Kinlight · The British Royal Line

King Henry VIII

1491 – 1547 · Generation XXII · King of England and Ireland (r. 1509–1547) · House of Tudor

Portrait of King Henry VIII

Henry VIII is remembered for his six marriages and for the break with Rome that created the Church of England. He was born at Greenwich Palace on 28 June 1491, the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. As a younger son he was not raised to be king, but he received a first-rate education and became fluent in Latin and French. When his elder brother, Arthur, died in 1502 at the age of fifteen, Henry became heir, and in 1504 he was created Prince of Wales.

He succeeded his father in April 1509, aged seventeen, and on 11 June married Catherine of Aragon, his brother’s widow, under a papal dispensation. They were crowned together in Westminster Abbey on 24 June. The young king was tall, athletic and accomplished. He jousted and hunted, played the lute and the virginals, and composed music, including the song “Pastime with Good Company”. One contemporary reported that he spoke good French, Latin and Spanish. In 1521 his book defending the seven sacraments against Martin Luther earned him the title Defender of the Faith from Pope Leo X, and his successors still bear it. Thomas Wolsey, made Lord Chancellor and a cardinal in 1515, ran much of the government for him until 1529.

Henry wanted glory in France. In 1513 he led an army across the Channel and won the Battle of the Spurs, while at home an English army, with Queen Catherine overseeing the defence, defeated the Scots at Flodden, where James IV was killed. In 1520 he and Francis I of France spent two weeks trying to outshine each other at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, near Calais. He also enlarged the navy to around fifty ships, among them the Mary Rose.

Catherine had at least six pregnancies, but only one child, Mary, born in 1516, survived infancy. By 1527 Henry had persuaded himself that his marriage to his brother’s widow was cursed, and he had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn. Pope Clement VII, perhaps under pressure from Catherine’s nephew, the Emperor Charles V, would not grant an annulment, and Wolsey fell from power in 1529 for failing to obtain one. Henry married Anne in secret, and in May 1533 Thomas Cranmer, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, declared the marriage to Catherine void. Anne was crowned on 1 June and gave birth to Elizabeth that September. The pope excommunicated Henry, and Parliament passed a series of acts cutting the English church off from Rome, culminating in the Act of Supremacy of 1534, which made the king Supreme Head of the Church of England. Sir Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher were executed in 1535 after refusing to accept his supremacy.

Under the direction of Thomas Cromwell, the monasteries were dissolved from 1536 onwards, and by 1540 some 800 religious houses had been closed and their lands and wealth taken by the Crown. The shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury was dismantled in 1538. Anger at the changes helped provoke the Pilgrimage of Grace, a great rising in the north in 1536, which Henry ended with promises of pardon and then followed with about two hundred executions.

Anne Boleyn gave him no son. In May 1536 she was condemned for treasonous adultery on thin evidence and beheaded on Tower Green. Less than a fortnight later Henry married Jane Seymour, who gave birth to the future Edward VI in October 1537 and died twelve days later. His fourth marriage, to Anne of Cleves in January 1540, was never consummated and was annulled that July. Cromwell, who had promoted the match, was executed, and on the same day Henry married the young Catherine Howard. She was beheaded in 1542 for adultery. His sixth wife, Catherine Parr, whom he married in 1543, helped reconcile him with his daughters and outlived him.

A jousting accident in January 1536 left him with a leg wound that never healed, and in later life he grew enormously overweight and increasingly suspicious and tyrannical. He spent heavily on renewed war with France and took Boulogne in 1544, but the cost, met partly by debasing the coinage, left the treasury exhausted. He died at the Palace of Whitehall on 28 January 1547, aged 55, and was buried beside Jane Seymour in St George’s Chapel, Windsor. All three of his surviving legitimate children reigned in turn, as Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

Place in the family

  • King Henry VIII was the youngest of 3 children of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York recorded in this archive.

Images

One of 11 people of House of Tudor (1485–1603) in this archive. Welsh in origin and only a handful of monarchs long — it broke with Rome and ended with Elizabeth I.

Line of descent: Owen Tudor → Edmund Tudor → King Henry VII → King Henry VIII.

Read more on Wikipedia

Parents

Siblings

Partners

Children

Life

  • 1491 — Born
  • 1509 — Married Catherine of Aragon
  • 1509 — Henry accedes to the throne on the death of his father, Henry VII.
  • 1509 — Henry marries Catherine of Aragon, daughter of the Spanish King and Queen, and widow of his elder brother, Arthur
  • 1511 — Henry joins the Holy League against the French. All men under the age of 40 are required to practise archery.
  • 1520 — Henry holds peace talks with Francis I of France at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, but fails to get support against Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire.
  • 1527 — Henry seeks permission from the Pope to divorce Catherine of Aragon but is refused.
  • 1529 — Sir Thomas More becomes Chancellor. Henry starts to cut ties with the Church of Rome.
  • 1533 — Separated from Catherine of Aragon
  • 1533 — Married Anne Boleyn
  • 1533 — Thomas Cranmer is appointed Archbishop of Canterbury and annuls Henry’s 24-year marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
  • 1533 — Henry marries Anne Boleyn.
  • 1533 — Pope Clement VII excommunicates Henry
  • 1534 — The Act of Supremacy is passed, establishing Henry as head of the Church of England.
  • 1535 — Sir Thomas More is executed after refusing to recognize Henry as Supreme Head of the Church of England.
  • 1536 — Married Jane Seymour
  • 1536 — Anne Boleyn is executed and Henry marries Jane Seymour
  • 1540 — Married Anne of Cleves
  • 1540 — Separated from Anne of Cleves
  • 1540 — Married Catherine Howard
  • 1540 — Henry marries Anne of Cleves in January but the marriage is annulled in July
  • 1540 — Henry marries Catherine Howard.
  • 1543 — Married Catherine Parr
  • 1543 — Henry marries the twice-widowed Catherine Parr, his sixth and last wife.
  • 1543 — Treaty of Greenwich proposes marriage between Henry's son Edward and Mary Queen of Scots. However it is repudiated by the Scots 6 months later who want an alliance with France.
  • 1545 — Henry's flagship _The Mary Rose_ sinks in the Solent
  • 1547 — Died
  • 1547 — Death of Henry at the age of 55, survived by Catherine Parr

Sources

  1. Henry VIII · Wikipedia
  2. Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547) · The Royal Family (royal.uk)
  3. Henry VIII · Westminster Abbey

Open King Henry VIII in the interactive tree