Henry VIII voted ‘worst monarch’

King John I may forever be known as a Bad King following that seminal history textbook ‘1066 and All That’, but according to history authors it is Henry VIII who should bear the title of the worst monarch in history.
More than 60 writers were surveyed by the Historical Writers Association, with Henry VIII taking 20 per cent of the vote to find the worst monarch and criticised for a wide range of crimes: he was “obsessive”, “syphilitic” and a “self-indulgent wife murderer and tyrant”, according to respondents.
Robert Wilton, the author of ‘The Spider of Sarajevo’, called the Tudor king “a gross man-child, wilfully and capriciously dangerous to everything around him including the country”, saying that psychologically, Henry “barely made it out of infancy, let alone adolescence, and ruled with little more policy than petulant self-gratification”.
Edward VIII was named the second worst, with 14 per cent of the vote, with John I and Charles I joint third, with 8 per cent.
At the other end of the scale, the current queen received just one vote in the Historical Writers Association’s quest to find the best monarch in history, with Elizabeth I triumphing with 36 per cent of the 62 writers’ votes. Alexander the Great was second, with 10 per cent of the vote, and Henry II third, with 6% per cent.