Henry VIII

For the play, see Henry VIII (play). For the opera, see Henry VIII (opera).

Henry VIII
Reign	22 April1509–28 January1547
Coronation	24 June 1509
Predecessor	Henry VII
Successor	Edward VI
Burial	St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle
Issue	Mary I Elizabeth I Edward VI
House	Tudor
Father	Henry VII
Mother	Elizabeth of York

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. He was the second monarch of the Tudor dynasty, succeeding his father, Henry VII. Henry VIII is famous for having been married six times, and ultimately breaking with Rome. He wielded perhaps the most untrammelled power of any English monarch, and brought about the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the union of England and Wales.

Many significant pieces of legislation were enacted during Henry VIII's reign. They included the several Acts which severed the English Church from the Roman Catholic Church and established Henry 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 royal tennis. He was also an accomplished musician, author, and poet; his best known piece of music is Pastyme 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 in Cambridge and Westminster Abbey in London—the existing buildings improved were often properties confiscated from Wolsey (such as Christ Church, Oxford, Hampton Court Palace, palace of Whitehall) and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Early life

The future Henry VIII was born at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich in 1491

Born at the Palace of Placentia at Greenwich, Henry VIII was the third child of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. His maternal grandparents were King Edward IV of England and Queen Elizabeth Woodville. Only three of Henry VIII's six siblings: Arthur (the Prince of Wales), Margaret and Mary, survived infancy. His Lancastrian father acquired the throne by right of conquest, his army defeating and killing the last Plantagenet King Richard III, but further solidified his hold by marrying Elizabeth, the daughter of the Yorkist King Edward IV. In 1493, the young 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, though still a child. Young Henry was given a first-rate education from leading tutors (along the way becoming fluent in Latin, French, and Spanish) albeit in anticipation of a career in the Church, not as monarch, a role reserved for his older brother, Prince Arthur. Upon the sudden death of Arthur from plague in 1501, however, Henry became Prince of Wales and heir to the throne.

Despite this blow, Henry VII refused to give up his efforts to seal a marital alliance between England and Spain through a marriage between Arthur and Catherine of Aragon, youngest surviving heir of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile. In place of the dead Arthur, King Henry now offered to Spain his surviving son, Henry. Since the Prince of Wales sought to marry his brother's widow, he first had to obtain a dispensation from the Pope from the impediment of affinity. Catherine maintained that her first marriage was never consummated; if she were correct, no papal dispensation would have been necessary, but merely a dissolution of ratified marriage. Nonetheless, both the English and Spanish parties agreed on the necessity of a papal dispensation for the removal of all doubts regarding the legitimacy of the marriage. Due to the impatience of Catherine's mother, Queen Isabella, the Pope granted his dispensation in a Papal Bull. Thus, fourteen months after her husband's death, Catherine found herself betrothed to his brother, the Prince of Wales. By 1505, however, Henry VII lost interest in an alliance with Spain, and the young Prince of Wales was forced to declare that his betrothal had been arranged without his assent.

Continued diplomatic maneuvering over the fate of the proposed mariage lingered until the death of Henry VII in 1509. The young king, able to decide the issue for himself without a regent by virtue of having just turned eighteen, decided to proceed with the marriage to Catherine, whom he married on June 11, two weeks before their formal coronation.

His Early Reign

Henry proved by nearly all accounts to be a popular and energetic monarch at the outset of his reign. Gifted not only with his father's considerable intelligence and erudition but also charm and athletic ability (if not his father's frugality), Henry soon transformed his court into a leading center of humanism in Western Europe by attracting and promoting talented, men of the new learning, such as Thomas Wolsey and Sir Thomas More, to key positions in his government. The new men were generally from middle class backgrounds and as such complemented Henry's general policy of advancing the gentry to offset the power of the old nobility, still weakened from the War of the Roses. Left with a large surplus in the Treasury by his Father, Henry lavished funds on arts and learning and advancing his new favorites. Even more was to be spent in carving out a prominent new role in European affairs.

