Toward the end of his life, England's King Henry VIII left a series of doodles in a prayer book, revealing his anguish over his health and his past actions, new research shows.
Henry, who ruled from 1509 until his death in 1547, made the annotations in a copy of "Psalms or Prayers," translated by his sixth and final wife, Katherine Parr, in 1544. Micheline White, an associate professor at the College of the Humanities and the Department of English at Carleton University in Canada, spotted them by chance.
White told CNN Tuesday that she found the marginalia "totally unexpectedly" while looking at the book, and recognized them from her previous work on Henry VIII.
"I was just astounded," said White. "I didn't know there were marginalia in the book."
Henry left two distinctive types of marking. The first, known as "manicules," are drawings of a hand with a pointed index finger, and the second are "trefoils," which are three dots with a squiggle.
White then compared the marginalia with known markings left by Henry in other books, and concluded that the prayer book doodles had also been made by the King, because of their size, shape and design, including the fact that the manicules feature a distinctive cuff.
Parr gave the book, which is currently housed in the Wormsley Library in Stokenchurch, England, to Henry as a gift. Printed in 1544, it "contains prayers for repentance, for wisdom, for the destruction of enemies, and for the King and his army," according to White.
"It's clear that when he was reading them there were certain things on his mind," said White, who found a total of 14 hand-drawn doodles in the margins of four psalms.
Henry infamously created a schism in the church in order to be able to marry his second wife, Anne Boleyn.
One passage in the prayer book says that God's punishment has left the narrator "feeble," and Henry was himself in bad health at the time.
"He's worried that God is punishing him with physical illness," said White.
Henry was also at war with France and the book—other copies of which were distributed to selected courtiers—would have played a role in rallying support for the conflict among those that received it, according to White.
Henry's own copy, including the marginalia, would have been read by chosen courtiers, giving it a political function as well as reflecting his personal thoughts, White said.
"I think he's trying to show that he's exemplary," she said, referencing marginalia next to passages in which the narrator asks God to bring him back to the right path.
"He's obviously really worried," said White. "Towards the end of his reign he definitely had a lot to be worried about."
The study was published in the journal Renaissance Quarterly.
