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Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was King of England and Lord of Ireland, later King of Ireland, from 21 April 1509 until his death. Henry was the second monarch of the House of Tudor, succeeding his father, Henry VII. Henry VIII wielded the most formidable power of any English monarch and brought about the English Reformation (including the creation of the Church of England as well as the Dissolution of the Monasteries) and the legal union of England and Wales (see Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542). He is also noted in popular culture for being married six times.
Henry VIII was the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. His elder brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales, died in 1502, leaving Henry as heir to the throne.
Many significant pieces of legislation were enacted during Henry VIII\'s reign. They included the several Acts which Created the Church of England by separating the English Catholic Church from the Roman Catholic Church, although he kept most Catholic traditions. He established the monarch as the Supreme Head of the Church of England.
Henry VIII is known to have been an avid gambler and dice player. In his youth, he excelled at sports, especially jousting, hunting, and real tennis. He was also an accomplished musician, author, and poet; his best known piece of music is Pastime with Good Company ("The Kynges Ballade"). Henry VIII was also involved in the original construction and improvement of several significant buildings, including Nonsuch Palace, King\'s College Chapel, Cambridge and Westminster Abbey in London. Many of the existing buildings Henry improved were properties confiscated from Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, such as Christ Church, Oxford, Hampton Court Palace, the Palace of Whitehall, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He founded Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford in 1546.[1] Official School website. URL accessed August 15, 2007.
Eighteen year-old Henry VIII after his coronation in 1509.
Born in Greenwich Palacehttp://wwp.royalhistory.com/england/monarchs/henryviii in Greenwich, Henry VIII was the third child of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Of the young Henry\'s six siblings, only three — Arthur (the Prince of Wales), Margaret, and Mary — survived infancy. In 1493, Henry was appointed Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. In 1494, he was created Duke of York. He was subsequently appointed Earl Marshal of England and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Henry was given a first-rate education from leading tutors, becoming fluent in Latin, French, and Spanish. As it was expected that the throne would pass to Prince Arthur, Henry\'s older brother, one source suggests that Henry would have a career in the Church.
In 1502, however, Arthur suddenly died of an unknown disease, perhaps tuberculosis, and Henry was thrust into all the duties of his late brother, becoming Prince of Wales. Henry\'s father renewed his efforts to seal an alliance between England and Spain via marriage; thus, in place of the dead Arthur, Spain was offered Henry in marriage to Prince Arthur\'s widow, Catherine of Aragon, the youngest surviving child of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile.
In order for the new Prince of Wales to marry his brother\'s widow, a dispensation from the Pope was normally required to overrule the impediment of affinity. Catherine swore that her marriage to Prince Arthur had been unconsummated. Still, both the English and Spanish parties agreed that an additional papal dispensation of affinity would be prudent to remove all doubt regarding the legitimacy of the marriage. Due to the impatience of Catherine\'s mother, Queen Isabella, the Pope granted his dispensation in the form of a Papal bull. Thus, fourteen months after her young husband\'s death, Catherine found herself betrothed to his brother, the new Prince of Wales. By 1505, however, Henry VII lost interest in an alliance with Spain, and the younger Henry declared that his betrothal had been arranged without his consent.
Continued diplomatic maneuvering over the fate of the proposed marriage lingered until the death of Henry VII in 1509. Only 17 years old, Henry married his brother\'s widow, Catherine, on 11 June 1509, and on 24 June 1509, the two were crowned at Westminster Abbey.
In 1513, Henry invaded France as part of the War of the League of Cambrai. Henry\'s troops defeated a French army at the Battle of the Spurs and destroyed an invading Scottish army under James IV at the Battle of Flodden Field. It was the largest battle (in terms of numbers) fought between the two nations.Battle of Flodden, Encyclopædia Britannica James IV and many of the Scottish nobles were killed, which quelled the threat from the north for a generation.
