Post by Galadriel on Jul 12, 2007 23:36:35 GMT
Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was King of England and Lord of Ireland, later King of Ireland, from 22 April 1509 until his death.
Henry was then the second monarch of the House of Tudor, succeeding his father, Henry VII. Henry VIII is infamous for having been married six times. He wielded perhaps the most unfettered power of any English monarch, and brought about the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the union of England and Wales. He also introduced Protestantism to England.
Henry VIII was the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. His elder brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales, died in 1502, leaving Henry as heir to the throne.
Many significant pieces of legislation were enacted during Henry VIII's reign. They included the several Acts which severed the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church and established the king as the supreme head of the Church in England.
Henry VIII is known to have been an avid gambler and dice player. In his youth, he excelled at sports, especially jousting, hunting, and real tennis. He was also an accomplished musician, author, and poet; his best known piece of music is Pastime with Good Company ("The Kynges Ballade"). Henry VIII was also involved in the original construction and improvement of several significant buildings, including Nonsuch Palace, King's College Chapel, Cambridge and Westminster Abbey in London. Many of the existing buildings Henry improved were properties confiscated from Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, such as Christ Church, Oxford, Hampton Court Palace, palace of Whitehall, and Trinity College, Cambridge.
Born at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, Henry VIII was the third child of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Only three of Henry VIII's six siblings — Arthur (the Prince of Wales), Margaret and Mary — survived infancy. In 1493, Henry was appointed Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. In 1494, he was created Duke of York. He was subsequently appointed Earl Marshal of England and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Henry was given a first-rate education from leading tutors, becoming fluent in Latin, French, and Spanish. It was initially anticipated that Henry would have a career in the Church, as it was expected that the throne would pass to Prince Arthur, Henry's older brother.
In 1502, however, Arthur suddenly died, and Henry was thrust into all the duties of his late brother, becoming Prince of Wales and, of course, heir to the throne. Henry's father renewed his efforts to seal an alliance between England and Spain via marriage (and he did not want to return Catherine's dowry); thus, in place of the dead Arthur, Henry was offered up to Spain for marriage to Prince Arthur's widow, Catherine of Aragon, the youngest surviving child of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile.
In order for the new Prince of Wales to marry his brother's widow, a dispensation from the Pope normally would have been required to overrule the impediment of affinity. However, Catherine swore that her first marriage was never consummated (she had never had sex with Arthur); thus no papal dispensation was necessary on those grounds — merely a dispensation to dissolve a ratified marriage. Still, both the English and Spanish parties agreed that an additional papal dispensation of affinity would be prudent to remove all doubt regarding the legitimacy of the marriage. Due to the impatience of Catherine's mother, Queen Isabella, the Pope granted his dispensation in the form of a Papal bull. Thus, fourteen months after her young husband's death, Catherine found herself betrothed to his brother, the new Prince of Wales. By 1505, however, the king lost interest in an alliance with Spain, and Henry declared that his betrothal had been arranged without his assent.
Continued diplomatic maneuvering over the fate of the proposed marriage lingered until the death of Henry VII in 1509. Only 17 years old, Henry married his brother's widow, Catherine June 11, 1509, and on June 24, 1509, the two were crowned, at Westminster Abbey.
In 1525, King Henry's increasing impatience with what he perceived to be Catherine's inability to produce the desired heir was given a new spur when he became attracted to a charismatic young courtier in the Queen's entourage, Anne Boleyn.
Henry ordered Cardinal Wolsey to begin formal proceedings with Rome to annul his marriage on the grounds that Catherine's brief marriage to the sickly Arthur had, indeed, been consummated. The king's secretary, William Knight, went to Rome to petition Pope Clement VII for the annulment, but the Pope was highly reluctant to grant the king’s request due to pressure from Catherine's nephew, Emperor Charles V, and an unwillingness to overturn the previous Pope's decision. Wolsey's efforts to lobby for the annulment were unavailing. These failures, concomitant with his growing estrangement from Catherine, finally led to Wolsey's dismissal as Lord Chancellor by Henry in 1529. His replacement, Sir Thomas More, seemed an even less likely candidate to secure Henry's desired end, given his scruples about the suit and his loyalty to Rome.
