Henry VIII (1491-1547) is perhaps the most famous king in English history: the monarch of the six wives, the man who broke with the Church of Rome and founded the Church of England, the cultured, sporting Renaissance prince who in his last years became a suspicious and cruel tyrant. His reign of almost forty years changed England's religion, politics and landscape for ever.
The young king
Born on 28 June 1491 at Greenwich Palace, the second son of Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty, Henry was not meant to be king: he became heir on the death of his elder brother Arthur in 1502. He came to the throne in 1509, aged seventeen, and immediately married his brother's widow, Catherine of Aragon. He was tall and athletic, passionate about jousting, hunting and tennis, a musician and composer, well versed in Latin and theology: in 1521 he wrote a treatise against Luther that earned him from the Pope the title Defender of the Faith, still borne by British monarchs. In his early years he left much of the government to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, sought military glory in France and met King Francis I amid the splendour of the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520.
The "Great Matter" and the break with Rome
Catherine gave him only one surviving daughter, Mary, and the king, obsessed with the need for a male heir to secure the young dynasty and in love with Anne Boleyn, asked the Pope to annul the marriage. Clement VII, under pressure from Emperor Charles V, Catherine's nephew, refused. After Wolsey's fall, the new adviser Thomas Cromwell and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer found the solution: through a series of Acts of Parliament England separated from papal authority, and with the Act of Supremacy of 1534 the king became Supreme Head of the Church of England. Those who refused the oath, such as the humanist Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher, were executed. Between 1536 and 1541 the king had every monastery in the realm dissolved, confiscating their immense wealth: the ruins of abbeys such as Fountains, Tintern and Glastonbury still mark this revolution today (see the history of the Church of England).
The six wives
An English rhyme sums up the wives' fate: divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived.
- Catherine of Aragon (1509-1533): marriage annulled.
- Anne Boleyn (1533-1536): mother of the future Elizabeth I, beheaded in the Tower of London on probably false charges of adultery and treason.
- Jane Seymour (1536-1537): gave the king his male heir, Edward, and died days after the birth.
- Anne of Cleves (1540): a political marriage, annulled after six months.
- Catherine Howard (1540-1542): Anne Boleyn's very young cousin, beheaded for adultery.
- Catherine Parr (1543-1547): learned and prudent, she outlived the king.
The last years
After a serious jousting accident in 1536, the king grew increasingly obese, tormented by a leg wound that would not heal, irascible and suspicious. He had Cromwell executed too, in 1540. He devoted himself to building a great navy, including the Mary Rose, which sank before his eyes off Portsmouth in 1545 and was raised in 1982; it is now displayed in a museum. With the laws of 1536 and 1543 he formally united Wales with England, and in 1542 took the title King of Ireland. He died on 28 January 1547 at Whitehall Palace and was buried beside Jane Seymour in St George's Chapel, Windsor. He was succeeded by his three children: Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.
Where to discover Henry VIII
Hampton Court Palace, which the king took over from Wolsey and enlarged, with its Tudor kitchens and Great Hall; the Tower of London, where two queens were beheaded (see the Tower of London); Hever Castle, the Boleyn family home; the Mary Rose in Portsmouth; Hans Holbein's portraits at the National Portrait Gallery. See also London's royal palaces and the British monarchy.