Henry VIII | Biography, Wives, Religion, Death, & Facts | Britannica (2024)

king of England

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Written by

Geoffrey R. Elton Regius Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge, 1983–88; Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, 1954–93. Author of The Tudor Revolution in Government and others.

Geoffrey R. Elton,

John S. Morrill Assistant Master and Professor of History, Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. Consultant editor for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

John S. MorrillAll

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Last Updated: Article History

Quick Facts

Born:
June 28, 1491, Greenwich, near London, England
Died:
January 28, 1547, London (aged 55)
Title / Office:
king (1509-1547), England
House / Dynasty:
House of Tudor
Notable Family Members:
spouse Catherine Howard
spouse Anne Boleyn
spouse Catherine Parr
spouse Anne of Cleves
spouse Jane Seymour
spouse Catherine of Aragon
father Henry VII
daughter Mary I
daughter Elizabeth I
son Edward VI
sister Margaret Tudor
sister Mary Tudor

See all related content →

Top Questions

What was Henry VIII’s childhood like?

Henry was the second son ofHenry VII and Elizabeth, daughter ofEdward IV. When his elder brother, Arthur, died in 1502, Henry became the heir to the throne. He was an excellent student and athlete who enjoyed hunting and dancing. When he became king at age 18, great things were expected of him.

When did Henry VIII get married?

Henry VIII married six times between 1509 and 1543 in pursuit of heirs and political alliances. His wives were Catherine of Aragon(the mother of Mary I),Anne Boleyn(the mother of Elizabeth I),Jane Seymour(the mother of Henry’s successor,Edward VI),Anne of Cleves,Catherine Howard, andCatherine Parr.

Who were Henry VIII’s children?

Henry VIII was survived by three children, each of whom sat on the throne of England: Edward VI (ruled 1547–53), Mary I (ruled 1553–58), and Elizabeth I (ruled 1558–1603). Several of his children died soon after birth; his affair with a mistress also produced a son, Henry Fitzroy, who died at age 17.

How was Henry VIII influential?

Henry VIII was the king of England (1509–47). He broke with the Roman Catholic Church and had Parliament declare him supreme head of the Church of England, starting the English Reformation, because the pope would not annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. He wanted to remarry and produce a male heir.

Why did Henry VIII kill his wives?

Of his six wives, Henry VIII had two killed: Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. He accused Anne of adultery, and she was convicted and beheaded on May 19, 1536; that she had not given birth to a male heir was, however, Henry’s primary motive for having her executed. Henry accused Catherine of having affairs before their marriage and of adultery, which led to charges of treason; she was executed on February 13, 1542.

Henry VIII (born June 28, 1491, Greenwich, near London, England—died January 28, 1547, London) was the king of England (1509–47) who 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.

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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.

Henry VIII | Biography, Wives, Religion, Death, & Facts | Britannica (2024)

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