HENRY Vlll????

Question

does anyone know about henry viii and his break with rome or any websites about it?

Answer 1

try wikipedia or do a google search - you may come up with something.

Or you can do what I did - read books by Jean Plaidy. She was a British writer who wrote all historcal novels (most Britain, France and Spain) - for me it was a wonderful way to get to know history!

She has an entire series on Henry VIII and people associated with him (like Sir Thomare More, Thomas Wosley the Archbishop who was negotiating with Rome, etc)

This site has a lot of info about Henry VIII and all books written about him (including Jean Plaidy) -

http://www.royalty.nu/Europe/England/Tudor/HenryVIII.html

Answer 2

...You mean his break with the roman Catholic Church? He only broke with the church because they would not grant him the divorce that he wanted from Katherine of Aragon (his late brother's wife & also, :Bloody Mary's mother). The main reason why they wouldn't grant him this divorce (according to people) was because she was loved by the people of England, and his little girlfriend, Anne Boleyn (Queen Elizabeth's I Mother) wasn't so kind and people said she had a strange laugh (something witchy you can say). But I find it rather ironic since he ended up beheading her crying that she was a witch that casted an evil spell on him.

I really do think that you should read about King Henry VIII, he was a very interesting individual. People believe that Anne poisoned Katherine and the main reason why people called Mary, Bloody Mary, because she was a devoted Catholic exactly like her mother, Katherine (which may be the main reason for the massacres in UK)

Answer 3

There's got to be a huge amount on him on the web. This will be easy for you. Basically, he was married,(I THINK her name was Katherine) because she couldn't produce a male heir, he divorced her and married Anne Boleyn. The irony is that his first wife got off a lot easier than Anne. At least the first kept her head.

Answer 4

1

Answer 5

Try this for a start.

Answer 6

Here's the reasoning in a nutshell.

The Split with Rome


The Split with Rome in 1534 occurred as a result of King Henry VIII's desire to divorce and remarry. Henry had been married to Catherine of Aragon since 1509 and she had borne Henry no male heir. Henry was anxious to have a son, who would become King upon his death. In order to secure the succession Henry wanted to remarry and he had fallen in love with a young courtier called Anne Boleyn.

To remarry Henry would need to get the permission of the pope who was the head of the catholic church. The Pope though was warned by King Charles V of Spain that he would be very unhappy if the divorce went ahead. Spain were a very powerful Catholic country and the Pope was reluctant to upset the Spanish King. Likewise the Pope didn't want to upset Henry as he too was a very powerful man who had, until now, been a very useful ally of the churches. The pope put off a decision.

In 1533 Henry forced the issue. Anne Boleyn was pregnant to Henry and the king knew that he must be married for the child to be legitimate. He married Anne without Rome saying that he could. The Pope, in 1534 said that Henry's marriage to Anne was illegal. Henry's reaction was to say that as King he had the right to control the way that the church was run in England and that the pope had no authority. In November 1534, parliament passed an act that made King Henry the head of the church in England. The English government had now Split with Rome.


Here's some more in depth information.

