The King Henry VIII of England ( 1509-1547 )

Family of Henry VIII 1545 ( Elisabeth on the right )

Unknown artist

Family of Henry VIII, an Allegory of the Tudor Succession 1572

National Museum and Gallery, London

Author: Lucas de Heere

By the beginning of the 16th century there was a current that defended that Roman Church should be reformed. This first happened in England with the rejection of the Pope Clement VII in order to stop the corruption that were frequently succeeding. Meanwhile in Germany a man called Martin Luther was founding a new kind of Christianity based in his interpretation of Bible.

The King Henry VIII (1509-1547) was the first English monarch to be a learner of the renaissance ideas and that was his regent lighting. He became a highly skilled scholar, linguist, musician and athlete. Although he was dissatisfied with the union with Catherine of Aragon ( his brother's widow ) it was completed in the first few months of his reign.

All of his sons had been dying in infancy so it was fairly certain that Henry VIII could have no male heir to the throne while Catherine remained his wife. There was Mary, but no queen regnant had yet ruled in England; he wanted his marriage annulled. All these considerations were intensified by Henry VIII's passion for Anne Boleyn, though she certainly was not the sole or the main cause of the divorce. That the succession was the main point is proved by the fact that Henry's efforts were all directed to securing a wife. As the Catholic Church refuse it, Henry assumed his supremacy over religious questions. He got divorced and implanted the English Church, the Protestantism.

Information Sources: Universal Modern Encyclopedia - Lexicoteca;

Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Ed.,

Vol XIII.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910. 289.