his six marriages: dispensing with these forthwith enables a deeper search

into the major themes of the reign. He married Catherine of Aragon (widow

of his brother, Arthur) in 1509, divorcing her in 1533; the union produced

one daughter, Mary. Henry married the pregnant Anne Boleyn in 1533; she

gave him another daughter, Elizabeth, but was executed for infidelity (a

treasonous charge in the king's consort) in May 1536. He married Jane

Seymour by the end of the same month, who died giving birth to Henry's lone

male heir, Edward, in October 1536. Early in 1540, Henry arranged a

marriage with Anne of Cleves, after viewing Hans Holbein's beautiful

portrait of the German princess. In person, alas, Henry found her homely

and the marriage was never consummated. In July 1540, he married the

adulterous Catherine Howard - she was executed for infidelity in March

1542. Catherine Parr became his wife in 1543, providing for the needs of

both Henry and his children until his death in 1547.

The court life initiated by his father evolved into a cornerstone of

Tudor government in the reign of Henry VIII. After his father's staunch,

stolid rule, the energetic, youthful and handsome king avoided governing in

person, much preferring to journey the countryside hunting and reviewing

his subjects. Matters of state were left in the hands of others, most

notably Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York. Cardinal Wolsey virtually ruled

England until his failure to secure the papal annulment that Henry needed

to marry Anne Boleyn in 1533. Wolsey was quite capable as Lord Chancellor,

but his own interests were served more than that of the king: as powerful

as he was, he still was subject to Henry's favor - losing Henry's

confidence proved to be his downfall. The early part of Henry's reign,

however, saw the young king invade France, defeat Scottish forces at the

Battle of Foldden Field (in which James IV of Scotland was slain), and

write a treatise denouncing Martin Luther's Reformist ideals, for which the

pope awarded Henry the title "Defender of the Faith".

The 1530's witnessed Henry's growing involvement in government, and a

series of events which greatly altered England, as well as the whole of

Western Christendom: the separation of the Church of England from Roman

Catholicism. The separation was actually a by-product of Henry's obsession

with producing a male heir; Catherine of Aragon failed to produce a male

and the need to maintain dynastic legitimacy forced Henry to seek an

annulment from the pope in order to marry Anne Boleyn. Wolsey tried

repeatedly to secure a legal annulment from Pope Clement VII, but Clement

was beholden to the Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and nephew of Catherine.

Henry summoned the Reformation Parliament in 1529, which passed 137

statutes in seven years and exercised an influence in political and

ecclesiastic affairs which was unknown to feudal parliaments. Religious

reform movements had already taken hold in England, but on a small scale:

the Lollards had been in existence since the mid-fourteenth century and the

ideas of Luther and Zwingli circulated within intellectual groups, but

continental Protestantism had yet to find favor with the English people.

The break from Rome was accomplished through law, not social outcry; Henry,

as Supreme Head of the Church of England, acknowledged this by slight

alterations in worship ritual instead of a wholesale reworking of religious

dogma. England moved into an era of "conformity of mind" with the new royal

supremacy (much akin to the absolutism of France's Louis XIV): by 1536, all

ecclesiastical and government officials were required to publicly approve

of the break with Rome and take an oath of loyalty. The king moved away

from the medieval idea of ruler as chief lawmaker and overseer of civil

behavior, to the modern idea of ruler as the ideological icon of the state.

The remainder of Henry's reign was anticlimactic. Anne Boleyn lasted only

three years before her execution; she was replaced by Jane Seymour, who

laid Henry's dynastic problems to rest with the birth of Edward VI.

Fragmented noble factions involved in the Wars of the Roses found

themselves reduced to vying for the king's favor in court. Reformist

factions won the king's confidence and vastly benefiting from Henry's

dissolution of the monasteries, as monastic lands and revenues went either

to the crown or the nobility. The royal staff continued the rise in status

that began under Henry VII, eventually to rival the power of the nobility.

Two men, in particular, were prominent figures through the latter stages of

Henry's reign: Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer. Cromwell, an efficient

administrator, succeeded Wolsey as Lord Chancellor, creating new

governmental departments for the varying types of revenue and establishing

parish priest's duty of recording births, baptisms, marriages and deaths.

Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, dealt with and guided changes in

ecclesiastical policy and oversaw the dissolution of the monasteries.

Henry VIII built upon the innovations instituted by his father. The break

with Rome, coupled with an increase in governmental bureaucracy, led to the

royal supremacy that would last until the execution of Charles I and the

establishment of the Commonwealth one hundred years after Henry's death.

Henry was beloved by his subjects, facing only one major insurrection, the

Pilgrimage of Grace, enacted by the northernmost counties in retaliation to

the break with Rome and the poor economic state of the region. History

remembers Henry in much the same way as Piero Pasqualigo, a Venetian

ambassador: "... he is in every respect a most accomplished prince."

EDWARD VI (1547-1553 AD)

Edward VI, son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, was born in 1537. He

ascended the throne at age nine, upon the death of his father. He was

betrothed to his cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, but deteriorating English-

Scot relations prohibited their marriage. The frail, Protestant boy died of

consumption at age sixteen having never married. Edward's reign was beset

by problems from the onset. Ascending the throne while stillin his minority

presented a backdrop for factional in fighting and power plays. Henry VIII,

in his last days, sought to eliminate this potential problem by decreeing

that a Council of Regency would govern until the child came of age, but

Edward Seymour (Edward VI's uncle) gained the upper hand. The Council

offered Seymour the Protectorship of the realm and the Dukedom of Somerset;

he genuinely cared for both the boy and the realm, but used the

Protectorship, as well as Edward's religious radicalism, to further his

Protestant interests. The Book of Common Prayer, the eloquent work of

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, was instituted in 1549 as a handbook to the new

style of worship that skated controversial issues in an effort to pacify

Catholics. Henrician treason and heresy laws were repealed, transforming

England into a haven for continental heretics. Catholics were pleased with

the softer version of Protestantism, but radical Protestants clamored for

further reforms, adding to the ever-present factional discord. Economic

hardship plagued England during Edward's rule and foreign relations were in

a state of disarray. The new faith and the dissolution of the monasteries

left a considerable amount of ecclesiastical officials out of work, at a

time when unemployment soared; enclosure of monastic lands deprived many

peasants of their means of subsistence. The coinage lost value as new coins

were minted from inferior metals, as specie from the New World flooded

English markets. A French/Scottish alliance threatened England, prompting

Somerset to invade Scotland, where Scottish forces were trounced at Pinkie.

Then general unrest and factional maneuvering proved Somerset's undoing; he

was executed in September 1552. Thus began one of the most corrupt eras of

English political history. The author of this corruption was the Earl of

Warwick, John Dudley. Dudley was an ambitious political survivor driven by

the desire to become the largest landowner in England. Dudley coerced

Edward by claiming that the boy had reached manhood on his 12th birthday

and was now ready to rule; Dudley also held Edward's purse strings. Dudley

was created Duke of Northumberland and virtually ruled England, although he

had no official title. The Council, under his leadership, systematically

confiscated church territories, as the recent wave of radical Protestantism

seemed a logical, and justifiable, continuation of Henrician reform.

Northumberland's ambitions grew in proportion to his gains of power: he

desperately sought to connect himself to the royal family. Northumberland

was given the opportunity to indulge in king making - the practice by which

an influential noble named the next successor, such as Richard Neville

during the Wars of the Roses - when Edward was diagnosed with consumption

in January 1553. Henry VIII named the line of succession in his will;next

in line after Edward were his sisters Mary and Elizabeth, followed by the

descendants of Henry's sister, Mary: Frances Grey and her children.

Northumberland convinced Edward that his Catholic sister, Mary, would ruin

the Protestant reforms enacted throughout the reign; in actuality, he knew

Mary would restore Catholicism and return the confiscated Church

territories which were making the Council very rich. Northumberland's

appeal to Edward's radicalism worked as intended: the dying lad declared

his sisters to be bastards and passed the succession to Frances Grey's

daughter, Lady Jane Grey, one of the boy's only true friends.

