A king at the edge of the Middle Ages
Henry VIII was born in 1491 and was king of England from 1509 until his death in January 1547. Most historians place the end of the Middle Ages somewhere around 1485 to 1500, depending on what they emphasize, so he belongs to the period after the usual medieval boundary. But his reign is still worth reading alongside medieval kings, because much of what he did is a response to medieval problems: a dynasty that had only recently survived the Wars of the Roses, a church with enormous landed wealth, and a crown that needed money and heirs.
His father, Henry VII, had won the throne at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 and ended the long dynastic quarrels by marrying Elizabeth of York. Henry VIII came to the throne with little challenge. He was seventeen, and he soon married Catherine of Aragon, the widow of his older brother Arthur, who had died in 1502.
Early reign and ministers
In the early years Henry left much of the daily work to ministers while he hunted, jousted and pursued military glory. The most prominent minister was Thomas Wolsey, a cleric who became Archbishop of York and a cardinal and who ran the government and foreign policy for about fifteen years. English wars in France in the 1510s brought limited results. The meeting with Francis I of France at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520 was a lavish show of the kind of chivalric display that kings of the late Middle Ages enjoyed.
In 1521 Henry published a book against Martin Luther’s teaching, and the pope gave him the title Defender of the Faith. It is an irony of later events that the title stayed with English monarchs even after the break with Rome.
The king’s “great matter”
Catherine had borne several children, but only a daughter, Mary, survived. Henry wanted a male heir and, from the later 1520s, also wanted to marry Anne Boleyn. He asked the pope to declare his first marriage invalid, based on the argument that it broke a biblical rule because Catherine had been his brother’s wife. The pope was unwilling, partly because Catherine’s nephew, the Emperor Charles V, held great military influence in Italy.
When Wolsey failed to obtain the annulment, he fell from power in 1529. Henry turned to other advisers, among them Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer. Over the next few years parliament passed laws that limited appeals to Rome and, in 1534, the Act of Supremacy declared the king the supreme head of the Church of England. This was a break with papal supremacy that had been a central feature of medieval church and state relations. Henry’s marriage to Anne had been performed in 1533, and their daughter Elizabeth was born that year. The doctrine of the church did not change much at once, since Henry remained in many ways traditional in belief, but control over it did.
Money, monasteries and revolt
The second great consequence was the dissolution of the monasteries, carried out between about 1536 and 1540. The monastic houses held substantial property, and the church wealth that had built up over centuries passed largely into the hands of the crown, which sold or granted much of it to lay owners. Historians still discuss how much this was driven by money, by religious reform or by politics, and the answer is probably a mixture. For the many communities that had given hospitality, charity and employment for generations, the change was dramatic.
Not everyone accepted it. In 1536 a large rising in the north, called the Pilgrimage of Grace, objected to the religious changes and to government interference. It was put down by a combination of promises and later executions. The crown also authorized an English-language Bible for use in churches in the late 1530s, which was a notable step, given the earlier suspicion of English Bible translation.
Court politics
Henry’s court was dangerous for those who served in it. Anne Boleyn was executed in 1536 after being accused of adultery and treason; scholars still debate how reliable the charges were. Cromwell, who had built up the administration, was arrested and executed in 1540 after the failure of the king’s marriage to Anne of Cleves. Henry married six times in all. The sequence of wives is well known, and the factions that formed around them, often tied to religious positions, shaped appointments and policy.
The politics of the court were also a politics of succession. With only one legitimate son, Edward, born in 1537 to Jane Seymour, the question of who would rule after Henry was always present. Edward VI came to the throne at his father’s death in 1547 as a child, and the contests that followed belong to a later period.
Why he matters in a medieval story
Henry VIII’s reign shows both continuity and change. The king still used medieval tools, including tournaments, councils, royal progress and the language of kingship. But the tools of printing, of a stronger central government and of a national church under royal control point forward. For a reader coming from the earlier medieval kings, he is a useful figure at the point where the older arrangements begin to give way to new ones.