Henry VIII (1491-1547)
- Born: Greenwich on 28 June 1491
- He became heir to the throne when his elder brother, Prince Arthur, died in 1502
- He succeeded the throne in 1509
- His interest in foreign policy was focused on Western Europe, a shifting pattern of alliances centered around the kings of Spain and France, and the Holy Roman Emperor.
- He was related to Spain, France and the holy Roman Empire by marriage, his wife Catherine was Ferdinand of Aragon's daughter, his sister Mary married Louis XII of France in 1514, and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was Catherine's nephew.
- Henry had unsuccessful Anglo-Spanish campaigns against France, ending in peace with France in 1520
- Henry increased the size of the navy from 5 to 53 ships
- Catherine had produced only one surviving child - a girl, Princess Mary, born in 1516. Henry was desperate for a son
- Henry was the second monarch of the Tudor dynasty that had been established by conquest in 1485
- Henry had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, the sister of one of his many mistresses, and tried to persuade the Pope to grant him an annulment
- 1533 Cranmer declared Henry's marriage invalid; Anne Boleyn was crowned queen a week later.
- The Pope responded with excommunication, and Parliamentary legislation enacting Henry's decision to break with the Roman Catholic Church soon followed.
- Act of Submission of the Clergy and an Act of Succession followed, together with an Act of Supremacy (1534) which recognised that the king was 'the only supreme head of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia'.
- Henry's second marriage had raised hopes for a male heir. Anne Boleyn, however, produced another daughter, Princess Elizabeth, and failed to produce a male child
- Henry got rid of Anne on charges of treason which were almost certainly false, and she was executed in 1536.
- Henry's third wife Jane Seymour, finally bore him a son, who was later to become Edward VI. Jane died in childbed, 12 days after the birth in 1537.
- Henry's fourth, marriage to Anne of Cleves was abortive and short-lived.
- Henry made two more marriages, to Katherine Howard, who was executed on grounds of adultery in 1542, and Catherine Parr, who survived Henry to die in 1548. Neither produced any children.
- Henry made sure that his sole male heir, Edward, was educated by people who believed in Protestantism rather than Catholicism because he wanted the anti-papal nature of his reformation and his dynasty to become more firmly established.
- in the last seven years of Henry's reign, he turned his attention to France once more.
- Despite assembling an army of 40,000 men, only the town of Boulogne was captured and the French campaign failed.
- Although more than half the monastic properties had been sold off, forced loans and currency depreciation also had to be used to pay for the war, which contributed to increased inflation.
- Henry died in London on 28 January 1547.
Henry VIII (r.1509-1547). N.p., n.d. Web. 31 May 2013.
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thetudors/henryviii.aspx>.
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thetudors/henryviii.aspx>.