THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII – THE STUPENDOUS PAGE IN THE HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN

Henry VIII (1491-1547), king of England (1509-1547), the image of the Renaissance king as immortalized by German artist Hans Holbein the Younger, who painted him hands on hips, legs astride, exuding confidence and power. Henry VIII had six wives, fought numerous wars in Europe, and even aspired to become Holy Roman Emperor in order to extend his control to Europe. He ruthlessly increased the power of royal government, using Parliament to sanction his actions. Henry ruled through powerful ministers who, like his six wives, were never safe in their positions. His greatest achievement was to initiate the Protestant Reformation in England. He rejected the authority of the pope and the Roman Catholic Church, confiscated church lands, and promoted religious reformers to power.

Born at Greenwich Palace in London on June 28, 1491, Henry was the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Although a willful child, Henry proved a capable student and studied languages, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and writing and speaking under his first tutor, English poet and satirist John Skelton. He was an even more capable athlete and excelled at hunting and wrestling. Henry loved music and could play, sing, and dance. When he was 11, Henry’s life was transformed by the death of his elder brother, Arthur. He was now heir to the throne and was made Prince of Wales in 1503, the year in which his mother and grandmother died. Henry now came decisively under the influence of his father, a stern and greedy man who left his son a healthy treasury and a secure crown upon his death in 1509.

For the first time in generations an English king came to the throne without the threat of a rebellion against him. Henry VII’s chief concerns had been to control the independence of the nobility and to enrich the crown. When Henry VIII became king, he set out on a different course—to expand England’s power in Europe. He married his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon, and entered into an alliance with King Ferdinand of Spain. Whereas his father had avoided war to save money, Henry and his allies were eager for confrontation. In 1513 Henry led a victorious campaign against the French; in retaliation the Scots declared war on England. Henry’s forces repelled the Scots at the Battle of Flodden Field where the king of Scotland, James IV, was killed.

For the next decade, Henry VIII attempted to act as a mediator between France and Spain, playing the countries against each other in hopes of gaining power in Europe. Despite his earlier military victory, Henry’s subsequent diplomatic efforts and military campaigns were fruitless. In 1520 he met with Francis I, king of France, at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in France. But no significant political decisions resulted from the meeting. Henry’s wars emptied his treasury, and his efforts to raise taxes led to rioting among his subjects.

A few years after Henry took the throne, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, a man as ambitious as the king, became the leader of Henry’s government. Wolsey shouldered the burden of daily government, freeing the king from the work he least enjoyed. The cardinal was a capable administrator and diplomat and something of a social reformer.

To Henry’s mind, the greatest failure of his reign was his inability to produce a male heir. This he blamed on his Spanish wife, Catherine, whose only child was the Princess Mary. Henry soon fell in love with Anne Boleyn, one of the great beauties of the age and a woman of strong will, shrewd political instincts, and Protestant religious beliefs. From 1527 Henry was looking for a way out of his marriage, arguing from biblical authority that the union with his brother’s widow was invalid. Henry sent Wolsey to Rome to present the English case before the papacy, and when this failed Wolsey was forced from power. He was replaced with Sir Thomas More, whom Henry had made lord chancellor. Whatever the merits of the case, however, the divorce was a political impossibility. Catherine’s nephew was Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor and the most powerful ruler in Europe, and the pope would not take sides against Charles. Henry would have to find another way to accomplish his goal.

Beginning in 1529, Henry used Parliament to exert pressure on the pope. Claiming that they were correcting abuses, the Reformation Parliament, as it came to be called, voted to ban payments from English bishops to Rome and to end the independence of the English clergy. By these acts Henry gained the power to appoint his own bishops; he used it to appoint one of Anne Boleyn’s friends, Thomas Cranmer, as archbishop of Canterbury.

When Anne became pregnant in 1532, the “King’s Great Matter” could no longer await legal resolution. Thomas Cromwell, one of the king’s advisers, led a circle of powerful politicians associated with Anne in counseling Henry to break with Rome. In addition to the laws Parliament had already passed shifting religious authority to Henry, Parliament passed a law prohibiting appeals to the pope in matters of marriage. Such questions were now to be decided by the archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, who declared Henry’s union with Catherine invalid. Henry officially married Anne and made her queen. In September, Anne gave birth to a girl, Princess Elizabeth.