The first events of the English Reformation occurred Alongside Henry VIII's sensational divorce proceedings. Henry himself was not a Protestant, and the great majority of the English people, though they may have been somewhat anti-clerical, were, at the time, piously devoted to the Catholic Church. In the 1520s, Lutheranism had made some inroads at the university of Cambridge, and the leading English Protestant of that decade, William Tyndale, had created some sensation when he fled England in 1524 to translate the bible into English and conduct a pamphlet war with Sir Thomas More. Henry himself was very much opposed to the spread of Lutheran and other Protestant doctrines, his 1534 break with Rome notwithstanding
In July 1536, Henry's government issued the Ten Articles, which upheld traditional Catholic teachings on the sacraments of the altar, penance, and baptism. In 1537, the other four traditional sacraments of confirmation, holy matrimony, holy orders, and extreme unction were defended in an official primer called The Institutions of a Christian Man, also known as "The Bishops' Book." Henry demonstrated a more firm commitment to Catholic theology with the 1539 passage through Parliament of the Six Articles. These articles stated that the Church of England upheld the traditional doctrines of Transubstantiation, celibacy for priests, the inviolability of monastic vows, the legality of private masses, and the necessity for oral confessions to a priest. Parliament next passed a statute that appointed penalties for violations of the Six Articles.
At the same time, obedience to the authority of the Roman Church was made treason, punishable by death. Sir Thomas More, who had resigned the chancellorship in 1532 because he could no longer support conscientiously Henry's schismatic actions, was executed for treason in June 1535. Bishop John Fisher was also executed that summer, along with six monks and several other priests who would not swear loyalty to the new regime. Catholics looked upon these men as saintly martyrs. Henry later proved equally cruel to Protestants, having a number of them burned at the stake for heresy.
1536 brought the dissolution of Catholic monastaries throughout England. Henry ordered that the vast tracts of land owned by Catholic bishops and by the religious communities be taken over by the new regime, and the lands were handed over both to members of the nobility and other loyal laymen, as well as to conforming clergymen who embraced the new order and renounced their allegiance to the pope. Many of the old monastic buildings were destroyed, along with some libraries and works of art–depictions of Catholic saints and of Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, were targetted particularly. In 1538, Henry ordered a campaign against relics–preserved body parts of saints and other objects considered to be holy by Catholics–and the 350-year-old tomb of Thomas Becket of Canterbury, medieval England's most beloved saint, was destroyed.
Aside from individual opposition by monks and men such as More and Fisher, Henry's newly named Church of England saw one major movement against it while Henry reigned as king. In October 1536, there was an uprising under a man named Robert Aske in northern England. The rebels called the movement the Pilgrimage of Grace, and among them were groups of Catholic monks. Henry sent his able general Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk to quash the uprising. The rebels were executed for treason in 1537. To further establish the supremacy of the Church of England and to control more eficiently places such as the northern counties which were far from London and the primary seat of the Church at Canterbury, Henry established six new episcopal sees–Oxford, Chester, Gloucester, Bristol, Peterborough, and Westminster.
Analysis
A primary point of contention among English Reformation scholars is the nature of Henry's break with Rome. They debate whether it was a political and jurisdictional separation from the Papacy or a doctrinal reform that paved the way for Protestant Christianity? The issue is complicated by both Henry's known commitment to orthodox Catholic theology and his simultaneous elevation and loyal, long-term support of the Protestant-minded Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.
Whatever Henry's deeper convictions and understanding of the religious implications of his political reformation, the manner in which he both played upon the anti-clerical feelings of many in Parliament and destroyed the propertied influence of the secular clergy and the monastaries was crucial to the advancement of Protestant religious doctrines in later decades. At the time of Henry's break from Rome, the English people were relatively content with the teachings of the Catholic Church, even if they sometimes resented occasionally hypocritical and worldly priests. Men such as Cranmer who studied Lutheran and other Protestant teachings and found them favorable were very rare in the kingdom, and most Englishmen hated Protestant heresies as violently as did King Henry when he had numbers of Protestants burned at the stake.
The competing religious tendencies between government and people and between various factions within the government did not work themselves out in favor of a more Protestant religious establishment until after Henry's death. The most important aspect of the Reformation during Henry's reign is precisely its confusion and its openness to many different interpretations by historians. Henry always considered himself "catholic" in his beliefs and wished the Church of England to remain so as well: he hoped to find a Via Media, or "Middle Way" between what he considered to be the extremes of both Roman Catholicism–with its popes and devotions to the Virgin Mary and the saints–and heretical Protestantism, which denied the truth of Transubstantiation and the validity of other sacraments and which tended to de-emphasize the importance or necessity of a rigidly hierarchical, ordained priesthood in the Christian Church.
While he was king, Henry fulfilled the role of Supreme Head on Earth of the Church of England with ruthless success, but his desires to uphold rigidly most of Catholic orthodoxy was not long championed by the majority of Parliament or by the effective will of future English monarchs.

