By Sean Coughlan

BBC News Online education staff



Henry VIII: Did a football injury make him order his kicking boots?

The proof that the Tudor monarch played the beautiful game has been discovered by an academic at Southampton University.

Textile expert Maria Hayward has found what could be the first ever specific reference to football boots.

The pair of boots, costing four shillings, were in an inventory of Henry VIII's clothes when he died.

As part of a wardrobe that would have made Footballers' Wives look understated, Henry VIII possessed a pair of specially made boots for playing football.

'Royal of the Rovers'

In a list of 17,000 pieces of clothing and possessions owned by the king, Dr Hayward found that the royal cordwainer had made shoes for playing football.

As they were more expensive than the type of shoes that the king wore for other sports, such as jousting, Dr Hayward says that they might well have been heavier and used stronger leather.

Royal stud: Legacy of a Tudor football lover?

Although it's not likely that the king's boots had studs and a fancy design from a commercial sponsor - it is possible that there was a European connection, as Spanish leather was considered of premium quality at the time.

Dr Hayward says that the way the football boots have been specified among the king's possessions is "really unusual" and suggests that there must been something particularly noteworthy about them.

The shoes have not survived - and it is impossible to be certain - but these could have been among the first purpose-made football boots.

King when you're winning

The football-friendly king, with his jewellery, palaces, personalised carriages and dark side of domestic violence, was also something of a shoe enthusiast - ordering 20 or 30 pairs at a time.

The amount he spent on shoes would also have merited a nod from the Sex and the City generation - as the cost of a single pair of football boots was not far short of what the head of his wardrobe might have earned in a week.

Dr Hayward, who works at the Textile Conservation Centre at Winchester School of Art, says relatively little research has been carried out on what male royals wore - and that there has been much more study of the clothes of Elizabeth I.

Whatever the Tudor boots looked like, they would have needed to be very robust, because football at the time was a no-holds-barred brawl, with few rules and frequent casualties.

What makes the discovery that Henry VIII had his own football boots even more intriguing is that the burly royal with the glamorous wives had himself once banned the game, on the grounds that it incited riots.