King Henry VIII
King Henry VIIIKing Henry VIII
Henry VIII (born 1491, ruled 1509-1547). The second son of Henry VII
and Elizabeth of York was one of England\'s strongest and least popular
monarchs. He was born at Greenwich on June 28, 1491. The first English
ruler to be educated under the influence of the Renaissance, he was a
gifted scholar, linguist, composer, and musician. As a youth he was gay and
handsome, skilled in all manner of athletic games, but in later life he
became coarse and fat. When his elder brother, Arthur, died (1502), he
became heir apparent. He succeeded his father on the throne in 1509, and
soon thereafter he married Arthur\'s young widow, Catherine of Aragon.
During the first 20 years of his reign he left the shaping of policies
largely in the hands of his great counselor, Cardinal Wolsey (See Wolsey,
Cardinal). By 1527 Henry had made up his mind to get rid of his wife. The
only one of Catherine\'s six children who survived infancy was a sickly
girl, the Princess Mary, and it was doubtful whether a woman could succeed
to the English throne. Then too, Henry had fallen in love with a lady of
the court, Anne Boleyn.
When the pope (Clement VII) would not annul his marriage, Henry turned
against Wolsey, deprived him of his office of chancellor, and had him
arrested on a charge of treason. He then obtained a divorce through Thomas
Cranmer, whom he had made archbishop of Canterbury, and it was soon
announced that he had married Anne Boleyn.
The pope was thus defied. All ties that bound the English church to
Rome were broken. Appeals to the pope\'s court were forbidden, all payments
to Rome were stopped, and the pope\'s authority in England was abolished. In
1534 the Act of Supremacy declared Henry himself to be Supreme Head of the
Church of England, and anyone who denied this title was guilty of an act of
treason. Some changes were also made in the church services, the Bible was
translated into English, and printed copies were placed in the churches.
The monasteries throughout England...
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