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• Born: 28 June 1491
• Birthplace: Greenwich, England
• Died: 28 January 1547
• Best Known As: The king of England who had six wives

Henry VIII ruled England from 1509-1547 and remains one of that country's most famous and controversial kings. Henry's hearty appetites and fickle passions are legendary, and his demand for a male heir led him to marry six different women. (Two of those wives, Anne Boleyn and Katharine Howard, were executed on his order.) Henry's divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, led the king to split with the Catholic Church and found his own church, the Church of England, which in turn set the stage for the English Reformation and for religious battles which lasted for centuries. (It also led to his famous clash with Sir Thomas More, who was tried for treason and executed.) Henry is also known for his great girth; his obesity probably contributed to his death at age 56. He was succeeded by Edward VI, his short-lived son with Jane Seymour. Henry's daughter with Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I, eventually took the throne and became one of England's most powerful and longest-reigning monarchs.

The king's life story was told by William Shakespeare in his play Henry VIII... According to the official site of the British royal family, Henry "was an accomplished player of many instruments and a composer. 'Greensleeves,' the popular melody frequently attributed to him is, however, almost certainly not one of his compositions"... He has been played onscreen many times, by actors including Robert Shaw (A Man For All Seasons, 1966), Charlton Heston (Crossed Swords, 1977), Eric Bana (The Other Boleyn Girl, 2008), and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (the TV series Tudors, 2007.)

• Genre: Folk
• Instruments: Jug, Vocals, Instrumental

Biography

When Henry became king only five musicians were in permanent service to the court. When he died there were 58 resident musicians in service. He himself played upon the organ, lute and virginal. Music lived well at the court for a variety of revels, banquets, visits by heads of state, et al. Henry's leading court musician was William Cornysh. Numerous musicians visited the court and different nationalities were represented indicating Henry's love for music. Approximately 34 compositions were attributed to the king including fremen songs, songs styled in the French manner, rounds, instrumental pieces and a three part motet. Within "Henry VIII's Manuscript" are compositions by Cornysh, Fayrfax, Farthing, Hayne van Ghizeghem, Barbireau and Compere. ~ Keith Johnson, All Music Guide

Worked With:

Ralph McTell

(b Greenwich, 28 June 1491; d Windsor, 28 Jan 1547). King of England, 1509-47. He was trained in music from an early age and music occupied a prominent place at his court. 34 compositions by him survive. Of the 20 vocal items, some are arrangements of existing music. Helas madam and Pastyme with good companye, two of his most famous works, are based on continental models. The same MS contains 13 instrumental pieces by him, in three or four parts. He also wrote a three-part motet, Quam pulchra es.

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Henry VIII (1491-1547) was king of England from 1509 to 1547. As a consequence of the Pope's refusal to nullify his first marriage, Henry withdrew from the Roman Church and created the Church of England.

The second son of Henry VII, Henry VIII was born on June 28, 1491, at Greenwich Palace. He was a precocious student; he learned Latin, Spanish, French, and Italian and studied mathematics, music, and theology. He became an accomplished musician and played the lute, organ, and harpsichord. He composed hymns, ballads, and two Masses. He also liked to hunt, wrestle, and joust and drew "the bow with greater strength than any man in England."

On his father's death on April 21, 1509, Henry succeeded to a peaceful kingdom. He married Catherine of Aragon, widow of his brother Arthur, on June 11, and 13 days later they were crowned at Westminster Abbey. He enthused to his father-in-law, Ferdinand, that "the love he bears to Catherine is such, that if he were still free he would choose her in preference to all others."

Foreign Policy

In short order Henry set course on a pro-Spanish and anti-French policy. In 1511 he joined Spain, the papacy, and Venice in the Holy League, directed against France. He claimed the French crown and sent troops to aid the Spanish in 1512 and determined to invade France. The bulk of the preparatory work fell to Thomas Wolsey, the royal almoner, who became Henry's war minister. Despite the objections of councilors like Thomas Howard, the Earl of Surrey, Henry went ahead. He was rewarded by a smashing victory at Guinegate (Battle of the Spurs, Aug. 13, 1513) and the capture of Tournai and Théorouanne.

