Wednesday 14th November 2018

Record turnout for Henry VIII
An audience of over 200 filled the Priory Road Lecture theatre for the second meeting of this year’s Bristol Branch of the Historical Association . Tracy Borman’s lecture on Henry VIII and the men who made him was bound to be popular but this was also thought provoking. Dr Borman wanted to shift the emphasis away from the usual discussion of the six wives and instead focus on the men in Henry VIII’s life. Some were well known figures like Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell but others less so like his tutor John Skelton, his fool Will Sumner and his best friends Charles Brandon and Sir Francis Bryan known as the Vicar of Hell. The audience followed the lecture with lots of questions including a fascinating question from Peter Greenhouse who asked Tracy Borman about the theory about Henry VIII’s syphilis which might have caused the deaths of his children by Catherine of Aragon.