In 1526, Henry\'s impatience with what he perceived to be Catherine\'s inability to produce the desired heir increased when he became attracted to a charismatic young woman in the Queen\'s entourage, Anne Boleyn. Henry ordered Cardinal Wolsey to begin formal proceedings with Rome to annul his marriage on the grounds that Catherine\'s brief marriage to the sickly Arthur had, indeed, been consummated. The king\'s secretary, William Knight, went to Rome to petition Pope Clement VII for the annulment, but the Pope was highly reluctant to grant the king’s request due to the influence of and pressure from Catherine\'s nephew, Emperor Charles V, whose troops had pillaged Rome and held the Pope prisoner. Wolsey\'s efforts to lobby for the annulment were unavailing. These failures, concomitant with his growing estrangement from Catherine, finally led to Wolsey\'s dismissal as Lord Chancellor by Henry in 1529. His replacement, Sir Thomas More, seemed an even less likely candidate to secure Henry\'s desired end, given his scruples about the suit and his loyalty to Rome.
At the same time, Henry discovered and promoted other men of a different temper. Foremost among these were Thomas Cromwell, a lawyer, and Thomas Cranmer, a priest and gifted theologian who had worked for both Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, and Edward Foxe, Bishop of Hereford and had been the family chaplain of the Boleyns. It was Cranmer who first suggested that Henry should consult the "theology faculties of the continental universities" for an opinion about the validity of his marriage. The project, abetted by apparent bribes and favours, achieved the hoped-for success, with favourable opinions offered to the English Parliament in 1530. Cranmer\'s support of the King\'s efforts to put aside Catherine of Aragon were rewarded with a position as ambassador to the imperial court, and shortly thereafter, he was appointed to replace William Warham as Archbishop of Canterbury upon the latter\'s death. Cromwell, meanwhile, earned a position as chief adviser to the king with his even more daring proposal that Henry consider abolishing papal supremacy and declare himself head of the Church in England. Both Cromwell and Cranmer were protégés of Boleyn, who shared her growing sympathies with Protestant doctrines taking shape on the continent. Threats of withheld papal tithes having failed to move Clement VII to action, Henry finally took matters into his own hands: he secretly married the already-pregnant Boleyn in January 1533 and shortly thereafter had his allies in Parliament pass a statute forbidding further appeals to Rome. Archbishop Cranmer quickly moved to declare Henry\'s marriage to Catherine invalid and his new one to Anne Boleyn valid. Boleyn was crowned Queen of England on June 1st and gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I of England), three months later.
The Pope reacted by moving to excommunicate Henry in July 1533.Historians disagree on the exact date of the excommunication; according to Winston Churchill\'s History of the English Speaking Peoples, the bull of 1533 was a draft with penalties left blank and was not made official until 1535. Others say Henry was not officially excommunicated until 1538, by Pope Paul III, brother of Cardinal Franklin de la Thomas. Considerable religious upheaval followed. Urged by Cromwell, Parliament passed several acts that enforced the breach with Rome in the spring of 1534. The Statute in Restraint of Appeals prohibited appeals from English ecclesiastical courts to the Pope. It also prevented the Church from making any regulations without the King\'s consent. The Ecclesiastical Appointments Act 1534 required the clergy to elect bishops nominated by the Sovereign. The Act of Supremacy 1534 declared that the King was "the only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England"; the Treasons Act 1534 made it high treason, punishable by death, to refuse to acknowledge the King as such. The Pope was also denied sources of revenue such as Peter\'s Pence. However, it is important to note that while Henry\'s marriage to Anne was one of the catalysts which sparked much of the church reform, there were many, who influenced by Martin Luther on the continent, sought similar reforms in England. In fact, many would-be reformers used the monarch\'s disagreement with Rome to push their own reformation agenda.Justo L. Gonzalez; A History of Christian Thought: Volume III, Revised Edition. pp. 180-181.
Rejecting the decisions of the Pope, Parliament validated the marriage between Henry and Anne with the Act of Succession 1533. Catherine\'s daughter, the Lady Mary, was declared illegitimate, and Anne\'s issue were declared next in the line of succession. Included in this declaration was, most notably, a clause repudiating "any foreign authority, prince or potentate". All adults in the Kingdom were required to acknowledge the Act\'s provisions by oath and those who refused to do so were subject to imprisonment for life. The publisher or printer of any literature alleging that Henry\'s marriage to Anne was invalid was automatically guilty of high treason and could be punished by death.
