Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 15:28, 19 March 2013

Henry VIII
King Henry VIII after Hans Holbein the Younger, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
King of England and Ireland (more...)
Reign	21 April 1509 – 28 January 1547
Coronation	24 June 1509
Predecessor	Henry VII
Successor	Edward VI
Born	(1491-06-28)28 June 1491 Greenwich Palace, Greenwich
Died	28 January 1547(1547-01-28) (aged 55) Palace of Whitehall, London
Burial	4 February 1547 St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle
Spouses	Catherine of Aragon (1509-1533; annulled) Anne Boleyn (1533-1536; annulled) Jane Seymour (1536-1537; her death) Anne of Cleves (1540; annulled) Catherine Howard (1540-1541; annulled) Catherine Parr (1543-1547; his death)
Issue Among others	Mary I of England Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Richmond and Somerset (illegitimate) Elizabeth I of England Edward VI of England
House	House of Tudor
Father	Henry VII of England
Mother	Elizabeth of York
Signature

Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was king of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was lord, and later king, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France. Henry was the second monarch of the Tudor dynasty, succeeding his father, Henry VII.

Besides his six marriages, Henry VIII is known for his role in the separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church. Henry's struggles with Rome led to the separation of the Church of England from papal authority, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and establishing himself as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Yet he remained a believer in core Catholic theological teachings, even after his excommunication from the Catholic Church. Henry oversaw the legal union of England and Wales with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542.

In 1513, the new king allied with the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximillian I, and invaded France in 1513 with a large, well-equipped army, but achieved little at a considerable financial cost. Maximillian, for his part, used the English invasion to his own ends and this prejudiced England's ability to defeat the French. This foray would prove the start of an obsession for Henry, who invaded again in 1544. This time, Henry's forces captured the important city of Boulogne but again the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, supported Henry only as long as he needed to and England, strained by the enormous cost of the war, ransomed the city back for peace.

Henry was considered an attractive, educated and accomplished king in his prime and has a reputation as "one of the most charismatic rulers to sit on the English throne". Besides ruling with absolute power, he also engaged himself as an author and composer. His desire to provide England with a male heir—which stemmed partly from personal vanity and partly because he believed a daughter would be unable to consolidate the Tudor dynasty and the fragile peace that existed following the Wars of the Roses—led to the two things for which Henry is remembered: his six marriages and the English Reformation. In later life, he became morbidly obese and his health suffered; his public image is frequently depicted as one of a lustful, egotistical, harsh, and insecure king.

Biography

Early years

Born at Greenwich Palace, Henry VIII was the third child of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York and their second son. Of the young Henry's six siblings, only three — Arthur, Prince of Wales; Margaret; and Mary — survived infancy. He was baptised by Richard Fox, the Bishop of Exeter, at a church of the Observant Franciscans close to the palace. In 1493, at the age of two, Henry was appointed Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. He was subsequently appointed Earl Marshal of England and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland aged three, and was inducted into the Order of the Bath soon after. The day after the ceremony he was made Duke of York; a month or so later he was made Warden of the Scottish Marches. In May 1495, he was appointed to the Order of the Garter. Henry was given a first-rate education from leading tutors, becoming fluent in Latin, French, and at least some Spanish and Ancient Greek. Elizabeth of York, his mother, died when Henry was aged 11. Not much is known about his early life – save for his appointments – because he was not expected to become king. In November 1501, Henry also played a considerable part in the ceremonies surrounding the marriage of his brother, Prince Arthur, to Catherine of Aragon. As Duke of York, Henry used the arms of his father as king, differenced by a label of three points ermine.

In 1502, Arthur died at the age of 15, after only 20 weeks of marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Arthur's death thrust all his duties upon his younger brother, the 10-year-old Henry, who after a little debate succeeded him to the Dukedom of Cornwall in October 1502, and the Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester in February 1503. Henry VII gave the boy few tasks. Young Henry was strictly supervised and did not appear in public. Scarisbrick says he ascended the throne "untrained in the exacting art of kingship."

Henry VII renewed his efforts to seal a marital alliance between England and Spain, by offering his second son in marriage to Catherine, youngest surviving child of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile. Both Isabella and Henry VII were keen on the idea, which had arisen very shortly after Arthur's death. On 23 June 1503, a treaty was signed for their marriage, and they were betrothed two days later. A papal dispensation was only needed for the "impedement of public honesty" if the marriage had not been consummated as Catherine and her duenna claimed, but Henry VII and the Spanish Ambassador set out to obtain a dispensation for "affinity", which took account of consummation. The young Henry's age, only eleven, prevented cohabitation and the parties were thus required to wait. Isabella's death in 1504, and the ensuing problems of succession in Castile, changed Catherine's position. Her father, Ferdinand, preferred her to stay in England, but Henry VII's relations with Ferdinand had deteriorated. Catherine was left in limbo for some time, culminating in Prince Henry's rejection of the marriage as soon he was able, at the age of 14. Ferdinand's solution was to make his daughter ambassador, allowing her to stay. Devout, she began to believe that it was God's will that she marry the prince.

Early reign

Henry VII died on 22 April 1509; soon after his burial on 10 May the new Henry VIII suddenly declared that he would indeed marry Catherine, curtailing the causes of hesitation concerning Catherine – over the papal dispensation and a missing part of the marriage portion. The new king maintained that it had been his father's dying wish that he marry Catherine. Whether or not this was true, it was certainly convenient: the Hapsburg Emperor Maximilian I of the Holy Roman Empire had been attempting to marry his granddaughter, Eleanor, to Henry; she had now been jilted. The wedding was kept low-key and was held at the friar's church in Greenwich. On 23 June 1509, Henry led Catherine from the Tower of London to Westminster Abbey for the coronation, which took place the following day. it was a grand affair: the king's passage was lined with tapestries and laid with fine cloth. Following Henry's coronation by the archbishop of Canterbury, there was a grand banquet in Westminster Hall. As Catherine wrote to her father, "our time is spent in continuous festival".

Two days after Henry's coronation, he arrested his father's two most unpopular ministers, Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley. They were charged with high treason and were executed in 1510. This was to become Henry's primary tactic for dealing with those who stood in his way, as believed by historians such as Crofton. Henry also returned to the public some of the money supposedly extorted by the two ministers: "his executors made restitution of great sums of money, to many persons taken against good conscience to the said king's use, by the forenamed Empson and Dudley."

Soon after the coronation, Catherine conceived, but the child – a girl – was stillborn on 31 January 1510. About four months later, she again became pregnant. On New Year's Day 1511, the child – Henry – was born. After the grief of losing their first child, the couple were pleased to have a boy and there were festivities to celebrate, including a jousting tournament. Unfortunately, however, the child died seven weeks later. It was revealed in 1510 that Henry had been conducting an affair with one of the sisters of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, either Elizabeth or Anne Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon. Her brother became enraged and Lord George Hastings, her husband, sent her to a convent. Catherine miscarried again in 1514, but gave birth successfully in February 1516 to a girl, Princess Mary. Relations between king and queen had been strained, but they eased slightly after Mary's birth.

The most significant of Henry's mistresses was Elizabeth Blount for about three years in 1516 onwards. Elizabeth is one of only two completely undisputed mistresses, few for a virile young king. Exactly how many Henry had is disputed: David Loades believes Henry had mistresses "only to a very limited extent", whilst Alison Weir believes there were numerous other affairs. Catherine did not protest, and in 1518 fell pregnant again with another girl, only for her to be stillborn. Blount gave birth in June 1519 to Henry's illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy. The young boy was made Duke of Richmond in June 1525 in what some thought was one step on the path to legitimising him. In 1533, FitzRoy married Mary Howard, Anne Boleyn's first cousin, but died three years later leaving only two illegitimate daughters. At the time of FitzRoy's death in June 1536, Parliament was enacting the Second Succession Act, which could have allowed Henry's illegitimate son to become king.

France and the Habsburgs

In 1510, France, more or less allied with the Holy Roman Empire in the League of Cambrai, was winning a war against Venice. Henry renewed his father's friendship with Louis XII of France, an issue which divided his council. Certainly war with the combined might of the two powers would have been exceedingly difficult. Shortly after, he also signed a contradictory pact with Ferdinand against France. The problem was resolved with a shift in the League with the creation of the Holy League by Pope Julius II in October 1511. Henry brought England into the anti-French alliance shortly after, with an initial joint Anglo-Spanish attack on Aquitaine for the spring to recover for England. It appeared to be the start of making Henry's dreams reality. The attack, starting with the declaration of war on France in April, was not led by Henry personally. It was a considerable failure – due mostly to Ferdinand using the attack to his own ends – and put strain on the Anglo-Spanish alliance; however, the French were pushed out of Italy soon after and the alliance survived. Soon after Henry pulled off a diplomatic coup by convincing the Emperor to join the Holy League. Before Henry began on the invasion, he had Edmund de la Pole – a prisoner in the Tower of London – executed, prompted by his brother Richard siding against the king. Remarkably, Henry had also secured the promised title of "Most Christian King of France", and possibly coronation by the Pope himself in Paris, but only if Louis could be defeated.

On 30 June 1513, Henry invaded France and his troops defeated a French army at the Battle of the Spurs; a minor result, but one which was seized on by the English and played up. Soon after, the English seized Thérouanne and handed it over to Maximillian; Tournai, a more significant settlement, followed. Henry had led the army personally, complete with large entourage. His brother-in-law, James IV of Scotland, invaded England at the behest of Louis. The English army, led by Queen Catherine, who acted as regent of England while Henry was in France, defeated the Scots at the Battle of Flodden on 9 September 1513. Among the dead was the King James IV, ending Scotland's brief involvement in the war. These campaigns had given Henry a taste of the military success he so desired. However, despite initial indications he would pursue a 1514 campaign, Henry decided against such a move. He had been supporting Ferdinand and Maximilian financially during the campaign but had got back little; England's own coffers were now empty. With the replacement of Julius by Pope Leo X, who was inclined to peace with France, Henry instead signed a treaty with Louis: Mary would become Louis' wife, having previously been pledged to the younger Charles, and peace secured for eight years, a remarkably long time.

