Henry VIII

Henry VIII is one of history's most notorious monarchs.
Henry VIII has worn many faces since he came to the throne in 1509:
The Defender of the Faith. Lecher. Despot.
Poet. Musician. Theologian. Insane. Ruthless.
One of the authors of the Reformation. Statesman. Murderer. Diabetic.
Glutton. Athlete. Boy King.
Vicious Oppressor of Protestants and Catholics alike.
Composer. Writer. Lover.
Which mask reveals the real Henry?

Politics or love?
What was Henry like?
Why did
he have six wives?
It is one step from devotion to renunciation.
The Defender of the Faith or
Oppressor of Protestants and Catholics ?
Why did Henry VIII quarreled
with the Pop Clement VII?
It is both a great love story and a supreme political thriller.
Was Henry VIII Bluebeard
or not?
Who was Mary Rose?

"If a lion knew his strength,
it were hard for any man to hold him."
Sir Thomas More of Henry VIII
HENRY VIII
BORN: 28 JUNE 1491
SUCCEEDED: 1509
DIED: 28 JANUARY 1547
The young Prince Henry, the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York.
Henry was vigorous and handsome. At over six feet tall, with rich auburn hair, clear skin, and a slender waist, he was, to many, "the handsomest prince ever seen."
Henry embodied the Renaissance ideal of a man of many talents-musician, composer, linguist, scholar, sportsman, warrior-indeed, the Dutch humanist Erasmus declared him a "universal genius."
He was a very well educated man, he spoke 4 languages, was good at latin, maths, astronomy, cosmology, wrote poetry, and knew a lot about religion.
He was an incredible athlete and loved jousting.
He was excellent at many sports. It is said that he could use a bow and arrow better than any man in England.
He was famous for wrestling and loved hunting stags in the forests which still covered most of England. He played a game very like tennis.
Henry was famous for his love of music. He was a keen musician, composer and singer.
He composed many pieces of music, one was called ‘Helas Madame’ and he is said to have written a famous tune called ‘Greensleeves’

Passetyme with good companye
I love, and shall until I dye;
Grugge who wyll, but none deny,
So God be pleeyd, this lyfe wyll I:
For my pastaunce,
Hunt, syng, and daunce,
My hert ys sett;
All godely sport,
To my comfort,
Who shall me lett?
Pastyme With Good Company
“The Kynges Ballade” by Henry VIII
This song is preserved in a manuscript now residing at the British Museum.
Both words and music are certainly written by Henry VIII
Я буду до последних дней
Любить веселый круг друзей -
Завидуй, но мешать не смей
Мне бога радовать своей
Игрой: стрелять,
Петь, танцевать -
Вот жизнь моя,
Иль множить ряд
Таких услад не волен я?

Contrary and capricious.
Henry VIII's expansive personality sits at the heart of English Reformation.
An enthusiastic sportsman. This aspiring intellectual despatched wives and political opponents with callous brutality.
The one-time Catholic' defender of the faith' initiated England's break with Rome, but later reversed some of this own reforms.
What was Henry like?
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.

Henry had ample religious and increasing personal motives for achieving a closer alliance with the papacy.
His early theological education had inculcated in him a deep interest in religious issues, and he quickly carved out a record as a staunch supporter of the Catholic Church in the controversies of the era.
Henry capped these efforts by authoring a blistering attack on Martin Luther titled “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 Luther.
Henry's tract earned him the honorific title
”Defender of the Faith” from Pope Leo X (a title which all subsequent monarchs of England have retained).
A close alliance with the papacy

Henry VIII thirsts for a form of immortality- the perpetuation of himself and his royal
line in the form of a male heir.
Henry VIII desired an annulment
of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which Pope Clement VII had refused to sign.
The Act of Supremacy was signed in November 1534
Henry was confirmed as head of the Church in England.
That fact made the English Reformation official and caused a long-lasting distrust between England and the Roman Catholic Church.
It is one step from devotion to renuciation

A divorce was not a simple issue in XVI century. In fact, it was a very complicated one. Henry VIII was a Roman Catholic and the head of this church was the pope based in Rome.
The Roman Catholic faith believed in marriage for life. It did not recognise, let alone support, divorce. Those who were widowed were free to re-marry; this was an entirely different issue. But husbands could not simply decide that their marriage was not working, divorce their wife and re-marry. The Roman Catholic Church simply did not allow it.
This put Henry VIII in a difficult position. If he went ahead and announced that as king of England he was allowing himself a divorce, the pope could excommunicate him. This meant that under Catholic Church law, your soul could never get to Heaven.
To someone living at the time of Henry, this was a very real fear, and a threat which the Catholic Church used to keep people under its control.
Why the Pope didn’t let Henry get divorced?