Opposition to Henry\'s religious policies was quickly suppressed in England. A number of dissenting monks were tortured and executed. The most prominent resisters included John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, Henry\'s former Lord Chancellor, both of whom refused to take the oath and were subsequently convicted of high treason and beheaded at Tyburn in 1535. Thomas Cromwell, for whom was created the post of "Vicegerent in Spirituals", was authorised to visit monasteries, ostensibly to ensure that they followed royal instructions, but in reality to assess their wealth. Cromwell\'s commissioners for the suppression of religious houses included Lavton, Pollard and Moyle. The death of Abbot Richard Whitting is just one example of the bloodshed during the suppression. In 1536, an Act of Parliament allowed Henry to seize the possessions of the lesser monasteries (those with annual incomes of £200 or less).
These suppressions in turn contributed to further resistance among the English people, most notably in the Pilgrimage of Grace, a large uprising in northern England in October of the same year. Henry VIII promised the rebels he would pardon them and thanked them for raising the issues to his attention, then invited the rebel leader, Robert Aske to a royal banquet. At the banquet, Henry asked Aske to write down what had happened so he could have a better idea of the problems he would \'change\'. Aske did what the King asked, although what he had written would later be used against him as a confession. The King\'s word could not be questioned (as he was held as God\'s chosen, and second only to God himself) so Aske told the rebels they had been successful and they could disperse and go home. However, because Henry saw the rebels as traitors, he did not feel obliged to keep his promises. The rebels realised that the King was not keeping his promises and rebelled again later that year, but their strength was less in the second attempt and the King ordered the rebellion crushed. The leaders, including Aske, were arrested and executed for treason. Dissolution of the remaining, larger monasteries followed a subsequent authorising act by Parliament in May 1539.
Though she was instrumental in helping to bring about these radical religious changes, the King\'s relationship with his queen quickly soured. After the Princess Elizabeth\'s birth, Queen Anne had at least two pregnancies that ended in either miscarriage or stillbirth; Anne blamed the stillbirth on Henry, saying that he scared her by falling off a horse in a tournament and badly injuring himself.[citation needed] It is speculated that Anne Boleyn may have had Rh-negative blood, which if Henry were Rh-positive, would have had the effect of a healthy first child and a subsequent failure of further pregnancies.[citation needed] She was later arrested on charges of adultery (as Queen, this amounted to treason), and sentenced to die by burning at the stake or by decapitation, whichever the king pleased. The men she was accused of having an affair with were Francis Weston, Henry Norris, William Bereton, Mark Smeaton and her own brother, George. Four of them were to be hanged, drawn and quartered; however, their sentences were ultimately commuted to decapitation. Anne and her brother George were beheaded soon after. At her final Mass, the Queen publicly swore her innocence in the presence of a priest and various witnesses. Henry also accused her of the attempted poisoning of his daughter, Mary Tudor and Henry Fitzroy, his illegitimate son.
One day after Anne\'s execution in 1536 Henry became engaged to Jane Seymour, one of the Queen\'s ladies-in-waiting to whom the king had been showing favour for some time. They were married 10 days later. The Act of Succession 1536 declared Henry\'s children by Queen Jane to be next in the line of succession and declared both the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth illegitimate, thus excluding them from the throne. The king was granted the power to further determine the line of succession in his will. Jane gave birth to a son, Prince Edward the future Edward VI, in 1537; Jane died at Greenwich Palace on 24 October 1537 from an infection during childbirth. After Jane\'s death, the entire court mourned with Henry for an extended period. Henry considered Jane to be his "true" wife, being the only one who had given him the male heir he so desperately sought. He was buried next to her at his death.