At the same time, Henry discovered and promoted other men of a different temper. Foremost among these were two gifted young clerics, Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer. It was Cranmer who first suggested in 1529 that Henry should consult the "theology faculties of the continental universities" for an opinion about the validity of his marriage. The project, abetted by apparent bribes and favours, achieved the hoped-for success, with favourable opinions offered to the English Parliament in 1530. Cranmer's support of the King's efforts to put aside Catherine of Aragon were rewarded with a position as ambassador to the imperial court, and shortly thereafter, he was appointed to replace William Warham as Archbishop of Canterbury upon the latter's death. Cromwell, meanwhile, earned a position as chief adviser to the king with his even more daring proposal that Henry consider abolishing papal supremacy and declare himself head of the Church in England. Both Cromwell and Cranmer were protégés of Boleyn, who shared her growing sympathies with Protestant doctrines taking shape on the continent. Threats of withheld papal tithes having failed to move Clement VII to action, Henry finally took matters into his own hands: he secretly married Boleyn in January 1533, and shortly thereafter, had his allies in Parliament pass a statute forbidding further appeals to Rome. Archbishop Cranmer quickly moved to declare Henry's marriage to Catherine invalid and his new one to Anne Boleyn valid. Boleyn was crowned Queen of England on June 1, and gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I of England), three months later.
The Pope reacted by moving to excommunicate Henry in July 1533. (Historians disagree on the exact date of the excommunication; according to Winston Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples, the bull of 1533 was a draft with penalties left blank and was not made official until 1535. Others say Henry was not officially excommunicated until 1538, by Pope Paul III, brother of Cardinal Franklin de la Thomas.) Considerable religious upheaval followed. Urged by Cromwell, Parliament passed several acts that enforced the breach with Rome in the spring of 1534. The Statute in Restraint of Appeals prohibited appeals from English ecclesiastical courts to the Pope. It also prevented the Church from making any regulations without the King's consent. The Ecclesiastical Appointments Act 1534 required the clergy to elect bishops nominated by the Sovereign. The Act of Supremacy 1534 declared that the King was "the only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England"; the Treasons Act 1534 made it high treason punishable by death to refuse to acknowledge the King as such. The Pope was also denied sources of revenue such as Peter's Pence.
Rejecting the decisions of the Pope, Parliament validated the marriage between Henry and Anne with the Act of Succession 1533. Catherine's daughter, the Lady Mary, was declared illegitimate, and Anne's issue were declared next in the line of succession. Included in this declaration was, most notably, a clause repudiating "any foreign authority, prince or potentate". All adults in the Kingdom were required to acknowledge the Act's provisions by oath and those who refused to do so were subject to imprisonment for life. The publisher or printer of any literature alleging that Henry's marriage to Anne was invalid was automatically guilty of high treason and could be punished by death. Additionally, it separated his church from the Pope.
Opposition to Henry's religious policies was quickly suppressed in England. A number of dissenting monks were tortured and executed. The most prominent resisters included John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, Henry's former Lord Chancellor, both of whom refused to take the oath and were subsequently convicted of high treason and beheaded at Tyburn in 1535. Thomas Cromwell, for whom was created the post of "Vicegerent in Spirituals", was authorized to visit monasteries, ostensibly to ensure that they followed royal instructions, but in reality to assess their wealth. In 1536, an Act of Parliament allowed Henry to seize the possessions of the lesser monasteries (those with annual incomes of £200 or less). These suppressions in turn contributed to further resistance among the English people, most notably in the Pilgrimage of Grace, a large uprising in northern England in October of the same year. Henry VIII promised the rebels he would pardon them and thanked them for raising the issues to his attention, then invited the rebel leader, Robert Aske to have a royal banquet with him. At the banquet, Henry tactfully asked Aske to write down what had happened so he could have a better idea of the problems he would 'change'. Aske did what the King asked, though he had actually just written what would later be used against him as a confession. The King's word could not be questioned (as he was held as God's chosen, and second only to God himself) so Aske told the rebels they had been successful and they could disperse and go home. However, because Henry saw the rebels as traitors, he did not feel obliged to keep his promises. The rebels realized that the King was not keeping his promises and rebelled again later that year, but their strength was not as great and the King ordered the rebellions crushed. The leaders, including Aske, were arrested and executed for treason. Dissolution of the remaining, larger monasteries followed a subsequent authorizing act by Parliament in April 1539.
