Henry VIII was the king of England from 1509 until his death in 1547. An arrogant and autocratic ruler, he brought about radical changes in the English Constitution and greatly expanded royal power, asserting the King’s supremacy over the Church of England. He married six times, beheading two of his wives, and was the main instigator of the English Reformation.
Background
Ethnicity:
Henry’s nuclear DNA and mitrochondrial DNA show his ancestry comes from present-day Morocco, Algeria or the Near East.
Henry VIII was born on June 28, 1491, at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, London, England, like all the Tudor monarchs. Henry was the second son of Henry VII, first of the Tudor line, and Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, the first king of the short-lived line of York.
Henry VIII was one of six children, only three of whom survived infancy: Arthur, Margaret, and Mary. Henry was second in line to the throne. He became heir apparent after his elder brother, Arthur, died of consumption in 1502.
Education
When Henry was two, he was appointed the Constable of Dover Castle by his father, as well as the Lord Warden of Cinque Ports. When he was three, Henry was appointed the Duke of York, and then later he was appointed both the Earl Marshal of England, as well as the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
As a young man and monarch, second in the Tudor Dynasty, Henry VIII exuded a charismatic athleticism and diverse appetite for art, music, and culture. He was witty and highly educated, taught by private tutors for his entire upbringing. He loved music and wrote some as well. While his older brother Arthur was being prepared for the throne, Henry was steered toward a church career, with a broad education in theology, music, languages, poetry, and sports.
He spoke many languages fluently and loved to read and study. Henry loved art and culture bringing many of the top artists, writers, and philosophers from mainland Europe to his court. He was the first English monarch to be educated under the influence of the Renaissance, and his tutors included the poet Skelton; he became an accomplished scholar, linguist, musician, and athlete, and when by the death of his brother Arthur in 1502 and of his father on the 22nd of April 1509 Henry VIII succeeded to the throne, his accession was hailed with universal acclamation.
Upon King Henry VII’s death in 1509, Henry VIII took the crown at age 17. Henry was good-natured, but his court soon learned to bow to his every wish. The new king quickly disposed of his father's chief ministers, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley. Two days after his coronation, he arrested the two and promptly executed them. He began his rule seeking advisers on most matters and would end it with absolute control.
Inexperienced and still a teenager at the time of his coronation, Henry VIII relied greatly on Thomas Wolsey’s guidance to rule the kingdom. 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.
In 1511, Henry VIII joined Pope Julius II’s Holy League against France. The King depended heavily on Wolsey to help in organizing the first French campaign through which he aimed to bring French territories under the English rule. A war against France was formally declared in 1512, and the initial attacks proved to be a failure. In 1513, Henry and his troops invaded France and defeated a French army at the Battle of the Spurs. Soon the English also conquered Thérouanne and Tournai.
During the King’s absence from England, James IV of Scotland attempted to invade England. However Henry VIII”s wife Queen Catherine successfully defended England and defeated the Scots at the Battle of Flodden. 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, the 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 the 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.
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. Nevertheless, the years from 1515 to 1527 were marked by Wolsey’s ascendancy, and his initiatives set the scene. Henry VIII had relied on Thomas Wolsey to guide his domestic and foreign policies.
In 1521, Charles of Austria, who was the monarch of both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, declared war on France. Henry aligned England with Charles and hoped to restore English lands in France. Charles successfully defeated and captured King Francis I of France but none of Henry’s expectations from this battle were fulfilled. So he withdrew England from the alignment with France and signed the Treaty of the More in 1525.
Wolsey’s attempt to reverse alliances at this unpropitious moment brought reprisals against the vital English cloth trade with the Netherlands and lost the advantages that alliance with the victor of Pavia might have had. It provoked a serious reaction in England, and Henry concluded that Wolsey’s usefulness might be coming to an end. The annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was the breaking point in Henry and Wolsey’s friendship.
When Wolsey failed to deliver Henry's quick annulment from Catherine, the cardinal quickly fell out of favor. After 16 years of power, Wolsey was arrested and falsely charged with treason. He subsequently died in custody. Henry's actions upon Wolsey gave a strong signal to the pope that he would not honor the wishes of even the highest clergy and would instead exercise full power in every realm of his court. With the backing of the English parliament and clergy, Henry ultimately decided that he didn’t need the pope’s permission to rule on issues affecting the Church of England.
