Execution of Anne Boleyn
On
8 January 1536 news reached the king and the queen that Catherine of
Aragon had died. Upon hearing the news of her death, Henry and Anne
reportedly decked themselves in bright yellow clothing, yellow being
the colour of mourning in Spain at the time. Henry called for public
displays of joy regarding Catherine's death. The queen was pregnant
again, and she was aware of the consequences if she failed to give
birth to a son. Her life could be in danger, as with both wives dead,
Henry would be free to remarry and no one could claim that the union
was illegal. Later that month, the King was unhorsed in a tournament
and was badly injured. It seemed for a time that the King's life was in
danger. When news of this accident reached the queen she was sent into
shock and miscarried a male child that was about 15 weeks old. This
happened on the very day of Catherine’s funeral, 29 January 1536. For
most observers, this personal loss was the beginning of the end of the
royal marriage.
Given the King's desperate desire for a son, the
sequence of Anne's pregnancies has attracted much interest. Author,
Mike Ashley, speculated that Anne had two stillborn children after
Elizabeth's birth and before the birth of the male child she miscarried
in 1536. Most sources attest only to the birth of Elizabeth in
September 1533, a possible miscarriage in the summer of 1534, and the
miscarriage of a male child, of almost four months gestation, in
January 1536. As Anne recovered from what would be her final
miscarriage, Henry declared that his marriage had been the product of
witchcraft. The King's new mistress, Jane Seymour, was quickly moved
into new quarters. This was followed by Anne's brother, George Boleyn,
being refused a prestigious court honour, the Order of the Garter,
which was instead given to Jane Seymour's brother.
Five men,
including Anne's own brother, were arrested on charges of incest and
treason, accused of having sexual relationships with the queen. On 2
May 1536 Anne was arrested and taken to the Tower of London. She was
accused of adultery, incest and high treason. Although the evidence
against them was unconvincing, the accused were found guilty and
condemned to death by the peers. George Boleyn and the other accused
men were executed on 17 May 1536. At 8 a.m. on 19 May 1536, the queen
was executed on Tower Green. She knelt upright, in the French style of
executions. The execution was swift and consisted of a single stroke.
One
day after Anne's execution in 1536 Henry became engaged to Jane
Seymour, one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting to whom the king had been
showing favour for some time. They were married 10 days later. At about
the same time as this, his third marriage, Henry granted his assent to
the Laws in Wales Act 1535, which legally annexed Wales, uniting
England and Wales into one unified nation. This was followed by the Act
of Succession 1536, which declared Henry's children by Queen Jane to be
next in the line of succession and declared both the Lady Mary and the
Lady Elizabeth illegitimate, thus excluding them from the throne. The
king was granted the power to further determine the line of succession
in his will. In 1537, Jane gave birth to a son, Prince Edward, the
future Edward VI. The birth was difficult and the queen died at
Greenwich Palace on 24 October 1537 from an infection. After Jane's
death, the entire court mourned with Henry for an extended period.
Henry considered Jane to be his "true" wife, being the only one who had
given him the male heir he so desperately sought. He was buried next to
her at his death.
Final years: 1540-1547
n 1540, Henry sanctioned the destruction of shrines to saints. At this time, Henry desired to marry once again to ensure the succession. Thomas Cromwell, promoted to 1st Earl of Essex, suggested Anne, the sister of the Protestant Duke of Cleves, who was seen as an important ally in case of a Roman Catholic attack on England. Hans Holbein the Younger was dispatched to Cleves to paint a portrait of Anne for the king. Although it has been said that he painted her in a more flattering light, it is unlikely that the portrait was highly inaccurate, since Holbein remained in favour at court. After regarding Holbein's portrayal, and urged by the complimentary description of Anne given by his courtiers, Henry agreed to wed Anne. On Anne's arrival in England, Henry is said to have found her utterly unattractive, privately calling her a "Flanders Mare".
Portrait of Anne of Cleves by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1539.
Henry wished to annul the marriage in order to marry another. The Duke of Cleves had become engaged in a dispute with the Holy Roman Emperor, with whom Henry had no desire to quarrel. Queen Anne was intelligent enough not to impede Henry's quest for an annulment. Upon the question of marital sex, she testified that her marriage had never been consummated. Henry was said to have come into the room each night and merely kissed his new bride on the forehead before retiring. All impediments to an annulment were thus removed.
The marriage was subsequently dissolved and Anne received the title of "The King's Sister", and was granted Hever Castle, the former residence of the Boleyn family. Cromwell, meanwhile, fell out of favour for his role in arranging the marriage and was subsequently attainted and beheaded. The office of Viceregent in Spirituals, which had been specifically created for him, was not filled.
Miniature Portrait of Catherine Howard by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1540.
