Henry VIII – The Impact He Had on England and his Six Wives

Henry VIII was made King of England at just seventeen years of age in 1509. Not long after he sat on the throne after his father Henry VII, he married and got two his father’s unpopular ministers executed. In cricket parlance, he started hitting sixes in his very first over. The wedding would be his first out of six and these executions would be among the first of hundreds that were carried out as per his orders. He began to think from his teenage years that his powers were limitless. Europe started looking at him as a powerful ruler whose court represented sophistication and grandeur. It cannot be denied that he was one of the most charismatic and accomplished kings that England would witness. He took over the throne of England at a tumultuous time when the House of Tudor was showing signs of vulnerability and being fragile. England’s elite were warring with factions of each other. The Ward of the Roses had just about come to an end and the royal houses of York and Lancaster had fought over their rights for over three decades. Henry VIII was obsessed about a son and a male heir and that eluded him. Hence, the progression resulted from one marriage to another. That eventually led to his controversial conflict with the Catholic Church and the Pope. Henry VIII was a glutton and in his late twenties had turned into an obese and an infirm character. He also started suffering with recurring leg infections. He had got this injury while jousting. He became an egotist with a capricious and a callous nature. After his death, school children had this to say about his six wives, “divorced-beheaded-died-divorced- beheaded-survived.” History has not been kind to this king. He is mostly remembered now as a fool and a tyrant who was occasionally betrayed by his counselors who met a fateful end through executions. Henry VIII was born on 28th June 1491 in Greenwich, London. He was the third child of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. His grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Derby, brought him up. This lady owned so much of land in England that she was second only to the king in land ownership. After taking up the throne, Henry VIII surprised everyone by announcing that he wanted to marry Katherine of Aragon, widow of Prince Arthur who was Henry VII’s younger brother. Katherine was a pious woman who got up in the middle of the night to recite Matins and was eager to hear mass at dawn. During this era, all the acts of parliament were carried out in the name of the king and his authority was considered second only to that of God. Henry VIII was pompous enough to go along with the belief that his will was an expression of God’s will and one that could not be questioned. He was lucky that people still venerated him despite all his cruelties. To the English gentry, Henry VIII became personification of grandeur and power and was the first king in England to adopt the title of ‘Your Majesty’. His court became the seat of government and the cultural hub of the entire nation. His love of gaiety and dancing took him away from important business of ruling the nation. He hated paperwork and bureaucracy and passed on diplomatic matters to his ambitious ministers. He also possessed a glad eye and took several mistresses. Extra marital affairs were not unusual for him. Katherine did not seem to protest as he had not borne him a son as an heir. In 1511, he gave birth to a son, Henry but the poor child died after a couple of years. This was followed by births of still-born babies in 1514 and 1515. During this time, England became embroiled in a war with France. After a lengthy campaign, the English army defeated the French one and took couple of French towns. As a result of financial strain, the war with France was abandoned. Cardinal Wolsey was appointed papal legate and given full authority over the Church of England. He convinced Henry VIII to execute the Treat of London in 1518. The Cardinal’s efforts were in vain as Henry ignored him and wanted to unite England with the Roman Empire in the war with France in 1521. As Henry VIII did not have a son to succeed him on the throne of England, English noblemen with Plantagenet blood were putting up claim, particularly the Duke of Buckingham as he was a descendant of Edward III. Being aware of this, Henry had the Duke of Buckingham executed on slim and false charges of treason. Meanwhile, he had an illegitimate son from Elizabeth Blount, named Henry Fitzroy. To Katherine’s dismay, she reached menopause at just thirty-eight. Henry was busy courting Mary Boleyn, Anne’s elder sister and had two children from her. His interest waned in her and he started paying attention to her younger sister, Anne Boleyn. Anne, at first, tried to reject Henry’s advances but gave in, later. Anne was talented; she played many musical instruments and had an interest in decorative arts ad the field of scholarly learning. She was also an accomplished dancer and a poetess. She quickly learnt the art of dressing fashionably. Seeing all this, Henry VIII was genuinely falling in love with Anne Boleyn. To prepare his ground, Henry took a revolutionary step of contacting Rome and asked the pope to annul his marriage with Katharine, as she was his brother’s widow, saying that he had sinned and that God was punishing him for refusing to bless him with a male descendant. Henry had started to make crucial decisions without the advice of Cardinal Wolsey. Henry’s decision to annul his marriage with Katharine with the Pope’s blessing came to be called as the `King’s Great Matter’. Cardinal Campeggio was sent from Italy to hear out Henry’s case. The hearing was unsuccessful and the annulment went into a state of limbo. Henry took out his anger on Cardinal Wolsey. He got him imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he died of natural causes. In 1529, Henry made several appointments. An important one was that of Thomas More as the Lord Chancellor of England. More lasted only for a year and a brilliant film has been made on these events titled `a man for all Seasons’. In 1530, Thomas Cromwell was appointed as Collector of Revenues and was added to the King’s Privy Council. During this time Henry VIII declared himself the religious head of the United