The first such effort in this direction offered itself in 1512, when Henry was able to join the Holy League, which then included the Papal States, Spain and Venice, in alliance against Francis I of France. The ancient Anglo-French rivalry was intensified by the accession of Francis, who now competed with Henry for prestige as a fellow gifted, magnetic young dynast. Few tangible military results obtained from Henry's subsequent continental campaign, but Henry's forces were able to add yet another entry to the long list of resounding victories over Scottish arms at Flodden in 1513. Deserted by Spain's King Ferdinand and unable to count on continued energetic support from Pope Julius II's successor, Leo X, Henry finally made peace with Francis, with a round of diplomacy culminating in the extravagent meeting of the "Field of the Cloth of Gold" near Calais, France, in 1520. Results from the conference proved as fleeting as the Holy League war, however. In the end, it proved merely an expensive and glittering interlude in a larger, three way struggle for power between Henry, Francis, and the new Spanish king, Charles of Hapsburg - whose power was enormously augmented by his election as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1519. Aided by his adoit Lord Chancellor, Thomas (now Cardinal) Wolsey, Henry soon resurrected the Spanish alliance with Charles but ultimately played a limited role in the ensuing war. Francis spent the next several years contesting Charles for control of Italy, losing Milan and, more decisively, faced defeat and capture by Charles at Pavia in 1525. Faced with the age-old papal nightmare of imperial dominance of Italy come again to life, Pope Clement VII solicited Henry to join a new alliance against the emperor, the League of Cognac.

Henry had ample religious as well as growing personal motives for a closer alliance with Rome. His early theological education remained to inculcate a deep interest in religious issues throughout Henry's reign, and he quickly carved out a record as a staunch supporter of the Catholic Church in the controversies of the age, earning a golden rose from the Pope as early as 1510. Henry capped these efforts with a blistering attack on Martin Luther, Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, a tract vindicating the Church's dogmatic teaching on the sacraments, the sacrifice of the mass,and papal supremacy - all doctrines which had come under assault by Reformer of Wittenburg. Henry's tract earned him the honorific title Defensor Fidei (Defender of the Faith) from Pope Leo X, a title which all subsequent monarchs of England have retained.

This theological prestige, coupled with Henry's papal military alliance, increasingly entered Henry's dynastic calculations in 1526-27 as it became increasingly clear that his wife, Queen Catherine, was unlikely to provide a male heir to the Tudor throne. Now over 40, Catherine was considered unlikely to mother any sequels to a disappointing maternal record - three short-lived sons, a miscarriage, and one surviving child, Princess Mary (later Mary I of England). Unwilling to accept a female heir yet convinced of his continuing ability to sire healthy offspring (perhaps thanks to reputed illegitimate issue from his mistresses), Henry increasingly pondered the possibility of obtaining Church sanction for invalidating his marriage to Catherine - whose Spanish birth and connections were increasingly a liability in Henry's anti-imperial foreign policy.

Religious upheaval

Main article: English Reformation

King Henry's increasing impatience with 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 in 1525. Henry ordered Cardinal Wolsey to begin formal proceedings with Rome to annul their marriage, sending the king's secretary, William Knight, to Rome to peititon for a declaration of nullity of Henry's marriage with Catherine on the grounds that her brief marriage to Henry's dead brother Arthur had been consummated. Pope Clement VII was highly reluctant to grant the king’s request, however, for fear that it would anger Charles V, who was Catherine’s nephew. Clement's reluctance was only magnified after the sack of Rome in 1527, a disaster which left him effectively Charles's prisoner. Wolsey's efforts to lobby for the divorce were unavailing. These failures, concomittant with his growing estrangment from Boleyn, finally led to his dismissal as Chancellor by King Henry in 1529. Wolsey's replacement - Sir Thomas More - seemed an even less likely candidate to secure Henry's desired end, given his scruples about the suit and devout loyalty to Rome.