On 28 July 1540, (the same day Cromwell was executed) Henry married the young Catherine Howard (also Katherine), Anne Boleyn's first cousin and a lady-in-waiting of Anne's. He was absolutely delighted with his new queen. Soon after her marriage, however, Queen Catherine had an affair with the courtier, Thomas Culpeper. She also employed Francis Dereham, who was previously informally engaged to her and had an affair with her prior to her marriage, as her secretary. Thomas Cranmer, who was opposed to the powerful Roman Catholic Howard family, brought evidence of Queen Catherine's activities to the king's notice. Though Henry originally refused to believe the allegations, he allowed Cranmer to conduct an investigation, which resulted in Queen Catherine's implication. When questioned, the queen could have admitted a prior contract to marry Dereham, which would have made her subsequent marriage to Henry invalid, but she instead claimed that Dereham had forced her to enter into an adulterous relationship. Dereham, meanwhile, exposed Queen Catherine's relationship with Thomas Culpeper. As was the case with Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard could not technically have been guilty of adultery, as the marriage was officially null and void from the beginning. Again, this point was ignored, and Catherine was executed on 13 February 1542. She was aged between 17 and 22 when she died (opinions differ as to her year of birth). That same year, England's remaining monasteries were all dissolved, and their property transferred to the Crown. Abbots and priors lost their seats in the House of Lords; only archbishops and bishops came to comprise the ecclesiastical element of the body. The Lords Spiritual, as members of the clergy with seats in the House of Lords were known, were for the first time outnumbered by the Lords Temporal.
Catherine Parr, Henry's sixth and final wife.
Henry married his last wife, the wealthy widow Catherine Parr, in 1543. She argued with Henry over religion; she was a reformer, but Henry remained a conservative. This behaviour nearly proved her undoing, but she saved herself by a show of submissiveness. She helped reconcile Henry with his first two daughters, the Princess Mary and the Lady Elizabeth. In 1544, an Act of Parliament put the daughters back in the line of succession after Edward, Prince of Wales, though they were still deemed illegitimate. The same act allowed Henry to determine further succession to the throne in his will.
A mnemonic for the fates of Henry's wives is "divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived". An alternative version is "King Henry the Eighth, to six wives he was wedded: One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded". (Or, more succinctly, "Two beheaded, one died, two divorced, one survived.") The phrase may be misleading. Firstly, Henry was never divorced from any of his wives; rather, his marriages to them were annulled by the Church of England. Secondly, four marriages — not two — ended in annulments. The marriages to Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were annulled shortly before their executions and, although her marriage to Henry was annulled, Anne of Cleves survived him, as did Catherine Parr.
The cruelty and tyrannical egotism of Henry became more apparent as he advanced in years and his health began to fail. A wave of political executions which had commenced with that of Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk in 1513 ended with Henry Earl of Surrey in January, 1547. According to Holinshed the number of executions in this reign amounted to 72,000, although higher figures are given by some authorities.
Death and succession
Late in life, Henry became grossly overweight (with a waist measurement of 54 inches/137 cm) and had to be moved about with the help of mechanical inventions. He was covered with painful, suppurating boils and possibly suffered from gout. His obesity dates from a jousting accident in 1536 in which he suffered a leg wound. This prevented him from exercising and gradually became ulcerated. It undoubtedly hastened his death at the age of 55, which occurred on 28 January 1547 in the Palace of Whitehall, on what would have been his father's 90th birthday. He expired soon after uttering these last words: "Monks! Monks! Monks!"
The theory that Henry suffered from syphilis was first promoted approximately 100 years after his death[citation needed], but has been disregarded by most serious historians. Syphilis was a well-known disease in Henry's time, and although his contemporary, Francis I of France was treated for it, the notes left from Henry's physicians do not indicate that the English king was. A more recent and credible theory suggests that Henry's medical symptoms, and those of his older sister Margaret Tudor, are also characteristic of untreated Type II diabetes.
Meeting of Henry VIII and Maximilian.
Henry VIII was buried in St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, next to his wife Jane Seymour. Over a hundred years later Charles I was buried in the same vault.
Within a little more than a decade after his death, all three of his royal heirs sat on the English throne, and all three left no descendants. Under the Act of Succession 1543, Henry's only surviving legitimate son, Edward, inherited the Crown, becoming Edward VI. Since Edward was only nine years old at the time, he could not exercise actual power. Henry's will designated 16 executors to serve on a council of regency until Edward reached the age of 18. The executors chose Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford, Jane Seymour's elder brother, to be Lord Protector of the Realm. In default of heirs to Edward, the throne was to pass to Henry VIII's daughter by Catherine of Aragon, the Princess Mary and her heirs. If Mary's issue also failed, the crown was to go to Henry's daughter by Anne Boleyn, Princess Elizabeth, and her heirs. Finally, if Elizabeth's line also became extinct, the crown was to be inherited by the descendants of Henry VIII's deceased younger sister, Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk. The descendants of Henry's sister Margaret Tudor - the royal family of Scotland - were therefore excluded from succession according to this act.
Zodiac
Subject: King Henry VIII {Part II} 
Sun 14 Jun 2009 - 19:30
