Henry Tudor was the king of England from until his death in He married six times, beheading two of his wives, and was the main instigator of the English Reformation.
His only surviving son, Edward VI, succeeded him after his death. 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. A lover of gambling and jousting, he hosted countless tournaments and banquets. His father always envisioned Arthur as king and Henry as a high-ranking church official—the appropriate role at that time for his secondary birth order.
As fate would have it, Henry instead inherited an entire peaceful nation after his father ended the Wars of the Roses. After less than four months of marriage, Arthur died at the age of 15, leaving his year-old brother, Henry, the next in line to the throne. Henry was good-natured, but his court soon learned to bow to his every wish.
Two days after his coronation, he arrested two of his father's ministers and promptly executed them. He began his rule seeking advisers on most matters and would end it with absolute control. Wolsey enjoyed a lavish existence under Henry, but 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. After Henry declared his supremacy, the Christian church separated, forming the Church of England.
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 catechism, called the King's Primer , left out the saints. Fully separated now from the pope, the Church of England was under England's rule, not Rome's.
From to , a great northern uprising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace took hold, during which 30, people rebelled against the king's changes. It was the only major threat to Henry's authority as monarch. The rebellion's leader, Robert Aske, and others were executed.
The pope conceded, but the official marriage of Henry and Catherine was postponed until the death of Henry VII in His philandering ways were tame by the standards of his contemporaries, but they nonetheless resulted in his first divorce in Because Catherine was now 42 and unable to conceive another child, Henry set on a mission to obtain a male heir by configuring a way to officially abandon his marriage with Catherine.
The Book of Leviticus stated that a man who takes his brother's wife shall remain childless. On 23 May, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer confirmed the annulment and Anne was crowned on 1 June in a magnificent coronation. Her seven-year wait for crown, and king, was over. Having overturned the religious and political life of England to marry Anne and conceive an heir, Henry was convinced his unborn child would be a son.
The birth of Elizabeth , on 7 September , therefore, was a bitter blow and must have caused considerable anxiety to Anne, who had seen her predecessor cast aside for the same. Anne suffered at least two miscarriages during the marriage, the second of which, in January , was a boy. Court gossip and intrigue, however, was to change his mind. A series of acts were passed, cutting back papal power and influence in England. The pope was infuriated by the news, and excommunicated Henry.
This effectively brought an end to centuries of papal jurisdiction over religious life in England. Cromwell now had the tools with which to reform the English Church. In January , he embarked upon the Dissolution of the Monasteries, bringing their immense wealth and landholdings under crown control. When Henry learned of her pregnancy in early , he took great pains to ensure her every whim was catered for, even shipping quails eggs from France to satisfy her cravings.
But 12 days later, Henry was mourning the death of his third wife, after postnatal complications. A political alliance was deemed necessary and the net was cast for a new wife.
I like her not! The meeting was a disaster. Henry, in chivalric tradition, chose to meet his bride-to-be in disguise. Henry, faced with the reality that he was no longer the golden Prince of his youth, was utterly humiliated.
The marriage lasted just six months — Henry was allegedly unable to consummate the union and his eyes were already set on a new prize. Her former indiscretions and an affair with a courtier cost her her life. Now nearly 50, Henry had fallen in love again, with another lady-in-waiting: year-old Catherine Howard. To the ageing and ailing king, Catherine was everything a queen should be: obedient, fertile and chaste. Henry was entranced; Catherine made him feel young again, helping him forget the constant pain of his ulcerated legs.
Henry remained hopeful Anne would give him a son, but after a series of stillborn births, Henry lost interest in his wife. When he took a mistress, Anne became enraged. Desperate to end the relationship, Henry accused her of adultery and treason and had the marriage annulled. On May 19, , Anne was beheaded for her alleged crimes. She is by far the most studied of Henry VIII's wives, but much of her life remains a mystery, including the terms of her execution.
Jane had served as a lady-in-waiting to both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. On October 12, , Jane gave birth to Edward VI and died from complications of the birth several weeks later.
At the wishes of the king, Jane is buried at St. George's Chapel alongside him. When Anne arrived in England on January 1, , 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,
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