Like Son, unlike Father: King Henry the Eighth, versus Henry the Seventh

Henry VII and VIII - These two portraits express well their differences

It is a sad reflection on the English that Henry VIII continues to get continual attention, and a kind of sneaking admiration, for his (unsurpassed except by except by William I) rapacious brutality in the Dissolution of the Monasteries; together with his "achievement"of having six wives. 

Yet Henry the Eighth left England far weaker, poorer and more internally conflicted than he found the nation. 

By contrast, Henry the Eighth's father, Henry Tudor, was one of the best of English Monarchs, the last King of Merrie England. 

This is not recognized for various reasons. Henry Tudor's character was shrewd and compassionate - he was not "larger than life" like his son. 

Also, English people have forgotten the colossal destructiveness of "the Wars of the Roses", decades of selfish and self-destructive civil war between Lancastrian and Yorkist aristocrats; to which Henry VII put an end. 

As a measure of destructiveness; when the English population was only about 2-3 million, the Roses wars were a terrible drain on the fittest and most productive of the national population. For instance, the Battle of Towton (hardly known by anyone, nowadays) probably killed something like 4% or more of the military-age and physically able men (ie. something like 25,000) in a single horrific day of mutual slaughter.  

But the saddest reflection on our national memory is related to the marriage question. 

While Henry VIII married six times (plus mistresses, and illegitimate children) of which he killed two, and "divorced" (technically had-annulled) another two - in contrast, his father Henry Tudor had what has been described as perhaps the most genuinely loving Royal Marriage in English history. 

This, despite that the marriage was originally a "political" alliance between the houses of Lancaster (Henry) and York (his wife Elizabeth). 

Henry seems, indeed, to have been that most unusual thing among monarchs - a loving husband and father. The husband and wife were devastated by the premature death of his first son and heir Arthur, Prince of Wales at age 15; and then Henry was even more affected by the death of his wife - after which he was never the same again. 

Nonetheless, and despite the fault of a somewhat miserly greed in his final widowed years; Henry VII left England a stronger, richer, more peaceful, unified and powerful nation; and the English monarch probably the most secure and dominant leader in Europe. 

Most of which achievement (except domestic power) his son then exploited and dissipated for personal gratification - with adverse consequences that extended for several generations.   

If nations usually get the monarchs they deserve; then the relative English reputations of these two Henrys may partly explain how this happens.