Following the break with Rome, Henry and Cromwell undertook a reorganization of church and state. Henry was declared supreme head of the church in England, and all of the payments normally made to the pope now went to the crown. Parliament altered the succession to exclude Princess Mary in favour of the children of Anne Boleyn, in hopes a boy would eventually be born. It was treason to question either Henry’s new title or the succession. The king accepted small changes in Catholic religious beliefs and practices. The Bible was translated into English, priests were allowed to marry, and the shrines of saints were destroyed. Henry’s own religious beliefs remained Catholic, despite the growing number of people at court and in the nation who had adopted Protestant religious beliefs. He prevented the more fervent of these Protestants from making radical changes to religious doctrine by instituting the Six Articles of 1539. This document outlined the doctrines of the Church of England, all of which were Catholic in nature.

In 1534 Cromwell began a wholesale confiscation of the enormous wealth of the Catholic Church, estimated at three times that of the crown. A survey of the buildings, lands, and possessions of the English religious houses was completed in 1535, and thereafter Parliament began passing laws dissolving these Catholic groups, a process that was completed by 1540. The crown then took possession of all their property. To pay for his continued wars, Henry sold the former monastic lands to nobles and gentry, who thereby gained an interest in the success of Henry’s reformation and became dependent upon the king.

The king’s motives for dissolving the religious houses were mostly financial, and his motives for breaking with Rome were both political and personal; however, these actions fed into the widespread hostility against the Catholic Church that was becoming common throughout Europe. A growing number of Catholics were opposed to the activities of the papacy, the wealth of the clergy, and the corruption of the religious orders. They wanted these institutions to be reformed. English people who favoured these views supported Henry’s reformation.

The Reformation in England was not accomplished without opposition. Throughout the 1530s and into the 1540s more than 300 people were executed for treason, most for rebelling against the new religious order. Among Henry’s councilors, Sir Thomas More refused to recognize the king as supreme head of the church and was executed for his Catholicism, along with a number of bishops and prominent nobles. In 1536 a serious rebellion, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, occurred in the northern counties. The rebellion combined economic grievances with an attachment to the institutions of the Catholic Church. It represented the most serious threat to Henry’s reign, although it was ultimately quelled. In most parishes, however, there was a sullen acceptance of Protestant innovations.

Ultimate power, however, remained in the king’s hands, and Henry used it to become involved in the series of matrimonial disasters for which he is famous. By 1536 Henry had tired of Anne Boleyn, and Cromwell joined with several councilors to turn the king decisively against her. In less than a month she was tried on trumped-up charges of adultery, executed, and replaced by Jane Seymour. Jane finally provided Henry with his male heir, the future Edward VI, although she died in childbirth. Henry’s next three marriages occurred in rapid succession. The king married Anne of Cleves as part of Cromwell’s plan for a Protestant union with German princes, but divorced her after only six months—Henry’s displeasure with Cromwell over this match led to Cromwell’s execution. Henry then married Catherine Howard, had her executed within a year, and finally settled down with Catherine Parr in 1543, the wife who survived him.

As Henry aged he became bitter and angry. One by one he had either killed his old councilors or driven them from royal service. In 1542 he again entered into continental warfare, joining Emperor Charles V in his war against France. That same year the Scots invaded England and were again defeated, this time at Solway Moss where their king, James V, received mortal wounds. James’s death freed England from the threat of invasion for the next generation. The wars of Henry’s old age were no more successful than those of his youth, and to pay for these wars Henry had to sell the richest of the monastic lands, raise taxes, and debase the coinage. His popularity diminished with his strength. He died on January 28, 1547, and was succeeded by his ten-year-old son, Edward VI.

Viewed by some as the embodiment of the warrior king who restored England’s honour, by others as a tyrant who ruled by the chopping block, the life of Henry VIII has been a source of continuous fascination. Catholic writers pictured him as the devil, English Protestants credited him as the founder of their religion. His appetites became legendary, whether he was wrestling with Francis I, eating and drinking enormous meals, or marrying six women. After the civil wars of the preceding century that had weakened the monarchy, Henry VIII reestablished the power of the English crown. This was done largely through the work of his powerful ministers Wolsey and Cromwell. They made use of the new Privy Council (the former royal council) and Parliament, whose members included the aristocracy and gentry. As these groups were brought into government, their individual ability to challenge the king diminished. The confiscation of church wealth enabled Henry’s heirs to rule without new revenues for the rest of the century. The dual defeat of the Scots made his kingdom safe from armed invasion while his strengthening of the navy made it safe from attacks by sea. Henry’s break with Rome was a critical step in the development of English national identity. His vision of an English empire encouraged successive generations to look outward with the spirit of enterprise that eventually led to England’s expansion overseas.