At the same time, however, Henry discovered and promoted other men of a different temper. Chief among these were two gifted young clerics, Thomas Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell. It was Cromwell who first suggested in 1529 that Henry should consult the great universities of Europe for an opinion about the validity of his marriage. The project, abetted by apparent bribes and favors, achieved the hoped-for success, with favorable opinions offered to parliament in 1530. Cranmer was rewarded with a position as ambassador to the imperial court, and shortly thereafter, appointed to replace William Warham as Archbishop of Canterbury upon the latter's death. Cromwell, meanwhile, earned a position as chief advisor to the king with his even more daring - and fateful - proposal that Henry consider abolishing papal supremacy and declare himself head of the Church in England. Both Cranmer and Cromwell were proteges of Boleyn, who shared her growing sympathies with Protestant doctrines taking shape on the continent - and soon had a chance to put them in practice. Threats of withheld papal tithes having failed to move Clement VII to action, Henry finally moved to decisive action: he secretly married Boleyn in January 1533; and shortly thereafter had his allies in parliament pass a statute forbidding further appeals to Rome in April, 1533. 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 (latter 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 he was not officially excommunicated until 1538 by Pope Paul III). Considerable religious upheaval followed. Urged by Thomas 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 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 1534. Catherine's daughter, the Lady Mary, was declared illegitimate, and Anne's issue were declared next in the line of succession. Included in this was, most notably, a clause repudiating "any foreign authority, prince or potentate". All adults were required to acknowledge the Act's provisions by oath; those who refused to do so were liable 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.

Opposition to Henry's religious policies was quickly suppressed. 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. Cromwell, for whom was created the post of "Vicegerent in Spirituals", was authorised 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, most notably in the Pilgrimage of Grace, a large uprising in the north of England, in October of the same year. After negotiations with the Pilgrimage's leaders broke down, Henry ordered its leaders, including its chief, Robert Aske, arrested and executed for treason. Dissolution of the remaining, larger monasteries followed a subsequent authorizing act by parliament in April 1539 (See main article: Dissolution of the monasteries).

These initiatives, done in some degree at the behest of Queen Anne, had to reach their culmination despite her fall from Henry's favor and subsequent execution. After the Princess Elizabeth's birth, Queen Anne had two pregnancies that ended in either miscarriage or stillbirth. Henry VIII, meanwhile, had begun to turn his attentions to another lady of his court, Jane Seymour. Perhaps encouraged by Thomas Cromwell, Henry had Anne arrested on charges of using witchcraft to trap Henry 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. Lord Rochford was beheaded soon after the trial ended; the four others implicated had their sentences commuted from hanging, drawing and quartering to decapitation. Anne was also beheaded soon thereafter. At her final Mass, she publicly swore to her innocence in the presence of a priest and various witnesses.

Birth of a Prince

Only days after Anne's execution in 1536, Henry married Jane Seymour. 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. The King was granted the power to further determine the line of succession in his will. Jane gave birth to a son, the Prince Edward, in 1537, and died two weeks later of puerperal fever. After Jane's death, the entire court mourned with Henry for some time. Henry also considered her to be his only "true" wife, being the only one who had given him the male heir he so desperately sought.

Major Acts

At about the same time as his marriage to Jane Seymour, Henry granted his assent to the Laws in Wales Act 1535, which legally annexed Wales, uniting England and Wales into one nation. The Act provided for the sole use of English in official proceedings in Wales, inconveniencing the numerous speakers of the Welsh language.

Henry continued with his persecution of his religious opponents. In 1536, an uprising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace broke out in Northern England. To appease the rebellious Roman Catholics, Henry agreed to allow Parliament to address their concerns. Furthermore, he agreed to grant a general pardon to all those involved. He kept neither promise, and a second uprising occurred in 1537. As a result, the leaders of the rebellion were convicted of treason and executed. In 1538, Henry sanctioned the destruction of shrines to Roman Catholic Saints. In 1539, England's remaining monasteries were all dissolved, and their property transferred to the Crown. As a reward for his role, Thomas Cromwell was created Earl of Essex. 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's mistresses

Historians are only sure of the names of two of Henry's mistresses: Bessie Blount and Mary Boleyn (Anne's sister). There is also evidence to link him to several other women such as: Jane Popicourt, in 1510, a Frenchwoman at the court and a mistress of the kidnapped Duc de Longueville; Lady Anne Stafford, in 1514, sister of the duke of Buckingham and wife of Lord Hastings; and Margaret (Madge) Shelton, in 1534-5, cousin of Anne Boleyn. There are also references to a lady he housed in a manor house (unknown year), an 'unknown lady' in 1534 and a lady from Tournai, in his excursions into France in 1513.