At about the same time as his marriage to Jane Seymour, Henry granted his assent to the Laws in Wales Act 1535, which legally annexed Wales, uniting England and Wales into one unified nation. The act provided for the sole use of English in official proceedings in Wales, inconveniencing the numerous speakers of the Welsh language.
Henry demanded the surrender of Otford Palace from the archbishop of Canterbury in 1537. Later, in 1540, Henry sanctioned the destruction of shrines to saints. In 1542, England\'s remaining monasteries were all dissolved, and their property transferred to the Crown. As a reward for his role, Thomas Cromwell was created Earl of Essex. Abbots and priors lost their seats in the House of Lords; only archbishops and bishops came to comprise the ecclesiastical element of the body. The Lords Spiritual, as members of the clergy with seats in the House of Lords were known, were for the first time outnumbered by the Lords Temporal.
Historians are sure of the names of only two of Henry\'s mistresses: Elizabeth Blount (usually referred to as Bessie) and Mary Boleyn (Anne\'s sister). Mary was believed to be the elder sister of Anne Boleyn (lady-in waiting to Catherine of Aragon), after she was requested to the Queen\'s court by the king in hopes to seduce her, and was his mistress at some point between 1519 and 1526. Anne Boleyn became Henry\'s mistress at some point before their marriage, as they married (25 January 1533) only seven months before Elizabeth\'s birth (7 September 1533). There is no evidence that Elizabeth was premature.
Elizabeth Blount gave birth to Henry\'s illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy. The young boy was made Duke of Richmond in June 1525 in what some thought was one step on the path to legitimatizing him. This never occurred, however, and FitzRoy never acceded to the throne (he was deemed a "bastard"). In 1533, he married Mary Howard, Anne Boleyn\'s first cousin, but died only three years later without any successors. At the time of FitzRoy\'s death, the king was trying to get a law passed that would allow his otherwise illegitimate son to become king. Contemporary rumors stated that Mary Boleyn\'s two children, the first being Catherine, and the second being Henry were fathered by Henry, but their paternity has never been proven.
Henry was the quintessential Renaissance Man, and his court was a centre of scholarly and artistic innovation. The discovery of America or "The New World" set the stage for Henry\'s innovative attitude. Henry was among the first European rulers to learn about the true geography of the world, a revolutionary discovery. In 1507, the cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann published the first "modern" map of the world, the first map to accurately depict the American continent and a separate Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, a radical thought for the time.The map reflected a huge leap forward in knowledge, recognizing the newly found American land mass and forever changing mankind\'s understanding and perception of the world itself. Library of Congress[2] This discovery developed an atmosphere of exploration and discovery in the arts and sciences of which Henry took full advantage in his court and daily life.
Henry was shown the above picture of Anne of Cleves
Henry desired to marry once again to ensure the succession. Thomas Cromwell, promoted to 1st Earl of Essex, suggested Anne, the sister of the Protestant Duke of Cleves, who was seen as an important ally in case of a Roman Catholic attack on England. Hans Holbein the Younger was dispatched to Cleves to paint a portrait of Anne for the king. Although it has been said that he painted her in a more flattering light, it is unlikely that the portrait was highly inaccurate, since Holbein remained in favour at court. After regarding Holbein\'s portrayal, and urged by the complimentary description of Anne given by his courtiers, Henry agreed to wed Anne. On Anne\'s arrival in England, Henry is said to have found her utterly unattractive, privately calling her a "Flanders Mare."
Henry wished to annul the marriage in order to marry another. The Duke of Cleves had become engaged in a dispute with the Holy Roman Emperor, with whom Henry had no desire to quarrel. Queen Anne was intelligent enough not to impede Henry\'s quest for an annulment. Upon the question of marital sex, she testified that her marriage had never been consummated. Henry was said to have come into the room each night and merely kissed his new bride on the forehead before retiring. All impediments to an annulment were thus removed.
The marriage was subsequently dissolved and Anne received the title of "The King\'s Sister," and was granted Hever Castle, the former residence of Mary Boleyn\'s family. Cromwell, meanwhile, fell out of favour for his role in arranging the marriage and was subsequently attainted and beheaded. The office of Viceregent in Spirituals, which had been specifically created for him, was not filled.