Northumberland impelled the Greys to consent to a marriage between his son,

Guildford and Lady Jane. Edward died on July 6, 1553, leaving a disputed

succession. Jane, against her wishes, was declared queen by the Council.

Mary retreated to Framlingham in Suffolk and claimed the throne.

Northumberland took an army to capture Mary, but bungled the escapade. The

Council abandoned Northumberland as Mary collected popular support and rode

triumphantly into London. Jane after a reign of only nine days, was

imprisoned in the Tower of London until her 1554 execution at the hands of

her cousin Mary. Edward was a highly intellectual and pious lad who fell

prey to the machinations of his powerful Council of Regency. His frailty

led to an early death. Had he lived into manhood, he potentially could have

become one of England's greatest kings. Jane Austen wrote, "This Man was on

the whole of a very amiable character...", to which Beckett added, " as

docile as a lamb, if indeed his gentleness did not amount to absolute

sheepishness."

LADY JANE GREY (10-19 July 1553)

The Accession of Lady Jane Grey was engineered by the powerful Duke of

Northumberland, President of the King's Council, in the interests of

promoting his own dynastic line. Northumberland persuaded the sickly Edward

VI to name Lady Jane Grey as his heir. As one of Henry VIII's great-nieces,

the young girl was a genuine claimant to the throne. Northumberland then

married his own son, Lord Guilford Dudley, to Lady Jane. On the death of

Edward, Jane assumed the throne and her claim was recognised by the

Council. Despite this, the country rallied to Mary, Catherine of Aragon's

daughter and a devout Roman Catholic. Jane reigned for only nine days and

was later executed with her husband in 1554.

MARY I (1553-1558)

Mary I was the first Queen Regnant (that is, a queen reigning in her own

right rather than a queen through marriage to a king). Courageous and

stubborn, her character was moulded by her earlier years: an Act of

Parliament in 1533 had declared her illegitimate and removed her from the

succession to the throne (she was reinstated in 1544, but her half-brother

Edward removed her from the succession once more shortly before his death),

whilst she was pressurised to give up the Mass and acknowledge the English

Protestant Church.

Mary restored papal supremacy in England, abandoned the title of Supreme

Head of the Church, reintroduced Roman Catholic bishops and began the slow

reintroduction of monastic orders. Mary also revived the old heresy laws to

secure the religious conversion of the country; heresy was regarded as a

religious and civil offence amounting to treason (to believe in a different

religion from the Sovereign was an act of defiance and disloyalty). As a

result, around 300 Protestant heretics were burnt in three years - apart

from eminent Protestant clergy such as Cranmer (a former archbishop and

author of two Books of Common Prayer), Latimer and Ridley, these heretics

were mostly poor and self-taught people. Apart from making Mary deeply

unpopular, such treatment demonstrated that people were prepared to die for

the Protestant settlement established in Henry's reign. The progress of

Mary's conversion of the country was also limited by the vested interests

of the aristocracy and gentry who had bought the monastic lands sold off

after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and who refused to return these

possessions voluntarily as Mary invited them to do.

Aged 37 at her accession, Mary wished to marry and have children, thus

leaving a Catholic heir to consolidate her religious reforms, and removing

her half-sister Elizabeth (a focus for Protestant opposition) from direct

succession. Mary's decision to marry Philip, King of Spain from 1556, in

1554 was very unpopular; the protest from the Commons prompted Mary's reply

that Parliament was 'not accustomed to use such language to the Kings of

England' and that in her marriage 'she would choose as God inspired her'.

The marriage was childless, Philip spent most of it on the continent,

England obtained no share in the Spanish monopolies in New World trade and

the alliance with Spain dragged England into a war with France. Popular

discontent grew when Calais, the last vestige of England's possessions in

France dating from William the Conqueror's time, was captured by the French

in 1558. Dogged by ill health, Mary died later that year, possibly from

cancer, leaving the crown to her half-sister Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH I (1558-1603)

Elizabeth I - the last Tudor monarch - was born at Greenwich on 7

September 1533, the daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne

Boleyn. Her early life was full of uncertainties, and her chances of

succeeding to the throne seemed very slight once her half-brother Edward

was born in 1537. She was then third in line behind her Roman Catholic half-

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