Fewer leaders left such an indelible mark on a country as did Henry VIII. While known mostly in folklore for the many wives he beheaded, his impact on history is much more far-reaching and complex. He influenced British courts of law whose statues are still debated as to their proper meaning, and his influence is also felt in England's religious, moral, and political realms. He reigned as the Protestant Reformation was sweeping Europe and violence between Christian denominations engulfed the continent. Henry was determined for England to chart its own political destiny and not have its affairs unduly influenced by the papacy, which had ruled England when it had been a Catholic nation. His methods were brutal, but he managed to successfully establish the Anglican Church and safeguard his nation's interests at a time when its existence was threatened by neighboring states.
Henry VIII ruled England for thirty-eight years while retaining significant levels of popularity and comporting himself as civilized gentleman. What makes this charming, well-liked, educated artist and intellectual rank as a dictatorial brute? Henry VIII had a gift for the arts, but he also had a propensity for the execution of enemies, rivals, advisers, and family members. He put away wives, children, advisers and some 72,000 fellow Englishmen. Sometimes the putting away of his family was as simple as denouncing his sons with the sentencing of “I am no longer your father!” or his wives with “I do not wish to be your husband!”
When Henry VII died in 1509, seven years had passed since the death of his eldest son, Arthur. During the interim, his younger son Henry VIII was largely kept out of the public eye. Young Henry was assigned a few intermittent tasks, but was not by any stretch of the imagination being groomed to assume the role of king, though it was obvious that he would eventually rule as the opportunities for anyone to succeed him vanished one by one. In the four days following the old king’s death and Henry VIII's assumption of the throne, his administration set about hunting for hidden money throughout the royal estate. Henry knew his subjects were not particularly fond of their new king so he made it his first order of business to have his father’s top two advisers executed, then beheaded other members of his father’s staff after reclaiming the equivalent of more than $150 million dollars from those who managed his father’s affairs.
Henry’s personal life and legacy took precedence over his kingship. In those days, having one to whom you could cede your kingdom was one of the most important aspects of the kingship. Henry was unconvinced a woman could effectively unite the Tudor Dynasty. As such, his primary mission was to have a son.
He married his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon, in an attempt to strengthen ties between England and Spain. After multiple pregnancies, Catherine gave birth to two living children, only one of whom survived, Princess Mary. One of the king’s mistresses, Elizabeth Blount, gave birth to an illegitimate son, but it would have been too much trouble to have that son legitimized through the Church. Instead, Henry divorced Catherine under the grounds that she had consummated her marriage to Arthur years before and, despite the fact that the Catholic Church did not authorize the remarriage, Henry made Anne Boleyn his wife. Catherine was stripped of her title as queen, and her daughter Mary declared illegitimate. Anne gave birth to Princess Elizabeth, but had multiple other pregnancies that either resulted in miscarriages or stillbirths. Because she was unsuccessful in producing for him an heir, the king wanted out of his marriage to Anne. He falsely accused the queen of infidelity and had five men, including her own brother, murdered for defiling his bed. The queen was also executed.
His subjects were increasingly displeased with the king’s outlandish display of unchristian behavior, but no one was allowed to speak against the king’s multiple marriages. The religious community, too, was in an uproar over the king’s multiple divorces and unsanctioned marriages. So the king, not wanting to be bothered by their opinions and finger-pointing, had dissenting clergy killed.
The king’s new wife Jane Seymour was made queen. Jane gave birth to a son, Prince Edward, but she died only a few days later from an infection. The king then remarried but quickly annulled his marriage to Anne of Cleaves, whom he thought was unattractive after meeting her. His next wife was Catherine Howard, who was beheaded after being rightfully found guilty of adultery. His last wife, Catherine Parr, helped the king to reconcile his relationship with his first two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth.
Henry VIII’s problems with the Catholic Church were largely of his own making. The church did not support his desire to divorce and remarry at will, particularly since the church's ability to sanction royal marriages made it a major power broker in Europe. Nor did the church support his murderous exploits to make sure he retained the autonomy to marry as he wished. When he broke off from the Catholic Church in 1534, he didn’t change the official church doctrines, but declared himself the supreme head of the Church of England and exercised papal authority over the newly-minted Anglican Church. Hundreds of thousands of England’s practicing Catholics were dissatisfied with the decision and those who did not go along with it (including John Fisher- Bishop of Rochester, and Thomas More, who had been the king’s hero and close friend) risked execution.
This event, known as the English Reformation, resulted in the closing down monasteries that had been supporting the poor and launching a widespread uprising called the Pilgrimage of Grace in which tens of thousands of rebels participated, led by Robert Aske. Aske was later executed and his body chained to the walls York Castle as a warning to others. A long list of rebel leaders were also killed including Sir Robert Constable, parliamentarian Thomas Moigne, Lord Darcy, Bigod, Sir William Constable, Sir Stephen Hamerton, Sir William Lumley, Sir Jon Constable and a slew of abbots, monks and priests. Despite his strong support of the English Reformation, Thomas Cromwell, who had been the king’s adviser for years, fell out of the king’s good graces and was convicted of treason and a list of other charges, fueled in large part by Cromwell’s insistence that the king go through with his marriage to Anne of Cleaves.
In the later years of his rule, the king’s morbid obesity, increasing irritability and suspected madness seemed to write the epitaph for which he is still remembered. The handsome young man who was eagerly received in 1509, had by 1540 come to be described by French Ambassador Charles de Marillac as “so covetous that all the riches in the world would not satisfy him.” The brutality of Henry VIII seemed to lie in the fact that no one was ever really safe from him. No title or position -- whether adviser, friend, child or wife -- could exempt one from indictment and execution.
Following Henry’s death, three of his children ruled after him. It was his daughter, Elizabeth I who served as the last ruler of the Tudor dynasty. She is widely held to be one of the greatest monarchs of all time and has a far better reputation than her father.
Yet for all the violence committed in Henry's lifetime, many historians believe that his actions were done out of expediency in a time of rebellion and social turbulence rather than out of a cruel will. Had he not taken extreme actions and conducted an occasional execution, they argue, the effects of the Reformation and the chaotic transformation of England from a medieval state to a nascent world empire could have engulfed the island into chaos. Whether society made Henry brutal or he made society brutal is an enigma, but a good case can be made for the former explanation. A.F. Pollard argues such a caste in his masterful biography of Henry VIII:
“Yet it is probable that Henry's personal influence and personal action averted greater evils than those they provoked. Without him, the storm of the Reformation would still have burst over England; without him, it might have been far more terrible. Every drop of blood shed under Henry VIII might have been a river under a feebler king. Instead of a stray execution here and there, conducted always with a scrupulous regard for legal forms, wars of religion might have desolated the land and swept away thousands of lives. London saw many a hideous sight in Henry's reign, but it had no cause to envy the Catholic capitals which witnessed the sack of Rome and the massacre of St. Bartholomew; for all Henry's iniquities, multiplied manifold, would not equal the volume of murder and sacrilege wrought at Rome in May, 1527 [The Sack of Rome], or at Paris in August, 1572 [The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre]. From such orgies of violence and crime, England was saved by the strong right arm and the iron will of her Tudor king. 'He is,' said Wolsey after his fall, 'a prince of royal courage, and he hath a princely heart; and rather than he will miss or want part of his appetite he will hazard the loss of one-half of his kingdom.'“