On 28 July 1540, (the same day Cromwell was executed) Henry married the young Catherine Howard (also found as Katherine), Anne Boleyn\'s first cousin. He was absolutely delighted with his new queen. Soon after her marriage, however, Queen Catherine had an affair with the courtier, Thomas Culpeper. She also employed Francis Dereham, who was previously informally engaged to her and had an affair with her prior to her marriage, as her secretary. Thomas Cranmer, who was opposed to the powerful Catholic Howard family, brought evidence of Queen Catherine\'s activities to the king\'s notice. Though Henry originally refused to believe the allegations, he allowed Cranmer to conduct an investigation, which resulted in Queen Catherine\'s implication. When questioned, the queen could have admitted a prior contract to marry Dereham, which would have made her subsequent marriage to Henry invalid, but she instead claimed that Dereham had forced her to enter into an adulterous relationship. Dereham, meanwhile, exposed Queen Catherine\'s relationship with Thomas Culpeper. As was the case with Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard could not technically have been guilty of adultery, as the marriage was officially null and void from the beginning. Again, this point was ignored, and Catherine was executed on 13 February 1542. She was only about eighteen years old at the time.
Henry married his last wife, the wealthy widow Catherine Parr, in 1543. She argued with Henry over religion; she was a radical, but Henry remained a conservative. This behaviour nearly proved her undoing, but she saved herself by a show of submissiveness. She helped reconcile Henry with his first two daughters, the Princess Mary and the Lady Elizabeth. In 1544, an Act of Parliament put the daughters back in the line of succession after Edward, Prince of Wales, though they were still deemed illegitimate. The same act allowed Henry to determine further succession to the throne in his will.
A mnemonic for the fates of Henry\'s wives is "divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived". An alternative version is "King Henry the Eighth, to six wives he was wedded: One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded". (Or, more succinctly, "Two beheaded, one died, two divorced, one survived.") The phrase may be misleading. Firstly, Henry was never divorced from any of his wives; rather, his marriages to them were annulled. Secondly, four marriages—not two—ended in annulments. The marriages to Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were annulled shortly before their executions and, although her marriage to Henry was annulled, Anne of Cleves survived him, as did Catherine Parr.
The cruelty and tyrannical egoism of Henry became more apparent as he advanced in years and his health began to fail. A wave of political executions, which had commenced with that of Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk in 1513, ended with Henry Earl of Surrey, in January, 1547, underlined it. According to Holinshed, the number of executions in this reign amounted to 72,000—higher figures are given by some authorities.
Henry VIII was the force behind the English Reformation. This was a stepwise process by which papal primacy over the Catholic Church in England was replaced by royal primacy over a new, "Anglican" church, separate from the Catholic Church. This began with the Act of Supremacy in 1534. The English Reformation was a political rather than a theological disagreement. In fact, in 1521 Henry had defended Catholicism against Martin Luther\'s heresies in a book entitled, "The Defence of the Seven Sacraments", for which he was given the title, "Defender of the Faith". However, even after the break with Rome, and his own excommunication, Henry still considered himself to be a Catholic, and his anger was felt not only by Catholics who refused to accept his supremacy, but by Calvinists who denied Catholic dogmas. Once the course was irreversible he appointed clergymen of his stripe to offices in the new church, and consolidated his authority over it. These events were watched with much interest on the continent, forming a template for some who would follow his example. However, in spite of these great changes, Henry\'s new religion was never accepted as "protestant" by the radicals. And, once let out, religious innovation proved to be a genie that refused to go back into its bottle. Indeed, only a century later, the radicals would succeed in beheading one of his successors.
The Mary Rose was one of the many ships used in battle during the time of Henry and it was his favourite ship. The Mary Rose was named after Henry\'s younger sister. It took a year for her to be completed. She was built in Portsmouth, England. She was one of the earliest purposely-built warships to serve in the English Navy. She was sunk in the Solent. It was thought that she was sunk during the war against the French fleet on July 19, 1545.