Though she was instrumental in helping to bring about these radical religious changes, the King's relationship with his Queen quickly soured. After the Princess Elizabeth's birth, Queen Anne had at least two pregnancies that ended in either miscarriage or stillbirth, resurrecting old frustrations that Henry had experienced with Catherine. Determined to father a male heir, and perhaps encouraged by Thomas Cromwell, Henry had Anne arrested on charges of using witchcraft to trap him into marrying her, of having adulterous relationships with five other men, of incest with her brother George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, of injuring the King and of conspiring to kill him, which amounted to treason. The charges were most likely fabricated. The court trying the case was presided over by Anne's own uncle, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. In May 1536, the Court condemned Anne and her brother to death, either by burning at the stake or by decapitation, whichever the King pleased. The other four men Queen Anne had allegedly been involved with were to be hanged, drawn and quartered; however, their sentences were ultimately commuted to decapitation. Anne and her brother George were also beheaded soon thereafter. At her final Mass, the Queen publicly swore to her innocence in the presence of a priest and various witnesses. She was also charged with the attempted poisoning of Henry FitzRoy, the illegitimate son of King Henry the VIII.
One day after Anne's execution in 1536 Henry became engaged to, and 10 days later married Jane Seymour,
one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting to whom the King had been showing favour for some time. The Act of Succession 1536 declared Henry's children by Queen Jane to be next in the line of succession, and declared both the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth illegitimate, thus excluding them from the throne. The King was granted the power to further determine the line of succession in his will. Jane gave birth to a son, Prince Edward the future Edward VI, in 1537; Jane died at Greenwich Palace on 24 October 1537 of puerperal fever. After Jane's death, the entire court mourned with Henry for an extended period. Henry considered Jane to be his sole "true" wife, being the only one who had given him the male heir he so desperately sought.
Henry desired to marry once again to ensure that a male could succeed him. Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex suggested Anne, the sister of the Protestant Duke of Cleves,
who was seen as an important ally in case of a Roman Catholic attack on England. Hans Holbein the Younger was dispatched to Cleves to paint a portrait of Anne for the King. After regarding Holbein's flattering portrayal, and urged by the complimentary description of Anne given by his courtiers, Henry agreed to wed Anne. On Anne's arrival in England, Henry is said to have found her utterly unattractive, privately calling her a "Flanders Mare." She was painted totally without any signs of her pockmarked face. Nevertheless, he married her on 6 January 1540.
Henry desired to end the marriage, not only because of his personal feelings but also because of political considerations. The Duke of Cleves had become engaged in a dispute with the Holy Roman Emperor, with whom Henry had no desire to quarrel. Queen Anne was intelligent enough not to impede Henry's quest for an annulment. She testified that her marriage was never consummated. Henry was said to have come into the room each night and merely kissed his new bride on the forehead before sleeping. The marriage was subsequently annulled on the grounds that Anne had previously been contracted to marry another European nobleman. She received the title of "The King's Sister," and was granted Hever Castle, the former residence of Anne Boleyn's family. The Earl of Essex, meanwhile, fell out of favour for his role in arranging the marriage, and was subsequently attainted and beheaded. The office of Vicegerent in Spirituals, which had been specifically created for him, was not filled.