Henry's innovative court

Henry was the quintessential Renaissance Man, and his court was a centre of scholarly and artistic innovation. The discovery of America or "The New World" set the stage for Henry's innovative attitude. Henry was among the first European rulers to learn about the true geography of the world, a revolutionary discovery. In 1507, the cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann published the first "modern" map of the world, the first map to accurately depict the American Continent and a separate Atlantic and Pacific Ocean, a radical thought for the time. This discovery created an atmosphere of exploration and discovery in the arts and sciences which Henry took full advantage of in his court and daily life.

Later years

Henry was shown the above picture of Anne of Cleves.

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, 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.

In December 1541, Culpeper and Dereham were executed. Catherine was condemned not by a trial, but by an Act of Attainder passed by Parliament. The Act recited the evidence against the Queen, and Henry would have been obliged to listen to the entire text before granting the Royal Assent. Because "the repetition of so grievous a Story and the recital of so infamous a crime" in the King's presence "might reopen a Wound already closing in the Royal Bosom", a special clause permitting Commissioners to grant the Royal Assent on the King's behalf was inserted in the Act. This method of granting the Royal Assent had never been used before, but, in later reigns, it came to replace the traditional personal appearance of the Sovereign in Parliament.

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". 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 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, was terminated by that of Henry Earl of Surrey, in January, 1547. According to Holinshed, the number of executions in this reign amounted to 72,000.

Death and succession

King Henry VIII died in the Palace of Whitehall in 1547

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 congenital 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 children sat on the English throne, and were his only descendants.

It is suggested that Henry VIII had another child, Henry Fitzroy by a mistress, Elizabeth (Bessie) Blount. Though never officially acknowledged by Henry VIII, the young boy was made Duke of Richmond in June 1525 in what some thought was one stop on the path to legitimatizing him. This never occurred, however, and Fitzroy never acceded to the throne. In 1533, he married Mary Howard of the Norfolk Howards. Henry died only 3 years later in 1536 without any successors.

Under the Act of Succession 1544, Henry's only surviving 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 sixteen executors to serve on a council of regency until Edward reached the age of eighteen. The executors chose Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford, Jane Seymour's elder brother, to be Lord Protector of the Realm. In the event of a death without children, Edward was to be succeeded (in default of his issue) by Henry VIII's daughter by Catherine of Aragon, the Princess Mary. If Princess Mary did not have children, she was to be succeeded by his daughter by Anne Boleyn, Princess Elizabeth. Finally, if Princess Elizabeth also did not have children, she was to be followed by the descendants of Henry VIII's deceased sister, Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk.

Legacy

Together with Alfred the Great, Henry is traditionally called one of the founders of the Royal Navy. There are good reasons for this - his reign featured some naval warfare and, more significantly, large royal investment in shipbuilding (including a few spectacular 'great ships' such as the Mary Rose), dockyards (such as HMNB Portsmouth) and naval innovations (eg the use of cannon onboard ship - although archers were still deployed on medieval-style forecastles and bowcastles as the ship's primary armament on large ships, or co-armament where cannon were used). However, it is a misnomer since Henry did not bequeath to his immediate successors a 'navy' in the sense of a formalised organisation with structures, ranks, formalised munitioning structures etc, but only in the sense of a set of ships (albeit some spectacular ones). Elizabeth I still had to cobble together a set of privately owned ships to fight off the Spanish Armada (which was consisted of about 130 war ships and converted merchant ships) and in the former, formal sense the modern British navy, the Royal Navy, is largely a product of the Anglo-Dutch naval rivalry of the seventeenth century.