Not many changes were made to Catholic forms of worship. Only changes were:
- he became head of the Anglican Church
- confiscated some Catholic Church lands and wealth and gave it to nobles and other “high-ranking” citizens.
allowed the use of English in Church services.
Parliament approved the Act of Supremacy in 1534, establishing the Church of England as a Protestant entity under King Henry VIII.
English Reformation

The vast bulk of the population were very angry at the way the Roman Catholic Church had used them as a source of money:
to get married you had to pay;
to get a child baptized (which you needed to be if you
were to go to Heaven - so the Catholic Church preached)
you had to pay;
you even had to pay the Church to bury someone on their
land (which you had to do as your soul could only go to
Heaven if you were buried on Holy Ground).
Therefore, the Catholic Church was very wealthy while many poor remained just that….poor.
Their money was going to the Catholic Church.
Therefore, there were no great protests throughout the land as many felt that Henry would ease up on taking money from them.
Henry knew of the Catholic Church's unpopularity and, therefore, used this to his advantage.
But now it is generally accepted that the English Reformation was not a popular movement but an act of state, carried through in the face of widespread resentment or, at best, sullen indifference.
How did the people of England react to this?

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. He confiscated all church lands and money in his country. This is known to history as 'dissolution of the English monasteries'.
the Laws in Wales Acts 1535-1542 (which united England and Wales into one nation)
the Buggery Act 1533, the first anti-sodomy enactment in England
the Witchcraft Act 1542, which punished 'invoking or conjuring an evil spirit' with death.
The break with Rome, coupled with an increase in governmental bureaucracy, led to the royal supremacy that would last until the execution of Charles I and the establishment of the Commonwealth one hundred years after Henry's death.
Henry's legislation

The Six Wives of Henry VIII
Why did Henry have so many wives?
No-one really knows.
The usual answer was that he wanted a son to be his heir. But actually he had plenty of sons, sadly most of them died but one survived, born to his third wife so why did he have another three wives after that?
Well, although he had one son, children died very easily in Tudor times, so he really needed a second one to make sure. Plus maybe he just fell in love easily and he was extremely spoilt and used to having what ever he wanted. He wouldn't let anything stand in his way.

You still have to remember the wives names and their order:
CatherineCatherine, AnneCatherine, Anne, Jane,
AnneAnne, KatherineAnne, Katherine and Kathryn.
It is a little rhyme that will help you remember what happened to each wife:
Divorced, beheaded, died
Divorced, beheaded, survived.

This is a letter Henry wrote to Anne Boleyn
Oh my heart, and oh my heart,
My hart it is so sore.
Since I must from my love depart,
And know no cause wherefore!
Lover and gentle King
The coronation was celebrated with joust
Alas, what shall I do for love?
For love, alas, what shall I do?
Since now so kind
I do you find
To keep you me unto.
Alas!
Pastime with good company
I love and shall until I die.
Grudge who likes, but none deny,
So God be pleased, thus live will I.
For my pastance:
Hunt, sing, and dance.
My heart is set!
All goodly sport
For my comfort.
Who shall me let?

A Terrible and Cruel King
King Henry VIII had over 78,000 people executed while he was king.
That is the same as 5 people killed every day for 38 years!
He executed anyone who disagreed with him (including two of his wives!)
Henry closed all the Monasteries and Nunneries in England and took all the money from the Monks and Nuns. He literally threw all of them out onto the streets to beg and gave their Monasteries to his friends for fine houses.
Henry persecuted 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.
By the time Henry died, everyone was completely terrified of him.

Henry VIII called the Bluebeard
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.
Bluebeard is the title character in a famous fairy tale about a violent
nobleman and his over-curious wife.
It was written by Charles Perrault and first published in 1697.

Henry had a serious weight problem. He was grossly overweight, with a waist measurement
of 54 inches (137 cm).
He ate vast amounts of food, meat, fish, dairy products and lots of wine and beer. He wouldn't stop eating, even when a doctor told him to cut down. He became so fat that he had to be carried everywhere by servants.
The scurvy, caused by vitamin C deficiency, is the only disease that fits Henry's symptoms - ulcerated legs, bad breath, collapsed nose etc.
There was a prejudice at the time that only lower orders ate vegetables. The rich could afford more exiting things like venison. Vegetables grown in England were seen as food for the poor.
Henry was like Robin the Bobbin
Robin the Bobbin, the big-bellied Ben,
He ate more meat than fourscore men;
He ate a cow, he ate a calf,
He ate a butcher and a half,
He ate a church, he ate a steeple,
He ate the priest and all the people!
A cow and a calf,
An ox and a half,
A church and a steeple,
And all the good people,
And yet he complained
That his stomach wasn't full.
It's to refer to the rapacious nature of King Henry VIII in seizing Church estates.