In 1534, Henry VIII declared himself supreme head of the Church of England. There were several uprisings opposing his religious policies, but they were quickly suppressed. A number of dissenters were arrested and executed. Under Henry’s dominance, the Church of England completely broke away from the Pope and this gave rise to a great northern uprising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 in protest against the King’s policies which were unacceptable to the Catholics. Thousands of people, led by Robert Aske rebelled against the King and Henry arrested Aske along with 200 other rebels and executed them for treason, thus bringing an end to the disturbances.
Henry instituted several statutes that outlined the relationship between the king and the pope and the structure of the Church of England: the Act of Appeals, the Acts of Succession, and the first Act of Supremacy, declaring the king was "the only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England." These macro reforms trickled down to minute details of worship. Henry ordered the clergy to preach against superstitious images, relics, miracles, and pilgrimages, and to remove almost all candles from religious settings. His 1545 catechism, called the King's Primer, left out the saints.
By the early 1540s, his relations with Charles had improved and they once again formed an alliance and planned to invade France in 1543. In preparation, Henry proceeded to eliminate the potential threat of Scotland and defeated the Scots at the Battle of Solway Moss in 1542. Initially, he hesitated to invade France and this angered Charles. Finally, Henry went to France in 1544 and launched a two-pronged attack. Meanwhile, Charles made peace with France leaving Henry alone in the campaign. Henry too attempted to make peace with France but France tried to invade England in 1545. The French attempt was unsuccessful, and these campaigns had cost both England and France dearly. Thus France and England signed the Treaty of Camp in June 1546.
As the year 1546 drew to a close, it was apparent to all observers that the king had not long to live. Not that it was clear to the man most concerned; he continued as before, lamenting religious dissension, attending to the business of government, continuing the pretense of deathless majesty, destroying the powerful Howard family, whom he suspected of plotting to control his successor. Conscious almost to the very end, he died on January 28, 1547. He left the realm feeling bereft and the government the more bewildered because, to the last, he had refused to make full arrangements for the rule of a boy king.
His 9-year-old son Edward VI succeeded him as king but died six years later. Mary I spent her five-year reign steering England back into the Catholic fold, but Elizabeth I, the longest-reigning of the Tudor monarchs, re-entrenched her father’s religious reforms.
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.
Although his daughter, Elizabeth I, is usually associated with the height of English culture, Henry set the stage by encouraging new humanist ideas that were being brought from Italy in the sixteenth century.
When the first Tudor Kings came to the throne, England was a Roman Catholic country and the head of the church was the Pope in Rome, Clement VII. England was a Catholic nation under the rule of Henry VII (1485-1509) and during much of Henry VIII's (1509-1547) reign. Once titled "defender" of the Catholic church, Henry's personal circumstances would drive him to break his Catholic ties and found the Church of England.
When Henry VIII came to the throne, he was a devout Catholic and defended the Church against Protestants. When Martin Luther issued grievances about the Catholic Church in 1517, King Henry VIII took it upon himself to personally repudiate the arguments of the Protestant Reformation leader. The pope rewarded Henry with the lofty title of Fidei Defensor, or Defender of the Faith.
Though early signs of anticlericalism had surfaced in England by the 1520s, Catholicism still enjoyed widespread popular support. As for Henry VIII, he had no wish and no need to break with the church. 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 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. When the Pope refused to grant Henry VIII a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, Henry split off the English Church from the Roman church. Rather than the pope, the king would be the spiritual head of the English church.
Once he'd established himself as Supreme Head of the Church of England, loyalty to the new church was equated with loyalty to the king. Those who did not, or could not, subscribe to the new order were to be regarded as traitors who owed their allegiance to a foreign pope - or in the case of Calvinists, to a foreign ideology - and not to the king of England.
The year 1535 saw Henry order the closing down of Roman Catholic Abbeys, monasteries, and convents across England, Wales, and Ireland. This act became known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Until Henry's death in 1547, although split off from Rome, the English Church remained a Catholic country. It wasn't until Henry's son, Edward VI, and his advisors, that England became a Protestant country.
Politics
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 and the capture of Tournai and Théorouanne.
Peace was made in 1514 with the Scots, who had invaded England and been defeated at Flodden, 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. When Henry heard about Francis's victory, he burst into tears of rage.
Views
The Italian Renaissance reached England during the early years of Henry's reign, and he became the true Renaissance prince. Handsome, dashing, well educated in classical Latin and theology, he was willing to spend money on learning and the arts.