Peace was made in 1514 with the Scots, who had invaded England and been defeated at Flodden (Sept. 9, 1513), as well as with France. The marriage of Henry's sister Mary to Louis XII sealed the French treaty. This diplomatic revolution resulted from Henry's anger at the Hapsburg rejection of Mary, who was to have married Charles, the heir to both Ferdinand and Maximilian I, the Holy Roman emperor. Soon the new French king, Francis I, decisively defeated the Swiss at Marignano (Sept. 13-14, 1515). When Henry heard about Francis's victory, he burst into tears of rage. Increasingly, Wolsey handled state affairs; he became archbishop of York in 1514, chancellor and papal legate in 1515. Not even his genius, however, could win Henry the coveted crown of the Holy Roman Empire. With deep disappointment he saw it bestowed in 1519 on Charles, the Spanish king. During 1520 Henry met Emperor Charles V at Dover and Calais, and Francis at the Field of Cloth of Gold, near Calais, where Francis mortified Henry by throwing him in an impromptu wrestling match. In 1521 Henry joyfully received the papally bestowed title "Defender of the Faith" as a reward for writing the Assertion of the Seven Sacraments, a criticism of Lutheran doctrine. He tried to secure Wolsey's election as pope in 1523 but failed.

English Reformation

Catherine was 40 in 1525. Her seven pregnancies produced but one healthy child, Mary, born May 18, 1516. Despairing of having a legitimate male heir, Henry created Henry Fitzroy, his natural son by Elizabeth Blount, Duke of Richmond and Somerset. More and more, he conceived Catherine's misfortunes as a judgment from God. Did not Leviticus say that if a brother marry his brother's widow, it is an unclean thing and they shall be childless? Since Catherine was Arthur's widow, the matter was apparent.

The Reformation proceeded haphazardly from Henry's negotiations to nullify his marriage. Catherine would not retire to a nunnery, nor would Anne Boleyn consent to be Henry's mistress as had her sister Mary; she grimly demanded marriage. A court sitting in June 1529 under Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio heard the case. Pope Clement VII instructed Campeggio to delay. When the Peace of Cambrai was declared between Spain and France in August 1529, leaving Charles V, Catherine's nephew, still powerful in Italy, clement revoked the case to Rome. He dared not antagonize Charles, whose troops had sacked Rome in 1527 and briefly held him prisoner.

Henry removed Wolsey from office. Actually, Wolsey's diplomacy had been undermined by Henry's sending emissaries with different proposals to Clement. Catherine had a valid dispensation for her marriage to Henry from Pope Julius II; furthermore, she claimed that she came a virgin to Henry. She was a popular queen, deeply hurt by Henry's forsaking her bed in 1526. Henry's strategy matured when Thomas Cromwell became a privy councilor and his chief minister. Cromwell forced the clergy in convocation in 1531 to accept Henry's headship of the Church "as far as the law of Christ allows."

Anne's pregnancy in January 1533 brought matters to a head. In a fever of activity Henry married her on Jan. 25, 1533, secured papal approval to Thomas Cranmer's election as archbishop of Canterbury in March, had a court convened under Cranmer declare his marriage to Catherine invalid in May, and waited triumphantly for the birth of a son. His waiting was for naught. On Sept. 7, 1533, Elizabeth was born. Henry was so disappointed that he did not attend her christening. By the Act of Succession (1534) his issue by Anne was declared legitimate and his daughter Mary illegitimate. The Act of Supremacy (1534) required an oath affirming Henry's headship of the Church and, with other acts preventing appeals to Rome and cutting off the flow of annates and Peter's Pence, completed the break. Individual unwilling to subscribe to the Acts of Succession and Supremacy suffered, the two most notable victims being John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and Thomas More (1535). Their executions led to the publication of the papal bull excommunicating Henry.

Although Henry allowed the publication of an English Bible (1538), the Henrician Reformation was basically conservative. Major liturgical and theological revisions came under his son, Edward VI. Henry's financial need, however, made him receptive to Cromwell's plan for monastic dissolutions via parliamentary acts in 1536 and 1539, in which the Crown became proprietor of the dissolved monasteries. The scale of monastic properties led to important social and economic consequences.