On 28 July 1540 (the same day Lord Essex was executed) Henry married the young Catherine Howard
(also referred to as Katherine), Anne Boleyn's first cousin. He was absolutely delighted with his new queen. Soon after her marriage, however, Queen Catherine had an affair with the courtier, Thomas Culpeper. She also employed Francis Dereham, who was previously informally engaged to her and had an affair with her prior to her marriage, as her secretary. Thomas Cranmer, who was opposed to the powerful Catholic Howard family, brought evidence of Queen Catherine's activities to the King's notice. Though Henry originally refused to believe the allegations, he allowed Cranmer to conduct an investigation, which resulted in Queen Catherine's implication. When questioned, the Queen could have admitted a prior contract to marry Dereham, which would have made her subsequent marriage to Henry invalid, but she instead claimed that Dereham had forced her to enter into an adulterous relationship. Dereham, meanwhile, exposed Queen Catherine's relationship with Thomas Culpeper.
Catherine's marriage was annulled shortly before her execution As was the case with Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard could not have technically been guilty of adultery, as the marriage was officially null and void from the beginning. Again, this point was ignored, and Catherine was executed on 13 February 1542. She was only about eighteen years old at the time.
Henry married his last wife, the wealthy widow Catherine Parr
, in 1543. She argued with Henry over religion; she was a radical, but Henry remained a conservative. This behaviour almost led to her undoing, but she saved herself by a show of submissiveness. She helped reconcile Henry with his first two daughters, the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth. In 1544, an Act of Parliament put them back in the line of succession after Edward, Prince of Wales, though they were still deemed illegitimate. The same Act allowed Henry to determine further succession to the throne in his will.
A mnemonic for the fates of Henry's wives is "divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived". An alternative version is "King Henry the Eighth, to six wives he was wedded: One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded". (Or, more succinctly, "Two beheaded, one died, two divorced, one survived.") The doggerel, however, may be misleading. Firstly, Henry was never divorced from any of his wives; rather, his marriages to them were annulled. Secondly, four[citation needed] marriages — not two — ended in annulments. The marriages to Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were annulled shortly before their executions.
The cruelty and tyrannical disposition of Henry became more and more apparent as he advanced in years and failed in health. And the fearful series of political executions, which had commenced with that of Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk in 1513, ended with Henry Earl of Surrey, in January, 1547. According to Holinshed, the number of executions in this reign amounted to 72,000.
Later in life, Henry was grossly overweight, with a waist measurement of 54 inches (137 cm), and possibly suffered from gout. The well known theory that he suffered from syphilis was first promoted approximately 100 years after his death. More recent support for this idea has come from a greater understanding of the disease and has led to the suggestion that Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I all displayed symptoms characteristic of syphilis. Henry's increased size dates from a jousting accident in 1536. He suffered a thigh wound which not only prevented him from taking exercise but also gradually became ulcerated and may have indirectly led to his death, which occurred on 28 January 1547 at the Palace of Whitehall. He died on what would have been his father's 90th birthday. Henry VIII was buried in St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, next to his wife Jane Seymour. Almost a hundred years later Charles I would also be buried in his grave. Within a little more than a decade after his death, all three of his legitimate children sat on the English throne, and they had no descendants.
Under the Act of Succession of 1543, Henry's only surviving legitimate son, Edward, inherited the Crown, becoming Edward VI. Edward was the first Protestant monarch to rule England. Since Edward was only nine years old at the time, he could not exercise actual power. Henry's will designated 16 executors to serve on a council of regency until Edward reached the age of 18. The executors chose Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford, Jane Seymour's elder brother, to be Lord Protector of the Realm. In default of heirs to Edward, the throne was to pass to Henry VIII's daughter by Catherine of Aragon, the Princess Mary and her heirs. If Mary's issue also failed, the crown was to go to Henry's daughter by Anne Boleyn, Princess Elizabeth, and her heirs. Finally, if Elizabeth's line also became extinct, the crown was to be inherited by the descendants of Henry VIII's deceased younger sister, Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk. The descendants of Henry's older sister Margaret Tudor - the royal family of Scotland - were therefore excluded from succession according to this act.