Charles I replaced Ferdinand as King of Spain in 1516 and Maximilian as Emperor in 1519 (becoming Charles V); Francis I became King of France on Louis' death. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey's careful diplomacy had resulted in the Treaty of London in 1518, aimed at uniting the kingdoms of western Europe in the wake of a new Ottoman threat and it seemed that peace might be secured. Meeting Francis I on 7 June 1520 at the Field of the Cloth of Gold near Calais, he entertained the French king with a fortnight of lavish entertainment to establish a closer diplomatic relationship after the military conflicts of the previous decade. The strong air of competition laid to rest any hopes of a renewal of the Treaty of London, however, and conflict was inevitable. Henry had more in common with Charles, who he met once before and once after Francis. Charles brought the Empire into war with France in 1521; Henry offered to mediate but little was achieved and by the end of the year Henry had aligned England with Charles. He still clung to his previous aim of restoring English lands in France, but also securing an alliance with Burgundy and the continuing support of Charles. A small English attack in the north of France made up little ground. When Francis and his army were defeated at the Battle of Pavia, leaving Charles (who believed he owed Henry nothing) free to make peace, Henry decided to take England out of the war before his ally, signing the Treaty of the More on 30 August 1525.

King's Great Matter

Henry became impatient with Catherine's inability to produce the heir he desired. Henry wanted a male heir to consolidate the power of the Tudor dynasty, and Catherine was now past the age of child-bearing. Henry had three options: legitimise Henry FitzRoy, which would take the intervention of the pope and would be open to challenge; marry off Mary as soon as possible and hope for a grandson to inherit directly, but Mary was an undersized child and was unlikely to conceive before Henry's death; or somehow reject Catherine and find someone else. The third was the most attractive possibility to Henry.

Around this time, Henry conducted an affair with Mary Boleyn, Catherine's lady-in-waiting at some point between 1519 and 1526. There has been speculation that Mary's two children, Catherine and Henry Carey, were fathered by Henry, but this has never been proved and the King never acknowledged them as he did Henry FitzRoy. In 1525, as Henry grew more impatient, he became enamoured of Mary's sister, Anne Boleyn, then a charismatic young woman in the Queen's entourage. Anne at first resisted his attempts to seduce her, and refused to become his mistress as her sister Mary Boleyn had. It is commonly believed that Anne, by refusing to become Henry's mistress, pushed Henry into the course of action he later undertook; this story was widely used by Protestant supporters of Anne and may be exaggerated. It is clear that by 1528 Henry was infatuated by her and was beginning to plan a second marriage. It soon became the King's absorbing desire to annul his marriage to Catherine.

When Henry confronted Catherine in 1527, claiming that their marriage had never been valid – the Old Testament forbade marrying the wife of your brother in Leviticus – all hope of tempting Catherine to retire to a nunnery or otherwise stay quiet were lost. Henry sent his secretary, William Knight, to appeal directly to the Holy See, independently from Wolsey. he openly appealed to be excused from his affair with Mary Boleyn, to allow his marriage to Anne. The draft bull also contained references to Henry's marriage to Catherine having been illegitimate, although these were worded so as to try to sneak the Pope into agreeing to them and thus avoiding the problem Henry faced over the issue. Knight was unsuccessful; the Pope could not be misled so easily.

Other missions concentrated on arranging an ecclesiastical court to meet in England, with a representative from the Pope. The Pope had never had any intention of empowering his legate. Charles V also resisted the annulment of his aunt's marriage, but it is not clear how far this influenced the pope. It is clear that Henry saw that the Pope was unlikely to give him an annulment. The pope forbade Henry to proceed to a new marriage before a decision was given in Rome, not in England. Wolsey bore the blame. Convinced that he was treacherous, Anne Boleyn maintained pressure until Wolsey was dismissed from public office in 1529. After being dismissed, the cardinal begged her to help him return to power, but she refused. He then began a plot to have Anne forced into exile and began communication with Queen Catherine and the Pope to that end. When this was discovered, Henry ordered Wolsey's arrest and had it not been for his death from illness in 1530, he might have been executed for treason. His replacement, Sir Thomas More, initially cooperated with the king's new policy, denouncing Wolsey in Parliament, and proclaiming the opinion of the theologians at Oxford and Cambridge that the marriage of Henry to Catherine had been unlawful. As Henry began to deny the authority of the Pope, More's qualms grew.

A year later, Queen Catherine was banished from court and her rooms were given to Anne. With Wolsey gone, Anne had considerable power over political matters. She was an unusually educated and intellectual woman for her time, and was keenly absorbed and engaged with the ideas of the Protestant Reformers. When Archbishop of Canterbury William Warham died, Anne's influence and the need to find a supporter for reforms had Thomas Cranmer appointed to the vacant position. This was approved by the Pope, unaware of the King's nascent plans for the Church.

Marriage to Anne Boleyn

In the winter of 1532, Henry attended a meeting with Francis I of France at Calais in which he enlisted the support of the French king for his new marriage. Immediately upon returning to Dover in England, Henry and Anne went through a secret wedding service. She soon became pregnant and there was a second wedding service in London on 25 January 1533. On 23 May 1533, Cranmer, sitting in judgment at a special court convened at Dunstable Priory to rule on the validity of the king's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, declared the marriage of Henry and Catherine null and void. Five days later, on 28 May 1533, Cranmer declared the marriage of Henry and Anne to be valid. Catherine was formally stripped of her title as queen, becoming instead "princess dowager" as the widow of Arthur. In her place, Anne was crowned queen consort on 1 June 1533. The queen gave birth to a daughter slightly prematurely on 7 September 1533. The child was christened Elizabeth, in honour of Henry's mother, Elizabeth of York.

Following the marriage, there was a period of consolidation taking the form of a series of statutes of the Reformation Parliament aimed at finding solutions to a series of particular problems, whilst protecting the new reforms from challenge, convincing the public of their legitimacy, and exposing and dealing with opponents. Although the canon law was dealt with at length by Cranmer and others, these acts were advanced by Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Audley and the Duke of Norfolk as well as a significant role for Henry himself. Following these acts, Thomas More resigned as Chancellor, leaving Cromwell as Henry's chief minister. Through these acts Parliament validated the marriage of Henry and Anne; Catherine's daughter, Mary, was declared illegitimate, and Anne's issue were declared next in the line of succession. They also enforced which recognised Royal Supremacy over the church and abolished the right of appeal to Rome. It was only then that Pope Clement at last took the step of launching sentences of excommunication against Henry and Thomas Cranmer, although it was not made official until some time later.

The king and queen were not pleased with married life. The royal couple enjoyed periods of calm and affection, but Anne refused to play the submissive role expected of her. The vivacity and opinionated intellect that had made her so attractive as an illicit lover made her too independent for the largely ceremonial role of a royal wife, given that Henry expected absolute obedience from those who interacted with him in an official capacity at court. It made her many enemies. For his part, Henry disliked Anne’s constant irritability and violent temper. After a false pregnancy or miscarriage in 1534, he saw her failure to give him a son as a betrayal. As early as Christmas 1534, Henry was discussing with Cranmer and Cromwell the chances of leaving Anne without having to return to Catherine. Henry is traditionally believed to have had affair with Margaret ("Madge") Shelton in 1535, although historian Antonia Fraser has claimed that Henry in fact had an affair with her sister Mary Shelton.

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 to the King. Neither Henry nor Cromwell sought to have the men executed; rather, they hoped that they might change their minds and save themselves. Fisher openly rejected Henry as supreme head of the Church, but unlike Fisher More was careful to avoid openly breaking the Treason Act. Both men were subsequently convicted of high treason, however – More on the evidence of a single conversation with Richard Rich, the Solicitor General. They were beheaded at Tower Hill, just outside the Tower of London.

These suppressions, including the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries Act of 1536, 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, 1536. Some 20,000 to 40,000 rebels were led by Robert Aske, together with parts of the northern nobility. Henry VIII promised the rebels he would pardon them and thanked them for raising the issues to his attention. Aske told the rebels they had been successful and they could disperse and go home. Henry saw the rebels as traitors and did not feel obliged to keep his promises with them, so when further violence occurred after Henry's offer of a pardon he was quick to break his promise. The leaders, including Aske, were arrested and executed for treason. About 200 rebels were executed and the disturbances ended.

Execution of Anne Boleyn

On 8 January 1536 news reached the king and the queen that Catherine of Aragon had died. Henry called for public displays of joy regarding Catherine's death. The queen was pregnant again, and she was aware of the consequences if she failed to give birth to a son. Her life could be in danger, as with both wives dead, Henry would be free to remarry and no one could claim that the union was illegal. Later that month, the King was unhorsed in a tournament and was badly injured. It seemed for a time that the King's life was in danger. When news of this accident reached the queen, she was sent into shock and miscarried a male child that was about 15 weeks old, on the day of Catherine’s funeral, 29 January 1536. For most observers, this personal loss was the beginning of the end of the royal marriage. Given the King's desperate desire for a son, the sequence of Anne's pregnancies has attracted much interest. Author Mike Ashley speculated that Anne had two stillborn children after Elizabeth's birth and before the birth of the male child she miscarried in 1536. Most sources attest only to the birth of Elizabeth in September 1533, a possible miscarriage in the summer of 1534, and the miscarriage of a male child, of almost four months gestation, in January 1536.