Later Marriages

Anne's haughty demeanor and moody temperament suited Henry ill, and her failure to produce a male heir rankled. She miscarried of a baby boy on Jan. 27, 1536, 6 days after fainting at the news that Henry had been knocked unconscious in a jousting accident in which the king fell under his mailed horse. It was a costly miscarriage, for Henry was already interested in Jane Seymour. He determined on a second divorce. He brought charges of treason against Anne for alleged adultery and incest; she was executed on May 19. The following day Henry betrothed himself to Jane and married her 10 days later. Jane brought a measure of comfort to Henry's personal life; she also produced a son and heir, Edward, on Oct. 12, 1537, but survived his birth a scant 12 days.

Henry was deeply grieved, and he did not remarry for 3 years. He was not in good health. Headaches plagued him intermittently; they may have originated from a jousting accident of 1524, in which Charles Brandon's lance splintered on striking Henry's open helmet. Moreover his ulcerated leg, which first afflicted him in 1528, occasionally troubled. Both legs were infected in 1537. In May 1538 he had a clot blockage in his lungs which made him speechless, but he recovered.

The course of diplomatic events, particularly the fear that Charles V might attempt an invasion of England, led Henry to seek an alliance with Continental Protestant powers; hence, his marriage to the Protestant princess Anne of Cleves on Jan. 12, 1540. His realization that Charles did not intend to attack, coupled with his distaste for Anne, led to Cromwell's dismissal and execution in June 1540 and to the annulment of his marriage to Anne on July 9, 1540.

Cromwell's fall was engineered by the conservative leaders of his Council, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and Bishop Gardiner. They thrust forward the 19-year-old niece of Norfolk, Catherine Howard, and Henry found her pleasing. He married Catherine within 3 weeks of his annulment and entered into the Indian summer of his life. He bore his by now tremendous girth lightly and was completely captivated, but his happiness was short-lived. Catherine's indiscretions as queen consort combined with her sexual misdemeanors as a protégé of the old dowager Duchess of Norfolk ensured her ruin. Inquiry into her behavior in October 1541 led to house arrest and her execution on Feb. 13, 1542, by means of a bill of attainder.

Henry's disillusionment with Catherine plus preoccupation with the Scottish war, begun in 1542, and plans for renewal of hostilities with France delayed remarriage. The French war commenced in 1543 and dragged on for 3 years, achieving a solitary triumph before Boulogne (1545). Henry married the twice-widowed Catherine Parr on July 12, 1543. Though she bore him no children, she made him happy. Her religious views were somewhat more radical than those of Henry, who had revised the conservative Six Articles (1539) with his own hand. During his last years he attempted to stem the radical religious impulses unleashed by the formal break with Rome.

No minister during Henry's last 7 years approached the power of Wolsey or Cromwell. Henry bitterly reflected that Cromwell was the most faithful servant that he had ever had. He ruled by dividing his Council into conservative and radical factions. When Norfolk's faction became too powerful, he imprisoned him and executed his son the poet Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. The King was unwell in late 1546 and early 1547, suffering from a fever brought on by his ulcerated leg. Before he died on Jan. 28, 1547, Henry reflected that "the mercy of Christ [is] able to pardon me all my sins, though they were greater than they be."

Appearance and Assessment

A contemporary described Henry in his prime as "the handsomest potentate I have ever set eyes on; above the usual height, with an extremely fine calf to his leg; his complexion fair and bright, with auburn hair … and a round face so very beautiful that it would become a pretty woman. … He is much handsomer than any other sovereign in Christendom; a great deal handsomer than the King of France." Henry was "a capital horseman, a fine jouster," and "very fond of hunting," tiring 8 or 10 horses in the course of a day's hunting. "He is extremely fond of tennis, at which game it is the prettiest thing in the world to see him play, his fair skin glowing through a shirt of the finest texture."

