King Henry VIII (1491-1547) after Hans Holbein the younger
(Augsburg 1497/8 – London 1543). ©National Trust Images
We know that Henry VIII sustained two injuries in 1536, which resulted in his use of a series of mobility aids. He also later used a walking stick, wheelchair and had a pulley mechanism installed at Whitehall Palace to lift him up and down the stairs.
Henry VIII crafted his image carefully, hiding his impairments to present a highly constructed image of power and kingship.
What does this say about the relationship between disability and power throughout history? Whose interests are we protecting when we shy away from discussing disability today?
Alternative reading
We invited people with lived experience of disability to offer their own personal reflections on some of the stories in Everywhere and Nowhere. In the section below researcher Isabelle Lawrence offers an alternative reading of the Henry VIII portrait.
What makes someone dangerous or unfit for power?
by Isabelle Lawrence
Historians have increasingly speculated the unpredictable and tyrannical behaviours that King Henry VIII is known for are the result of a brain injury sustained whilst jousting and this may have been the cause of memory issues and behavioural changes.
What makes someone dangerous or unfit for power?
Speaking as an adult with lived experience of childhood brain injury, I feel uncomfortable with the way King Henry VIII’s head injury could be used to retrospectively explain away his descent into tyranny. It may well explain changes in his behaviour, but what about the obscene level of power he had within his grasp? What about the uncertainty surrounding providing a male heir, and the political ploys of those around him? This feels all too reminiscent of the way in which criminality and immorality were pathologized in the 19th and 20th centuries, and attributed to ‘intellectual deficiency’.
My behaviour might have temporarily changed when I first acquired my brain injury, but this doesn’t inherently make me dangerous, criminal or unfit for positions of power. We need to be careful how we approach this retrospective diagnosis.