Who is Henry the Eighth?

Question

Who is Henry the Eighth?

Answer 1

He was plump and liked to behead people

Answer 2

Herny VIII was king of england from 1509-1547.  As a young man he was handsome, athletic, a talented musician and composer, and a scholar.  He was first married to Catherine of Aragon, but they had only one living child, a daugher Mary, all their other children died.  Henry became desperate to have a son, and he also fell in love with Anne boleyn.  He tried to get an annulment from Catherine, but the pope refused to allow it, so he broke with the roman Catholic church and made himself head of the church of england.  He ruthlessly destroyed the monasteries and seized their wealth, and many of the ancient traditions of the catholic church were done away with.

His marriage to Anne Boleyn did not last long, she too gave him a daughter, elizabeth, and then had two miscarriages, which convinced him that their marriage was cursed.  also he had fallen in love with Jane Seymour.  Anne boleyn was arrested on trumped-up charges of adultery, and she and her alleged lovers (including her own brother) were tried, convicted, and executed.

Jane Seymour gave Henry the son he had longed for, Edward, then she died.  He next married Anne of Cleeves, but he didn't like her, so the marriage was annulled before it was consumated.  Then he married Catherine Howard, who was executed for adultery (probably true in her case) and finally Katherine Parr, who managed to outlive him, though only just.

Apart from getting through all these wives, Henry fought a number of costly wars with France, and also had to put down a rebellion against the dissolution of the monasteries, which he did with great savagery.  He executed quite a few other people as well as two of his wives, like thomas More, who had been his chancellor, Bishop fisher, and a number of other people, some Catholic and some Protestant.

In spite of all his cruelties, he remained popular with the people of england, who retained an affection for him until the end.

Answer 3

Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was King of England and Lord of Ireland, later King of Ireland and claimant to the Kingdom of France, from 21 April 1509 until his death. Henry was the second monarch of the House of Tudor, succeeding his father, Henry VII.

Henry VIII was a significant figure in the history of the English monarchy. Although in the first parts of his reign he energetically suppressed the Reformation of the Anglican Church, which had been building steam since John Wycliffe of the fourteenth century, he is more often known for his ecclesiastical struggles with Rome. These struggles ultimately led to him separating the Anglican Church from Roman authority, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and establishing the English monarch as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Although some claim he became a Protestant on his death-bed, he advocated Catholic ceremony and doctrine throughout his life; royal backing of the English Reformation was left to his heirs, Edward VI and Elizabeth I. Henry also oversaw the legal union of England and Wales (see Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542). He is noted in popular culture for being married six times.

Answer 4

He was a king of England and had a head fetish.

Answer 5

The son of Henry the Seventh.

Answer 6

I'm Henry the 8th, I am

How come no-one has said that here yet?!?

Answer 7

He was a womanising N O B J O C K E Y!!!!!!

Answer 8

Well, at this point he's a pile of moldering bones; but at one time he was King of England.

Answer 9

Henry the 8th was the father of Queen Elizabeth the 1st king of England, and whom married 8 wives who divorced him self from Catherine of Aragon to marry his mistress Anee future mother of Elizabeth, he later killed Anee for adultery with 7 men ,false rumors, he remaried, never had a son his life wish.He died from been to damm fat :)

Answer 10

One of the more famous kings of England.

http://www.royal.gov/uk/output/Page19.as...

"HENRY VIII (r. 1509-1547)

Henry VIII was born at Greenwich on 28 June 1491, the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. He became heir to the throne on the death of his elder brother, Prince Arthur, in 1502 and succeeded in 1509.

In his youth he was athletic and highly intelligent. A contemporary observer described him thus: 'he speaks good French, Latin and Spanish; is very religious; heard three masses daily when he hunted ... He is extremely fond of hunting, and never takes that diversion without tiring eight or ten horses ... He is also fond of tennis.'

Henry's scholarly interests included writing both books and music, and he was a lavish patron of the arts.

He was an accomplished player of many instruments and a composer. Greensleeves, the popular melody frequently attributed to him is, however, almost certainly not one of his compositions.

As the author of a best-selling book (it went through some 20 editions in England and Europe) attacking Martin Luther and supporting the Roman Catholic church, in 1521 Henry was given the title 'Defender of the Faith' by the Pope.

From his father, Henry VIII inherited a stable realm with the monarch's finances in healthy surplus - on his accession, Parliament had not been summoned for supplies for five years. Henry's varied interests and lack of application to government business and administration increased the influence of Thomas Wolsey, an Ipswich butcher's son, who became Lord Chancellor in 1515.

Wolsey became one of the most powerful ministers in British history (symbolised by his building of Hampton Court Palace - on a greater scale than anything the king possessed). Wolsey exercised his powers vigorously in his own court of Chancery and in the increased use of the Council's judicial authority in the court of the Star Chamber.