Henry came to the throne with great gifts and high hopes. Ministers like Wolsey and Cromwell freed him from the burdensome chores of government and made policy, but only with Henry's approval. His relentless search for an heir led him into an accidental reformation of the Church not entirely to his liking. Ironically, had he waited until Catherine of Aragon died in 1536, he would have been free to pursue a solution to the succession problem without recourse to a reformation. His desire to cut a figure on the European battlefields led him into costly wars. To pay the piper, it was necessary to debase the coinage, thus increasing inflationary pressures already stimulated by the influx of Spanish silver, and to use the tremendous revenues from the sale of monastic properties. Had the properties been kept in the royal hand, the revenue could have made the Crown self-sufficient - perhaps so self-sufficient that it could have achieved an absolutism comparable to that of Louis XIV.

Though personally interested in education, Henry sponsored no far-reaching educational statutes. However, his avid interest in naval matters resulted in a larger navy and a modernization of naval administration. He brought Wales more fully into union with the English by the Statute of Wales (1536) and made Ireland a kingdom (1542). Through the Statute of Uses (1536) he attempted to close off his subjects' attempts to deny him his feudal dues, but this was resisted and modified in 1540. The great innovations came out of the Reformation Statutes, not the least of which was the Act in Restraint of Appeals, in which England was declared an empire, and the Act of Supremacy, in which Henry became supreme head of the Anglican Church. The politically inspired Henrician Reformation became a religiously inspired one under his son, Edward VI, and thus Henry's reign became the first step in the forging of the Anglican Church.

Henry ruled ruthlessly in a ruthless age; he cut down the enemies of the Crown, like the Duke of Buckingham in 1521 and the Earl of Surrey. He stamped out the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536-1537), which issued from economic discontent, and set up a council in the north to ensure that there would be no more disorder. Though he had political gifts of a high order, he was neither Machiavelli's prince in action nor Bismarck's man of blood and iron. He was a king who wished to be succeeded by a son, and for this cause he bravely and rashly risked the anger of his fellow sovereigns. That he did what he did is a testament to his will, personal gifts, and good fortune.

Further Reading

A. F. Pollard, Henry VIII (1902; new ed. 1913), the traditional interpretation of Henry VIII, has been challenged in recent years by G. R. Elton, Henry VIII: An Essay in Revision (1962), and J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (1968). Scarisbrick, unlike Pollard, does not view Henry as England's savior. He believes that Henry created England's difficulties and censures him for his lack of social responsibility. He also provides a detailed analysis of the technical aspects of the divorce. Lacey Baldwin Smith, Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty (1971), concentrates on Henry's last years and brilliantly portrays his personal despotism and naked pride and power. Melvin J. Tucker, The Life of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, Second Duke of Norfolk, 1443-1524 (1964), gives a good case study of Henry's relationship to his aristocracy. Joycelyne G. Russell, The Field of Cloth of Gold (1969), supplies an interesting analysis of the pageantry that accompanied state affairs. Lacey Baldwin Smith, Tudor Prelates and Politics, 1536-1558 (1953), effectively deals with conciliar factions. A variety of studies deal with the historical background: J. W.

Allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (1928; 3d ed. 1951), ably handles political theory; S. T. Bindoff, Tudor England (1951), is a brilliantly written general survey and is good on economics; G. R. Elton, ed., The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary (1960), unravels complicated constitutional matters; A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation (1964; rev. ed. 1967), deals incisively with the Henrician Reformation; and R. B. Wernham, Before the Armada: The Emergence of the English Nation, 1485-1588 (1966), is essential on Tudor foreign policy.

For more information on Henry VIII, visit Britannica.com.

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English king from ad 1509 of the House of Tudor. Born 1491, second son of Henry VII. Married (1) Catherine, daughter of Ferdinand II, king of Aragon, and widow of his elder brother Arthur (divorced); (2) Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn (executed); (3) Jane, daughter of Sir John Seymour (died in childbirth); (4) Anne, daughter of John, duke of Cleves (divorced); (5) Catherine Howard, niece of the duke of Norfolk (executed); (6) Catherine, daughter of Sir Thomas Parr and widow of Lord Latimer. Died in ad 1547 aged 55, having reigned 37 years.

1491–1547, king of England (1509–47), second son and successor of Henry VII.

Early Life

In his youth he was educated in the new learning of the Renaissance and developed great skill in music and sports. He was created prince of Wales in 1503, following the death of his elder brother, Arthur. At that time he also received a papal dispensation to marry Arthur's widow, Katharine of Aragón. The marriage took place shortly after his accession in 1509.