By his break with Rome, Henry incurred the threat of a large-scale French or Spanish invasion. To guard against this he strengthened existing coastal defence fortresses (such as Dover Castle and, also at Dover, Moat Bulwark and Archcliffe Fort - he personally visited for a few months to supervise, as is commemorated in the modern exhibition in Dover Castle's keep there). He also built a chain of new 'castles' (in fact, large bastioned and garrisoned gun batteries) along Britain's southern coast from East Anglia to Cornwall, largely built of material gained from the demolition of monasteries. These were also known as Henry VIII's Device Forts.

In 2002, Henry VIII placed 40th in a BBC-sponsored poll on the 100 Greatest Britons.

In popular culture

Film

There have been many films about Henry and his court, notably The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), starring Charles Laughton, whose performance as Henry earned him an Academy Award, and The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1973), starring Keith Michell, based on an earlier TV series (see below). Richard Burton and Geneviève Bujold were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Actress for their roles as Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969). Henry, played by Robert Shaw, also appears as one of the main characters in the multiple-Oscar-winning movie about Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons (1966), based upon Robert Bolt's play of the same name. Also, Henry VIII (again played by Charles Laughton) was a featured character in a movie about the early years of Elizabeth I, Young Bess (1953).

TV – documentary

In documentary, the leading academic on Henry, David Starkey, produced the Channel 4 series Henry VIII and The Six Wives of Henry VIII - the latter gave one episode each to Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, one jointly to Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, and another jointly to Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr. Henry also has an episode to himself in the more recent series Monarchy.

Style and arms

Henry VIII was the first English monarch to regularly use the style "Majesty", though the alternatives "Highness" and "Grace" were also used from time to time.

Several 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 attacking Martin Luther and defending Catholicism, 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". After the breach with Rome, Pope Paul III rescinded the grant of the title "Defender of the Faith", but an Act of Parliament declared that it remained valid.

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" 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 because Ireland had originally been given to the English King Henry II by Pope Adrian IV in the twelfth century as a feudal territory under papal overlordship. The meeting of Irish Parliament that proclaimed Henry VIII 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.

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 'loyall'. His emblem was the Tudor rose and the Beaufort portcullis.

Henry VIII'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).

Issue

Name	Birth	Death	Notes
By Catherine of Aragon (married June 11 1509 annulled May 23, 1533; she died January 6 1536)
Miscarried daughter	January 31 1510	January 31 1510
Henry, Duke of Cornwall	1 January 1511	22 February 1511
Unnamed son	November 1513	November 1513
Henry, Duke of Cornwall	December 1514	December 1514
Queen Mary I	18 February 1516	13 September 1558	married 1554, Philip II of Spain; no issue
Unnamed child	November 10 1518	November 10 1518
By Anne Boleyn (married January 25 1533 annulled 1536; she was executed May 19 1536)
Queen Elizabeth I	7 September 1533	24 March 1603	never married, no issue
"Henry Tudor"	1534	1534	Historians are uncertain if the child was born and died shortly after birth, or if it was a miscarriage. The affair was hushed up and we cannot even be certain of the child's sex.
"Edward Tudor"	29 January 1536	29 January 1536
By Jane Seymour (married May 30 1537; she died October 25 1537)
King Edward VI	12 October 1537	6 July 1553
By Anne of Cleves (married January 6 1540 annulled 1540; she died July 17 1557)
no issue
By Catherine Howard (married July 28 1540 annulled 1541; she was executed February 13 1542)
no issue
By Catherine Parr (married July 12 1543; died September 5 1548)
no issue
By Elizabeth Blount
Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset	15 June 1519	18 June 1536	illegitimate; married 1533, the Lady Mary Howard; no issue
By The Lady Mary Boleyn (most historians now reject the legend that the following two children were fathered by Henry VIII)
Catherine Carey	c. 1524	15 January 1568	reputed illegitimate; married Sir Francis Knollys; had issue
Henry Carey, Baron Hunsdon	4 March 1526	23 July 1596	reputed illegitimate; married 1545, Ann Morgan; had issue
By Mary Berkeley
Sir Thomas Stucley	c. 1525	August 4 1578	reputed illegitimate; married Anne Curtis; had issue
Sir John Perrot	c. 1527	September 1592	reputed illegitimate; married (1) Ann Cheyney and (2) Jane Pruet; had issue
By Joan Dyngley
Etheldreda Malte	c. 1529	aft. 1555	reputed illegitimate; married 1546–1548 to John Harrington; no known issue

* Note: Of Henry VIII's reputedly illegitimate children, only the Duke of Richmond and Somerset was formally acknowledged by the King. The paternity of his other alleged illegitimate children is not fully established. There may also have been other illegitimate children born to short-term unidentified mistresses.