When Henry became King, he started to build up the Royal Navy into a strong fighting force.
Henry loved his ships – he would often go and watch them being built and have parties on board.
His most famous ship was the Mary Rose, she was built in Portsmouth around 1510 and was named after his sister. The “Mary Rose” was a favourite of King Henry VIII.
In July 1545, Henry was watching from South sea (Hampshire) as the Mary Rose sank in the Silent just after leaving Portsmouth Harbour.
About 700 men died.
She lay on the seabed, covered in mud for 400 years before being discovered in 1967.
In 1982 she was lifted out of the sea – an amazing feat of engineering.
Mary Rose

By the end of his life, Henry was a sad and lonely person. He was terrified of getting ill, and anyone who had had contact with small pox or the plague was not allowed in court.
He also had a bad leg, with ulcers possibly from an old jousting wound. Both legs became infected in 1538 and doctors thought he would die.
On 28th January 1547, he died at Greenwich. Various theories have been put forward for the possible cause of death:
- Old age - 56 was a ripe old age in Tudor times
- A sexually transmitted disease
- Over eating
- Gangrene - where his bad legs went off
- Scurvy - lack of Vitamin C because he didn't eat his veggies!
No-one knows the answer.
Henry's last years
King Henry VIII died in the Palace of Whitehall in 1547

But at all times, he was Henry VIII
The 1530's witnessed Henry's growing involvement in government, and a series of events which greatly altered England, as well as the whole of Western Christendom: the separation of the Church of England from Roman Catholicism.
The break with Rome, coupled with an increase in governmental bureaucracy, led to the royal supremacy that would last until the execution of Charles I and the establishment of the Commonwealth one hundred years after Henry's death.
History remembers Henry as "in every respect a most accomplished prince."

Catherine of Aragon
Catherine of Aragon was the first of the six wives of King Henry VIII of England.
As a child she was betrothed to Henry's older brother, Prince Arthur; they were married in 1501 but Arthur died six months later.
Catherine subsequently married Henry on 11 June 1509. She was pregnant by him at least six times but only one of the children, Mary, survived.
Desiring a male heir, Henry divorced Catherine on 30 March 1534 and married Anne Boleyn. The act of divorce proved highly significant: it caused Henry to break with the pope and thereby led to the English Reformation.
After the divorce Catherine was not executed (as were some of Henry's later wives) but was expelled from court and died two years later at Kimbolton Castle.
Her only surviving child became Mary Tudor, also known as Bloody Mary, who reigned from 1553-1558.
Born: 16 December 1485
Birthplace: Alcala de Henares, Spain
Died: 7 January 1536 (natural causes)
Best Known As: First wife of Henry VIII

BORN: c.1500?
MARRIED: JANUARY 1533
EXECUTED: 19 MAY 1536
Anne Boleyn
Anne was a lady-in-waiting. Exactly when and where Henry VIII first noticed Anne is not known. It is likely that Henry sought to make Anne his mistress, as he had her sister Mary years before. We don't know who first had the idea marriage, but eventually it evolved into "Queen or nothing" for Anne.
King Henry's passion for Anne can be attested to in the love letters he wrote to her when she was away from court. Henry hated writing letters, and very few documents in his own hand survive. However, 17 love letters to Anne remain and are preserved in the Vatican library. They married in 1533, but she didn’t give him a son.
Anne was not popular with the people of England.
Anne's enemies at court began to plot against her using the King's attentions to Jane Seymour as the catalyst for action. Cromwell began to move in action to bring down the Queen. He persuaded the King to sign a document with charges of treason.
Interestingly, shortly before her execution on charges of adultery, the Queen's marriage to the King was dissolved and declared invalid. One would wonder then how she could have committed adultery if she had in fact never been married to the King, but this was overlooked, as were so many other lapses of logic in the charges against Anne.
On May 19, Anne Boleyn was executed.

BORN: c. 1509
MARRIED: 30 MAY 1536
DIED: 24 OCTOBER 1537
Jane Seymour
In October, a prince was born at Hampton Court Palace and was christened on 15th of October. The baby was named Edward. Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon, was godmother and Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, also played a role in the ceremony.
Jane attended her son's christening, although she was weak. She died on October 24th, just two weeks after her son was born.
Henry had already been preparing his own tomb at St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, which was where Jane was buried. In the end, she would be the only of Henry's six wives to be buried with him.
Ten days after Ann Boleyn’s execution the king married his third wife, Jane Seymour.
Jane Seymour and Henry VIII were formally betrothed. On the 30th of May, they were married. Unlike Henry's previous two Queens, Jane never had a coronation. Perhaps the King was waiting to Jane to 'prove' herself by giving him a son.

