Henry VIII
Henry VIII was king of England and Ireland.
Contents
History
Henry was the second son of Henry VII. His elder brother Arthur died in 1502, when Henry was 11, widowing Catherine of Aragon only a few months after their marriage.
His father died in 1509, leaving Henry to inherit. Shortly after he married Arthur's widow.
Henry inherited a French-aligned foreign policy that he quickly reversed. He repeatedly involved himself in the Italian Wars, but to little benefit. (He in fact suffered an invasion for it; Louis had convinced James V, king of Scotland and his cousin, to very unsuccessfully make an attempt for the English crown.) First he joined the Holy League and led his armies personally. But by 1514 he had only taken peripheral towns like Tournai, so he negotiated peace. He also arranged for his sister Mary to marry Louis, although he died within a year. The secret Treaty of Bruges in 1521, between Henry and his nephew-in-law Charles V, planned a new war. Again, by 1525 the war had yielded little benefit, and he negotiated peace.
By the 1530s, he and Catherine still had only one child together, Mary (same name as his sister). He sought an annulment from Clement VII. This set off a chain of events; Charles pressured the Church to refuse; Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury, granted it anyway; Clement excommunicated Henry; the Act of Supremecy of 1534 established the Anglican Church with Henry as its Supreme Head.
In 1542, Henry created the kingdom of Ireland using his new spiritual authority. (To this point the English kings had been styled 'lord of Ireland'.)
Upon divorcing Catherine, Mary was technically disinherited. Henry's second wife was Anne Boleyn, who gave birth to Elizabeth. She was accused of treason and executed in 1536. His third wife, Jane Seymour, gave him a son and heir but died shortly after; Edward VI was born in 1537. His fourth 'wife' was Anne of Cleves, although they never consummated the marriage and immediately annulled it. His fifth wife, Catherine Howard, was accused of treason and executed in 1542. His sixth and final wife, who outlived him, was Catherine Parr.
Henry repeatedly interfered in succession law, setting up an inevitable crisis. He twice amended the Act of Succession to disqualify his daughters. Through the Final Act of 1544 he reinstated them and stipulated that, should his children have no heirs, the crown should pass to the line of his sister Mary (the sister; died in 1533).