Although the Boleyns still held important positions on the Privy Counsel, Anne had many enemies, including the Duke of Suffolk. The Duke of Norfolk, her own uncle, had come to resent her attitude to her power. The Boleyns, including Norfolk, preferred good relations with France to those with the Emperor, but Cromwell had helped to swing the King's favour towards the latter. Also opposed to Anne were supporters of reconciliation with Princess Mary (among them the former supporters of Catherine), having now reached maturity. A second divorce was now a real possibility, although it is commonly believed that it was Cromwell's influence that led opponents to look for way of having her executed.

As Anne recovered from her final miscarriage, Henry declared that his marriage had been the product of witchcraft. The King's new mistress, Jane Seymour, was quickly moved into new quarters. This was followed by Anne's brother, George Boleyn, being refused the Order of the Garter, which was instead given to Jane Seymour's brother, who became Earl of Hertford. Between 30 April and 2 May, five prominent members of the Privy Council, including Anne's own brother, were arrested on charges of treasonable adultery, accused of having sexual relationships with the queen. Anne was also arrested, accused of treasonous adultery and incest. Although the evidence against them was unconvincing, the accused were found guilty and condemned to death. George Boleyn and the other accused men were executed on 17 May 1536. At 8 am on 19 May 1536, the queen was executed on Tower Green. She knelt upright, in the French style of executions. The execution was swift and consisted of a single stroke.

Marriage to Jane Seymour

The day after Anne's execution in 1536 Henry became engaged to Seymour, who was one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting. They were married 10 days later. Henry granted his assent to the Laws in Wales Act 1535, which legally annexed Wales, uniting England and Wales into one unified nation. This was followed by the Second Succession Act (Act of Succession 1536), which 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, should he have no further issue.

On 12 October 1537, Jane gave birth to a son, Prince Edward, the future Edward VI. The birth was difficult and the queen died on 24 October 1537 from an infection and was buried in Windsor. The euphoria that had accompanied Edward's birth became sorrow, but it was only over time that Henry came to long for his wife. At the time, Henry recovered quickly from the shock. Measures were immediately put in place to find another wife for Henry, which, at the insistence of Cromwell and the court, were focused on the Continent.

Henry's foreign policy had played second fiddle to domestic concerns about his wives in preceding years, with Charles V distracted by the internal politics of his many kingdoms and external threats and Henry and Francis on relatively good terms. However, when Charles and Francis made peace in January 1539, Henry became increasingly apprehensive. Cromwell as spymaster supplied Henry with a constant list of threats to the kingdom (real or imaginary, weak or serious), and Henry was increasingly paranoid in their wake. Enriched by the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry used some of his reserves into building a series of coastal defences and set some aside for the expected Franco-German invasion.

However, the alliance between Francis and Charles soon soured, and degenerated to war. With Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn now dead, relations between Charles and Henry improved considerably and Henry decided to enter the Italian War in favour of his new ally. An invasion was planned for 1543. In preparation for it, Henry lured Scottish forces south into the area around Carlisle before defeating them in the Battle of Solway Moss. Although Henry's plans for Scotland's new queen, Mary I, to marry his son Edward failed despite the signing of the Treaty of Greenwich, Scotland was indeed kept out the French war. Henry's hesitation on his French invasion annoyed Charles, however. Henry partitioned his own invasion in June 1544 into two: the Duke of Norfolk led one force, which failed to take Montreuil; but the other, under the Duke of Suffolk successfully besieged Boulogne. Charles' efforts were unsuccessful, and, irritated by Henry, he made peace with the French. Henry was left alone against France, unable to agree a peace deal; England was once again placed under threat of invasion. When it came, however, it was a fiasco that brought France to the negotiating table. Signing the Treaty of Camp, Henry secured Boulogne for eight years, after which the French would get it back if 2 million crowns (£750,000) were paid. Henry's motivation was now financial; the 1544 campaign had cost £650,000 and England was once again bankrupt. Henry still clung to the Treaty of Greenwich, which the Scottish rejected; whether the countries were at war or not remained unclear up to Henry's death.

Marriage to Anne of Cleves

At this time, Henry wished to marry once again to ensure the succession. Cromwell, now Earl of Essex, suggested Anne, the sister of the Duke of Cleves, who was seen as an important ally in case of a Roman Catholic attack on England, for the duke fell between Lutheranism and Catholicism. Hans Holbein the Younger was dispatched to Cleves to paint a portrait of Anne for the king. Despite speculation that Holbein painted her in an overly flattering light, it is more likely that the portrait was accurate; Holbein remained in favour at court. After regarding Holbein's portrayal, and urged by the complimentary description of Anne given by his courtiers, the king agreed to wed Anne. On Anne's arrival in England, Henry is said to have found her unattractive, privately calling her a "Flanders Mare". It was not long before Henry wished to annul the marriage so he could marry another. Anne did not argue, and confirmed that the marriage had never been consummated. The subject of Anne's previous marriage arrangements with the Duke of Lorraine's son eventually provided for the answer, one complicated enough that the remaining impediments to an annulment were thus removed. The marriage was subsequently dissolved and Anne received the title of "The King's Sister", two houses and a generous allowance. It was already clear that Henry had fallen for Catherine Howard, the Duke of Norfolk's niece, the politics of which worried Cromwell, for Norfolk was a political opponent.

Shortly after, the religious reformers (and protégés of Cromwell) Robert Barnes, William Jerome and Thomas Garret were burned as heretics. Cromwell, meanwhile, fell out of favour although it is unclear exactly why, for there is little evidence of differences of domestic or foreign policy; despite his role, he was not officially accused of being responsible for Henry's failed marriage. Cromwell was now amongst enemies at court, with Norfolk also able to draw on his niece's position. Charges of treason, selling export licences, granting passports, and drawing up commissions without permission were all laid at Cromwell's table, and may have been accompanied with blame for the Cleves failure, and the failure of the foreign policy it accompanied. He was subsequently attainted and beheaded. Cromwell was not replaced as Vicegerent in Spirituals, a position which had been created for him.

Marriages to Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr

On 28 July 1540 (the same day Cromwell was executed), Henry married the young Catherine Howard, Anne Boleyn's first cousin and a lady-in-waiting of Anne's. He was absolutely delighted with his new queen, and awarded her the lands of Cromwell and a vast array of jewellery. Soon after her marriage, however, Queen Catherine had an affair with the courtier Thomas Culpeper. She employed Francis Dereham, who was previously informally engaged to her and had an affair with her prior to her marriage, as her secretary. The court was informed of her affair with Dereham whilst Henry was away; they dispatched Thomas Cranmer to investigate, who brought evidence of Queen Catherine's previous affair with Dereham to the king's notice. Though Henry originally refused to believe the allegations, Dereham confessed. It took another meeting of the council, however, before Henry believed and went into a rage, blaming the council before consoling himself in hunting. 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. Culpeper and Dereham were executed, and Catherine too was beheaded on 13 February 1542.

In 1540, Henry sanctioned the destruction of shrines to saints. In 1542, England's remaining monasteries were all dissolved, and their property transferred to the Crown. Abbots and priors lost their seats in the House of Lords; only archbishops and bishops came to comprise the ecclesiastical element of the body. The Lords Spiritual, as members of the clergy with seats in the House of Lords were known, were for the first time outnumbered by the Lords Temporal.

Henry married his last wife, the wealthy widow Catherine Parr, in July 1543. She argued with Henry over religion; she was a reformer, but Henry remained committed to a mixture of Catholicism and Protestantism: the reactionary mood which had gained ground following the fall of Cromwell had not won the day completely. She helped reconcile Henry with his first two daughters, the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth. In 1543, an Act of Parliament put the daughters back in the line of succession after Edward, Prince of Wales. The same act allowed Henry to determine further succession to the throne in his will.

Death and succession

Late in life, Henry became obese (with a waist measurement of 54 inches/137 cm) and had to be moved about with the help of mechanical inventions. He was covered with painful, pus-filled boils and possibly suffered from gout. His obesity and other medical problems can be traced from the jousting accident in 1536, in which he suffered a leg wound. The accident actually re-opened and aggravated a previous leg wound he had sustained years earlier, to the extent that his doctors found it difficult to treat it. The wound festered for the remainder of his life and became ulcerated, thus preventing him from maintaining the same level of physical activity he had previously enjoyed. The jousting accident is believed to have caused Henry's mood swings, which may have had a dramatic effect on his personality and temperament.

The theory that Henry suffered from syphilis has been dismissed by most historians. A more recent theory suggests that Henry's medical symptoms are characteristic of untreated Type II diabetes. Alternatively, his wives' pattern of pregnancies and his mental deterioration have led some to suggest that the king may have been Kell positive and suffered from McLeod syndrome. According to another study, Henry VIII's history and body morphology was likely the result of traumatic brain injury after his 1536 jousting accident, which in turn led to a neuroendocrine cause of his obesity. This analysis identifies growth hormone deficiency (GHD) as the source for his increased adiposity but also significant behavioural changes noted in his later years, including his multiple marriages.

Henry's obesity hastened his death at the age of 55, which occurred on 28 January 1547 in the Palace of Whitehall, on what would have been his father's 90th birthday. He died soon after allegedly uttering his last words: "Monks! Monks! Monks!", perhaps in reference to the monks he caused to be evicted during the dissolution of the monasteries. Henry VIII was interred in St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, next to his wife Jane Seymour. Over a hundred years later, Charles I was buried in the same vault.

