Enrique viii

The amazing story of Henry VIII

Henry VIII was born at Greenwich on 28 June 1491, the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. He became successor to the throne on the death of his elderbrother, Prince Arthur, in 1502 and succeeded in 1509.
As the author of a best-selling book (it went through some 20 editions in England and Europe) attacking Martin Luther and supporting the RomanCatholic church, in 1521 Henry was given the title 'Defender of the Faith' by the Pope.
Henry's interest in foreign policy was focused on Western Europe, which was a shifting pattern of alliances centredround the kings of Spain and France, and the Holy Roman Emperor. (Henry was related by marriage to all three - his wife Catherine was Ferdinand of Aragon's daughter, his sister Mary married Louis XIIof France in 1514, and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was Catherine's nephew.)
The second half of Henry's reign was dominated by two issues very important for the later history of England and themonarchy: the succession and the Protestant Reformation, which led to the formation of the Church of England.
Henry had married his brother's widow, Catherine of Aragon, in 1509. Catherine hadproduced only one surviving child - a girl, Princess Mary, born in 1516. By the end of the 1520s, Henry's wife was in her forties and he was desperate for a son.

Henry had anyway fallen in love with AnneBoleyn, the sister of one of his many mistresses, and tried to persuade the Pope to grant him an annulment of his marriage on the grounds that it had never been legal. Wolsey failed to gain thePope's agreement to resolve Henry's case in England.
Since the attempts to obtain the divorce through pressure on the papacy had failed, Wolsey's eventual successor Thomas Cromwell (Henry's chief adviserfrom 1532 onwards) turned to Parliament, using its powers and anti-clerical attitude (encouraged by Wolsey's excesses) to decide the issue.
The result was a series of Acts cutting back papal power...