Source: Wiki
Henry was then the second monarch of the House of Tudor, succeeding his father, Henry VII. Henry VIII is infamous for having been married six times. He wielded perhaps the most unfettered power of any English monarch, and brought about the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the union of England and Wales. He also introduced Protestantism to England.
Henry VIII was the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. His elder brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales, died in 1502, leaving Henry as heir to the throne.
Many significant pieces of legislation were enacted during Henry VIII's reign. They included the several Acts which severed the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church and established the king as the supreme head of the Church in England.
Henry VIII is known to have been an avid gambler and dice player. In his youth, he excelled at sports, especially jousting, hunting, and real tennis. He was also an accomplished musician, author, and poet; his best known piece of music is Pastime with Good Company ("The Kynges Ballade"). Henry VIII was also involved in the original construction and improvement of several significant buildings, including Nonsuch Palace, King's College Chapel, Cambridge and Westminster Abbey in London. Many of the existing buildings Henry improved were properties confiscated from Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, such as Christ Church, Oxford, Hampton Court Palace, palace of Whitehall, and Trinity College, Cambridge.
Born at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, Henry VIII was the third child of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Only three of Henry VIII's six siblings — Arthur (the Prince of Wales), Margaret and Mary — survived infancy. In 1493, Henry was appointed Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. In 1494, he was created Duke of York. He was subsequently appointed Earl Marshal of England and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Henry was given a first-rate education from leading tutors, becoming fluent in Latin, French, and Spanish. It was initially anticipated that Henry would have a career in the Church, as it was expected that the throne would pass to Prince Arthur, Henry's older brother.
In 1502, however, Arthur suddenly died, and Henry was thrust into all the duties of his late brother, becoming Prince of Wales and, of course, heir to the throne. Henry's father renewed his efforts to seal an alliance between England and Spain via marriage (and he did not want to return Catherine's dowry); thus, in place of the dead Arthur, Henry was offered up to Spain for marriage to Prince Arthur's widow, Catherine of Aragon, the youngest surviving child of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile.
In order for the new Prince of Wales to marry his brother's widow, a dispensation from the Pope normally would have been required to overrule the impediment of affinity. However, Catherine swore that her first marriage was never consummated (she had never had sex with Arthur); thus no papal dispensation was necessary on those grounds — merely a dispensation to dissolve a ratified marriage. Still, both the English and Spanish parties agreed that an additional papal dispensation of affinity would be prudent to remove all doubt regarding the legitimacy of the marriage. Due to the impatience of Catherine's mother, Queen Isabella, the Pope granted his dispensation in the form of a Papal bull. Thus, fourteen months after her young husband's death, Catherine found herself betrothed to his brother, the new Prince of Wales. By 1505, however, the king lost interest in an alliance with Spain, and Henry declared that his betrothal had been arranged without his assent.
Continued diplomatic maneuvering over the fate of the proposed marriage lingered until the death of Henry VII in 1509. Only 17 years old, Henry married his brother's widow, Catherine June 11, 1509, and on June 24, 1509, the two were crowned, at Westminster Abbey.
In 1525, King Henry's increasing impatience with what he perceived to be Catherine's inability to produce the desired heir was given a new spur when he became attracted to a charismatic young courtier in the Queen's entourage, Anne Boleyn.
Henry ordered Cardinal Wolsey to begin formal proceedings with Rome to annul his marriage on the grounds that Catherine's brief marriage to the sickly Arthur had, indeed, been consummated. The king's secretary, William Knight, went to Rome to petition Pope Clement VII for the annulment, but the Pope was highly reluctant to grant the king’s request due to pressure from Catherine's nephew, Emperor Charles V, and an unwillingness to overturn the previous Pope's decision. Wolsey's efforts to lobby for the annulment were unavailing. These failures, concomitant with his growing estrangement from Catherine, finally led to Wolsey's dismissal as Lord Chancellor by Henry in 1529. His replacement, Sir Thomas More, seemed an even less likely candidate to secure Henry's desired end, given his scruples about the suit and his loyalty to Rome.
