gave him the air of being a "Renaissance Man." Henry VIII was very intelligent and very gifted. He was an accomplished author and musician. He was also a gifted athlete. He had a passion for gambling as well. These were the things that Henry VIII enjoyed and loved to spend his time doing.
Great for a prince, probably (I think of Prince Charles of England now as an example), but awful for a king. And some of these interests and proclivities were what made him dangerous – and an unquintessential leader – as a king.
Henry VIII was also a devout Roman Catholic, very knowledgeable on liturgy and theology, and authored a best-selling book in Europe denouncing Martin Luther and supporting the church in Rome. Paradoxically, Henry VIII was also very handsome as a young man and, even before his marriages, had begun to be a womanizer. Like so many things in Henry VIII's life, his professed beliefs and the contradictory behavior showed an unquintessential leader at the very core. It also, and this became more apparent throughout his life, showed a complete lack of self-control – also an unquintessential leadership trait.
Henry VII arranged a marriage early on for Arthur with the youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, Catherine of Aragon. The young couple married in 1501, but Arthur died five months after they were married.
After Authur's death, Henry VII offered Henry VIII, who was 10 years old at the time, to Ferdinand and Isabella as a husband for Catherine, who was five years older, when he was old enough. These were political marriages and with Spain still at the top of game in Europe, Henry VII wanted to ensure peace and prosperity for England by a continue alliance with Ferdinand and Isabella. The logic was pragmatic: it's unlikely, although not impossible, that a ruler will initiate a war against a country where one of his children is the spouse of the ruler.
Ferdinand and Isabella agreed.
When Henry VIII was eligible to marry Catherine at age 14, he rejected the marriage at the insistence of Henry VII, mainly because Isabella had died and Spain was not as politically strong nor as valuable to have as an ally. However, after Henry VII's death, beginning a long series of unnecessary "in-your-face" decisions in opposition to his late father, Henry VIII married Catherine. It was a decision that would, in time, change the course of English and European history forever.
Henry VIII's early reign showed many unquintessential leadership traits (although, some stayed the same throughout his reign, others replaced the younger ones as time went on). One that stayed the same was his method of dealing with people – all people – who were either inconvenient or got in his way. He simply got rid of them. The first two people he had executed were two of his father's advisors, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley.
Other unquintessential leadership traits became apparent in the way Henry VIII governed – or, more precisely, didn't govern – early on. For some time after ascending to the throne, Henry VIII lived much the same life he lived as a prince, devoting most of his time to doing the things he enjoyed and following his passions. The unquintessential leadership trait that emerged was handing all the governing responsibilities over to a single person – Thomas Wolsey – who both quickly started consolidating his own power and making a lot of enemies. The fractious and dangerous environment of Henry VIII's court began here. Henry, when he finally did decide to take complete control (another unquintessential leadership trait), used this to his advantage, encouraging and instigating the constant atmosphere of fear, intrigue, suspicion, and lies that led to death that characterize his reign. None of this was quintessential leadership.
He was a spendthrift all his life. His tastes were lavish, excessive, and his need for instant gratification quickly took the English coffers from the economically-stable position that Henry VII had left them in to a constant need for cash infusions throughout Henry VIII's reign, which ended with him and England deeply in debt.
In part II of this look at Henry VIII, we'll pick up at the point where his marriage to Catherine became inconvenient.