Wolsey was also appointed Cardinal in 1515 and given papal legate powers which enabled him to by-pass the Archbishop of Canterbury and 'govern' the Church in England.

Henry's interest in foreign policy was focused on Western Europe, which was a shifting pattern of alliances centred round 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 XII of France in 1514, and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was Catherine's nephew.)

An example of these shifts was Henry's unsuccessful Anglo-Spanish campaigns against France, ending in peace with France in 1520, when he spent huge sums on displays and tournaments at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

Henry also invested in the navy, and increased its size from 5 to 53 ships (including the Mary Rose, the remains of which lie in the Portsmouth Naval Museum).

The second half of Henry's reign was dominated by two issues very important for the later history of England and the monarchy: 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 had produced 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.

The Tudor dynasty had been established by conquest in 1485 and Henry was only its second monarch. England had not so far had a ruling queen, and the dynasty was not secure enough to run the risk of handing the Crown on to a woman, risking disputed succession or domination of a foreign power through marriage.

Henry had anyway fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, 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.

Royal divorces had happened before: Louis XII had been granted a divorce in 1499, and in 1527 James IV's widow Margaret (Henry's sister) had also been granted one. However, a previous Pope had specifically granted Henry a licence to marry his brother's widow in 1509.

In May 1529, Wolsey failed to gain the Pope's agreement to resolve Henry's case in England. All the efforts of Henry and his advisers came to nothing; Wolsey was dismissed and arrested, but died before he could be brought to trial.

Since the attempts to obtain the divorce through pressure on the papacy had failed, Wolsey's eventual successor Thomas Cromwell (Henry's chief adviser from 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 and influence in England and bringing about the English Reformation.

In 1532, an Act against Annates - although suspended during 'the king's pleasure' - was a clear warning to the Pope that ecclesiastical revenues were under threat.

In 1532, Cranmer was promoted to Archbishop of Canterbury and, following the Pope's confirmation of his appointment, in May 1533 Cranmer declared Henry's marriage invalid; Anne Boleyn was crowned queen a week later.

The Pope responded with excommunication, and Parliamentary legislation enacting Henry's decision to break with the Roman Catholic Church soon followed. An Act in restraint of appeals forbade appeals to Rome, stating that England was an empire, governed by one supreme head and king who possessed 'whole and entire' authority within the realm, and that no judgements or excommunications from Rome were valid.

An Act of Submission of the Clergy and an Act of Succession followed, together with an Act of Supremacy (1534) which recognised that the king was 'the only supreme head of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia'.

The breach between the king and the Pope forced clergy, office-holders and others to choose their allegiance - the most famous being Sir Thomas More, who was executed for treason in 1535.

The other effect of the English Protestant Reformation was the Dissolution of Monasteries, under which monastic lands and possessions were broken up and sold off. In the 1520s, Wolsey had closed down some of the small monastic communities to pay for his new foundations (he had colleges built at Oxford and Ipswich).

In 1535-6, another 200 smaller monasteries were dissolved by statute, followed by the remaining greater houses in 1538-40; as a result, Crown revenues doubled for a few years.



Henry's second marriage had raised hopes for a male heir. Anne Boleyn, however, produced another daughter, Princess Elizabeth, and failed to produce a male child. Henry got rid of Anne on charges of treason (presided over by Thomas Cromwell) which were almost certainly false, and she was executed in 1536. In 1537 her replacement, Henry's third wife Jane Seymour, finally bore him a son, who was later to become Edward VI. Jane died in childbed, 12 days after the birth in 1537.

Although Cromwell had proved an effective minister in bringing about the royal divorce and the English Reformation, his position was insecure. The Pilgrimage of Grace, an insurrection in 1536, called for Cromwell's dismissal (the rebels were put down) but it was Henry's fourth, abortive and short-lived marriage to Anne of Cleves that led to Cromwell's downfall. Despite being made Earl of Essex in 1540, three months later he was arrested and executed.

Henry made two more marriages, to Katherine Howard (executed on grounds of adultery in 1542) and Catherine Parr (who survived Henry to die in 1548).

None produced any children. Henry made sure that his sole male heir, Edward, was educated by people who believed in Protestantism rather than Catholicism because he wanted the anti-papal nature of his reformation and his dynasty to become more firmly established.



After Cromwell's execution, no leading minister emerged in the last seven years of Henry's reign. Overweight, irascible and in failing health, Henry turned his attention to France once more.

Despite assembling an army of 40,000 men, only the town of Boulogne was captured and the French campaign failed. Although more than half the monastic properties had been sold off, forced loans and currency depreciation also had to be used to pay for the war, which contributed to increased inflation. Henry died in London on 28 January 1547.

To some, Henry VIII was a strong and ruthless ruler, forcing through changes to the Church-State relationship which excluded the papacy and brought the clergy under control, thus strengthening the Crown's position and acquiring the monasteries' wealth.