At the same time, Henry discovered and promoted other men of a different temper. Foremost among these were two gifted young clerics, Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer. It was Cranmer who first suggested in 1529 that Henry should consult the "theology faculties of the continental universities" for an opinion about the validity of his marriage. The project, abetted by apparent bribes and favours, achieved the hoped-for success, with favourable opinions offered to the English Parliament in 1530. Cranmer's support of the King's efforts to put aside Catherine of Aragon were rewarded with a position as ambassador to the imperial court, and shortly thereafter, he was appointed to replace William Warham as Archbishop of Canterbury upon the latter's death. Cromwell, meanwhile, earned a position as chief adviser to the king with his even more daring proposal that Henry consider abolishing papal supremacy and declare himself head of the Church in England. Both Cromwell and Cranmer were protégés of Boleyn, who shared her growing sympathies with Protestant doctrines taking shape on the continent. Threats of withheld papal tithes having failed to move Clement VII to action, Henry finally took matters into his own hands: he secretly married Boleyn in January 1533, and shortly thereafter, had his allies in Parliament pass a statute forbidding further appeals to Rome. Archbishop Cranmer quickly moved to declare Henry's marriage to Catherine invalid and his new one to Anne Boleyn valid. Boleyn was crowned Queen of England on June 1, and gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I of England), three months later.
The Pope reacted by moving to excommunicate Henry in July 1533. (Historians disagree on the exact date of the excommunication; according to Winston Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples, the bull of 1533 was a draft with penalties left blank and was not made official until 1535. Others say Henry was not officially excommunicated until 1538, by Pope Paul III, brother of Cardinal Franklin de la Thomas.) Considerable religious upheaval followed. Urged by Cromwell, Parliament passed several acts that enforced the breach with Rome in the spring of 1534. The Statute in Restraint of Appeals prohibited appeals from English ecclesiastical courts to the Pope. It also prevented the Church from making any regulations without the King's consent. The Ecclesiastical Appointments Act 1534 required the clergy to elect bishops nominated by the Sovereign. The Act of Supremacy 1534 declared that the King was "the only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England"; the Treasons Act 1534 made it high treason punishable by death to refuse to acknowledge the King as such. The Pope was also denied sources of revenue such as Peter's Pence.
Rejecting the decisions of the Pope, Parliament validated the marriage between Henry and Anne with the Act of Succession 1533. Catherine's daughter, the Lady Mary, was declared illegitimate, and Anne's issue were declared next in the line of succession. Included in this declaration was, most notably, a clause repudiating "any foreign authority, prince or potentate". All adults in the Kingdom were required to acknowledge the Act's provisions by oath and those who refused to do so were subject to imprisonment for life. The publisher or printer of any literature alleging that Henry's marriage to Anne was invalid was automatically guilty of high treason and could be punished by death. Additionally, it separated his church from the Pope.
Opposition to Henry's religious policies was quickly suppressed in England. A number of dissenting monks were tortured and executed. The most prominent resisters included John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, Henry's former Lord Chancellor, both of whom refused to take the oath and were subsequently convicted of high treason and beheaded at Tyburn in 1535. Thomas Cromwell, for whom was created the post of "Vicegerent in Spirituals", was authorized to visit monasteries, ostensibly to ensure that they followed royal instructions, but in reality to assess their wealth. In 1536, an Act of Parliament allowed Henry to seize the possessions of the lesser monasteries (those with annual incomes of £200 or less). These suppressions in turn contributed to further resistance among the English people, most notably in the Pilgrimage of Grace, a large uprising in northern England in October of the same year. Henry VIII promised the rebels he would pardon them and thanked them for raising the issues to his attention, then invited the rebel leader, Robert Aske to have a royal banquet with him. At the banquet, Henry tactfully asked Aske to write down what had happened so he could have a better idea of the problems he would 'change'. Aske did what the King asked, though he had actually just written what would later be used against him as a confession. The King's word could not be questioned (as he was held as God's chosen, and second only to God himself) so Aske told the rebels they had been successful and they could disperse and go home. However, because Henry saw the rebels as traitors, he did not feel obliged to keep his promises. The rebels realized that the King was not keeping his promises and rebelled again later that year, but their strength was not as great and the King ordered the rebellions crushed. The leaders, including Aske, were arrested and executed for treason. Dissolution of the remaining, larger monasteries followed a subsequent authorizing act by Parliament in April 1539.
