Henry VIII At War
Not Just the Tudors
History Hit
4.8 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2025
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
**Contains descriptions of war atrocities, including rape and infanticide**
In 1544, Henry VIII led the largest army ever raised by an English monarch to capture the French port of Boulogne. It was said that the conquest would be Henry’s “perpetual monument.” Yet history has largely forgotten it.
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb speaks with Professor Neil Murphy to uncover the little-known story of Henry VIII at war. Together they explore the campaign to seize Boulogne, which reshapes our view of Tudor power, imperial ambition, and Henry’s legacy as a conqueror.
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Presented by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. The researcher is Max Wintle, audio editor is Amy Haddow and the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Want to walk the halls of Anne Boleyn's childhood home, or explore the castles that made up Henry the 8th's English stronghold. |
| 0:08.9 | With a subscription to History Hit, you can dive into our Tudor past alongside the world's leaving historians and archaeologists. |
| 0:16.6 | You also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release |
| 0:21.8 | every single week. Covering everything from the ancient world to World War II, just visit |
| 0:28.1 | historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. |
| 0:34.9 | Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and welcome welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, |
| 0:40.7 | the podcasts in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, |
| 0:45.2 | from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to Samarise, |
| 0:49.8 | relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. |
| 0:54.0 | Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most |
| 0:56.9 | definitely also the Tudors. In November 1545, Edmund Harvel, Tudor representative in Venice, |
| 1:10.3 | declared that the famous conquest of Boulogne |
| 1:12.9 | shall be a perpetual monument of the most mighty King Harry the Eighth. Besides noting that it was |
| 1:19.5 | perfectly normal to call Henry VIII Harry in the 16th century, what I want you to recognise is how |
| 1:25.0 | very wrong Edmund Harville was. |
| 1:30.9 | Historians talk and write surprisingly little about Henry VIII at war and write almost nothing about his conquest of Boulogne in 1544. |
| 1:36.0 | The backstory to this is that Henry had invaded France in June 1513 with a force of 25,000, |
| 1:43.3 | capturing the little town of Terran in August and the larger tournay in |
| 1:47.5 | September. Peace was negotiated in 1514, which included marrying Henry's sister to the French |
| 1:53.5 | King Louis VIII, and a peace treaty of 1518 was celebrated at the field of cloth of gold in 1520. |
| 2:02.0 | But in the 1520s, the English again made raids on the French coast, |
| 2:06.0 | and a thrust across the Somme in 1523 even threatened Paris before freezing weather |
... |
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