Evelyn Anthony

It was a still and lovely summer afternoon when the train of riders, headed by the King, turned into Hever Castle. He rode a head taller than the others and, after setting a gruelling pace from London, he was still fresh. At thirty-four Henry VIII was in his physical prime. He was tall and massively built; he still wrestled and maintained his reputation as the most formidable sportsman in the country.

He had called his gentlemen and ridden out of Greenwich Palace on an impulse to visit his new comptroller, see the Kentish countryside, and rest for a few hours at Hever before returning to London. The King had made the Lord of Hever a peer when he gave him the post of comptroller a short time before, and Sir Thomas Boleyn, grandson of a London merchant, had become Viscount Rochford. As the cavalcade trotted

he still wrestled and maintained his reputation as the most formidable sportsman in the country.