After his death, his only legitimate son, Edward, inherited the Crown, becoming Edward VI. 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 failed, the crown was to go to Henry's daughter by Anne Boleyn, Princess Elizabeth, and her heirs. Finally, if Elizabeth's line became extinct, the crown was to be inherited by the descendants of Henry VIII's deceased younger sister, Mary. The descendants of Henry's sister Margaret Tudor – the royal family of Scotland – were therefore excluded from succession according to this act. This final provision failed when James VI of Scotland subsequently became James I of England upon Elizabeth's death.

Public image

Henry cultivated the image of a Renaissance Man and his court was a centre of scholarly and artistic innovation and glamorous excess, epitomised by the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He scouted the country for choirboys, taking some directly from Wolsey's choir, and introduced Renaissance music into court. Musicians included Benedict de Opitiis, Richard Sampson, Ambrose Lupo, and Venetian organist Dionisio Memo. Henry himself kept a considerable collection of instruments; he was skilled on the lute, could play the organ, and was a talented player of the virginals. He could also sight read music and sing well. He was an accomplished musician, author, and poet; his best known piece of music is "Pastime with Good Company" ("The Kynges Ballade"). He is often reputed to have written "Greensleeves" but probably did not. He was an avid gambler and dice player, and excelled at sports, especially jousting, hunting, and real tennis. He was known for his strong defence of conventional Christian piety. The King was 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 Wolsey, such as Christ Church, Oxford, Hampton Court Palace, the Palace of Whitehall, and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Henry was an intellectual. The first English king with a modern humanist education, he read and wrote English, French, Latin and was thoroughly at home in his well-stocked library. He personally annotated many books and wrote and published one of his own. He is said to have written the song "Helas madam". He founded Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford, in 1546. To promote the public support for the reformation of the church, Henry had numerous pamphlets and lectures prepared. For example, Richard Sampson's Oratio (1534) was argument for absolute obedience to the monarchy and claimed that the English church had always been independent from Rome. At the popular level, theatre and minstrel troupes funded by the crown travelled around the land to promote the new religious practices: the pope and Catholic priests and monks were mocked as foreign devils, while the glorious king was hailed as a brave and heroic defender of the true faith. Henry worked hard to present an image of unchallengeable authority and irresistible power.

A strong man, over six feet tall and broad in proportion, Henry excelled at jousting and hunting. More than pastimes, they were political devices that served multiple goals, from enhancing his athletic royal image to impressing foreign emissaries and rulers, to conveying Henry's ability to suppress any rebellion. Thus he arranged a jousting tournament at Greenwich in 1517, where he wore gilded armour, gilded horse trappings, and outfits of velvet, satin, and cloth of gold, dripping with pearls and jewels. It suitably impressed foreign ambassadors, one of whom wrote home that, "The wealth and civilisation of the world are here, and those who call the English barbarians appear to me to render themselves such." Henry finally retired from the lists in 1536 after a heavy fall from his horse left him unconscious for two hours, but he continued to sponsor two lavish tournaments a year.

Legacy

Finances

Financially, the reign of Henry was a near-disaster. Although he inherited a prosperous economy (and further augmented his royal treasury by seizures of church lands), Henry's heavy spending and long periods of mismanagement damaged the economy. For example, Henry expanded the Royal Navy from 5 to 53 ships. He loved palaces; he began with a dozen and died with fifty-five, in which he hung 2,000 tapestries. By comparison, his neighbour and nephew James V of Scotland had five palaces and 200 tapestries. He took pride in showing off his collection of weapons, which included exotic archery equipment, 2,250 pieces of land ordnance and 6,500 handguns.

Henry inherited a vast fortune from his father Henry VII who had, in contrast to his son, been frugal and careful with money. This fortune was estimated to £1,250,000 (£375 million by today's standards). Much of this wealth was spent by Henry on maintaining his court and household, including many of the building works he undertook on royal palaces. Tudor monarchs had to fund all the expenses of government out of their own income. This income came from the Crown lands that Henry owned as well as from customs duties like tonnage and poundage, granted by parliament to the king for life. During Henry's reign the revenues of the Crown remained constant (around £100,000), but were eroded by inflation and rising prices brought about by war. Indeed it was war and Henry's dynastic ambitions in Europe that meant that the surplus he had inherited from his father was exhausted by the mid-1520s. Whereas Henry VII had not involved Parliament in his affairs very much, Henry VIII had to turn to Parliament during his reign for money, in particular for grants of subsidies to fund his wars. The Dissolution of the Monasteries provided a means to replenish the treasury and as a result the Crown took possession of monastic lands worth £120,000 (£36 million) a year. The Crown had profited a small amount in 1526 when Wolsey had put England onto a gold, rather than silver, standard, and had debased the currency slightly. Cromwell debased the currency more significantly, starting in Ireland in 1540. The England pound halved in value against the Flemish pound between 1540 and 1551 as a result. The nominal profit made was significant, helping to bring income and expenditure together, but it had a catastrophic effect on the overall economy of the country. In part, it helped to bring about a period of very high inflation from 1544 onwards.

Government

Henry began his reign with heavy reliance on advisers and ended with complete control.

From 1514 to 1529, Thomas Wolsey (1473–1530), a cardinal of the established Church, served as Lord Chancellor and practically controlled domestic and foreign policy for the young king. Wolsey centralised the national government and extended the jurisdiction of the conciliar courts, particularly the Star Chamber. The Star Chamber's overall structure remained unchanged, but Wolsey used as the machinery of much-needed criminal law reform. The power of the court itself did not outlive Wolsey, however, since no serious administrative reform was undertaken and its role eventually devolved to the localities. Wolsey helped fill the gap left by Henry's declining participation in government (particularly in comparison to his father) but did so mostly by imposing himself in the King's place. His use of these courts to pursue personal grievances, and particular to treat delinquents as if mere examples of a whole class worthy of punishment, angered the rich, who were annoyed as well by his enormous wealth and ostentatious living. Wolsey disappointed the king when he failed to secure a divorce from Queen Catherine. The treasury was empty after years of extravagance; the peers and people were dissatisfied and Henry needed an entirely new approach; Wolsey had to be replaced. After 16 years at the top he lost power in 1529 and in 1530 was arrested on false charges of treason and died in custody. Wolsey's fall was a warning to the Pope and to the clergy of England of what might be expected for failure to comply with the king's wishes. Henry then took full control of his government, although at court numerous complex factions continued to try to ruin and destroy each other.

Thomas Cromwell (c. 1485–1540) also came to define Henry's government. Returning to England from the continent in 1514 or 1515, he soon entered Wolsey's service. He turned to law, also picking up a good knowledge of the Bible, and was admitted to Gray's Inn in 1524. He became Wolsey's "man of all work". Cromwell, driven in part by his religious beliefs, attempted to reform the body politic of the English government through discussion and consent, and through the vehicle of continuity and not outward change. He was seen by many people as the man they wanted to bring about their shared aims, including Thomas Audley. By 1531, Cromwell and those associated with him were already responsible for the drafting of much legislation. Cromwell's first office was that of the master of the King's jewels in 1532, from which Cromwell began invigorate the government finances. By this point, Cromwell's power as an efficient administrator in a Council full of politicians, exceeded that Wolsey had achieved. Cromwell did much work through his many offices to remove the tasks of government from the Royal Household (and ideologically from the personal body of the King) and into a public state. He did so, however, in a haphazard fashion that left several remnants, because he needed to retain Henry's support, his own power, and the possibility of actually achieving the plan he set out. Cromwell made the various income streams put in place by Henry VII more formal and assigned largely autonomous bodies for their administration. The role of the King's Council was transferred to a reformed Privy Council, much smaller and more efficient than its predecessor. A difference emerged between the financial health of the king, and that of the country, although Cromwell's fall undermined much of his bureaucracy, which required his hand to keep order among the many new bodies and prevent profligate spending which strained relations as well as finances. Cromwell's reforms ground to a halt in 1539, the initiative lost, and he failed to secure the passage of an enabling act, the Proclamation by the Crown Act 1539. Cromwell's association with the Cleves marriage, whilst not fatal in itself, rendered Cromwell weakened as an anti-Cromwell faction was on the rise: Henry was now after the hand of Catherine Howard, the Duke of Norfolk's niece, and it was Norfolk who eventually brought Cromwell down and he was executed on 28 July 1540.

G. R. Elton argues there was a major Tudor revolution in government. While crediting Henry with intelligence and shrewdness, Elton finds that much of the positive action, especially the break with Rome, was the work of Thomas Cromwell and not the king. Elton sees Henry as competent, but too lazy to take direct control of affairs for any extended period; that is, the king was an opportunist who relied on others for most of his ideas and to do most of the work. Henry's marital adventures are part of Elton's chain of evidence; a man who marries six wives, Elton notes, is not someone who fully controls his own fate. Elton shows that Thomas Cromwell had conceived of a commonwealth of England that included popular participation through Parliament and that this was generally expressed in the preambles to legislation. Parliamentary consent did not mean that the king had yielded any of his authority; Henry VIII was a paternalistic ruler who did not hesitate to use his power. Popular "consent" was a means to augment rather than limit royal power.

A wave of political executions that commenced with Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk in 1513 ended with Henry Earl of Surrey in January, 1547. The figure of 72,000 executions in his reign is inflated, coming from Gerolamo Cardano who in turn got it from the Roman Catholic Bishop of Lisieux. Henry did, however, execute at will, beheading, often in public, more English notables than any monarch before or since. This included two of his wives, twenty peers, four leading public servants, six of the king's close attendants and friends, one cardinal and various heads of monasteries. In addition, Cardinal Wolsey died en route to his treason trial.