Between 1537 and 1540, all of the 300 remaining Catholic monastaries and convents in England were suppressed by Henry VIII's government. A few of them resisted the new order, and several abbots were charged with high treason. Several prominent Catholic aristocrats, such as the Marquess of Exeter, suffered similar fates, being drawn and quartered for their religious allegiances. Henry's campaign against Catholics was accompanied by a fervent campaign against Protestantism. In October 1538, the bishops of England were ordered to search for Anabaptists, members of a small Protestant sect, burn their books, and turn over to the government any who refused to renounce their Anabaptist faith. Several Anabaptist men and women were burned at the stake the following month. November 1538 also saw the show-trial of a prominent Lutheran, John Lambert. Henry himself sat in Lambert's judgment at Whitehall palace, and Lambert was sent to be tortured and burned at the stake.
1540 brought many more trials and executions. In July, Henry staged a sensational trial and execution in the name of the new Church of England. Three Protestants and three Roman Catholics were tried and dragged through the streets of London. The Protestants were burned for heresy, and the Catholics drawn and quartered, the fullest punishment for treason. The most important figure to be sent to the block that summer, however, was Thomas Cromwell, who had once been Henry's most powerful minister. The Anne of Cleves disaster had been Cromwell's downfall, but his death without a trial was made possible, as well, by accusations that he had been using his position as the king's Viceregent to protect Lutherans and to see that the orthodox Six Articles were not enforced throughout the realm. He was condemned as a "detestable heretic" and beheaded for treason. Henry's chief orthodox ministers, the Duke of Norfolk and Bishop Stephen Gardiner, led the successful effort to overthrow Cromwell.
Over the next few years, Henry oversaw many more executions, including that of his fifth wife, Katherine Howard, who was beheaded in 1542. Most of the executions were carried out for religious reasons. In the spring and summer of 1543, Henry issued a prohibition against reading the Bible in English–an activity associated with the spread of Protestant heresy–and a number of Protestants were burned at the stake. Three summers later, a young woman named Anne Askew, was condemned for distributing Protestant literature to the people of London. She was brutally tortured and could hardly stand at her own trial. She was burned at the stake, along with a number of martyrs for the Protestant faith, in June 1546.
The human toll of Henry's religious persecutions was felt in England around the same time of his final wars in France and Scotland. The French war, which ended withe the Peace at Ardres in 1546, was very costly. With only the small city of Boulogne to show for victory, Henry had spent well over two million pounds–an astonishing amount of money in the sixteenth century–in the financing of his last military adventures. Along with all the English lives lost on French battlegrounds, the royal treasury, known as the exchequer, was bankrupt by the end of Henry's reign, and the financial independence of the Crown was essentially destroyed.
Analysis
With the beheading of Thomas Cromwell and Henry's wife Katherine Howard, the executions of numerous individuals both Protestant and Catholic for their faith, and the expensive, rather futile war in France in the mid-1540s, Henry firmed up his historical reputation as a great tyrant. In examining the later years of his reign, destruction seems to be the common denominator in so many of Henry's policies and actions: destruction of the monastaries, destruction of the newly arrived Protestant religion and the lives of its adherents, destruction of his wives and of a succession of his ministers, and finally the destruction of the royal treasury.
Henry was no doubt feared as a tyrant by those who knew him and by those who swore allegiance to him from afar as their king. The royal household was full of intrigue and fear. One statement uttered that could have been construed as an affront to the king's person could mean the end of a career, and courting the king's wrath–as Cromwell did when he brought Anne of Cleves to England–could mean the end of one's life. Cromwell was not even allowed to stand trial in his own defense, but instead had his fate sealed in Parliament with a Bill of Attainder. It is ironic that Cromwell–who had been so important to Henry in the years of the break with Rome and who had been instrumental in the executions of men such as Sir Thomas More–was hurried away to his own execution by the same powers he had helped to strengthen.
Through all of these unfortunate events, Henry himself remained convinced of his personal righteousness. With equal zeal, Henry wished to stamp out both Popery, as Roman Catholicism was called by its enemies, as well as Protestantism. The test of a heretic usually concerned the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Near the time he was burning Protestants and beheading Catholics for treason, Henry proudly sent the Catholic Emperor Charles V a copy of the religious primer that was used throughout England to teach the doctrines of its new Church. The orthodox doctrine of Transubstantiation figured prominently in the text, and Henry wanted Charles to see it, so that he could see how the Church of England was orthodox, even as it rejected Popery.
Henry's ruthless actions in the name of the Church of England can be somewhat counterbalanced by the conviction of many loyal to the new regime that the changes, both religious and political, were of the greatest importance to England and occasionally called for strong-armed enforcement. The draining of the royal treasury, however, and the loss of life in France for the sake only of Boulogne, seem to merit less understanding. The war in France was carried out largely because of Henry's desire for a sort of "last-hurrah" on the continent: Boulogne was of very little strategic importance, and the war itself was essentially a futile attempt to win a bit of personal glory for Henry in his old age. It cost Henry popularity back home in England, though the success of his armies in Scotland was able to offset the effect.

