Henry VIII of England
Henry VIII ruled England for thirty-eight years, broke with Rome to obtain a divorce, and executed two of his six wives. Born in 1491, he was a second son who became heir when his brother Arthur died in 1502, and succeeded in 1509 at seventeen. He was athletic, musical, well educated and genuinely learned in theology; the pope named him Defender of the Faith in 1521 for a book attacking Luther. He married his brother's widow, Catherine of Aragon, and for two decades left government largely to Thomas Wolsey while pursuing war in France at ruinous cost. Catherine produced one surviving child, Mary. Convinced that the marriage was cursed for having been with his brother's wife, and in love with Anne Boleyn, he sought an annulment from Clement VII — who was in the power of Catherine's nephew Charles V and could not grant it. The solution was constitutional. Between 1532 and 1534 parliament cut the English church's ties to Rome and the Act of Supremacy made the king its supreme head. Thomas More and John Fisher were executed for refusing the oath. The monasteries were dissolved between 1536 and 1541, transferring perhaps a quarter of the land in England to the crown and its buyers, and provoking the Pilgrimage of Grace. His six marriages produced three children. Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were beheaded, Jane Seymour died in childbirth, Anne of Cleves was divorced within months, and Catherine Parr survived him. He debased the coinage, spent the monastic windfall on war, and grew enormous after a jousting injury in 1536. He died in 1547.
- Lived: 1491 CE – 1547 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: king, head_of_state