Reformation

Henry never formally repudiated the doctrines of the Catholic Church, but he declared himself supreme head of the church in England in 1534. This, combined with subsequent actions, eventually resulted in a separated church, the Church of England. Henry and his advisors felt the pope was acting in the role of an Italian prince involved in secular affairs, which obscured his religious role. They said Rome treated England as a minor stepchild, allowing it one cardinal out of fifty, and no possibility of that cardinal becoming pope. For reasons of state it was increasingly intolerable to Henry that major decisions in England were settled by Italians. The divorce issue exemplified the problem but was not itself the cause of the problem.

Henry's reformation of the English church involved more complex motives and methods than his desire for a new wife and an heir. Henry asserted that his first marriage had never been valid, but the divorce issue was only one factor in Henry's desire to reform the church. In 1532–1537, he instituted a number of statutes that dealt with the relationship between the king and the pope and the structure of the Church of England. During these years, Henry suppressed monasteries and pilgrimage shrines in his attempt to reform the church. The king was always the dominant force in the making of religious policy; his policy, which he pursued skilfully and consistently, is best characterised as a search for the middle way.

Parliament validated the marriage of Henry and Anne with the Act of Succession 1533. Catherine's daughter, Mary, was declared illegitimate, and Anne's issue were declared next in the line of succession. All adults in the Kingdom were required to acknowledge the Act's provisions by oath; those who refused were subject to imprisonment for life. Any publisher or printer of any literature alleging that the marriage was invalid was automatically guilty of treason and could be punished by death.

Parliament also passed the Statute in Restraint of Appeals and exacted the penalties of praemunire against all who introduced papal bulls into England. Parliament prohibited the Church from making any regulations (canons) without the king's consent. Several more laws were passed in England. Other acts included the Supplication against the Ordinaries and the Submission of the Clergy, which recognised Royal Supremacy over the church. The Ecclesiastical Appointments Act 1534 required the clergy to elect bishops nominated by the Sovereign. The Act of Supremacy in 1534 declared that the King was "the only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England" and the Treasons Act 1534 made it high treason, punishable by death, to refuse to acknowledge the King as such. In response to the excommunications, the Peter's Pence Act was passed in and it reiterated that England had "no superior under God, but only your Grace" and that Henry's "imperial crown" had been diminished by "the unreasonable and uncharitable usurpations and exactions" of the Pope. The King had much support from the Church under Cranmer.

Questions over what was the true faith were resolved with the adoption of the orthodox "Act of Six Articles" (1539) and a careful holding of the balance between extreme factions after 1540. Even so, the era saw movement away from religious orthodoxy, the more so as the pillars of the old beliefs, especially Thomas More and John Fisher, had been unable to accept the change and had been executed in 1535 for refusing to renounce papal authority. Critical for the Henrician reformation was the new political theology of obedience to the prince that was enthusiastically adopted by the Church of England in the 1530s. It reflected Martin Luther's new interpretation of the fourth commandment ("Honour thy father and mother") and was mediated to an English audience by William Tyndale.

Henry made radical changes in traditional religious practices. He ordered the clergy to preach against superstitious images, relics, miracles, and pilgrimages, and to remove most candles. Henry's catechism of 1545, called the King's Primer, left out the saints. Latin rituals gave way to English. Shrines to saints were destroyed — including the popular one of St. Thomas of Canterbury — and relics were ridiculed as worthless old bones.

The founding of royal authority on the Ten Commandments, and thus on the word of God, was a particularly attractive feature of this doctrine, which became a defining feature of Henrician religion. Rival tendencies within the Church of England sought to exploit it in the pursuit of their particular agendas. Reformers strove to preserve its connections with the broader framework of Lutheran theology, with the emphasis on faith alone and the word of God, while conservatives emphasised good works, ceremonies, and charity. The Reformers linked royal supremacy and the word of God to persuade Henry to publish the Great Bible in 1539, an English translation that was a formidable prop for his new-found dignity.

In defiance of the Pope the Church of England was now under Henry’s control, not Rome's. Protestant Reformers still faced persecution, particularly over objections to Henry's annulment. Many fled abroad where they met further difficulties, including the influential William Tyndale, who was eventually executed and his body burned at King Henry's behest. Theological and practical reforms would follow only under Henry's successors.

England possessed numerous religious houses that owned large tracts of land worked by tenants. Henry dissolved them between 1536 and 1541 (known as the Dissolution of the monasteries) and transferred a fifth of England's landed wealth to new hands. The programme was designed primarily to create a landed gentry beholden to the crown, which would use the lands much more efficiently.

Response to the reforms was mixed. The religious houses had been the only support of the impoverished, and the reforms alienated most of the population outside London and helped provoke the great northern rising of 1536–1537, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. Elsewhere the changes were accepted and welcomed, and those who clung to Catholic rites kept quiet or moved in secrecy. They would re-emerge in the reign of Henry's daughter Mary (1553–1558).

Military

Apart from permanent garrisons at Berwick, Calais, and Carlisle, England's standing army numbered only a few hundred men. This was increased only slightly by Henry. Henry's invasion force of 1513, some 30,000 men, was composed of billmen and longbowmen, at a time when the other European nations were moving to hand guns and pikemen. The difference in capability was at this stage not significant, however, and Henry's forces had new armour and weaponry. They were also supported by battlefield artillery, a relatively new invention, and several large and expensive siege guns. The invasion force of 1544 was similarly well-equipped and organised, although command on the battlefield was laid with the dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk, which in the case of the latter produced the disastrous results at Montreuil in that campaign.

Henry is traditionally cited as one of the founders of the Royal Navy. Technologically, Henry invested in large cannon for his warships, an idea that had taken hold in other countries, to replace the smaller serpentines in use. He also flirted with designing ships personally – although his contribution to larger vessels, if any, is not known, it is believed that he influenced the design of rowbarges and similar galleys. Henry was also responsible for the creation of a permanent navy, with the supporting anchorages and dockyards. Tactically, Henry's reign saw the Navy move away from boarding tactics to employ gunnery instead. The Navy was enlarged up to fifty ships (the Mary Rose was one of them), and Henry was responsible for the establishment of the "council for marine causes" to specifically oversee all the maintenance and operation of the Navy, becoming the basis for the later Admiralty.

Henry's break with Rome incurred the threat of a large-scale French or Spanish invasion. To guard against this, in 1538, he began to build a chain of expensive new defences, state of the art in design, along Britain's southern and eastern coasts from Kent to Cornwall, largely built of material gained from the demolition of the monasteries. These were known as Henry VIII's Device Forts. He also strengthened existing coastal defence fortresses such as Dover Castle and, at Dover, Moat Bulwark and Archcliffe Fort, which he personally visited for a few months to supervise. Wolsey had many years before conducted the censuses required for an overhaul of the system of militia, but no reform came of it. Under Cromwell, in 1538–9, the shire musters were overhauled but Cromwell's work servedd most to demonstrate quite how inadequate they were in organisation. The building works, including that at Berwick, along with the reform of the militias and musters, were eventually finished under Queen Mary.

Ireland

At the beginning of Henry's reign, Ireland was effectively divided into three zones: the Pale, where English rule was unchallenged; Leinster and Munster, the so-called "obedient land" of Anglo-Irish peers; and the Gaelic Connaught and Ulster, with merely notional English rule. Until 1513, Henry continued the policy of his father, to allow Irish lords to rule in the king's name and accept steep divisions between the communities. However, upon the death of the 8th Earl of Kildare, governor of Ireland, fractional Irish politics combined with a more ambitious Henry to cause trouble. When Thomas Butler, 7th Earl of Ormond died, Henry recognised one successor for Ormond's English, Welsh and Scottish lands, whilst in Ireland another took control. Kildare's successor, the 9th Earl, was replaced as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland by Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey in 1520. Surrey's ambitious aims were costly, but ineffective; English rule became trapped between winning the Irish lords over with diplomacy, as favoured by Henry and Wolsey, and a sweeping military occupation as proposed by Surrey. Surrey was recalled in 1521, with Piers Butler – one of claimants to the Earldom of Ormond – appointed in his place. Butler proved unable to control opposition, including that of Kildare. Kildare was appointed chief governor in 1524, resuming his dispute with Butler, which had before been in a lull. Meanwhile, the Earl of Desmond, an Anglo-Irish peer, had turned his support to Richard de la Pole as pretender to the English throne; when in 1528 Kildare failed to take suitable actions against him, Kildare was once again removed from his post.

The Desmond situation was resolved on his death in 1529, which was followed by a period of uncertainty. This was effectively ended with the appointment of Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond and the king's son, as lord lieutenant. Richmond had never before visited Ireland, his appointment a break with past policy. For a time it looked as if peace might be restored with the return of Kildare to Ireland to manage the tribes, but the effect was limited and the Irish parliament soon rendered ineffective. Ireland began to receive the attention of Cromwell, who had supporters of Ormond and Desmond promoted. Kildare, on the other hand, was summoned to London; after some hesitation, he departed for London in 1534, where he would face charges of treason. His son, Thomas, Lord Offaly was more forthright, denouncing the king and leading a "Catholic crusade" against the king, who was by this time mired in marital problems. Offaly had the Archbishop of Dublin murdered, and besieged Dublin. Offaly led a mixture of Pale gentry and Irish tribes, although he failed to secure the support of Lord Darcy, a sympathiser, or Charles V. What was effectively a civil war was ended with the intervention of 2,000 English troops – a large army by Irish standards – and the execution of Offaly (his father was already dead) and his uncles.

