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Henry VIII was the king of royal excess and new research shows that the much married royal wasn’t afraid to splash out.

His annual booze bill would run to almost £6 million today while his meat bill for the year ran in at £3.5million.

And his second divorce cost him the equivalent of £30 million.

After Henry divorced Anne of Cleves in 1540, he provided her with generous financial compensation.

This included luxury property and assets, including Hever Castle in Kent.

Historians estimate that the settlement was worth £3,000 a year at the time.

Over the remaining 17 years of Anne’s life, this would amount to £29,630,000 in modern money.

“Henry’s lavish castle banquets featured a variety of different meats, including unusual dishes such as grilled beavers’ tails and whale meat.

“The banquets also featured some that are more familiar today like pork, beef and venison.”

The Tudor king’s huge meals were washed down with 600,000 gallons of beer every year.

This would cost £5.78million based on the price of an 11-gallon barrel today.

(Image: Getty)

To drink that much beer, each of the 1,200 people at court would need to have consumed an average of 10 pints every day.

Henry’s spending dwarfs our current Queen ’s £1.4 million food bill for 2014/15.

Henry was not the only monarch to indulge in extravagant castle spending.

Edward I shelled out three quarters of his Treasury’s annual income to build Beaumaris Castle on Anglesey, Wales in the 1290s.

Historical author Guy Walters said Edward’s castle spending was an ‘insane figure’.

He added: “It just shows the huge vanity project that some of these buildings were.

“You could justify it for defensive purpose, but this is absolutely enormous.

“It puts the expenditure on Buckingham Palace into huge perspective.”

(Image: Getty)

William the Conqueror also shelled out a huge portion of the royal purse on building and fortifying castles following the Battle of Hastings.

He built 500 castles in the first 20 years of his rule, with each the result of around 50 men working for 80 days - approximately 32,000 man hours.

Based on the current British minimum wage of £7.20, William would have spent £115.2 million over two decades on labouring costs alone to construct his formidable portfolio of 500 castles.

Our Queen is no stranger to big spending, though, with the Windsor Castle restoration following the 1992 fire costing £37 million in 1997, which is more than £60 million today.

In contrast, Henry VIII’s friend and confidante Thomas Wolsey’s 200,000 Crowns investment in turning Hampton Court Palace into what we know today amounts to a little less, being the equivalent of £33.8 million in today’s money.

The facts are revealed in Castles: Britain’s Fortified History which begins on Thursday at 8pm on the Yesterday channel.

Mr Walters added: “These figures show that the royals were very happy to spend money on getting themselves fat and drunk.

“In many ways, the monarchs of the past were like the dictators of today. They loved their vanity projects and their eating and drinking. They were big show offs and loved splashing their cash.”