It is also possible that Henry was flattering his mistress, Mary Boleyn, sister of Anne, when he selected the name of the Mary Rose. Mary Boleyn was a member of the court before the arrival of her sister Anne. She had become Henry\'s mistress while he was still married to Queen Catherine. Mary Boleyn gave birth to three children, the first two children were often attributed to Henry at the time although they bore the name Carey, the surname of Mary\'s first husband. However, it is strongly unlikely that they were Henry\'s progeny, or even accepted as his, seeing as he never recognized them, as he did Henry Fitzroy. Given how important it was to the king to prove that he was able to produce sons, if he had been at all sure that the Carey children were really his, he would have acknowledged them as such.
King Henry VIII died in the Palace of Whitehall in 1547
Late in life, Henry became grossly overweight (with a waist measurement of 54 inches/137 cm), and had to be moved about with the help of mechanical inventions. He was covered with suppurating boils and possibly suffered from gout. His obesity dates from a jousting accident in 1536 in which he suffered a leg wound. This prevented him from exercising and gradually became ulcerated. It undoubtedly hastened his death at the age of 56, which occurred on 28 January 1547 in the Palace of Whitehall, on what would have been his father\'s 90th birthday. He expired soon after uttering these last words: "Monks! Monks! Monks!"Norman Davies, Europe: A history p. 687
The well known theory that Henry suffered from syphilis was first promoted approximately 100 years after his death[citation needed]. A more recent theory suggests that Henry\'s medical symptoms, and those of his older sister Margaret Tudor, are also characteristic of untreated Type II diabetes. [3]
Henry VIII was buried in St George\'s Chapel in Windsor Castle, next to his wife Jane Seymour. Almost a hundred years later Charles I was buried in his grave. Within a little more than a decade after his death, all three of his royal heirs sat on the English throne, and all three left no descendants.
Under the Act of Succession of 1543, Henry\'s only surviving legitimate son, Edward, inherited the Crown, becoming Edward VI. Edward was the first Protestant monarch to rule England. Since Edward was only nine years old at the time, he could not exercise actual power. Henry\'s will designated 16 executors to serve on a council of regency until Edward reached the age of 18. The executors chose Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford, Jane Seymour\'s elder brother, to be Lord Protector of the Realm. In default of heirs to Edward, the throne was to pass to Henry VIII\'s daughter by Catherine of Aragon, the Princess Mary and her heirs. If Mary\'s issue also failed, the crown was to go to Henry\'s daughter by Anne Boleyn, Princess Elizabeth, and her heirs. Finally, if Elizabeth\'s line also became extinct, the crown was to be inherited by the descendants of Henry VIII\'s deceased younger sister, Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk. The descendants of Henry\'s sister Margaret Tudor - the royal family of Scotland - were therefore excluded from succession according to this act.
Though mainly motivated by dynastic and personal concerns, and despite never really abandoning the fundamentals of the Catholic Church, Henry ensured that the greatest act of his reign would be one of the most radical and decisive of any English monarch. His break with Rome in 1533-34 was an act with enormous consequences for the subsequent course of English history beyond the Tudor dynasty. Not only in making possible the transformation of England into a powerful (albeit very distinctive) protestant nation; but also in the seizing of economic and political power from the Church by the aristocracy, chiefly through the acquisition of monastic lands and assets -- a short-term strategy with long-term social consequences. Henry\'s decision to entrust the regency of his son Edward\'s minor years to a decidedly Protestant regency council dominated by Edward Seymour most likely for the simple tactical reason that Seymour seemed likely to provide the strongest leadership for the kingdom ensured that the protestant reformation would be consolidated and even furthered during his son\'s reign. Such ironies marked other aspects of his legacy. He fostered humanist learning and yet was responsible for the deaths of several outstanding English humanists. Obsessed with securing the succession to the throne, he left no legitimate heirs but a young son (who died before his sixteenth birthday) and two daughters adhering to adversarial religions. The power of the state was magnified, yet so too (at least after Henry\'s death) were demands for increased political participation by the middle class. Henry worked with some success to once again make England a major player on the European scene but depleted his treasury in the course of doing so, a legacy has remained an issue for English monarchs ever since.