Trivia

• Technically, Henry was only married twice. Four of his marriages were annulled which means they never took place.
• His court jester was named Will Somers.
• The only surviving piece of clothing worn by Henry VIII is a cap of maintenance, awarded to the Mayor of Waterford, along with a bearing sword, in 1536. It currently resides in the Waterford Museum of Treasures.
• It is widely believed (but almost certainly wrongly) that he composed the song Greensleeves for his lover and future Queen, Anne Boleyn.

See also

• Royal Navy
• History of the Royal Navy
• The Tudors and the Royal Navy

References

• Bowle, John. Henry VIII: A Study of Power in Action Little, Brown, 1964.
• Bryant, M. Private Lives. Cassell, 2001.
• Eakins, L. E. (2004). "The Six Wives of Henry VIII".
• Farrow, John V. The Story of Thomas More. Collins, 1956.
• "Henry VIII". (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed. London: Cambridge University Press.
• Jokinen, A. (2004). "Henry VIII (1491–1547)".
• Moorhouse, Geoffrey. Great Harry's Navy: How Henry VIII Gave England Seapower
• Public Broadcasting Service. (2003). "The Six Wives of Henry VIII".
• Thurston, H. (1910). "Henry VIII". The Catholic Encyclopedia. (Vol. VII). New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Vallieres, S. (1999). "Tudor Succession Problems"
• Wagner, John A. (2003). "Bosworth Field to Bloody Mary: An Encyclopedia of the Early Tudors." (Greenwood). ISBN 1-57356-540-7.
• Weir, Alison. The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Bodley Head, 1991.
• Ask Ireland: Waterford Museum of Treasures Collection: Cap of Maintenance

Further reading

• J S Brewer; Robert Henry Brodie; James Gairdner. Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, preserved in the Public Record Office, the British Museum, and elsewhere. 1965 2d ed. (TannerRitchie Publishing)
• Childs, Jessie. Henry VIII's Last Victim: The Life and Times of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. London: Jonathan Cape, 2006 (hardback, ISBN 0-224-06325-1).
  • Reviewed by C.J. Sansom in The Guardian, October 21, 2006.
• Luther Martin. Luther's Correspondence and Other Contemporary Letters, 2 vols., tr.and ed. by Preserved Smith, Charles Michael Jacobs, The Lutheran Publication Society, Philadelphia, Pa. 1913, 1918. vol. 1 (1507–1521) and vol. 2 (1521–1530) from Google Books. Reprint of Vol.1, Wipf & Stock Publishers (March 2006). ISBN 1-59752-601-0
• Weir, Alison. Henry VIII: The King and His Court. Ballantine Books, 2001.
• Williams, Neville. Henry VIII and His Court. Macmillan, 1971.

External links

• Luminarium: King Henry VIII Life, works, essays, study resources
• Henry VIII and his wifes
• Henry VIII World History Database
• Buehler, Edward. (2004). "Tudor and Elizabethan Portraits".
• Castelli, Jorge H. (2004). "Henry VIII".
• Stevens, Garry. (2003). "Henry VIII: Intrigue in the Tudor Court".
• Perrott, Terry. (2004). "Sir John Perrott".
• Illustrated history of Henry VIII.
• Henry VIII at Find A Grave
• Martin Luther to Henry VIII, September 1, 1525
• Henry VIII to Martin Luther. August, 1526
• Henry VIII to Frederic, John, and George, Dukes of Saxony. January. 20, 1523 re: Luther.

Template:Persondata