Henry VIII

King Henry VIII (28 June 1491-28 January 1547), King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was, by all accounts, an attractive and charismatic man, educated and accomplished. He ruled with absolute power, perhaps the last English monarch to do so. His overwhelming desire to provide England with a male heir, perhaps partly from personal vanity, but also on the grounds that a female would not be strong enough to consolidate the Tudor Dynasty and the fragile peace that existed following the Wars of the Roses, led to the two things that Henry VIII is remembered for today: his six wives, and the English Reformation. His public image is lustful, egotistical, deceitful, opinionated, and insecure.

Religion

Henry did not introduce Protestantism to England, but he strongly promoted it and made religion a central theme of his rule. Protestantism grew out of reforms sought by disaffected Christians on the European continent and its doctrines were brought to England by priests and intellectuals, where they were embraced by English reformers also at odds with the Church’s excesses. Henry VIII was a staunch Catholic and had written Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, a treatise in which he defended the Church against Martin Luther and asserted the primacy of the Pope. The Pope gave Henry the title Fidei Defensor Defender of the Faith, a style still used by the English monarch today. However, Henry’s eventual break with the Church of Rome and declaring himself head of the Church in England, combined with his persecution of those who still held to Papal Supremacy, allowed a situation in which protestant ideas would develop and result in separate churches with differing doctrines. Protestantism was officially established during the reign of Henry’s son, Edward VI.

Early life

Prince Henry was born on the 28th June 1491, the third child and second son of Henry VII (Henry Tudor) and Elizabeth of York. Henry was a second son and not the heir to the throne; he was well educated because his father intended him for the church. The death of his elder brother Arthur (1502) made him heir to the throne His father was a Tudor and heir to the Lancastrian claim to the throne, and his mother was the daughter of the Yorkist King Edward IV. Henry thus symbolized in his person the union of the houses of Lancaster and York whose rivalry had caused the War of the Roses. Unlike his father, therefore, he could believe himself to be the unquestioned and unquestionable king of God's choice.

Henry’s first marriage: Catherine of Aragon

His brother Arthur was married to Catherine, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. After Arthur's death, when Henry was ten years old, for reasons of state it was decided to marry Henry to his brother’s widow, who was several years his senior. This raised the question of whether it was moral and legal for Henry to married his late brother’s wife?

For her part, Catherine stated and always affirmed that her marriage to Arthur had never been consummated and she was therefore able to marry Henry. Because her parents wanted the marriage, they did not want there to be any doubt and so they petitioned the Pope to grant a dispensation allowing Catherine and Henry to marry. These matters would be of great significance later.

Highlights and paradoxes of Henry VIII’s reign:

- The births of Mary I of England in 1516 and Elizabeth I of England in 1533, both of whom would eventually rule England. Despite Henry’s best efforts, his only son Edward VI died young and the Tudor Dynasty ended with the death of Queen Elizabeth I, Henry’s daughter.

- Expansion of the Royal Navy. Henry is considered by some to be one of the founders of the Royal Navy, which went from 5 to 53 ships during his reign, largely as a result of his campaigns in Europe.

- Depletion of the treasury. Henry inherited a prosperous economy from his father, Henry VII, and despite additional gains from seizing the property of the church, the economy was ruined by the time Elizabeth came to the throne.

- Decimation of the intelligentsia. Henry VIII was a humanist himself, but the imprisonment and execution of those who opposed him resulted in modern terms in a “brain drain” of English thinkers.

Reformation

Henry never formally repudiated the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, but he declared himself supreme head of the church in England. This, combined with subsequent actions, eventually resulted in a separated church, the Church of England.

Henry's reformation of the English church involved more complex motives and methods than his desire for a new wife and an heir. Henry asserted that his first marriage had never been valid, but the divorce issue was only one factor in Henry's desire to reform the church. In 1536-37, he instituted a number of statutes-the act of appeal, the act of succession, the act of supremacy and others-that dealt with the relationship between the king and the pope and the structure of the Church of England. During these years, Henry also suppressed monasteries and pilgrimage shrines in his attempt to reform the church. The kins was always the dominant force in the making of religious policy; his policy, which he pursued skilfully and consistently, is best characterized as a search for the middle way.

