Of All Losses Time Is The

This line is attributed to Henry VIII in Alison Weir's biography Henry VIII: The King and His Court (2001), which draws on the extensive documentary record of Henry's reign, including his own letters and speeches. Henry was acutely conscious of time's irreversibility in the context of the succession crisis that dominated his reign: his desperate need for a male heir drove six marriages, the break with Rome, and the dissolution of the monasteries. By the time of his death in 1547 he had outlived several of his closest advisors and two of his wives, and the statement reads as a late-life reflection on the choices that defined his rule.