Henry VIII

Henry VIII (1491–1547), King of England from 1509. When M. Luther's ideas began to influence the English universities, Henry agreed to a demonstration of official orthodoxy. The Assertio Septem Sacramentorum (1521), for which Henry took the credit, earned him the title ‘Defender of the Faith’. In 1527 he began taking steps to procure the annulment of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon. He argued that Catherine's former marriage to his late brother invalidated his union with her, despite the dispensation given by Julius II. In 1529 pleadings on the marriage were heard in London before T. Wolsey and L. Campeggio, but Clement VII revoked the case to Rome. In Nov. 1529 Henry summoned Parliament. In 1530–31 a charge of praemunire against the whole clergy (for illegal exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction) was used to extract from Convocation a fine and limited acceptance of Henry's claims for England's jurisdictional independence from Rome. In 1532 the payment of Annates Act 1531, which was conditional, threatened to cut off Papal revenues from England. A House of Commons petition was used to secure the ‘Submission of the Clergy’ from a rump Convocation. These measures, however, did little to forward the cause of Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn. The death of W. Warham in Aug. 1532 allowed Henry to appoint T. Cranmer as Abp. of Canterbury. In Dec. 1532 Anne became pregnant; in Jan. 1533 Henry secretly married her. In Apr. Parliament forbade appeals to Rome in temporal cases, such as marriage. Cranmer annulled Henry's marriage to Catherine and pronounced that to Anne valid, and crowned Anne Queen. After Clement had threatened to excommunicate Henry unless he returned to Catherine, a Succession Act in 1534 imposed a national oath recognizing his marriage to Anne and entailing the Crown on its children, and a Supremacy Act declared Henry ‘supreme head’ of the English Church. The most eminent of these who denied the royal supremacy ( T. More and J. Fisher) were executed. Henry began the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536, negotiated with Lutheran princes, and supported the Ten Articles (1536). The Pilgrimage of Grace in Oct. 1536 showed that there was hostility to change, at least in the north. In 1537 Henry refused to give full official sanction to the Bishops' Book and began his own more conservative revision, which became the King's Book (1543). The Six Articles (1539) reaffirmed Catholic doctrine. In his later years he tried to maintain a balance in religion. See also REFORMATION.