Although the Offaly revolt was followed by a determination to rule Ireland more closely, Henry was weary of getting into drawn out conflict with the tribes and a royal commission recommended that the only relationship with the tribes was to be promises of peace, their land protected from English expansion. The man to lead this effort was Sir Antony St Leger, as Lord Deputy of Ireland, who would remain into the post past Henry's death. There had been a well-founded belief that Ireland was merely a fief of England from the Pope, so with the break from Rome came the assertion of Henry to the Kingdom of Ireland in 1541. It did, however, also reflect Henry's policy of peaceful reconciliation and expansion; the Lords of Ireland would grant their lands to the King, before being returned as fief. The incentive was an accompanying barony, and thus a right to sit in the Irish House of Lords – to run in parallel with England's. The Irish law of the tribes did not suit such an arrangement, because the chieftain did not have the required rights; this made progress tortuous and it was abandoned in 1543 not to be replaced.

Historiography

The complexities and sheer scale of Henry's legacy ensured that, in the words of Betteridge and Freeman, "throughout the centuries , Henry has been praised and reviled, but he has never been ignored". A particular focus of modern historiography bas been the extent to which the events of Henry's life (including his marriages, foreign policy and religious changes) were the result of his own initiative and, if they were, whether they were the result of opportunism or of a principled undertaking by Henry. It began with the seminal work of historian A.F. Pollard in 1902, who presented a positive view of Henry VIII, "laud as the king and statesman who, whatever his personal failings, led England down the road to parliamentary democracy and empire". Pollard's interpretation, which was broadly comparable to 17th century publications of Lord Herbert of Cherbury and his contemporaries, remained the dominant interpretation of Henry's life until the publication of the doctoral thesis of G. R. Elton in 1953. That thesis, entitled "The Tudor Revolution in Government", maintained Pollard's positive interpretation of the Henrician period as a whole, but reinterpreted Henry himself as a follower rather than a leader. For Elton, it was Cromwell and not Henry who undertook the changes in government – Henry was shrewd, but lacked the vision to follow a complex plan through. Henry was little more, in other words, than an "ego-centric monstrosity" whose reign "owed its successes and virtues to better and greater men about him; most of its horrors and failures sprang more directly from ".

Although the central tenets of Elton's thesis has now been all but abandoned, it has consistently provided the starting point for much later work, including that of J. J. Scarisbrick, his student. Scarisbrick largely kept Elton's regard for Cromwell's abilities, but returned agency to Henry, who Scarisbrick considered to have ultimately directed and shaped policy. For Scarisbrick, Henry was a formidable, captivating man who "wore regality with a splendid conviction". The effect of endowing Henry with this ability, however, was largely negative in Scarisbrick's eyes: to Scarisbrick the Henrician period was one of upheaval and destruction and those in charge worthy of blame more than praise. More recent biographers, including David Loades, David Starkey and John Guy have each fallen within that spectrum of views, though ultimately, there has been little consensus on the major issue of the extent to which Henry was responsible for the changes he oversaw or the correct assessment of those he did bring about.

This lack of clarity about Henry's control over events is in turn partly responsible for the variation in the qualities ascribed to him: religious conservative or dangerous radical; lover of beauty or brutal destroyer of priceless artefacts; friend and patron or betrayer of those around him; chivalry incarnate or ruthless chauvinist. The apparent multifaceted nature of Henry's personality has led to a portrayal of the king as one whose overpowering charm could turn unpredictably into anger and shouting, for he was high-strung, unstable, hypochondriac, and possessed of a strong streak of cruelty. Lacey Smith considered him an egotistical borderline neurotic given to great fits of temper and deep and dangerous suspicions, with a mechanical and conventional, but deeply held piety, having at best a mediocre intellect.

Style and arms

Many changes were made to the royal style during his reign. Henry originally used the style "Henry the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England, France and Lord of Ireland". In 1521, pursuant to a grant from Pope Leo X rewarding a book by Henry, the Defence of the Seven Sacraments, attacking Martin Luther, the royal style became "Henry the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England and France, Defender of the Faith and Lord of Ireland". Following Henry's excommunication, Pope Paul III rescinded the grant of the title "Defender of the Faith", but an Act of Parliament declared that it remained valid; and it continues in royal usage to the present day. Henry's motto was "Coeur Loyal" ("true heart") and he had this embroidered on his clothes in the form of a heart symbol and with the word "loyal". His emblem was the Tudor rose and the Beaufort portcullis. As king, Henry's arms were the same as those used by his predecessors since Henry IV: Quarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lys Or (for France) and Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England).

In 1535, Henry added the "supremacy phrase" to the royal style, which became "Henry the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England and France, Defender of the Faith, Lord of Ireland and of the Church of England in Earth Supreme Head". In 1536, the phrase "of the Church of England" changed to "of the Church of England and also of Ireland". In 1541, Henry had the Irish Parliament change the title "Lord of Ireland" to "King of Ireland" with the Crown of Ireland Act 1542, after being advised that many Irish people regarded the Pope as the true head of their country, with the Lord acting as a mere representative. The reason the Irish regarded the Pope as their overlord was that Ireland had originally been given to the King Henry II of England by Pope Adrian IV in the 12th century as a feudal territory under papal overlordship. The meeting of Irish Parliament that proclaimed Henry VIII as King of Ireland was the first meeting attended by the Gaelic Irish chieftains as well as the Anglo-Irish aristocrats. The style "Henry the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith and of the Church of England and also of Ireland in Earth Supreme Head" remained in use until the end of Henry's reign.

Ancestry

Marriages and issue

See also

• Cestui que
• English monarchs family tree
• Inventory of Henry VIII of England
• List of English monarchs
• Sebastian Giustinian
• The Rough Wooing

Footnotes

1. Historians disagree on the exact date of the excommunication: Winston Churchill puts the date the bull was made official as 1535; G. R. Elton as November 1538; and J. J. Scarisbrick as 17 December 1538, through promulgation by Pope Paul III.
2. A. F. Pollard provides the classic statement of the Henrician position. Pollard argues that that Spain and France stayed loyal because they controlled the papacy.