Renaissance ideas had begun to trickle into England during the reign of Henry VII. Under Henry VIII, these ideas spread more rapidly and widely. Sir Thomas More, Henry's lord chancellor, led a group of humanists at the court who promoted Renaissance learning.
After Henry's break with Rome, religious debates and divisions drew public attention away from humanist studies. But Renaissance ideas had taken hold, and they grew in popularity and importance during the reign of Henry's daughter Elizabeth I and her successor, James I.
Quotations:
"Well-beloved subjects! We thought that the clergy of our realm had been our subjects wholly, but now, we have well perceived that they be but half our subjects; yea, and scarce our subjects, for all the prelates, at their consecration, take an oath to the Pope clean contrary to the oath they make to us so that they seem to be his subjects and not ours."
"Be not judges yourselves of your own fantastical opinions and vain expositions; and although you be permitted to read Holy Scriptures and to have the Word of God in your mother tongue, you must understand it is licensed so to do only to inform your conscience and inform your children and families, not to make Scripture a railing and taunting stock against priests and preachers. I am very sorry to know and hear how irreverently that precious jewel, the Word of God, is disputed, rimed, sung, and jangled in every alehouse and tavern, contrary to the true meaning and doctrine of the same."
Personality
Though Henry was a healthy young man, he was still paranoid about getting sick and dying. Given the times, there were plenty of illnesses for him to worry about, but two particular concerns were the sweating sickness (a common and often deadly ailment) and the plague.
During outbreaks, Henry tried to minimize his risk of infection by steering clear of those who might’ve been exposed to the disease. When a severe wave of the sweating sickness hit in 1517-1518, Henry left London for nearly a year. At one point during the outbreak, the king refused to see ambassadors (however, his isolation was limited because he needed servants to take care of him).
Despite the popular image of Henry VIII throwing a chicken leg over his shoulder as he devoured one of his many feasts, he was in fact a fastidious eater. Only on special occasions, such as a visit from a foreign dignitary, did he stage banquets. Most of the time, Henry preferred to dine in his private apartments. He would take care to wash his hands before, during, and after each meal, and would follow a strict order of ceremony. Seated beneath a canopy and surrounded by senior court officers, he was served on bended knee and presented with several different dishes to choose from at each course.
Music was Henry’s great passion and he was not without musical talent. The king was a competent player of various keyboard, string, and wind instruments and numerous accounts attest to the quality of his own compositions. The Henry VIII Manuscript contains 33 compositions attributed to "the kyng h.viii."
Henry was a big spender. By his death on 28 January 1547, he had accumulated 50 royal palaces - a record for the English monarchy - and spent vast sums on his collections (including musical instruments and tapestries) and gambling. Not to mention the millions he pumped into wars with Scotland and France. When Henry’s son, Edward VI, took the throne, the royal coffers were in a sorry state.
Henry VIII sent more men and women to their deaths than any other monarch. During the later years of Henry’s reign, as he grew ever more paranoid and bad-tempered, the Tower of London was crowded with the terrified subjects who had been imprisoned at his orders.
Physical Characteristics:
Henry VIII was slim and athletic for most of his life. At six feet two inches tall, Henry VIII stood head and shoulders above most of his court. He had an athletic physique and excelled at sports, regularly showing off his prowess in the jousting arena.
As he grew older, particularly once he entered middle age, Henry put on a massive amount of weight. Suits of armor showed that his waistline, which had measured 32 inches in 1512, grew to 54 inches; Henry weighed nearly 400 pounds when he died in 1547. In his later years, the king also suffered from painful ulcers on his legs and had trouble standing and walking.
Quotes from others about the person
"A lying, greedy and idiotic king, a beetle and a pile of dung, the spawn of a snake, a chicken, a lying toad mixed all together by Satan's spawn." - Henry Randall
"We may be amused by a defense of Richard III, but we can feel only indignation and disgust at an apology for Henry VIII, whose atrocities are as well authenticated as those of Robespierre, and are less excusable." - John Campbell
Interests
Hunting
Artists
Hans Holbein
Sport & Clubs
Archery, jousting, real tennis
Music & Bands
Benedict de Opitiis, Richard Sampson, Ambrose Lupo, Dionisio Memo
Connections
Henry VIII had a total of six wives, including Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr. His first marriage was to the widow of his brother, Catherine of Aragon, who he later divorced due to her failure to produce a male heir even though the couple had one daughter. It was Henry’s desire to end his first marriage that led to the series of events that finally culminated in the separation of the Church of England from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church.