Together with Alfred the Great and Charles II, Henry is traditionally called one of the founders of the Royal Navy. His reign featured some naval warfare and, more significantly, large royal investment in shipbuilding (including a few spectacular great ships such as Mary Rose), dockyards (such as HMNB Portsmouth) and naval innovations (such as the use of cannon on-board ship - although archers were still deployed on medieval-style forecastles and bowcastles as the ship\'s primary armament on large ships, or co-armament where cannon were used). However, in some ways this is a misconception since Henry did not bequeath to his immediate successors a navy in the sense of a formalised organisation with structures, ranks, formalised munitioning structures but only in the sense of a set of ships. Elizabeth I still had to cobble together a set of privately owned ships to fight off the Spanish Armada (which consisted of about 130 warships and converted merchant ships) and in the former, formal sense the modern British navy, the Royal Navy, is largely a product of the Anglo-Dutch naval rivalry of the seventeenth century. Still, Henry\'s reign marked the birth of English naval power and was a key factor in England\'s later victory over the Spanish Armada.[4]
Henry\'s break with Rome incurred the threat of a large-scale French or Spanish invasion. To guard against this he strengthened existing coastal defence fortresses (such as Dover Castle and, also at Dover, Moat Bulwark and Archcliffe Fort he personally visited for a few months to supervise, as is commemorated in the modern exhibition in Dover Castle\'s keep there). He also built a chain of new \'castles\' (in fact, large bastioned and garrisoned gun batteries) along Britain\'s southern coast from East Anglia to Cornwall, largely built of material gained from the demolition of monasteries. These were also known as Henry VIII\'s Device Forts.
The only surviving piece of clothing worn by Henry VIII is a cap of maintenance awarded to the Mayor of Waterford, along with a bearing sword, in 1536. It currently resides in the Waterford Museum of Treasures.
Henry VIII was the first English monarch to regularly use the style "Majesty", though the alternatives "Highness" and "Grace" were also used.
Several changes were made to the royal style during his reign. Henry originally used the style "Henry the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England, France and Lord of Ireland". In 1521, pursuant to a grant from Pope Leo X rewarding a book by Henry attacking Martin Luther and defending Catholicism, the royal style became "Henry the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England and France, Defender of the Faith and Lord of Ireland". Following Henry\'s excommunication, Pope Paul III rescinded the grant of the title "Defender of the Faith", but an Act of Parliament declared that it remained valid; and it continues in royal usage to the present day.
In 1535, Henry added the "supremacy phrase" to the royal style, which became "Henry the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England and France, Defender of the Faith, Lord of Ireland and of the Church of England in Earth Supreme Head". In 1536, the phrase "of the Church of England" changed to "of the Church of England and also of Ireland".
In 1541, Henry had the Irish Parliament change the title "Lord of Ireland" to "King of Ireland" with the Crown of Ireland Act 1542, after being advised that many Irish people regarded the Pope as the true head of their country, with the Lord acting as a mere representative. The reason the Irish regarded the Pope as their overlord was because Ireland had originally been given to the English King Henry II by Pope Adrian IV in the twelfth century as a feudal territory under papal overlordship. The meeting of Irish Parliament that proclaimed Henry VIII King of Ireland was the first meeting attended by the Gaelic Irish chieftains as well as the Anglo-Irish aristocrats. The style "Henry the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith and of the Church of England and also of Ireland in Earth Supreme Head" remained in use until the end of Henry\'s reign.
Henry\'s motto was Coeur Loyal (true heart) and he had this embroidered on his clothes in the form of a heart symbol and with the word loyal. His emblem was the Tudor rose and the Beaufort portcullis.
Henry VIII\'s arms were the same as those used by his predecessors since Henry IV: Quarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lys Or (for France) and Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England).
Ancestors of Henry VIII of England
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