Henry VIII of England Biography

He was born as Henry Tudor on June 28, 1491, at Greenwich Palace to Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. He had six siblings but only three of them survived infancy. He was the King’s second son and thus was not expected to succeed his father.

He was appointed Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports in 1493, when he was just two and subsequently appointed Earl Marshal of England and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at age three. He was tutored by the best educators available and became fluent in Latin and French.

His elder brother Arthur died at the age of 15 in 1502, and Henry inherited all of Arthur’s duties. He was declared the new Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester in 1503.

King Henry VII died on April 21, 1509, and the young Henry succeeded him as King. Inexperienced and still a teenager at the time of his coronation, Henry VIII relied greatly on Thomas Wolsey’s guidance to rule the kingdom. Soon Wolsey became a very powerful figure in the English court and was made the Lord Chancellor by 1515.

In 1521, Charles of Austria, who was the monarch of both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, declared war on France. Henry aligned England with Charles and hoped to restore English lands in France. Charles successfully defeated and captured King Francis I of France but none of Henry’s expectations from this battle were fulfilled. So he withdrew England from the alignment with France and signed the Treaty of the More in 1525.

Under Henry’s dominance, the Church of England completely broke away from the Pope and this gave rise to a great northern uprising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, in protest against the King’s policies which were unacceptable to the Catholics.

By the early 1540s, his relations with Charles had improved and they once again formed an alliance and planned to invade France in 1543. In preparation, Henry proceeded to eliminate the potential threat of Scotland and defeated the Scots at the Battle of Solway Moss in 1542.

Initially he hesitated to invade France and this angered Charles. Finally Henry went to France in 1544, and launched a two-pronged attack. Meanwhile Charles made peace with France leaving Henry alone in the campaign. Henry too attempted to make peace with France but France tried to invade England in 1545. The French attempt was unsuccessful, and these campaigns had cost both England and France dearly. Thus France and England signed the Treaty of Camp in June 1546.

King Henry VIII is best remembered for breaking away the Church of England from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. This was brought into effect by a series of Acts passed by the Parliament between 1532 and 1534, among them the 1534 Act of Supremacy which declared that Henry was the "Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England". These events are also known as the English Reformation, and associated with the wider process of the European Protestant Reformation.

Henry VIII of England was very well known for his six marriages, several of which ended disastrously. His first marriage was to the widow of his brother, Catherine of Aragon, who he later divorced due to her failure to produce a male heir even though the couple had one daughter. It was Henry’s desire to end his first marriage that led to the series of events that finally culminated in the separation of the Church of England from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church.

Henry VIII suffered from several ailments during his later years. He was obese and this aggravated his already existing medical conditions. He died on January 28, 1547, in the Palace of Whitehall, and was succeeded by his only legitimate son, Edward.