108 Facts About Henry VIII

Henry VIII appointed himself Supreme Head of the Church of England and dissolved convents and monasteries, for which he was excommunicated by the pope.

Henry VIII frequently used charges of treason and heresy to quell dissent, and those accused were often executed without a formal trial using bills of attainder.

Henry VIII achieved many of his political aims through his chief ministers, some of whom were banished or executed when they fell out of his favour.

Henry VIII was an extravagant spender, using proceeds from the dissolution of the monasteries and acts of the Reformation Parliament.

Henry VIII converted money that was formerly paid to Rome into royal revenue.

Henry VIII founded the Royal Navy, oversaw the annexation of Wales to England with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542, and was the first English monarch to rule as King of Ireland following the Crown of Ireland Act 1542.

Henry VIII's contemporaries considered him an attractive, educated, and accomplished king.

Henry VIII has been described as "one of the most charismatic rulers to sit on the English throne" and his reign described as the "most important" in English history.

Henry VIII is frequently characterised in his later life as a lustful, egotistical, paranoid, and tyrannical monarch.

Henry VIII was baptised by Richard Foxe, the Bishop of Exeter, at a church of the Observant Franciscans close to the palace.

In 1493, at the age of two, Henry VIII was appointed Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

Henry VIII was appointed Earl Marshal of England and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at age three and was made a Knight of the Bath soon after.

Henry VIII became fluent in Latin and French and learned at least some Italian.

Henry VIII VII gave his second son few responsibilities even after the death of Arthur.

Young Henry VIII was strictly supervised and did not appear in public.

Henry VIII VII renewed his efforts to seal a marital alliance between England and Spain, by offering his son Henry VIII in marriage to the widowed Catherine.

Emperor Maximilian I had been attempting to marry his granddaughter Eleanor, Catherine's niece, to Henry VIII; she had now been jilted.

Henry VIII claimed descent from Constantine the Great and King Arthur and saw himself as their successor.

Two days after his coronation, Henry VIII arrested his father's two most unpopular ministers, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley.

Henry VIII returned some of the money supposedly extorted by the two ministers.

Exactly how many Henry VIII had is disputed: David Loades believes Henry VIII had mistresses "only to a very limited extent", whilst Alison Weir believes there were numerous other affairs.

Henry VIII renewed his father's friendship with Louis XII of France, an issue that divided his council.

Shortly thereafter Henry VIII signed a pact with Ferdinand II of Aragon.

Henry VIII then pulled off a diplomatic coup by convincing Emperor Maximilian to join the Holy League.

Remarkably, Henry VIII had secured the promised title of "Most Christian King of France" from Julius and possibly coronation by the Pope himself in Paris, if only Louis could be defeated.

Henry VIII had led the army personally, complete with a large entourage.

Henry VIII had been supporting Ferdinand and Maximilian financially during the campaign but had received little in return; England's coffers were now empty.

Henry VIII had more in common with Charles, whom he met once before and once after Francis.

Charles brought his realms into war with France in 1521; Henry VIII offered to mediate, but little was achieved and by the end of the year Henry VIII had aligned England with Charles.

Henry VIII still clung to his previous aim of restoring English lands in France but sought to secure an alliance with the Netherlands, then a territorial possession of Charles, and the continued support of the Emperor.

King Henry VIII never acknowledged them as he did in the case of Henry VIII FitzRoy.

In 1525, as Henry VIII grew more impatient with Catherine's inability to produce the male heir he desired, he became enamoured of Mary Boleyn's sister, Anne Boleyn, then a charismatic young woman of 25 in the Queen's entourage.

Martin Luther, on the other hand, initially argued against the annulment, stating that Henry VIII could take a second wife in accordance with his teaching that the Bible allowed for polygamy but not divorce.

Henry VIII now believed the Pope had lacked the authority to grant a dispensation from this impediment.

Henry VIII sent his secretary, William Knight, to appeal directly to the Holy See by way of a deceptively worded draft papal bull.

Henry VIII is traditionally believed to have had an affair with Madge Shelton in 1535, although historian Antonia Fraser argues that Henry VIII in fact had an affair with her sister Mary Shelton.

Henry VIII promised the rebels he would pardon them and thanked them for raising the issues.

Henry VIII saw the rebels as traitors and did not feel obliged to keep his promises to them, so when further violence occurred after Henry VIII's offer of a pardon he was quick to break his promise of clemency.