References

1. ^ Scarisbrick 1997, p. 361
2. Guy 2000, p. 41.
3. Adams 1986, pp. 111–112.
4. Wilkinson 2009, p. 70
5. Ives 2006, pp. 28–36
6. ^ Crofton 2006, p. 128
7. ^ Crofton 2006, p. 129
8. ^ Scarisbrick 1997, p. 3
9. Churchill 1987, p. 24 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFChurchill1987 (help)
10. Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 14–15
11. Scarisbrick 1997, p. 4
12. ^ Crofton 2006, p. 126
13. Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 4–5
14. Scarisbrick 1997, p. 6
15. ^ Loades 2009, p. 22
16. ^ Scarisbrick 1997, p. 8
17. Loades 2009, pp. 22–23.
18. ^ Loades 2009, p. 23
19. ^ Loades 2009, p. 24
20. Scarisbrick 1997, p. 12
21. ^ Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 18–19
22. Scarisbrick 1997, p. 19
23. Hall 1904, p. 17
24. ^ Loades 2009, p. 26
25. Scarisbrick 1997, p. 18
26. Hart 2009, p. 27
27. Weir 2002, p. 121
28. ^ Loades 2009, pp. 48–49
29. ^ Fraser 1994, p. 220
30. ^ Loades 2009, pp. 47–48
31. Weir 2002, p. missing
32. Elton 1977, pp. 98, 104
33. Elton 1977, p. 255
34. Elton 1977, p. 255, 271
35. ^ Loades 2009, p. 27
36. Loades 2009, pp. 27–28
37. ^ Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 28–31
38. Loades 2009, pp. 30–32
39. Loades 2009, p. 62
40. Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 31–32
41. Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 33–34
42. Loades 2009, pp. 62–63
43. Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 35–36
44. Guicciardini 1968, p. 280
45. Loades 2009, p. 63
46. Loades 2009, pp. 65–66
47. Loades 2009, pp. 66–67
48. Loades 2009, pp. 67–68
49. ^ Loades 2009, pp. 68–69
50. Loades 2009, p. 69
51. Loades 2009, pp. 70–71
52. Lacey 1972, p. 70 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFLacey1972 (help)
53. ^ Crofton 2006, p. 51
54. Loades 2009, pp. 88–89
55. Cruz & Suzuki 2009, p. 132
56. Scarisbrick 1997, p. 154
57. Weir 2002, p. 160
58. Brigden 2000, p. 114
59. Loades 2009, pp. 91–92
60. ^ Elton 1977, p. 109
61. Morris 1998, p. 166
62. Haigh 1993, p. 92f
63. Elton 1977, p. 130
64. Elton 1977, pp. 175–176
65. Williams 1971, p. 123
66. Starkey 2003, pp. 462–464
67. Williams 1971, p. 124
68. Elton 1977, p. 178
69. Williams 1971, pp. 128–131
70. Bernard 2005, pp. 68–71
71. Bernard 2005, p. 68
72. Williams 1971, p. 136
73. Bernard 2005, pp. 69–71
74. Churchill 1987, p. 51 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFChurchill1987 (help)
75. ^ Elton 1977, p. 282
76. Williams 1971, p. 138
77. Elton 1977, pp. 193–4
78. Elton 1977, pp. 262–3
79. Elton 1977, p. 260
80. Elton 1977, p. 261
81. Elton 1977, pp. 261–2
82. Elton 1977, p. 262
83. Scarisbrick 1997, p. 348
84. Williams 1971, p. 141
85. Ashley 2003, p. 240 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFAshley2003 (help)
86. Williams 1971, p. 4
87. Elton 1977, pp. 250–251
88. Elton 1977, pp. 252–253
89. Williams 1971, p. 142
90. Loades 2009, p. 55
91. Elton 1977, p. 253
92. Hibbert et al. 2010, p. 60 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFHibbertWeinribKeayKeay2010 (help)
93. Scarisbrick 1997, p. 350
94. Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 350–351
95. Scarisbrick 1997, p. 353
96. Scarisbrick 1997, p. 355
97. Elton 1977, p. 275
98. Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 355–256
99. Loades 2009, pp. 72–73
100. Loades 2009, pp. 74–75
101. Loades 2009, p. 75
102. Loades 2009, pp. 75–76
103. Loades 2009, pp. 76–77
104. Elton 1977, p. 307
105. Loades 2009, p. 79
106. Loades 2009, pp. 79–80
107. Loades 2009, p. 80
108. Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 368–369
109. Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 369–370
110. Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 373–374
111. Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 373–375
112. Lindsey 1995, pp. 136–157
113. Scarisbrick 1997, p. 370
114. Elton 1977, p. 289
115. ^ Scarisbrick 1997, p. 373
116. Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 372–3
117. ^ Elton 1977, pp. 289–291
118. ^ Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 376–7
119. Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 378–9
120. Elton 1977, p. 290
121. Elton 1977, p. 296
122. Farquhar 2001, p. 75
123. Scarisbrick 1997, p. 430
124. Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 430–431
125. Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 431–432
126. Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 432–433
127. Scarisbrick 1997, p. 456
128. Elton 1977, p. 301
129. Scarisbrick 1997, p. 457
130. Elton 1977, pp. 331, 373
131. "The jousting accident that turned Henry VIII into a tyrant". The Independent. UK. 18 April 2009. Retrieved 25 August 2010.
132. ^ Sohn, Emily (11 March 2011). "King Henry VIII's Madness Explained". discovery.com. Retrieved 25 March 2011.
133. Hays 2010, p. 68
134. Whitley, Banks & Kramer 2010, p. passim harvnb error: no target: CITEREFWhitleyBanksKramer2010 (help)
135. Ashrafian 2011, p. passim
136. Davies 2005, p. 687
137. Marvin 2010, p. missing
138. Loades 2007, p. 207 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFLoades2007 (help)
139. "Henry VIII's final resting place" (PDF). Windsor Castle: College of St George. Retrieved 12 March 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |Author= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
140. Elton 1977, pp. 332–333
141. ^ Scarisbrick 1997, pp. 15–16
142. Chibi 1997, pp. 543–560
143. Betteridge 2005, pp. 91–109
144. ^ Hibbert et al. 2010, p. 928 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFHibbertWeinribKeayKeay2010 (help)
145. Gunn 1991, pp. 543–560
146. Williams 2005, pp. 41–59
147. Elton 1977, pp. 215–216, 355–6
148. Thurley 1991, p. passim
149. Thomas 2005, pp. 79–80 citing Thurley 1993, pp. 222–224 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFThurley1993 (help)
150. Davies 2005, pp. 11–29
151. Weir 2002, p. 13
152. Weir 2002, p. 64
153. Weir 2002, p. 393
154. Elton 1977, pp. 312–314
155. Elton 1977, pp. 48–49
156. Elton 1977, p. 60
157. Elton 1977, pp. 60–63
158. Elton 1977, p. 212
159. Elton 1977, p. 64
160. Elton 1977, pp. 168–170
161. Elton 1977, p. 172
162. Elton 1977, p. 172
163. Elton 1977, p. 174
164. Elton 1977, p. 213
165. Elton 1977, p. 213
166. Elton 1977, p. 214
167. Elton 1977, pp. 214–215
168. Elton 1977, pp. 216–217
169. Elton 1977, pp. 215–216
170. Elton 1977, pp. 284–286
171. Elton 1977, pp. 289–292
172. Elton 1962, p. passim harvnb error: no target: CITEREFElton1962 (help)
173. Harrison & Edelen 1995, p. 193
174. Pollard 1905, pp. 230–238
175. Bernard 2005, p. missing
176. Bernard 2005, p. 69
177. Elton 1977, p. 185
178. Bernard 2005, p. 70
179. ^ Bernard 2005, p. 71
180. Lehmberg 1970, p. missing
181. Bernard 2005, p. 195
182. Trollope 1874, p. 133
183. Rex 1996, pp. 863–894
184. Stöber 2007, p. 190
185. Meyer & missing, pp. 254–256 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFMeyermissing (help)
186. Meyer & missing, pp. 269–272 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFMeyermissing (help)
187. Elton 1977, p. 32
188. Elton 1977, pp. 32–33
189. Elton 1977, p. 307
190. ^ Loades 2009, p. 82
191. Loades 2009, pp. 82–83
192. Loades 2009, pp. 83–84
193. Loades 2009, pp. 84–85
194. Elton 1977, pp. 183, 281–283
195. Elton 1977, pp. 87–88
196. Elton 1977, p. 391
197. Loades 2009, p. 180
198. Loades 2009, pp. 181–182
199. Loades 2009, pp. 183–184
200. Loades 2009, pp. 181–185
201. Loades 2009, pp. 185–186
202. Loades 2009, pp. 186–187
203. Elton 1977, pp. 206–207
204. ^ Loades 2009, p. 187
205. Loades 2009, pp. 187–189
206. Elton 1977, pp. 207–208
207. Loades 2009, p. 191
208. Loades 2009, pp. 191–192
209. Loades 2009, pp. 194–195
210. ^ Betteridge & Freeman 2012, pp. 1–19
211. Elton 1977, p. 43
212. Scarisbrick 1968, p. 17
213. Smith 1971, p. passim harvnb error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFSmith1971 (help)
214. Starkey 2003, p. 160
215. "Letter by the Venetian ambassador December 13th, 1518" in: Brown, Rawdon, ed. (1867). Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 2: 1509–1519. pp. 478–482.
216. Starkey 2003, p. 553

Bibliography

• Adams, Robert M. (1986). The Land and Literature of England. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthor= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Ashley, Mike (2002). British Kings & Queens. ISBN 0-7867-1104-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Ashrafian, Hutan (2011). "Henry VIII's Obesity Following Traumatic Brain Injury". Endocrine. 42 (1): 218–9. doi:10.1007/s12020-011-9581-z. PMID 22169966. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bernard, G. W. (2005). The King's Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Betteridge, Thomas (2005). "The Henrician Reformation and Mid-Tudor Culture". Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. 35 (1): 91–109. doi:10.1215/10829636-35-1-91. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Betteridge, Thomas; Freeman, Thomas S. (28 July 2012). Henry VIII in History. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 978-1-4094-6113-5. Retrieved 12 March 2013. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Brigden, Susan (2000). New Worlds, Lost Worlds. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bush, M. L. (2007). "The Tudor Polity and the Pilgrimage of Grace". Historical Research. 80 (207): 47–72. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2281.2006.00351.x. ISSN 0950-3471. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Chaney, Edward (2000). The Evolution of the Grand Tour: Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations Since the Renaissance. Routledge. ISBN 9780714644745. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Chibi, Andrew A. (1997). "Richard Sampson, His Oratio, and Henry VIII's Royal Supremacy". Journal of Church and State. 39 (3): 543–560. doi:10.1093/jcs/39.3.543. ISSN 0021-969x. {{cite journal}}: Check |issn= value (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Churchill, Winston (1966). The New World. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthor= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Crofton, Ian (2006). The Kings and Queens of England. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Cruz, Anne J.; Suzuki, Mihoko (2009). The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe. U. of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252076169. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Davies, Jonathan (2005). "'We Do Fynde in Our Countre Great Lack of Bowes and Arrows': Tudor Military Archery and the Inventory of King Henry VIII". Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research. 83 (333): 11–29. ISSN 0037-9700. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Elton, G. R. (1953; revised 1962). The Tudor Revolution in Government: Administrative Changes in the Reign of Henry VIII. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521092357. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
• Elton, G. R. (1977). Reform and Reformation: England, 1509–1558. London: Edward Arnold. ISBN 0713159529. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Farquhar, Michael (2001). A Treasure of Royal Scandals. New York, US: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-7394-2025-9. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthor= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Fraser, Antonia (1994). The Wives of Henry VIII. Vintage Books. ISBN 9780679730019. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Guicciardini, Francesco (1968). The History of Italy. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthor= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gunn, Steven (1991). "Tournaments and Early Tudor Chivalry". History Today. 41 (6): 543–560. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Guy, John A. (2000). The Tudors: a Very Short Introduction. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthor= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Harrison, William; Edelen, Georges (1995) . The Description of England: Classic Contemporary Account of Tudor Social Life. Dover Publications Inc. ISBN 978-0-486-28275-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hays, J. N. (2010). The Burdens of Disease: Epidemics and Human Response in Western History. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-4613-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hart, Kelly (1 June 2009). The Mistresses of Henry VIII (1st ed.). The History Press. ISBN 0-7524-4835-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hall, Edward (1904). The Triumphant Reign of Henry VIII. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthor= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Haigh, Christopher (1993). English Reformations. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hibbert, Christopher; Weinreb, Ben; Keay, Julia; Keay, John (2010). The London Encyclopaedia (3 ed.). {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Ives, Eric (2006). "Will the Real Henry VIII Please Stand Up?". History Today. 56 (2): 28–36. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lehmberg, Stanford E. (1970). The Reformation Parliament, 1529–1536. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthor= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lindsey, Karen (1995). Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII. Reading, MA., US: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. ISBN 0-201-60895-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Loades, David (2009). Henry VIII: Court, Church and Conflict. The National Archives. ISBN 9781905615421. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Marvin, Frederic (2010) . The Last Words of Distinguished Men and Women: Collected from Various Sources. Forgotten Books. ISBN 978-1-4400-6608-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Morris, T. A. (1998). Europe and England in the Sixteenth Century. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Moorhouse, Geoffrey (2003). The Pilgrimage of Grace: the Rebellion That Shook Henry VIII's Throne. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Pollard, A. F. (1905). Henry VIII. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Rex, Richard (1996). "The Crisis of Obedience: God's Word and Henry's Reformation". The Historical Journal. 39 (4): 863–894. doi:10.1017/S0018246X00024687. JSTOR 2639860. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Scarisbrick, J. J. (1968). Henry VIII. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520011304. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Scarisbrick, J. J. (1997). Henry VIII (2nd ed.). Yale University Press. ISBN 0300071582. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Smith, Lacey Baldwin (1971). Henry VIII: the Mask of Royalty. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Starkey, David (2003). Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII. ISBN 0-06-000550-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Stöber, Karen (2007). Late Medieval Monasteries and Their Patrons: England and Wales, C.1300–1540. Boydell Press. ISBN 9781843832843. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Thomas, Andrea (2005). Princelie Majestie. Birlinn. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Thurley, Simon (1994). The Royal Palaces of Tudor England. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Thurley, Simon (1991). "Palaces for a Nouveau Riche King". History Today. 41 (6). {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Trollope, William (1874). A practical and historical commentary on the liturgy and ritual of the Church of England: with examination questions. J. Hall. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Weir, Alison (1991). The Six Wives of Henry VIII. ISBN 0-8021-3683-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Weir, Alison (2002). Henry VIII: The King and His Court. Random House Digital, Inc. ISBN 034543708X. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Whitley, Catrina Banks; Kramer, Kyra (2010). "A New Explanation for the Reproductive Woes and Midlife Decline of Henry VIII". The Historical Journal. 52 (4): 827. doi:10.1017/S0018246X10000452. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Wilkinson, Josephine (2009). Mary Boleyn: the True Story of Henry VIII's Favourite Mistress (2nd ed.). Amberley Publishing. ISBN 0300071582. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Williams, James (2005). "Hunting and the Royal Image of Henry VIII". Sport in History. 25 (1): 41–59. doi:10.1080/17460260500073082. ISSN 1746-0263. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Williams, Neville (1971). Henry VIII and his Court. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Further reading

