Summary Of Henry VIII

Henry VIII, infamously known for his many marriages as well as his role in the English Reformation, reigned as king of England from 1509 until his death in 1547. After his brother died, Arthur, he was expected to take the throne. Henry married his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon, because it was his father’s dying wish. In addition to strengthening the alliance between the ruling families of Spain and England, however, their marriage was also meant to provide a political advantage. In the beginning, their love was genuine as he was quoted in a letter to his father-in-law about his new wife, he writes, “The bond between us is now so strict that all our interests are common, and the love I bear to Katherine is such that if I were still free,

He was the first to give what the king truly wanted: an annulment from Catherine of Aragon. The Reformation Parliament, which met from 1529 to 1536, was summoned to settle the dispute known as the “King’s Great Matter”. Members of this assembly were anti-clerical, as they resented many aspects of the church, from vast amounts of land they owned to the taxes they had to pay to the church. Therefore, it was not hard for Henry to persuade them to side with him, granting him the power to supersede the papacy. First, Parliament enacted the Statute of Praemunire which banned the Pope from having legal or financial power in England without the King’s consent. Under normal circumstances, taxes imposed on the clergy, were collected in England and then remitted to Rome. However, the Conditional Restraint of Annates (1532), ordered the money to be put into the royal banks instead. The purpose of both these regulations was to pressure the papacy into allowing the annulment between the king and the queen. When the new archbishop, Thomas Cranmer was instituted, he finally invalidated King Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon while also granting the marriage with Anne Boleyn. The pope excommunicated Henry after this, yet it was insignificant. All these events separated England further and

Among them was the Act of Supremacy of 1534, it was one of the final statutes before England completely broke away from Rome. It declares that Henry VIII would have the title, “Supreme Head of the Church of England” as well as demanding the citizens to recognize Anne Boleyn as his wife. Later on, the Statute in Restraint of Appeals would become the breaking point. It states, "This realm of England is an Empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one Supreme Head and King having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial Crown of the same”. This statute essentially meant that the king and England was utterly sovereign and did not have to heed anyone else. Ironically, Henry VIII had once been called the Defender of the Faith by the pope, he now maintained a pontiff-like status over his own church. Even after the official split from Rome, there were still many other aspects of the church that needed to be changed. For example, Monastic lands were sold to nobles so the money could refill banks that lost money during war against France and Scotland. 40,000 northern men rebelled against the crown because of the dissolved monasteries as well as newly imposed laws and taxes, an event that would be known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. The political presence of the Roman church was slowly blotted out through these