The day after Anne's execution the 45-year-old Henry VIII became engaged to Seymour, who had been one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting.

In 1536, for example, Henry VIII granted his assent to the Laws in Wales Act 1535, which legally annexed Wales, uniting England and Wales into a single nation.

The euphoria that had accompanied Edward's birth became sorrow, but it was only over time that Henry VIII came to long for his wife.

Enriched by the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII used some of his financial reserves to build a series of coastal defences and set some aside for use in the event of a Franco-German invasion.

When Henry VIII met Anne he was much displeased with her appearance.

The morning after their wedding night, Henry VIII complained about his new wife to Cromwell, stating:.

Henry VIII wished to annul the marriage as soon as possible so he could marry another.

Henry VIII was delighted with his new queen and awarded her the lands of Cromwell and a vast array of jewellery.

Henry VIII employed Francis Dereham, who had previously been informally engaged to her and had an affair with her prior to her marriage, as her secretary.

The Privy Council was informed of her affair with Dereham whilst Henry VIII was away; Thomas Cranmer was dispatched to investigate, and he brought evidence of Queen Catherine's previous affair with Dereham to the King's notice.

Henry VIII remained committed to an idiosyncratic mixture of Catholicism and Protestantism; the reactionary mood that had gained ground after Cromwell's fall had neither eliminated his Protestant streak nor been overcome by it.

In 1540, Henry VIII sanctioned the complete destruction of shrines to saints.

Henry VIII now hoped to unite the crowns of England and Scotland by marrying his son Edward to James's successor, Mary.

Henry VIII was left alone against France, unable to make peace.

Late in life, Henry VIII became obese, with a waist measurement of 54 inches, and had to be moved about with the help of mechanical devices.

Henry VIII was covered with painful, pus-filled boils and possibly had gout.

The theory that Henry VIII had syphilis has been dismissed by most historians.

Henry VIII was interred in a vault at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, next to Jane Seymour.

Finally, if Elizabeth's line became extinct, the crown was to be inherited by the descendants of Henry VIII's deceased younger sister, Mary, the Greys.

Henry VIII cultivated the image of a Renaissance man, and his court was a centre of scholarly and artistic innovation and glamorous excess, epitomised by the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

Henry VIII scouted the country for choirboys, taking some directly from Wolsey's choir, and introduced Renaissance music into court.

Musicians included Benedict de Opitiis, Richard Sampson, Ambrose Lupo, and Venetian organist Dionisio Memo, and Henry VIII himself played and kept a considerable collection of flute instruments including recorders.

Henry VIII was skilled on the lute and played the organ, and was a talented player of the virginals.

Henry VIII was an accomplished musician, author, and poet; his best-known piece of music is "Pastime with Good Company", and he is reputed to have written "Greensleeves" but probably did not.

Henry VIII was an avid gambler and dice player, and excelled at sports, especially jousting, hunting, and real tennis.

Henry VIII was known for his strong defence of conventional Christian piety.

Henry VIII was involved in the construction and improvement of several significant buildings, including Nonsuch Palace, King's College Chapel, Cambridge, and Westminster Abbey in London.

Henry VIII was an intellectual, the first English king with a modern humanist education.

Henry VIII read and wrote English, French, and Latin, and owned a large library.

Henry VIII annotated many books and published one of his own, and he had numerous pamphlets and lectures prepared to support the reformation of the church.

At the popular level, theatre and minstrel troupes funded by the crown travelled around the land to promote the new religious practices; the Pope and Catholic priests and monks were mocked as foreign devils, while Henry VIII was hailed as the glorious king of England and as a brave and heroic defender of the true faith.

Henry VIII worked hard to present an image of unchallengeable authority and irresistible power.

Henry VIII arranged a jousting tournament at Greenwich in 1517 where he wore gilded armour and gilded horse trappings, and outfits of velvet, satin, and cloth of gold with pearls and jewels.

Henry VIII finally retired from jousting in 1536 after a heavy fall from his horse left him unconscious for two hours, but he continued to sponsor two lavish tournaments a year.

Henry VIII then started gaining weight and lost the trim, athletic figure that had made him so handsome, and his courtiers began dressing in heavily padded clothes to emulate and flatter him.

Henry VIII's health declined rapidly near the end of his reign.

Where Henry VIII did intervene personally in the running of the country, Elton argued, he mostly did so to its detriment.