Though formidable in appearance and in his temper, Henry knew how to charm people and win their devotion. Henry was concerned about spreading learning and culture among his countrymen. For this purpose, Henry funded developments at the universities at Oxford and Cambridge. In 1546, for example, the year before he died, he oversaw the revamping of one of the colleges at Oxford, renaming it Christ's Church, a college which has flourished since the sixteenth century.
The great majority of Henry's subjects had to deal with basic economic hardships, which were the royal administration had difficulty addressing. There were major economic troubles early in Henry's reign, such as an increase in rural unemployment, and the raising of rents and fines for tenant farmers, who increasingly formed the bulk of the population. Along with rising prices, due to a general inflation which few if any of Henry's financial ministers comprehended, there was also a rising population, which compounded the difficulties. While Thomas Wolsey was chancellor, Henry's government was determined to help the poor, passing legislation which forbade enclosure, the practice by which local lords closed off with fences lands which had customarily been used as common farming spaces for poor folks. This policy angered the landed gentry in the countryside, and, what is more, was not very effective. With onsets of plague and trade depression in the 1520s, along with the draining costs of Wolsey's foreign policy efforts, the government saw a significant loss of popularity. Unrest was expressed through occasional riots against tax gatherers, landlords, and even the clergy.
The Pilgrimage of Grace uprising of 1536, while primarily a religious movement, also involved agrarian unrest. Some of the rebels were poor farmers who were angry at the government for not doing enough to stop the enclosure of lands–which continued despite the prohibitive legislation–or to stop the raising of rents. That same year saw the passage of the Poor Law in Parliament, which addressed the problem of vagrancy, the outstanding social problem of the day. In theory, the government took on responsibility for the downtrodden and the victims of society, though in practice many poor folks still fell through the cracks and were not helped.
Henry considered his subjects to be not only the people of England, but also the people of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Wales had been for the most part subdued by Henry's medieval predecessor, King Edward I, but Henry's government engaged in efforts to consolidate the small western territory into to real administrative unity with England. Many of the Welsh resented this policy, but were powerless to stop it. The Irish, on the other hand, were by their geographical and historical position far less submissive. Henry's official title included the appellation "Lord of Ireland," and he wished to exert his lordship over that island. In December 1540, he adopted the title King of Ireland, although the island was under the effective rule of local lords and clan chieftains who harbored few feelings of loyalty toward King Henry.
Analysis
Looking at Henry's relationship to the English people, it becomes evident that the monarch did not significantly affect the everyday lives of his subjects. Even when he wished to help solve some of the major social problems of the day Henry could do very little to effect widespread change across the reaches of his kingdom. Communication and travel was very difficult in the sixteenth century, and most people spent their whole lives never venturing outside their local county. At the same time, though the king was only a figurehead to most Englishmen, Henry represented the source of earthly power in the realm, and as king he was the focus of devotion and loyalty.
The developments of Henry's religious and political reformation affected the lives of average people in intimate ways. As the Pilgrimage of Grace uprising in the northern counties of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire attest, many common people resented deeply Henry's attack on the Catholic Church. They viewed the destruction of the monastaries with horror, and some were very willing to go to their death, as the 1536 rebels did, for the sake of their religious loyalties. In less sensational ways, Henry's reconstitution of the Church's administration with the institution of his six new episcopal sees, brought the national government a bit closer to the common people, as the new episcopal structure enabled more direct local control by the English archbishops.
Henry's employment of Parliament in the service of his new regime had a more subtle impact on society. Since many members of the House of Commons were merchants, lawyers, and the gentry (smaller landowners), new political significance was on its way for the very small but growing middle classes of England. This political significance would gradually be felt on a local level, as commercial and gentrified interests, with their ties to the government, became the focus of greater respect and prestige and thereby expanded in both size and influence over English society. At the same time, the great landowners, some of whom were granted lands that had been seized from the Catholic Church, while also increasing their local power, began to identify their interests more and more with those of the nation. Owing the security of their holdings to the good graces of the new, Reformation regime, many of the English nobles were presented new reasons for harboring a sort of state-oriented patriotism that did not exist in more feudal and Roman Catholic times.