Henry VIII

Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547, and King of Ireland from 1542 until his death. He was the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, born at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich. His elder brother, Arthur, was the heir apparent and had married the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon. Following Arthur’s death in 1502, Henry became Prince of Wales in 1504 and succeeded his father in 1509, soon marrying Catherine with a papal dispensation.

In his early reign, he was regarded as an attractive, educated, and accomplished monarch. However, he grew dissatisfied with the marriage and sought an annulment from Pope Clement VII. When the pope refused, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer declared the marriage void under the Church of England in 1533. Clement excommunicated Henry, who responded by passing the Acts of Supremacy, making himself Supreme Head of the Church of England and severing English obedience to Rome.

He dissolved Catholic monasteries and seized their wealth, driving the English Reformation. Henry is famous for his six marriages, particularly his prolonged effort to annul his first marriage in pursuit of a male heir. He ordered the beheadings of two wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. By his later years, he had become tyrannical, paranoid, and morbidly obese, immobile and suffering from a gangrenous leg wound from a 1536 jousting accident, along with diabetes, oedema, and organ failure. He was buried at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle and succeeded by his only surviving son, Edward VI.