Reign

Wolsey and Foreign Policy

As king, Henry inherited from his father a budget surplus and a precedent for autocratic rule. In 1511, Henry joined Pope Julius II, King Ferdinand II of Aragón, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, and the Venetians in their Holy League against France. The campaign, organized by Henry's talented minister Thomas (later cardinal) Wolsey, had little success. A more popular conflict, which occurred during Henry's absence, was the victory (1513) of Thomas Howard, 2d duke of Norfolk, at Flodden over the invading Scottish forces under James IV.

Rapid changes in the diplomatic situation following the death of Ferdinand (1516) enabled Wolsey, now chancellor, to conclude a new alliance with France, soon expanded to include all the major European powers in a pledge of universal peace (1518). However, with the election of Ferdinand's grandson, already king of Spain, as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1519, England's status as a secondary power was soon revealed. Henry joined Charles in war against France in 1522, but when Charles won a decisive victory over Francis at Pavia (1525), England was denied any of the spoils.

Henry and Wolsey tried to curb the alarming rise of imperial power by an unpopular alliance (1527) with France, which led to diplomatic and economic reprisals against England. Domestically, Henry had become less popular due to a series of new taxes aimed at providing revenue to bolster the depleted treasury. Despite the early advice of Sir Thomas More, one of Henry's councillors, Wolsey had remained the country's top minister, and by 1527 Wolsey had been forced to accept much of the blame for England's failures.

Divorce and the Reformation

Henry, determined to provide a male heir to the throne, decided to divorce Katharine and marry Anne Boleyn. English diplomacy became a series of maneuvers to win the approval of Pope Clement VII, who was in the power of emperor Charles V, Katharine's nephew. The king wished to invalidate the marriage on the grounds that the papal dispensation under which he and Katharine had been permitted to marry was illegal.

The pope reluctantly authorized a commission consisting of cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio to decide the issue in England. Katharine denied the jurisdiction of the court, and before a decision could be reached, Clement had the hearing adjourned (1529) to Rome. The failure of the commission, followed by a reconciliation between Charles and Francis I, led to the fall of Wolsey and to the initiation by Henry of an anti-ecclesiastical policy intended to force the pope's assent to the divorce.

Under the guidance of the king's new minister, Thomas Cromwell, the anticlerical Parliament drew up (1532) the Supplication Against the Ordinaries, a long list of grievances against the church. In a document known as the Submission of the Clergy, the convocation of the English church accepted Henry's claim that all ecclesiastical legislation was subject to royal approval. Acts stopping the payment of annates to Rome and forbidding appeals to the pope followed. The pope still refused to give way on the divorce issue, but he did agree to the appointment (1533) of the king's nominee, Thomas Cranmer, as archbishop of Canterbury. Cranmer immediately pronounced Henry's marriage with Katharine invalid and crowned Anne (already secretly married to Henry) queen, and the pope excommunicated Henry.

In 1534 the breach with Rome was completed by the Act of Supremacy, which made the king head of the Church of England (see England, Church of). Any effective opposition was suppressed by the Act of Succession entailing the crown on Henry's heirs by Anne, by an extensive and severe Act of Treason, and by the strict administration of the oath of supremacy. A number of prominent churchmen and laymen, including former chancellor Sir Thomas More, were executed, thus changing Henry's legacy from one of enlightenment to one of bloody suppression. Under Cromwell's supervision, a visitation of the monasteries in 1535 led to an act of Parliament in 1536 by which smaller monasteries reverted to the crown, and the others were confiscated within the next few years. By distributing some of this property among the landed gentry, Henry acquired the loyalty of a large and influential group.

Later Years

In 1536, Anne Boleyn, who had given birth to Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I) but failed to have a male heir, was convicted of adultery and incest and beheaded. Soon afterward, Henry married Jane Seymour, who in 1537 bore a son (later Edward VI) and died. Meanwhile in 1536–37 Henry had dealt brutally but effectively with rebellions in the north by subjects protesting economic hardships and the dissolution of the monasteries (see Pilgrimage of Grace). In 1536, Henry authorized the Ten Articles, which included some Protestant doctrinal points, and he approved (1537) publication of the Bible in English. However, the Six Articles passed by Parliament in 1539 reverted to the fundamental principles of Roman Catholic doctrine.