Questions over what was the true faith were resolved with the adoption of the orthodox "Act of Six Articles" (1539) and a careful holding of the balance between extreme factions after 1540. Even so the era saw movement away from religious orthodoxy, the more so as the pillars of the old beliefs, especially Thomas More and John Fisher, had been unable to accept the change and had been executed in 1535 for siding with the pope against the king.

Dissolving the monasteries

England was covered with many medieval monastaries that owned large tracts of land worked by tenants. As a religious institution they were almost defunct and had become handicaps to the economy. There was little protest when Henry dissolved them (1536-1540), with the transfer of a fifth of the England's landed wealth to new hands. The program was designed primarily to create a landed gentry beholden to the crown, which would use the lands much more efficiently. The dissolution helped provoke the great northern rising of 1536-1537, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, the only real threat to Henry's security on the throne in all his reign.

Public memory

Henry worked hard to present an image of authority and power to his people. His prowess at the hunt enhanced his royal image, both for his athletic skills and the wealth required. Hunting and hawking served a variety of political purposes, from impressing foreign emissaries and rulers to conveying Henry's control of rebellion within the kingdom. He took pride in showing off his collection of weapons, which included exotic archery equipment, 2,250 pieces of land ordnance and 6,500 handguns.

Henry VIII is probably the most famous of all English kings, and has been portrayed n many ways. Charles Laughton's Oscar-winning Henry in "The Private Life of Henry VIII" (directed by Alexander Korda 1933) portrayed the macho, totally self-regarding, totally self-absorbed Henry; it created the popular notion that the Tudors had weak table manners. Laughton shows a lustful monarch, a cock among a bevy of sweet chicks, each with eyes on the royal bed; a man who sees women as objects. The same theme appears in the 1994 comedy "Carry On Henry." Television's "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" (1970) was more accurate Keith Michell's performance was deeper than Laughton's, but as the title shows, the focus was once again on Henry the married man.

Bibliography

• Bernard, G. W. The King's Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church. (2005). 712 pp. excerpts and text search
• Bernard, G. W. "The Making of Religious Policy, 1533-1546: Henry VIII and the Search for the Middle Way." Historical Journal 1998 41(2): 321-349. Issn: 0018-246x Fulltext: in Jstor
• Elton, G. R. The Tudor Revolution in Government: Administrative Changes in the Reign of Henry VIII (1962), major interpretation online edition
• Gardner, James. "Henry VIII" in Cambridge Modern History vol 2 (1903) online edition
• Graves, Michael. Henry VIII (2003) 217pp,
• Mackie, J. D. The Earlier Tudors, 1485-1558 (1952) online edition
• Lindsey, Karen. Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII (1995) online edition
• Slavin, Arthur J., ed. Henry VIII and the English Reformation (1968), readings by historians. online edition
• Smith, H. Maynard. Henry VIII and the Reformation (1948) online edition
• Smith, Lacey Baldwin. Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty (1971) online edition
• Starkey, David. Six Wives: the Queens of Henry VIII (2003) excerpt and text search
• Walker, Greg. Writing under Tyranny: English Literature and the Henrician Reformation. (2005). 556 pp.
• Weir, Alison. Henry VIII, King and Court (2001). 640pp excerpt and text search
• "Henry VIII" in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), online at OUP

Historiography and memory

• Head, David M. "'If a Lion Knew His Own Strength': the Image of Henry VIII and His Historians." International Social Science Review 1997 72(3-4): 94-109. Issn: 0278-2308 Fulltext: Ebsco
• Hoak, Dale. "Politics, Religion and the English Reformation, 1533-1547: Some Problems and Issues." History Compass 2005 3 (Britain and Ireland): 7 pp Issn: 1478-0542 Fulltext: Blackwell Synergy
• Ives, Eric. "Will the Real Henry VIII Please Stand Up?" History Today 2006 56(2): 28-36. Issn: 0018-2753 Fulltext: Ebsco

Primary sources

• Williams, C. M. A. H. English Historical Documents, 1485-1558 (1996) online sources