Henry VIII’s 72,000 death toll is one of the most shocking and widely repeated claims in Tudor history—but is it actually true? This dramatic number has appeared in everything from 19th-century history books to modern TikToks, shaping the image of Henry as a ruthless, bloodthirsty monarch. In this article, we’ll explore where the 72,000 figure came from, how many people were really executed during his reign, and why this myth continues to stick in the public imagination.
So, where did that shocking number come from—and is it even true? Let’s find out.
Transcript of Did Henry VIII Really Order 72,000 Deaths? The Truth Behind the Myth
Today, we’re going to talk about all the people Henry VIII killed. That sounds like a fun topic for a beautiful spring afternoon, doesn’t it? So last week, I did a video on whether or not Henry VIII ever regretted any of the people he executed—any of the downfalls, like Thomas Cromwell, Thomas More, Anne Boleyn, and all the other people he had killed during his reign.
There were a few people in the comments who brought up the number we always hear—that Henry VIII killed 72,000 people. It’s a number that gets repeated everywhere. So let’s talk about where that number comes from, who these people were, and… I don’t know, why the heck Henry thought he needed to kill 72,000 people.
This number—72,000 people—is repeated everywhere: documentaries, websites, TikToks, all of that. It sounds horrific. I mean, 72,000 people is like a stadium full of people. Did Henry really kill that many? Let’s talk about where the number came from, whether it’s accurate, and who was actually getting the axe during Henry’s reign.
Okay, so let’s start with the number itself. The claim that Henry executed 72,000 people during his reign isn’t a modern invention. It actually dates back to just a few decades after his death, which is partly why it’s stuck around for so long.
The source is a man named William Harrison, writing in the 1570s. He was the rector of a parish in Essex and contributed to Holinshed’s Chronicles, which became a major source for Elizabethan writers—Shakespeare included. In his Description of England, he writes that Henry VIII, executing his laws very severely against such idle persons—I mean great thieves, petty thieves, and rogues—“did hang up three score and 12,000 of them in his time.”
Three score and twelve = 72, so that’s 72,000. Supposedly, 72,000 people were hanged for thievery and vagrancy—which seems… like a lie, you know? Now, Harrison doesn’t cite a source. He just states it as fact.
But historians who’ve looked into it have traced where Harrison probably got the number: from an Italian mathematician named Girolamo Cardano, who traveled to Scotland in the 1550s—but never actually set foot in England.
Cardano, in turn, said he heard the number from someone he called “the Bishop of L. Sovia,” which—just to make things weirder—seems to have been a bishopric that didn’t actually exist.
So, to recap: a number passed along by an Italian who never visited England, quoting a French bishop from a possibly made-up place, eventually written down by a clergyman who tossed it into a chapter on English punishments. Super solid, right?
Yet somehow, this figure ended up in Holinshed’s Chronicles, which gave it an air of authority. It was then picked up by people like David Hume, repeated in parliamentary debates in the 1800s, and eventually echoed by every history documentary trying to drive home just how scary Henry VIII’s reign was.
So, how many people actually died by execution during Henry’s reign? Well, we do know that England had a pretty brutal legal system in the 1500s. Capital punishment was used a lot more frequently than it is today. But modern scholars estimate the number of executions to be closer to 700 per year, on average. Still a lot—but that brings the total across Henry’s 37-year reign to somewhere around 20,000 to 25,000 people, not 72,000.
Most of these executions were not high-profile political victims. The vast majority were common criminals—thieves, murderers, highway robbers—people who were tried and sentenced in local courts, far from the king’s direct influence. Henry didn’t personally sign off on most of these. He probably didn’t even know their names. So that 20,000 to 25,000 people? It’s still a lot. It sounds like a lot. It is a lot. But it’s also important to understand who these people were.
First, you’ve got ordinary criminals—that’s the majority. England’s legal system in the 16th century handed out death sentences like candy. Theft, burglary, even poaching could earn you a spot at the gallows. Executions were public. They were brutal. They were routine. They were seen as deterrents, not spectacles. And most of these people were tried in local courts. They weren’t summoned to London. They never saw Tower Hill or anything like that.
Then there were the religious executions. Henry’s break with Rome triggered years of religious upheaval. Early in his reign, Catholics who opposed reform were targeted—people like the Carthusian monks, who were starved and hanged for refusing to accept the king’s supremacy. Later, Protestants like Anne Askew were burned at the stake for their beliefs. So really, nobody was safe. You could have Protestants and Catholics both executed under Henry.
Next, you’ve got the high-profile political victims—the ones we remember: Anne Boleyn, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Margaret Pole. These were dramatic. They were personal. They often involved fabricated charges of treason or heresy. And in these cases, yes, Henry was very involved. These were not local court cases. They were state-sanctioned purges, often driven by paranoia or shifting alliances.
Then we have the rebels during the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536. Thousands of people rose up in protest against the dissolution of the monasteries and the sweeping religious changes across the country. Henry crushed the rebellion. Over 200 people were executed in the aftermath, including abbots, lords, and commoners. That alone added a major spike to the death toll that year.
So while Henry didn’t personally order tens of thousands of deaths, he did preside over a reign where capital punishment was frequent, and he didn’t hesitate to make examples of people when it suited him—politically or religiously.
So why does this number—72,000—stick with us? Why has it hung around for so long? Well, mostly because it just kind of sounds right. It fits this popular image of Henry as the bloated, bloodthirsty tyrant, chopping off heads left and right. It’s dramatic. It’s got shock value. And the figure lived on thanks to the sources that passed it along: Holinshed’s Chronicles, and David Hume, who gave it credibility in his History of England.
Then, later in 1810, Samuel Romilly used it in a debate in Parliament about reforming capital punishment. These were big names—and they weren’t citing their sources very closely. From there, it got picked up by 19th-century history books, Victorian moralists, and eventually, sensational documentaries and viral TikToks.
By the time it landed on Reddit or TikTok, the number had been stripped of all context and just became another fact about scary Henry. Not saying he’s not scary—he’s definitely scary—but you know… it wasn’t quite 72,000.
So, was the number 72,000 accurate? Probably not. That figure came from a game of historical telephone involving a French bishop, an Italian visitor, and a clergyman who wrote about English dogs in the same book.
The real number was probably closer to 20,000 to 25,000 over nearly four decades. And most of those weren’t dramatic betrayals or personal vendettas, but everyday criminal “justice” in Tudor England.
Henry was absolutely capable of cruelty and violence—no doubt about that—but like most historical myths, the truth is a lot more complicated, and maybe even more revealing. It tells us not just about Henry, but about how history gets written, repeated, and warped over time.
Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