Another temporary peace (1538) between France and the empire seemed to pose the threat of Catholic intervention in England and helped Cromwell persuade the king to ally himself with the German Protestant princes by marrying (1540) Anne of Cleves. However, Henry disliked Anne and divorced her almost immediately. Cromwell, now completely discredited, was beheaded. The king then married Catherine Howard, but in 1542 she met the fate of Anne Boleyn. He married his sixth wife, Catherine Parr, in 1543.

In 1542 war had begun again with Scotland, still controlled through James V by French and Catholic interests. The fighting culminated in the rout of the Scots at Solway Moss and the death of James. Henry forced the Scots to agree to a treaty (1543) of marriage between Mary Queen of Scots and his own son, Edward, but this was to come to nothing. In 1543, Henry once more joined Charles in war against France and was able to take Boulogne (1544). The expensive war dragged on until 1546, when Henry secured a payment of indemnity for the city. When he died in 1547 he was succeeded, as he had hoped, by a son, but it was his daughter Elizabeth I who ruled over one of the greatest periods in England's history.

Character and Legacy

Henry was a supreme egotist. He advanced personal desires under the guise of public policy or moral right, forced his ministers to pay extreme penalties for his own mistakes, and summarily executed many with little excuse. In his later years he became grossly fat, paranoid, and unpredictable. Nonetheless he possessed considerable political insight, and he provided England with a visible and active national leader.

Although Henry seemed to dominate his Parliaments, the importance of that institution increased significantly during his reign. Other advances made during his reign were the institution of an effective navy and the beginnings of social and religious reform. The navy was organized for the first time as a permanent force. Wales was officially incorporated into England in 1536 with a great improvement in government administration there.

In 1521, Henry had been given the title “Defender of the Faith” by the pope for a treatise against Martin Luther, and he remained orthodox in his personal doctrinal views throughout his reign. However, the Six Articles were only fitfully enforced, the use of the English Bible was cautiously increased, seizure of church property continued, and the destruction of relics and shrines was begun. The way had been opened for Protestantism, and Henry presided over the dissolution of Irish monasteries and assumed (1541) the titles of king of Ireland and head of the Church of Ireland. At Henry's death, the council that he had appointed for the minority of Edward VI leaned toward the new doctrines.

Bibliography

See biographies by J. Bowle (1965), J. J. Scarisbrick (1968), C. Erickson (1984), and J. Ridley (1985); H. M. Smith, Henry VIII and the Reformation (1948); J. A. Kelly, The Matrimonial Trials of Henry VIII (1976); D. Starkey, The Reign of Henry VIII (1986).

Henry VIII (England) (1491–1547; ruled 1509–1547), king of England. Henry VIII has a good claim to be regarded as England's most important monarch. It was he who initiated and pushed through the seminal event in the nation's history, the break with the church of Rome. Though historians have long debated the king's motivations and the depth of his control over the policy-making process, few would question his fundamental importance to the English Reformation; nor indeed that of the English Reformation to the subsequent historical development of England, Britain, and the British Empire.

Born at Greenwich Palace on 28 June 1491, the child of Henry VII (Henry Tudor; ruled 1485–1509) and Elizabeth of York, Henry was second in line to the throne. He became heir apparent after his elder brother, Arthur, died of consumption in 1502. On 22 April 1509 Henry's respected but unloved father died; the young prince ascended the throne amid popular rejoicing, the first uncontested succession in over half a century.

The new king quickly disposed of his father's chief ministers, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley (both executed for constructive treason in 1510). Their place was taken by the brilliant and ostentatious commoner Thomas Wolsey (c. 1475–1530). Henry ruled through Wolsey, who became his lord chancellor, from 1514 to 1529, making him the principal influence on the formulation of royal policy and giving him authority over the day-to-day affairs of government. The main focus of policy during the first half of the reign was foreign affairs. The early years were taken up by war with France and Scotland (1511–1514). In France, Henry achieved his first success on the field of battle (the Battle of the Spurs, 1513); in the same year King James IV of Scotland (ruled 1488–1513) was defeated and killed at the head of an invading army at Flodden. Glorious though it might be, war was a drain on the nation's finances. Wolsey had a more realistic appreciation than his master of England's limited resources and inferior status to the Continent's leading powers; instead of war he pursued diplomacy as a cost-effective means of retaining the place of the king at the forefront of European relations, largely through acting as a peace broker in the conflicts between France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire. Henry tired of the passive role in the early 1520s, invading France once again in 1523. This invasion was an ignominious failure, ending in retreat and a severe depletion of the crown treasury; it would be the last such enterprise for almost two decades.