The prominence and influence of faction in Henry VIII's court is similarly discussed in the context of at least five episodes of Henry VIII's reign, including the downfall of Anne Boleyn.

Wolsey helped fill the gap left by Henry VIII's declining participation in government but did so mostly by imposing himself in the King's place.

Henry VIII turned to law, picking up a good knowledge of the Bible, and was admitted to Gray's Inn in 1524.

Cromwell made the various income streams Henry VIII VII put in place more formal and assigned largely autonomous bodies for their administration.

Henry VIII inherited a vast fortune and a prosperous economy from his father, who had been frugal.

Henry VIII augmented the royal treasury by seizing church lands, but his heavy spending and long periods of mismanagement damaged the economy.

Henry VIII spent much of his wealth on maintaining his court and household, including many of the building works he undertook on royal palaces.

Henry VIII hung 2,000 tapestries in his palaces; by comparison, James V of Scotland hung just 200.

Henry VIII took pride in showing off his collection of weapons, which included exotic archery equipment, 2,250 pieces of land ordnance and 6,500 handguns.

Henry VII had not involved Parliament in his affairs very much, but Henry VIII had to turn to Parliament during his reign for money, in particular for grants of subsidies to fund his wars.

Pollard has argued that even if Henry VIII had not needed an annulment, he might have come to reject papal control over the governance of England purely for political reasons.

Indeed, Henry VIII needed a son to secure the Tudor Dynasty and avert the risk of civil war over disputed succession.

Henry VIII established a new political theology of obedience to the crown that continued for the next decade.

Henry VIII strengthened existing coastal defence fortresses such as Dover Castle and, at Dover, Moat Bulwark and Archcliffe Fort, which he visited for a few months to supervise.

Henry VIII is traditionally cited as one of the founders of the Royal Navy.

Technologically, Henry VIII invested in large cannon for his warships, an idea that had taken hold in other countries, to replace the smaller serpentines in use.

Henry VIII was responsible for the creation of a permanent navy, with the supporting anchorages and dockyards.

Tactically, Henry VIII's reign saw the Navy move away from boarding tactics to employ gunnery instead.

The Tudor navy was enlarged from seven ships to up to 50, and Henry VIII was responsible for the establishment of the "council for marine causes" to oversee the maintenance and operation of the Navy, becoming the basis for the later Admiralty.

Until 1513, Henry VIII continued the policy of his father, to allow Irish lords to rule in the King's name and accept steep divisions between the communities.

When Thomas Butler, 7th Earl of Ormond, died, Henry VIII recognised one successor for Ormond's English, Welsh and Scottish lands, whilst in Ireland another took control.

Until the break with Rome, it was widely believed that Ireland was a Papal possession granted as a mere fiefdom to the English king, so in 1542 Henry VIII asserted England's claim to the Kingdom of Ireland free from the Papal overlordship.

The incentive to comply with Henry VIII's request was an accompanying barony, and thus a right to sit in the Irish House of Lords, which was to run in parallel with England's.

The complexities and sheer scale of Henry VIII's legacy ensured that, in the words of Betteridge and Freeman, "throughout the centuries, Henry VIII has been praised and reviled, but he has never been ignored".

Henry VIII kept the development of England in line with some of the most vigorous, though not the noblest forces of the day.

Dimly remembering the wars of the Roses, vaguely informed as to the slaughters and sufferings in Europe, the people of England knew that in Henry VIII they had a great king.

Henry VIII was little more, in other words, than an "ego-centric monstrosity" whose reign "owed its successes and virtues to better and greater men about him; most of its horrors and failures sprang more directly from [the King]".

For Scarisbrick, Henry VIII was a formidable, captivating man who "wore regality with a splendid conviction".

Henry VIII originally used the style "Henry VIII the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England, France and Lord of Ireland".

Henry VIII's motto was "Coeur Loyal", and he had this embroidered on his clothes in the form of a heart symbol and with the word "loyal".

Henry VIII's emblem was the Tudor rose and the Beaufort portcullis.

In 1535, Henry VIII added the "supremacy phrase" to the royal style, which became "Henry VIII the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England and France, Defender of the Faith, Lord of Ireland and of the Church of England in Earth Supreme Head".

In 1541, Henry VIII had the Irish Parliament change the title "Lord of Ireland" to "King of Ireland" with the Crown of Ireland Act 1542, after being advised that many Irish people regarded the Pope as the true head of their country, with the Lord acting as a mere representative.