In 1533, Anne Boleyn, who was still Henry's mistress, became pregnant. Henry decided he didn't need the pope's permission on matters of the Church of England. Thomas Cranmer, the new archbishop of Canterbury, presided over the trial that declared his first marriage annulled. Once liberated from his first marriage, he married Anne Boleyn. Soon after their daughter, Elizabeth I, was born, Henry grew tired of Anne Boleyn, who had failed to give birth to a son. Henry charged Anne with adultery and had her executed.
Within 11 days of Anne Boleyn's execution, Henry married Jane Seymour, who in 1537 gave the king what he had long wanted: a son, Edward VI. However, she died from a pregnancy-related infection just days later. Henry’s fourth marriage bore similarities to his first. Anne of Cleves was a political bride, chosen to cement an alliance with her brother, the ruler of a Protestant duchy in Germany. The marriage only lasted a few days before Henry had it annulled.
He soon married a pretty young woman, Catherine Howard, a first cousin to Anne Boleyn. Henry, 49, and Catherine, 19, started out a happy pair. Henry was now dealing with tremendous weight gain and a bad leg, and his new wife gave him a zest for life. He repaid her with lavish gifts. After just seventeen months of marriage to the king, she was arrested for adultery. She was executed for treason.
His sixth and final marriage was to Catherine Parr and lasted till his death. She acted as a nurse to him during his last years and also cared for his children from previous marriages. By the end of 1546, Henry was near death. Catherine Parr helped to persuade him to change his will, naming his daughters Mary and Elizabeth as next in line to the succession after their brother, Edward.
Father:
Henry VII
Henry VII was King of England from 1485 to 1509. He was a successful usurper, the founder of the Tudor dynasty, and an accomplished practitioner of Renaissance diplomacy. During his reign, he made efforts to strengthen the English monarchy. He also introduced policies in an attempt to restore stability, power, and peace, while creating economic prosperity.
Mother:
Elizabeth of York
Elizabeth of York was the wife of Henry VII and the first queen consort of England of the Tudor dynasty. Elizabeth and Henry were blessed with eight children, of which only four survived to adulthood. Elizabeth is remembered as a beautiful and kind woman who was loved by her subjects.
Brother:
Arthur, Prince of Wales
Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales was the firstborn child of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York and the elder brother of Henry VIII. He was the first in line to the throne until his death in 1502.
Sister:
Margaret Tudor
Margaret was the second child and eldest daughter of King Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York. She was the first princess in the new royal house of Tudor, and later Queen consort of Scotland.
Sister:
Mary Tudor
Mary Tudor, Queen of France, was the younger sister of King Henry VIII. Mary and her older brother Henry were the only two siblings left in England and it has been suggested that during this time, growing up together, they formed a close bond that survived until Mary's death.
Catherine of Aragon was the daughter of Spanish monarchs King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella. She married Henry VIII but did not give birth to a male heir. Catherine refused to annul her marriage so that Henry could marry again, which led to the separation of the Church of England from the Catholic Church.
Catherine refused to recognize the legitimacy of Henry's actions and still considered herself to be queen, refusing to send Boleyn her crown jewels when her replacement asked for them. Kept isolated and separated from her daughter, Mary, Catherine died at Kimbolton Castle in Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, England, on January 7, 1536, at the age of 50.
late wife:
Anne Boleyn
One of Henry’s mistresses during his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Mary Boleyn, introduced him to her sister, Anne, and Anne and Henry began secretly seeing one another. Henry and Anne wed in January of 1533, and Anne gave birth to their first child, Elizabeth, in September the same year. Henry remained hopeful Anne would give him a son, but after a series of stillborn births, Henry lost interest in his wife.
Henry VIII decided that it was time to take hold of his legacy. He quickly settled on taking Seymour as his future wife and sought out the annulment of his marriage to Boleyn. He then had Boleyn detained at the Tower of London on several false charges, among them adultery, incest, and conspiracy.
late wife:
Jane Seymour
Within 11 days of Anne Boleyn's execution, on May 30, 1536, Jane Seymour and Henry VIII formally wed. However, Jane was never officially coronated or crowned queen. In October 1537, following a difficult pregnancy, Jane Seymour produced the king’s long-hoped-for son, Edward.