However, Henry's reformation had produced dangerous Protestant-Roman Catholic differences in the kingdom. The monasteries' wealth had been spent on wars and had also built up the economic strength of the aristocracy and other families in the counties, which in turn was to encourage ambitious Tudor court factions.

Significantly, Parliament's involvement in making religious and dynastic changes had been firmly established. For all his concern over establishing his dynasty and the resulting religious upheaval, Henry's six marriages had produced one sickly son and an insecure succession with two princesses (Mary and Elizabeth) who at one stage had been declared illegitimate - none of whom were to have children."

Answer 11

A former king of England

Answer 12

A woman crazed-adulterous wife killing king.

Answer 13

You couldn't just google that? Henry the 8th was the king of England a loooong time ago...and he was famous for either divorcing or killing his wives.

Answer 14

Henry VIII was the second Monarch of the House of Tudor. He is most famous for having six wives, he divorced two, executed two, one died of natural causes and the last survived him.

He founded the Church of England. Three of his children survived him and all of them became Monarchs of England in their own right: Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

Answer 15

Henry VIII is famous for killing his wives, but he is also famous for creating the Anglican Church.  The reason why he killed his wives was because, being Catholic at the time, he asked the Pope to divorce each of them and the Pope said no, too bad, so sad, you'r stuck with what you've got.  Since he was king, he said to himself, "s***w this--I'll just start my own church."  Cool, huh?

Ah...it's good to be king.

PS:  Henry VIII also wrote the song "Greensleeves."

Answer 16

he had many wives.  He executed them all for treason... He wanted a son.  He got all daughters with the rest of his wives.. He had so many wives that I can't remember how many...  He got one son, named Edward the [cannot remember the number]...  Edward died a short life...  ... sorry, but that's all I can remember.  :/

Answer 17

p.s. he didnt write greensleeves, it was written in a style that wasnt heard in England till after he died. It is probably about a prostitute.

Answer 18

Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was King of England and Lord of Ireland, later King of Ireland and claimant to the Kingdom of France, from 21 April 1509 until his death. Henry was the second monarch of the House of Tudor, succeeding his father, Henry VII.

Henry VIII was a significant figure in the history of the English monarchy. Although in the first parts of his reign he energetically suppressed the Reformation of the Anglican Church, which had been building steam since John Wycliffe of the fourteenth century, he is more often known for his ecclesiastical struggles with Rome. These struggles ultimately led to him separating the Anglican Church from Roman authority, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and establishing the English monarch as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Although some claim he became a Protestant on his death-bed, he advocated Catholic ceremony and doctrine throughout his life; royal backing of the English Reformation was left to his heirs, Edward VI and Elizabeth I. Henry also oversaw the legal union of England and Wales (see Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542). He is noted in popular culture for being married six times.

His wives where: Historians are sure of the names of only two of Henry's mistresses: Elizabeth Blount (usually referred to as Bessie) and Mary Boleyn (Anne's sister). Elizabeth Blount gave birth to Henry's illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy. The young boy was made Duke of Richmond in June 1525 in what some thought was one step on the path to legitimatizing him. In 1533, he married Mary Howard, Anne Boleyn's first cousin, but died only three years later without any successors. At the time of FitzRoy's death, the king was trying to get a law passed that would allow his otherwise illegitimate son to become king.

Mary Boleyn is believed to be the elder sister of Anne Boleyn. She is thought to have been his mistress at some point between 1519 and 1526. Historians have speculated that Mary Boleyn's two children, Catherine and Henry were fathered by Henry, but this has never been proven.

The king also had a brief, six-month affair with Mary Shelton sometime in 1535. Mary has also been confused with her sister, Margaret. However, it has been confirmed that it was in fact Mary and not Margaret Shelton with whom Henry had the affair.

Henry the 8th Looked like: http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&...

Answer 19

may be king george

Answer 20

a famous King who had 6 wives...when he got fed up with one of them...he found an excuse to chop off their heads so that he could re-marry!!

Answer 21

King Henry VIII, was a renaissance man. He was famous for being handsome, athletic, intelligent, and overall a well rounded guy.

He was married to Catherine a spanish princess, who was actually Henrys older brother's wife. But after his older brother died, Catherine a devout Catholic announced their marriage was not consumated therefore it was anulled. Henry VIII was then married to the spanish princess to create peace between the two Kingdoms.

Henry wanted a son, Catherine gave him a daughter, and named her Mary. Henry had many mistresses including a girl from the Bolyen family, and then impregnated her, and left the catholic church and started his own church The Church of England. He divorced his Spanish wife, and married his pregnant mistresses older sister.

She was unable to give him a male heir, only a girl names Elizabeth. He had Anne Bolyen his second wife beheaded, after being tried for treason, and adultry. he married a few more wifes with a total of Six marriages.

He eventually died possibly of syphilis