Henry VIII Tudor ^{1 2}

  General Notes:

King of England, he presided over the beginnings of the English Renaissance and the English Reformation. His six wives were, successively, Catherine of Aragon (the mother of the future queen Mary I), Anne Boleyn (the mother of the future queen Elizabeth I), Jane Seymour (the mother of Henry's successor, Edward VI), Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr.

Accession to the throne.

Henry was the second son of Henry VII, first of the Tudor line, and Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, first king of the short-lived line of York. When his elder brother, Arthur, died in 1502, Henry became the heir to the throne; of all the Tudor monarchs, he alone spent his childhood in calm expectation of the crown, which helped give an assurance of majesty and righteousness to his willful, ebullient character. He excelled in book learning as well as in the physical exercises of an aristocratic society, and, when in 1509 he ascended the throne, great things were expected of him. Six feet tall, powerfully built, and a tireless athlete, huntsman, and dancer, he promised England the joys of spring after the long winter of Henry VII's reign.

Henry and his ministers exploited the dislike inspired by his father's energetic pursuit of royal rights by sacrificing, without a thought, some of the unpopular institutions and some of the men that had served his predecessor. Yet the unpopular means for governing the realm soon reappeared because they were necessary. Soon after his accession, Henry married Catherine of Aragon, Arthur's widow, and the attendant lavish entertainments ate into the modest royal reserves.

More serious was Henry's determination to engage in military adventure. Europe was being kept on the boil by rivalries between the French and Spanish kingdoms, mostly over Italian claims; and, against the advice of his older councillors, Henry in 1512 joined his father-in-law, Ferdinand II of Aragon, against France and ostensibly in support of a threatened pope, to whom the devout king for a long time paid almost slavish respect.

Henry himself displayed no military talent, but a real victory was won by the Earl of Surrey at Flodden (1513) against a Scottish invasion. Despite the obvious pointlessness of the fighting, the appearance of success was popular. Moreover, in Thomas Wolsey, who organized his first campaign in France, Henry discovered his first outstanding minister. By 1515 Wolsey was archbishop of York, lord chancellor of England, and a cardinal of the church; more important, he was the King's good friend, to whom was gladly left the active conduct of affairs. Henry never altogether abandoned the positive tasks of kingship and often interfered in business; though the world might think that England was ruled by the Cardinal, the King himself knew that he possessed perfect control any time he cared to assert it, and Wolsey only rarely mistook the world's opinion for the right one.

Nevertheless, the years from 1515 to 1527 were marked by Wolsey's ascendancy, and his initiatives set the scene. The Cardinal had some occasional ambition for the papal tiara, and this Henry supported; Wolsey at Rome would have been a powerful card in English hands. In fact, there was never any chance of this happening, any more than there was of Henry's election to the imperial crown, briefly mooted in 1519 when the emperor Maximilian I died, to be succeeded by his grandson Charles V. That event altered the European situation. In Charles, the crowns of Spain, Burgundy (with the Netherlands), and Austria were united in an overwhelming complex of power that reduced all the dynasties of Europe, with the exception of France, to an inferior position. From 1521, Henry became an outpost of Charles V's imperial power, which at Pavia (1525), for the moment, destroyed the rival power of France. Wolsey's attempt to reverse alliances at this unpropitious moment brought reprisals against the vital English cloth trade with the Netherlands and lost the advantages that alliance with the victor of Pavia might have had. It provoked a serious reaction in England, and Henry concluded that Wolsey's usefulness might be coming to an end.

  Noted events in his life were:

• Acceded: 1509. King of England.

Henry married Katharine of Aragón, daughter of Ferdinand V "The Catholic" of Castile and León and Isabella I "The Catholic" of Castile, on 11 Jun 1509 in Grey Friars Church, Greenwich, England. (Katharine of Aragón was born on 15 Dec 1485 in Alcala de Henares, Madrid, Spain and died on 7 Jan 1536 in Kimbolton Castle, Hunts, England.)

Henry next married Anne Boleyn, daughter of Thomas Boleyn and Lady Elizabeth Howard, on 25 Jan 1533 in Westminster, London, England. (Anne Boleyn was born in 1507 and died on 19 May 1536 in Tower of London, Tower Green, London, England.) The cause of her death was beheading.

Henry next married Jane Seymour, daughter of Sir John Seymour and Margaret Wentworth, on 30 May 1536 in York Place, England. (Jane Seymour was born circa 1509 and died on 24 Oct 1537.)

Henry next married Anne of Cleves on 6 Jan 1540. (Anne of Cleves was born on 22 Sep 1515 and died on 16 Jul 1557.)

Henry next married Kathryn Howard, daughter of Lord Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpeper, on 28 Jul 1540. (Kathryn Howard was born in 1521 and died on 13 Feb 1542.) The cause of her death was beheading.

Henry next married Katherine Parr, daughter of Sir Thomas Parr and Maud Green, on 12 Jul 1543. (Katherine Parr was born in 1512 and died on 5 Sep 1548.)