Henry VIII (1491-1547), a king of England, greatly influenced English history by separating the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church. Henry is often remembered for his pleasure-seeking lifestyle, his cruelty, and his six wives. However, he was well educated and a capable ruler.
During his reign, Henry built up a strong fleet of fighting ships. He also presided over a major government reorganization that helped set the stage for England’s development into a leading world power. This reorganization included the establishment of a bureaucracy that increased royal control over the countryside and border areas. Henry also involved England in several expensive wars with France and Scotland.
Henry was born on June 28, 1491, in Greenwich, near London. His father, Henry VII, was the first of the Tudor family of English rulers. Henry VIII was 17 years old when he came to the throne in 1509. One of his first acts as king was to marry his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon. Catherine bore Henry six children, but only one lived—a daughter who later reigned as Mary I. Henry wanted a male heir in order to help ensure that the Tudor family would continue to control the throne and to prevent any fighting over who would succeed him. He turned his attentions to a maid of honor at court, Anne Boleyn. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Henry’s chief minister, asked Pope Clement VII to annul (cancel) the king’s marriage. But Wolsey could not get the pope to do so, and Henry dismissed Wolsey in 1529.
The king then denied that the pope had authority over England. He secretly married Anne Boleyn in January 1533. In March of that year, Parliament passed the Act in Restraint of Appeals, which declared that England was independent of all foreign authorities, including the pope, and that the king was England’s highest judicial authority. On the basis of that act, a church commission headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, declared the marriage of Henry and Catherine to be without legal force. In June 1533, Anne was crowned queen.
At Henry’s insistence, Parliament passed additional acts that completed the English church’s break with the Roman Catholic Church. In 1534, the Act of Supremacy recognized the Church of England as a separate institution and the king as its supreme head. In the years that followed, Henry dissolved the monasteries in England, primarily to obtain their wealth.
The annulment did not produce a stable married life for Henry. In 1533, Anne bore him a daughter who later reigned as Elizabeth I. Then in 1536, the king had Anne beheaded on a charge of adultery. Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour, died shortly after the birth of a son who later ruled as King Edward VI.
At the urging of his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, Henry married a German princess, Anne of Cleves, in 1540. But Cromwell was disgraced and executed, and Henry had his marriage to Anne annulled. The king then married Catherine Howard, who, in 1542, was convicted of adultery and executed. Henry’s sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, outlived him after he died on Jan. 28, 1547.