Just nine days after giving birth, Jane died from a pregnancy-related infection. Because Jane was the only of Henry’s spouses to bear him a son, he considered her to be his only "true" wife. He and his court mourned for an extended period of time after her passing.
ex-wife:
Anne of Cleves
Henry stayed a bachelor for two years until his chief minister suggested that he seek a European alliance and marry one of the sisters (Anne and Amelia) of Germany’s Duke of Cleves. Henry requested the women’s portraits and found Anne to be the more flattering of the two.
When Anne arrived in England on January 1, 1540, Henry was shocked that she looked nothing like the painting. He tried to halt the wedding, but because the arrangement had progressed so far, they married on January 6, 1540. Henry found her physically unattractive and never consummated the marriage. This marriage was annulled within six months.
late wife:
Catherine Howard
In 1540 Henry married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, who was Anne Boleyn's cousin and who shared Anne's fate. Catherine was charged with adultery and beheaded in 1542.
Wife:
Catherine Parr
Henry married his sixth wife, Catherine Parr, in July 1543. A spirited and educated widow, when Catherine showed an interest in Protestantism, Henry had her arrested. She managed to avoid the fate of her predecessors, bringing stability and peace to the court, while serving as a kind and caring stepmother to Henry’s children.
Son:
Henry, Duke of Cornwall
Henry, Duke of Cornwall was the first child of King Henry VIII of England and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Prince Henry had died after only fifty-two days. There is no consensus on the cause of death. He may have taken ill as many children did then. Or possibly he died of sudden infant death syndrome.
Daughter:
Mary I of England
The daughter of King Henry VIII and the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, Mary as a child was a pawn in England’s bitter rivalry with more powerful nations, being fruitlessly proposed in marriage to this or that potentate desired as an ally. A studious and bright girl, she was educated by her mother and a governess of ducal rank.
In 1553, she was crowned the queen of England. During her five-year reign, Mary had over 300 religious dissenters burned at the stake in what is known as the Marian persecutions. It is a statistic that seems barbaric.
Son:
Henry FitzRoy
Henry FitzRoy was the son of Henry VIII and his mistress Elizabeth Blount.
Daughter:
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth was the daughter of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. She was only 2 years old when her mother was beheaded on the orders of her father, based on questionable charges of adultery and conspiracy.
Queen Elizabeth I claimed the throne in 1558 at the age of 25 and held it until her death 44 years later. Elizabeth I was born a princess but declared illegitimate through political machinations. Eventually, upon her half-sister Mary Tudor’s death, she took the crown.
Son:
Edward VI of England
Edward was King Henry VIII’s only legitimate son; his mother, Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour, died 12 days after his birth. Edward VI became king at the age of nine upon the death of his father.
adviser:
Thomas Wolsey
Thomas Wolsey dominated the government of England’s King Henry VIII from 1515 to 1529. His unpopularity contributed, upon his downfall, to the anticlerical reaction that was a factor in the English Reformation.
Wolsey used his vast secular and ecclesiastical power to amass wealth second only to that of the king. The immediate cause of Wolsey’s fall from power was his failure to persuade Pope Clement VII to grant Henry an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
Wolsey was arrested on November 4 on charges of treason (for corresponding with the French court), but he died at the end of the month while on his way south to face the king.
Mistress:
Elizabeth Blount
Henry's first big extramarital romance came in 1514 when he tell in love with Elizabeth (Bessie) Blount. Bessie gave birth to Henry Fitzroy, Henry's illegitimate son, in about June 1519.
Mistress:
Mary Boleyn
Mary Boleyn was the sister of King Henry VIII's second wife, the infamous Anne Boleyn. But she was also the king's mistress before her sister's ascendancy.
In 1539 Cromwell made the mistake of trying to force the king to his side by compelling him to marry Anne of Cleves. The king from the start hated his fourth wife, and by February 1540 it was clear that the alliance with the German princes that she represented was unnecessary. Thereafter, Cromwell’s fall came quickly.
He fought back for a few months, being created earl of Essex and lord great chamberlain in April 1540, but early in June, his enemies persuaded Henry that his vicegerent was a heretic and a traitor. He was arrested on June 10, condemned without a hearing, and executed on July 28.
Friend:
Charles Brandon
Henry VIII had few close friends, and Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was his closest throughout his life.