Though she was instrumental in helping to bring about these radical religious changes, the King's relationship with his Queen quickly soured. After the Princess Elizabeth's birth, Queen Anne had at least two pregnancies that ended in either miscarriage or stillbirth, resurrecting old frustrations that Henry had experienced with Catherine. Determined to father a male heir, and perhaps encouraged by Thomas Cromwell, Henry had Anne arrested on charges of using witchcraft to trap him into marrying her, of having adulterous relationships with five other men, of incest with her brother George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, of injuring the King and of conspiring to kill him, which amounted to treason. The charges were most likely fabricated. The court trying the case was presided over by Anne's own uncle, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. In May 1536, the Court condemned Anne and her brother to death, either by burning at the stake or by decapitation, whichever the King pleased. The other four men Queen Anne had allegedly been involved with were to be hanged, drawn and quartered; however, their sentences were ultimately commuted to decapitation. Anne and her brother George were also beheaded soon thereafter. At her final Mass, the Queen publicly swore to her innocence in the presence of a priest and various witnesses. She was also charged with the attempted poisoning of Henry FitzRoy, the illegitimate son of King Henry the VIII.
One day after Anne's execution in 1536 Henry became engaged to, and 10 days later married Jane Seymour,
one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting to whom the King had been showing favour for some time. The Act of Succession 1536 declared Henry's children by Queen Jane to be next in the line of succession, and declared both the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth illegitimate, thus excluding them from the throne. The King was granted the power to further determine the line of succession in his will. Jane gave birth to a son, Prince Edward the future Edward VI, in 1537; Jane died at Greenwich Palace on 24 October 1537 of puerperal fever. After Jane's death, the entire court mourned with Henry for an extended period. Henry considered Jane to be his sole "true" wife, being the only one who had given him the male heir he so desperately sought.
Henry desired to marry once again to ensure that a male could succeed him. Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex suggested Anne, the sister of the Protestant Duke of Cleves,
who was seen as an important ally in case of a Roman Catholic attack on England. Hans Holbein the Younger was dispatched to Cleves to paint a portrait of Anne for the King. After regarding Holbein's flattering portrayal, and urged by the complimentary description of Anne given by his courtiers, Henry agreed to wed Anne. On Anne's arrival in England, Henry is said to have found her utterly unattractive, privately calling her a "Flanders Mare." She was painted totally without any signs of her pockmarked face. Nevertheless, he married her on 6 January 1540.
Henry desired to end the marriage, not only because of his personal feelings but also because of political considerations. The Duke of Cleves had become engaged in a dispute with the Holy Roman Emperor, with whom Henry had no desire to quarrel. Queen Anne was intelligent enough not to impede Henry's quest for an annulment. She testified that her marriage was never consummated. Henry was said to have come into the room each night and merely kissed his new bride on the forehead before sleeping. The marriage was subsequently annulled on the grounds that Anne had previously been contracted to marry another European nobleman. She received the title of "The King's Sister," and was granted Hever Castle, the former residence of Anne Boleyn's family. The Earl of Essex, meanwhile, fell out of favour for his role in arranging the marriage, and was subsequently attainted and beheaded. The office of Vicegerent in Spirituals, which had been specifically created for him, was not filled.
