I'M HENERY THE EIGHTH, I AM, IAM

So goes the cheerful old musical hall song. But author Hilary Mantel must surely have had the current American president in mind as she wrote the third part of her Wolf Hall trilogy, "The Mirror and the Light." As she portrays him in this lengthy but compelling read, Henry VIII is vain, petty, vengeful, promiscuous, self-indulgent, oblivious to those around him, manipulative, domineering--the complete

narcissistic sociopath. He is overweight, unable to control his appetite, and infamous, of course, for his serial marriages. He expects unquestioning loyalty from everyone, but is capable of none himself. He craves power, but only for his self-aggrandizement and the expansion of his realm of influence. The only difference between Mantel's Henry and our Trump is the authority to literally chop off heads at whim, where Trump can only "fire" those who incur his displeasure.

That said, King Henry is not the protagonist of Mantel's trilogy. That would be Thomas Cromwell, his marriage broker, his consigliere Michael Cohen, his factotum Attorney General Barr, his Secretary of State Pompeo, his Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, his Defense Secretary Mark Esper--all rolled into one. Cromwell is of common birth, which leaves him in a weak position with the contemptuous (and contemptible!) nobility. By hook and crook--and often the latter--he has ascended to his lofty position by guile, by manipulation, by abject, if easily shifted loyalty. We like him perhaps in part because of the vulnerability that lies just below the surface of his smooth self-confidence. We always know that he is doomed: one thing we know for sure about Henry is that he eventually turns on everyone he once trusted, and Cromwell is no exception. He knows it himself. We like him also because we admire his smarts, his uncanny ability to navigate the court intrigue, and at heart a kind of wisdom, even a kind of compassion for humanity that virtually all others lack. 

The great historical background of the book is the tenuous relationship between England, France and Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire. In part it is the then intense struggle between religious faiths--the "papism" of the entrenched Roman Catholic tradition and the growing independence, under Henry, of what will become the Anglo-Catholic church. Henry dissolved the monasteries and convents, freely looted what had been church property and wealth for his own enrichment, persecuted (tortured, killed) those who remained adamantly loyal to the Pope, and gathered the power of the church into monarchical hands. Still, Protestantism, as practiced by the followers of Luther in Germany and the Lowlands, was considered heresy, punishable by public burning at the stake.

The bigger picture, then, is a constant, sometimes bewildering chess game between monarchs and their teams of duplicitous diplomats, in which women, potential queens, are essentially nothing more than pawns to be exchanged for political advantage. They are expected to be the providers of succession in the form of sons, and are spurned and cast aside if they fail to perform that function. Otherwise, they are treated and spoken of with contempt, or treated as convenient chattels or whores by men, no matter what their social station. It was, it seems, a bleak world for the female gender. Some might argue that it has not greatly improved; and most would agree that it took too long to make progress. Mantel does us a fine, if uncomfortable service, in reminding us of these truths about the historical hegemony of men.

Were the times as bad as Mantel would have us believe? She nothing if not convincing in her depiction of the casual torture, the beheadings, the disembowelments, the hangings, the burnings at the stake. If there's a take-away, it's a moral condemnation of barbarity and a recommitment to a more compassionate regard for all humanity. The history of this country of my birth has little to recommend it, but at least in Mantel's hands it gets to be an excellent read.