Kingdom. In 1532, Cromwell rose to the position of the King’s chief minister. Henry married Anne Boleyn in December 1532 as she was pregnant and he wanted to avoid having a child born out of wedlock. Important changes were made to parliamentary legislation and an Act of Restraint of Appeals was passed giving sovereign authority of the King over the pope. It gave Henry more power than any other English king before him. In May 1533, Henry’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon was declared void and null by a special court that was set up at Dunstable Priory. A few weeks later, the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn was declared valid. The coronation of Anne Boleyn occurred on 1st June 1533. She settled down as Queen and started attending Mass in the Royal Chapel. She was decked with diamonds and had sixty ladies attending to her. She was the happiest person in the entire realm of England. She was crowned Queen by Archbishop Cranmer. Henry retired with her after the coronation to Greenwich and enjoyed the days following their marriage ceremony in privacy. In September 1533, Anne Boleyn gave birth to Elizabeth who later went on to become the famous queen, Elizabeth I of England and Ireland. As Anne did not give him a son, Henry got tired of her very fast. The next child was a stillborn one and that disappointed Henry further. He took on a mistress, Jane Seymour. He started taking advice of Thomas Cromwell and sought ways of getting rid of Anne Boleyn from his life. Cromwell licked his arse as he was interested in the King’s treasury than in his marriages. And Henry VIII was, in fact, the richest King of England. He even antagonised Thomas More and got him convicted of high treason and executed in 1535. In 1536, Katharine of Aragon died. Anne miscarried again that year. Cromwell started on his cunning ways on looking for an opportunity to set up false claims of treason against Anne. When he failed on that count, he put up a fabricated charge of adultery on her. Henry pounced on that opportunity and had her brother and her lover executed and in the May of that year, he passed orders for the execution of Anne Boleyn. This was very well presented in the film ‘Anne of the Thousand Days’ featuring Richard Burton and Genevieve Bujold. Archbishop Cranmer was forced to declare Princess Elizabeth illegitimate. A day after Anne Boleyn’s Execution, Henry VIII brought Jane Seymour to Hampton Court. He was a heartless boor. Ten days later, they were married by Bishop Gardiner in Queen’s Closet at Whitehall. Jane did an admirable thing during her time as Queen and that was to bring about reconciliation between Henry and his two illegitimate daughters, Mary and Anne. Both girls were now welcome at the court. Jane died in October 1537 as a result of an infection she contracted during childbirth of Edward. Meanwhile, Cromwell was busy planning how he could wipe out the existing religious institutions in England and transfer their funds back into his treasury. The revenues of the abbeys doubled the wealth of the royal treasury. Henry used these sums to secure loyalty of influential men in his kingdom. He used some of his money to fund several elaborate building projects. The next bait or wife for Henry was Anne of Cleves, sister of the Duke of Cleves. It was arranged by Thomas Cromwell. It was not smooth sailing for Cromwell after that. Duke of Norwich was able to convince Henry that Cromwell had been amassing great wealth behind his back and giving him wrong counsel. This led to the arrest of Cromwell. Within a month, he was beheaded. People rejoiced as they did not like him and always suspected him of treason. The marriage with Anne of Cleves was a failure and he went on to marry Katherine Howard. She got lands that belonged to Cromwell and a fair amount of jewelry. During this period, monasteries were dissolved. Henry was becoming agitated by the day and started harbouring a violent temper. He was being called the `English Nero’. As he had no able assistance, he had to turn into a hard working king. Making crucial policy decisions and handling endless correspondence wrecked his mood further. He started burning Catholics for giving support to the Pope; and on the other hand, he was busy burning Protestant reformers for being heretic. Katharine started with an affair with a courtier and was soon spotted and condemned and was the second of Henry’s wives to be beheaded. After the death of Katharine, Henry realized that of all the losses in his life, time was the most irrecoverable of them all for it could never be redeemed. He now turned himself to the matters of war after failing miserable in his round of marriages. He also faced military aggression from Scotland. James V of Scotland had refused when Henry wanted to sway him away from Catholicism. He met big resistance at the Battle of Solway Moss in November 1542 but was victorious in the end. After this victory, Henry wedded his sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr. She was a twice-widowed woman and their alliance was harmonious as they enjoyed each other’s company. Her benevolent nature once gain helped unite Henry with Elizabeth and Mary. In 1544, Henry’s health took a turn for the worse. He was tormented by the pain in his leg and was plagued by fever. He managed to live for another three years without finding a remedy for his ailment and died in January 1547 as a result of pulmonary embolism. He was only fifty-six when he died. Edward VI was then proclaimed King of England. However boorish his temperament may have been, Henry VIII became a legend in his own lifetime. He brought England a sense of refinement and splendor during the early phase of his reign when he was not bedding and marrying. However, later on during his reign, it was not all pageantry and pleasure. He turned himself into n egocentric monstrosity; he became a king whose autocratic style of ruling brought much upheaval and destruction to his realm. The biggest blunder in his life was the act involving dissolution of monasteries and the people he executed for his whimsical mood changes. He may have been a patron of arts but his wives suffered at his hands. All six of them died in this way – divorced, married, died, divorced, married and survived. Out of these, two were beheaded.