Henry VIII of England

He was born as Henry Tudor on 28 June 1491 at Greenwich Palace to Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. He had six siblings but only three of them survived infancy. He was the King’s second son and thus was not expected to succeed his father.

He was appointed Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports in 1493 when he was just two and subsequently appointed Earl Marshal of England and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at age three. He was tutored by the best educators available and became fluent in Latin and French.

His elder brother Arthur died at the age of 15 in 1502 and Henry inherited all of Arthur’s duties. He was declared the new Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester in 1503.

King Henry VII died on 21 April 1509 and the young Henry succeeded him as King. Inexperienced and still a teenager at the time of his coronation, Henry VIII relied greatly on Thomas Wolsey’s guidance to rule the kingdom. Soon Wolsey became a very powerful figure in the English court and was made the Lord Chancellor by 1515.

In 1511, Henry VIII joined Pope Julius II’s Holy League against France. The King depended heavily on Wolsey to help in organizing the first French campaign through which he aimed to bring French territories under the English rule.

A war against France was formally declared in 1512, and the initial attacks proved to be a failure. In 1513, Henry and his troops invaded France and defeated a French army at the Battle of the Spurs. Soon the English also conquered Thérouanne and Tournai.

During the King’s absence from England, James IV of Scotland attempted to invade England. However Henry VIII”s wife Queen Catherine successfully defended England and defeated the Scots at the Battle of Flodden. The Scottish King was also killed in the battle.

In 1521, Charles of Austria, who was the monarch of both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, declared war on France. Henry aligned England with Charles and hoped to restore English lands in France. Charles successfully defeated and captured King Francis I of France but none of Henry’s expectations from this battle were fulfilled. So he withdrew England from the alignment with France and signed the Treaty of the More in 1525.

King Henry VIII is best remembered for breaking away the Church of England from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. This was brought into effect by a series of Acts passed by the Parliament between 1532 and 1534, among them the 1534 Act of Supremacy which declared that Henry was the "Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England". These events are also known as the English Reformation, and associated with the wider process of the European Protestant Reformation.