The Divorce

On 11 June 1509, Henry married Arthur's widow, Catherine of Aragón (1485–1536). The marriage failed to provide Henry with a male heir; only a girl born in 1516, the future Queen Mary, survived beyond infancy. For a long time a sequence of renewed pregnancies and the distractions of Wolsey's diplomatic schemes concealed the problem, but the unhappy cycle of miscarriages and still-born infants would not cease, aging Catherine prematurely and turning Henry increasingly suspicious of the marriage. Henry's concerns were not idle: as a child of the Wars of the Roses he was acutely aware of the danger to the stability of the nation that a contested succession could bring; and as the child of the founder of the Tudor dynasty he knew that posterity would compare him with his father principally by his success in perpetuating the line. A male heir would certainly have saved the marriage, but by the early 1520s it was clear that Catherine could become pregnant no more.

Around mid-decade the substantial concerns over the succession combined with two related developments: the king's infatuation with a clever and desirable lady of the court named Anne Boleyn (1507?–1536) and his discovery of two texts in the Book of Leviticus that cast doubt on the theological probity of a marriage to a dead brother's wife. Henry soon decided that his marriage to Catherine was cursed by God and must be annulled forthwith; he would then marry Anne Boleyn, who would provide him with a son. Had Catherine been English, the papal dissolution of the marriage would have been granted immediately. But Catherine was the aunt of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (ruled 1519–1556), whose army had recently sacked and occupied Rome (1527); under the circumstances the pope could not help the king.

The Break With Rome

Yet the king would not be deflected. Wolsey, unable to advance the matter sufficiently and detested by Anne, was discarded and died on his way to a final reckoning with his master in 1529. The cardinal's place was taken by new men sympathetic to Anne's cause and, like the woman who would be queen herself, attracted to the incipient Protestant ideas that had emanated from Germany over the previous decade. Chief among them were Wolsey's erstwhile assistant Thomas Cromwell (1485?–1540), soon to replace his lord as the king's minister, and Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), appointed archbishop of Canterbury in 1533. These two worked with the king and his mistress on a radical solution to the great matter: if the pope would not dissolve the marriage and allow Henry to marry Anne, then the king would follow his chosen course independently of Rome. The king was determined that the process should have the appearance of legitimacy; thus it was that Parliament was called into service to provide the legal apparatus that permitted Henry to have his way.

The Parliament that sat from 1529 to 1536 is rightly known to history as the Reformation Parliament. Though it had no program at the outset for making the break with Rome and establishing an independent Church of England, that is what it did. A succession of legislative instruments deprived Rome of its authority over the English spiritual estate, redirected its finances and property to the crown, and established the king as the supreme head of the English Church. At the same time, Henry was provided with his divorce and married to Anne in 1533; a child followed the same year, though to Henry's chagrin it was a daughter (the future Queen Elizabeth) rather than the expected son. By the middle of the decade Henry might have wondered if it had all been necessary: early in 1536 Catherine died of natural causes, and later the same year Anne, transformed from the enchanting mistress of the early days to a shrew of a wife, was executed on trumped-up charges of adultery and witchcraft, almost certainly the result of a contest between court factions seeking to make the best out of the king's growing dislike for his second marriage.

But by now the soap opera–like succession of events had been overtaken by a much greater story. Though the king was and remained for the rest of his life conservative in his theological beliefs (with some idiosyncratic exceptions), the repudiation of the authority of Rome provided the opportunity for those of more reformist belief to make the newly established church one whose theology owed more to the emerging Protestant faith than to that of the Roman Church. During the 1530s Cromwell and Cranmer urged the king not to stop at assuming the supreme headship of the church and subsuming the institution into the state, but to appoint Protestants to key clerical positions, to issue the first officially sanctioned English Bible (published in 1539), and even to adopt a Protestant theological code for the church.