Biographical

• Bowle, John (1964). Henry VIII: a Study of Power in Action. Little, Brown and Company.
• Erickson, Carolly (1984). Mistress Anne: the Exceptional Life of Anne Boleyn.
• Cressy, David (1982). "Spectacle and Power: Apollo and Solomon at the Court of Henry VIII". History Today. 32 (Oct): 16–22. ISSN 0018-2753.
• Gardner, James (1903). "Henry VIII". Cambridge Modern History. Vol. 2.
• Graves, Michael (2003). Henry VIII'.
• Ives, E. W (2004). "Henry VIII (1491–1547)". The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press.
• Rex, Richard (1993). Henry VIII and the English Reformation.
• Ridley, Jasper (1985). Henry VIII.
• Smith, Lacey Baldwin (1971). Henry VIII: the Mask of Royalty.
• Starkey, David (2002). The Reign of Henry VIII: Personalities and Politics. Random House. ISBN 9780099445104.
• Starkey, David; Doran, Susan (2009). Henry VIII: Man and Monarch. British Library Publishing Division. ISBN 9780712350259.
• Tytler, Patrick Fraser (1837). "Life of King Henry the Eighth" (Document). Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd. {{cite document}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |edition= (help); Unknown parameter |accessdate= ignored (help)
• Weir, Alison (1996). The Children of Henry VIII.

Scholarly studies

• Bernard, G. W. (1998). "The Making of Religious Policy, 1533–1546: Henry VIII and the Search for the Middle Way". Historical Journal. 41 (2): 321–349. ISSN 0018-246x. JSTOR 2640109. {{cite journal}}: Check |issn= value (help)
• Bernard, G. W. War, Taxation, and Rebellion in Early Tudor England: Henry VIII, Wolsey, and the Amicable Grant of 1525. (1986). 164 pp
• Coleman, Christoper, and David Starkey, eds. Revolution Reassessed: Revision in the History of Tudor Government and Administration (1986)
• Fielder, Martha Anne. "Iconographic Themes in Portraits of Henry VIII." PhD dissertation Texas Christian U. 1985. DAI 1985 46(6): 1424-A. DA8517256 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Fox, Alistair, and John Guy, eds. Reassessing the Henrician Age: Humanism, Politics and Reform 1500–1550 (1986)
• Head, David M. "Henry VIII's Scottish Policy: a Reassessment." Scottish Historical Review 1982 61(1): 1–24. Issn: 0036-9241
• MacCulloch, Diarmaid, ed. The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy, and Piety. (1995). essays by scholars
• Marshall, Peter. "(Re)defining the English Reformation," Journal of British Studies July 2009, Vol. 48 Issue 3, pp 564–85
• Mackie, J. D. The Earlier Tudors, 1485–1558 (1952), a political survey of the era online edition
• Moorhouse, Geoffrey. Great Harry's Navy: How Henry VIII Gave England Seapower (2007)
• Moorhouse, Geoffrey. The Last Divine Office: Henry VIII and the Dissolution of the Monasteries (2009)
• Slavin, Arthur J., ed. Henry VIII and the English Reformation (1968), readings by historians. online edition
• Smith, H. Maynard. Henry VIII and the Reformation (1948) online edition
• Wagner, John A. Bosworth Field to Bloody Mary: An Encyclopedia of the Early Tudors (2003). ISBN 1-57356-540-7.
• Walker, Greg. Writing under Tyranny: English Literature and the Henrician Reformation. (2005).

Historiography and memory

• Head, David M. "'If a Lion Knew His Own Strength': the Image of Henry VIII and His Historians." International Social Science Review 1997 72(3–4): 94–109. Issn: 0278-2308 Fulltext: Ebsco
• Hoak, Dale. "Politics, Religion and the English Reformation, 1533–1547: Some Problems and Issues." History Compass 2005 3 (Britain and Ireland): 7 pp Issn: 1478-0542 Fulltext: Blackwell Synergy
• Ives, Eric. "Will the Real Henry VIII Please Stand Up?" History Today 2006 56(2): 28–36. Issn: 0018-2753 Fulltext: Ebsco
• Rankin, Mark. 'Imagining Henry VIII: Cultural Memory and the Tudor King, 1535–1625'. PhD Dissrertation, Ohio State. U. Dissertation Abstracts International 2007 68(5): 1987-A. DA3264565, 403p.

Primary sources

• Williams, C. M. A. H. English Historical Documents, 1485–1558 (1996)
• Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII: preserved in the Public Record Office, the British Museum and elsewhere, volume 1 edited by John S. Brewer, Robert H. Brodie, James Gairdner. (1862); full text online vol 1; full text vol 3 See also Letters & Papers, Henry VIII, 21 vols., at British History Online,
• Nicolas, Nicholas Harris, ed., The Privy Purse Expences of Henry VIII, 1529–1532, Pickering, London (1827)

External links

• Quotations related to Henry VIII at Wikiquote
• Media related to Henry VIII of England at Wikimedia Commons

• Martin Luther to Henry VIII, 1 September 1525
• Henry VIII to Martin Luther. August, 1526
• Henry VIII to Frederic, John, and George, Dukes of Saxony. January. 20, 1523 re: Luther.
• Free scores by Henry VIII at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
• Free scores by Henry VIII in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)

Anglican Communion
Part of a series on Anglicanism
Organisation
Archbishop of Canterbury Vacant Anglican Communion history Anglican Communion Primates' Meetings (primates) Lambeth Conference (2022) Anglican Consultative Council Bishops Episcopal polity
Theology
Christian theology Father Son Holy Spirit Doctrine Thirty-nine Articles Books of Homilies Caroline Divines Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral Sacraments Mary Saints Ecumenism Ordination of women Homosexuality Windsor Report
Liturgy and worship
Book of Common Prayer Morning / Evening Prayer Eucharist Liturgical year Biblical Canon Churchmanship High Low Central Broad
Other topics
Monasticism Music Christian prayer Christian art
Christianity portal
v t e

v t e Dukes of Cornwall
Edward (1337–1376) Richard (1376–1377) Henry (1399–1413) Henry (1421–1422) Edward (1453–1471) Richard (1460; disputed) Edward (1470–1483) Edward (1483–1484) Arthur (1486–1502) Henry (1502–1509) Henry (1511) Edward (1537–1547) Henry Frederick (1603–1612) Charles (1612–1625) Charles (1630–1649) James (1688–1701/2) George (1714–1727) Frederick (1727–1751) George (1762–1820) Albert Edward (1841–1901) George (1901–1910) Edward (1910–1936) Charles (1952–2022) William (2022–present)
Cornwall Portal

Template:Persondata Template:Link GA Template:Link GA Template:Link FA Template:Link FA Template:Link GA

• Use dmy dates from September 2011
• Henry VIII of England
• 1491 births
• 1547 deaths
• Annulment
• Dukes of York
• Dukes of Cornwall
• Earls Marshal
• English Anglicans
• English composers
• English monarchs
• Converts to Anglicanism from Roman Catholicism
• English people of Welsh descent
• Former Roman Catholics
• Founders of English schools and colleges
• House of Tudor
• Knights of the Garter
• Knights of the Golden Fleece
• Lords Warden of the Cinque Ports
• Male Shakespearean characters
• Military leaders of the Italian Wars
• People excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church
• People from Greenwich
• English pretenders to the French throne
• Princes of Wales
• Recipients of the Golden Rose
• Renaissance composers
• Burials at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle
• 16th-century monarchs in Europe