Henry VIII of England

Henry VIII of England, King of England and of France and Lord of Ireland, 1521–1535 By the Grace of God, King of England and France, Defender of the Faith and Lord of Ireland, 1535–1536 By the Grace of God, King of England and France, Defender of the Faith, Lord of Ireland, and of the Church of England in Earth Supreme Head, 1536–1542 By the Grace of God, King of England and France, Defender of the Faith, Lord of Ireland, and of the Church of England and of Ireland in Earth Supreme Head, 1542–1555 By the Grace of God, King of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and of the Church of England and of Ireland in Earth Supreme Head

Henry VIII (b. 28 June 1491 in Greenwich, near London; d. 28 January 1547 in London) was King of England from April 21, 1509 until his death. He was also Lord of Ireland (later King of Ireland) and claimant to the Kingdom of France. Henry was the second monarch of the House of Tudor, succeeding his father, Henry VII.

Life

Henry was the second son of Henry VII, first of the Tudor line, and Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, first king of the short-lived line of York. When his elder brother, Arthur, died in 1502, Henry became the heir to the throne; of all the Tudor monarchs, he alone spent his childhood in calm expectation of the crown, which helped give an assurance of majesty and righteousness to his willful, ebullient character. He excelled in book learning as well as in the physical exercises of an aristocratic society, and, when in 1509 he ascended the throne, great things were expected of him. Six feet tall, powerfully built, and a tireless athlete, huntsman, and dancer, he promised England the joys of spring after the long winter of Henry VII’s reign. Henry and his ministers exploited the dislike inspired by his father’s energetic pursuit of royal rights by sacrificing, without a thought, some of the unpopular institutions and some of the men that had served his predecessor. Yet the unpopular means for governing the realm soon reappeared because they were necessary. Soon after his accession, Henry married Catherine of Aragon, Arthur’s widow, and the attendant lavish entertainments ate into the modest royal reserves. More serious was Henry’s determination to engage in military adventure. Europe was being kept on the boil by rivalries between the French and Spanish kingdoms, mostly over Italian claims; and, against the advice of his older councillors, Henry in 1512 joined his father-in-law, Ferdinand II of Aragon, against France and ostensibly in support of a threatened pope, to whom the devout king for a long time paid almost slavish respect. Henry himself displayed no military talent, but a real victory was won by the earl of Surrey at Flodden (1513) against a Scottish invasion. Despite the obvious pointlessness of the fighting, the appearance of success was popular. Moreover, in Thomas Wolsey, who organized his first campaign in France, Henry discovered his first outstanding minister. By 1515 Wolsey was archbishop of York, lord chancellor of England, and a cardinal of the church; more important, he was the king’s good friend, to whom was gladly left the active conduct of affairs. Henry never altogether abandoned the positive tasks of kingship and often interfered in business; though the world might think that England was ruled by the cardinal, the king himself knew that he possessed perfect control any time he cared to assert it, and Wolsey only rarely mistook the world’s opinion for the right one.

Henry VIII was a significant figure in the history of the English monarchy. Although in the great part of his reign he at first brutally suppressed the Protestant reformation of the church, a movement of Martin Luther, he is more popularly known for his political struggles with Rome.

King Henry VIII at first took it upon himself to personally repudiate the arguments of the German Protestant Reformation leader. The pope rewarded the Henry with the lofty title of Fidei Defensor, or Defender of the Faith. But by 1527, Henry had a big problem: His first marriage, to Catherine of Aragon, had failed to produce a son and male heir to the throne. Henry had also become infatuated with one of his wife’s ladies-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn, whose sister Mary had previously been his lover. Anne encouraged the king’s attentions, but shrewdly refused to become his mistress, setting her sights on a higher goal. So Henry asked Pope Clement VII to grant him a divorce from Catherine. He argued that the marriage was against God’s will, due to the fact that she had briefly been married to Henry’s late brother, Arthur. But timing was not on Henry’s side. That same year—1527—the imperial troops (Reichsarmee) of the Holy Roman Empire had attacked and destroyed Rome itself, forcing Pope Clement VII to flee the Vatican through a secret tunnel and take shelter in the Castel Sant’Angelo. At the time, the title of Holy Roman Emperor belonged to King Charles V, head of the rising House of Habsburg, Catherine of Aragon’s beloved nephew. When Henry assented to the Act of Restraint (1533), halting clerical appeals to Rome, he did not intend a religious revolution. He clung to the essentials of Romanist doctrine and, if he felt any true reforming urge, it was mainly in what he considered to be the outward forms of religion. Parliament’s passage of the Act of Supremacy in 1534 solidified the break from the Catholic Church and made the king the Supreme Head of the Church of England. With Cranmer and Cromwell in positions of power, and a Protestant queen by Henry’s side, England began adopting “some of the lessons of the continental Reformation,” Pettegree says, including a translation of the Bible into English. Yet by 1547 the insular Church was fast becoming a definitely Protestant body.

These struggles ultimately led to his separating the Anglican church from the Roman hierarchy, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and establishing himself as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Although some claim he became a Protestant on his death-bed, he advocated Catholic ceremony and doctrine throughout his life. Royal backing of the English Reformation was left to his heirs, the devout Edward VI and the renowned Elizabeth I, whilst daughter Mary I temporarily reinstated papal authority over England. Henry also oversaw the legal union of England and Wales with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542. He is also noted for his six wives, two of whom were beheaded.

Family

Spouses

• Catherine of Aragon (m. 1509; ann. 1533)​
• Anne Boleyn (m. 1533; ann. 1536)​
• Jane Seymour (m. 1536; d. 1537)​
• Anne of Cleves (m. 1540; ann. 1540)​
• Catherine Howard (m. 1540; d. 1542)​
• Catherine Parr (m. 1543)

Further reading

• Weir, Alison: The Children of Henry VIII, 1996