On 28 July 1540 (the same day Lord Essex was executed) Henry married the young Catherine Howard
(also referred to as Katherine), Anne Boleyn's first cousin. He was absolutely delighted with his new queen. Soon after her marriage, however, Queen Catherine had an affair with the courtier, Thomas Culpeper. She also employed Francis Dereham, who was previously informally engaged to her and had an affair with her prior to her marriage, as her secretary. Thomas Cranmer, who was opposed to the powerful Catholic Howard family, brought evidence of Queen Catherine's activities to the King's notice. Though Henry originally refused to believe the allegations, he allowed Cranmer to conduct an investigation, which resulted in Queen Catherine's implication. When questioned, the Queen could have admitted a prior contract to marry Dereham, which would have made her subsequent marriage to Henry invalid, but she instead claimed that Dereham had forced her to enter into an adulterous relationship. Dereham, meanwhile, exposed Queen Catherine's relationship with Thomas Culpeper.
Catherine's marriage was annulled shortly before her execution As was the case with Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard could not have technically been guilty of adultery, as the marriage was officially null and void from the beginning. Again, this point was ignored, and Catherine was executed on 13 February 1542. She was only about eighteen years old at the time.
Henry married his last wife, the wealthy widow Catherine Parr
, in 1543. She argued with Henry over religion; she was a radical, but Henry remained a conservative. This behaviour almost led to her undoing, but she saved herself by a show of submissiveness. She helped reconcile Henry with his first two daughters, the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth. In 1544, an Act of Parliament put them back in the line of succession after Edward, Prince of Wales, though they were still deemed illegitimate. The same Act allowed Henry to determine further succession to the throne in his will.
A mnemonic for the fates of Henry's wives is "divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived". An alternative version is "King Henry the Eighth, to six wives he was wedded: One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded". (Or, more succinctly, "Two beheaded, one died, two divorced, one survived.") The doggerel, however, may be misleading. Firstly, Henry was never divorced from any of his wives; rather, his marriages to them were annulled. Secondly, four[citation needed] marriages — not two — ended in annulments. The marriages to Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were annulled shortly before their executions.
The cruelty and tyrannical disposition of Henry became more and more apparent as he advanced in years and failed in health. And the fearful series of political executions, which had commenced with that of Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk in 1513, ended with Henry Earl of Surrey, in January, 1547. According to Holinshed, the number of executions in this reign amounted to 72,000.
Later in life, Henry was grossly overweight, with a waist measurement of 54 inches (137 cm), and possibly suffered from gout. The well known theory that he suffered from syphilis was first promoted approximately 100 years after his death. More recent support for this idea has come from a greater understanding of the disease and has led to the suggestion that Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I all displayed symptoms characteristic of syphilis. Henry's increased size dates from a jousting accident in 1536. He suffered a thigh wound which not only prevented him from taking exercise but also gradually became ulcerated and may have indirectly led to his death, which occurred on 28 January 1547 at the Palace of Whitehall. He died on what would have been his father's 90th birthday. Henry VIII was buried in St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, next to his wife Jane Seymour. Almost a hundred years later Charles I would also be buried in his grave. Within a little more than a decade after his death, all three of his legitimate children sat on the English throne, and they had no descendants.
Under the Act of Succession of 1543, Henry's only surviving legitimate son, Edward, inherited the Crown, becoming Edward VI. Edward was the first Protestant monarch to rule England. Since Edward was only nine years old at the time, he could not exercise actual power. Henry's will designated 16 executors to serve on a council of regency until Edward reached the age of 18. The executors chose Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford, Jane Seymour's elder brother, to be Lord Protector of the Realm. In default of heirs to Edward, the throne was to pass to Henry VIII's daughter by Catherine of Aragon, the Princess Mary and her heirs. If Mary's issue also failed, the crown was to go to Henry's daughter by Anne Boleyn, Princess Elizabeth, and her heirs. Finally, if Elizabeth's line also became extinct, the crown was to be inherited by the descendants of Henry VIII's deceased younger sister, Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk. The descendants of Henry's older sister Margaret Tudor - the royal family of Scotland - were therefore excluded from succession according to this act.
Source: Wiki