Conservatism

Yet the advances came at a price. Henry's innate conservatism asserted itself more strongly in the wake of Anne's execution, as he married the religiously conventional Jane Seymour (1509?–1537) and soon after faced a huge popular rebellion, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, against the religious changes in the north of England. Though the rebellion was extinguished in 1537, Henry's concern at the pace of religious change became plain thereafter, and the momentum of reform slowed. Jane provided Henry with the much-desired son, the future Edward VI, in 1537, but she died days after giving birth.

As reform stagnated, Cromwell saw an opportunity to restore the initiative by pursuing the marriage of Henry to a German duchess with Protestant connections, Anne of Cleves (1515–1557). However, the plan backfired when the king set eyes on Anne for the first time just before the wedding in early 1540 and found her repulsive. Though the diplomatic situation was such that Henry had to go ahead with the marriage, Cromwell's position was fatally compromised: his enemies persuaded the king that he was disloyal, and he was executed in the summer of 1540.

The remainder of the reign saw few developments to match those of the 1530s, as the king put a stop to further doctrinal innovation and refocused his kingship on the pastime of his younger days, foreign policy. Henry ruled in the closing years without a minister, executing policy instead through a small body of elite advisors, the Privy Council. Foreign affairs were dominated by wars with Scotland and France. Scotland was invaded in 1542 and France in 1544; though both conflicts were concluded honorably (the Treaty of Greenwich with Scotland in 1543 and the Treaty of Ardres with France in 1546), there was little in the way of diplomatic compensation for the ruinous expenses incurred. All the while the king's marital adventures continued. In July 1540 Henry divorced Anne; less than three weeks later (on the same day as Cromwell's execution) he married Catherine Howard (1520?–1542). Accused of adultery, she was beheaded in 1542. Henry married Catherine Parr (1512–1548), his sixth and last wife, in 1543. The oldest of Henry's brides and previously married herself, she proved adept at managing the failing and increasingly irascible king in his dotage, not only to her own profit, but also to that of the Protestant cause, restraining the persecution of reformers and ensuring that the young prince Edward was educated by men of reformed views. King Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547, leaving behind him an independent English church, a son and regency council who would over the next five-and-a-half years put England on a course of radical religious reform, and a daughter in Elizabeth who would consolidate and defend the national church and associated national identity that her father had done so much to establish.

Bibliography

Primary Source

Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, 1509–1547. Edited by J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R. H. Brodie. London, 1862–1910.

Secondary Sources

Elton, Geoffrey R. Reform and Reformation: England, 1509–1558. London, 1977.

Guy, John. Tudor England. Oxford, 1988.

Mac Culloch, Diarmaid. Thomas Cranmer: A Life. New Haven, 1996.

Mc Entegart, Rory. Henry VIII, the League of Schmalkalden, and the English Reformation. Woodbridge, U.K., and Rochester, N.Y., 2002.

Scarisbrick, J. J. Henry VIII. London, 1968.

Starkey, David. The Reign of Henry VIII: Personalities and Politics. London, 1985.

——. Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII. London, 2003.

Weir, Alison. Henry VIII: The King and His Court. New York, 2001.

—RORY MCENTEGART

A king of England in the early sixteenth century. With the support of his Parliament, Henry established himself as head of the Christian Church in England, in place of the pope, after the pope refused to allow his marriage to Catherine of Aragon to be dissolved. Since that time, except for a few years of rule under Henry's daughter Mary I, who was a Roman Catholic, England has been officially a Protestant nation.

In his personal life, Henry was known for his corpulence and for his six wives. He divorced the first, Catherine of Aragon. He beheaded the second, Anne Boleyn, for allegedly being unfaithful to him. His third wife, Jane Seymour, died soon after giving birth to a son. He divorced his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, and beheaded his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, also for alleged infidelity. His sixth wife, Catherine Parr, survived him. He also had his close friend and adviser Thomas More executed because More would not support Henry's declaration that he was head of the church in England. Henry was the father of King Edward VI and of Queen Elizabeth I, as well as Mary I.