Anne of Cleves
BORN: 1515
MARRIED: 6 JANUARY 1540
DIVORCED: JULY 1540
DIED: 16 JULY 1557
Anne was Henry's fourth wife. This German princess served as Queen for only a few months before she and Henry agreed to divorce by mutual consent. This marriage was based on her picture, and the desire to form an alliance with Protestant Germany.
Unluckily for both, the meeting was a disaster. Anne wasn't particularly excited about her fat, aging visitor, and Henry claimed to find Anne most unattractive. The feeling was probably mutual. Henry indicated that he felt trapped in his impending marriage to this "Great Flanders Mare".
To save face, and to preserve the German alliance, Anne and Henry were married. The marriage, however, was not consummated, probably by mutual agreement. Since this arrangement would never produce children, Henry soon began looking for a way out of the marriage without offending the German states. Anne was not particularly happy in her marriage to Henry, but did not want to go back to Germany. She liked England, and enjoyed Henry's children. To Henry's surprise and delight, she readily agreed to a divorce.
Anne was given the title of "Henry's Dear Sister", and took precedence over most of the ladies at Court. After the divorce, Anne lived a happy country life, coming to court on occasion to visit Henry and his family. She was generous, amusing, and loved by all. Henry began to appreciate her many good qualities, and the two became close friends.

Kathryn Howard Gallery
BORN: 1521
MARRIED: 28 JULY 1540
EXECUTED: 13 FEBRUARY 1542
Kathryn Howard was the first cousin to Anne Boleyn, Henry's ill-fated second Queen.
Kathryn came to court at about the age of 19 and there is no doubt that the spirited young girl caught Henry's attentions.
Kathryn's uncle probably encouraged the girl to respond to the King's attentions and saw it as a way to increase his own influence over the monarch. The Duke of Norfolk also took advantage of the debacle of the Anne of Cleves marriage as a chance to discredit his enemy,Thomas Cromwell.
Sixteen days after he was free of Anne, Henry took his fifth wife, Kathryn Howard, on July 28, 1540. Henry was 49 and he bride was no older than 19.
The vivacious young girl brought back some of Henry's zest for life. The King lavished gifts on his young wife and called her his 'rose without a thorn' and the 'very jewel of womanhood'.
Less than a year into Kathryn's marriage, the rumors of her infidelity began. By November 1541, there was enough evidence against the Queen that Archbishop Cranmer informed the King of Kathryn's misconduct. She was executed on the Tower Green on February 13, 1542 and laid to rest near her cousin Anne Boleyn at the Tower of London

BORN: 1512
MARRIED: 12 JULY 1543
WIDOWED: 28 JANUARY 1547
DIED: 5 SEPTEMBER 1548
Katherine Parr
Katherine Parr, the last of Henry's wives, was a different choice for the aging King. She was the daughter of Thomas Parr of Kendal.
Katherine was first married to Sir Edward Burough, but was widowed shortly after in 1529. Her second husband was Sir John Nevill, Lord Latimer. He was a wealthy landowner in Yorkshire and had an estate there called Snape Hall. He died in 1542 and had no children by Katherine.
Henry and Katherine Parr were married on July 12, 1543.
Henry's health had been declining such that his last wife must have been as much a nurse as anything else. Katherine managed to soothe the King's temper and bring his family closer together.
Unfortunately, Katherine did not recover from the childbirth and died on September 5. Katherine Parr is buried at St. Mary's Church at Sudeley Castle.

The King turned to Wolsey for help in getting an annulment of his first marriage. Wolsey pleaded with the King to avoid such action, but the King was adamant. Henry claimed having long had doubts of the validity of his marriage to his dead brother's widow, citing a biblical passage (from Leviticus 20) which condemns such a marriage as unclean, and which God will render childless.
Wolsey said on his deathbed, “If I had served God as diligently as I have done the King, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs.”
Wolsey was the real power behind the throne, without ever letting the King
guess who was truly running the country.
Wolsey had never privately supported the King's wish to obtain an annulment.
Realising that his only road back to power would be if the Queen were retained
Wolsey was appointed Cardinal by the Pope and named Lord Chancellor by the
King in September, 1515. He enjoyed not only a high Church position, but also the
highest secular position.
Cardinal Thomas Wolsey
BORN: 1473 in Ipswich, Suffolk
DIED: 1530 at Leicester Abbey