Henry VIII, as the second son of his father, had been originally
educated for the church, and still retained a taste for theological
learning. He now distinguished himself by writing a book against the
Lutheran doctrines; and the Pope was so much pleased with it as to
grant him the title of _Defender of the Faith_. Henry was not
destined, however, to continue long an adherent of the Roman pontiff.
In the year 1527, he became enamored of a young gentlewoman named Anne
Boleyn, who was one of his wife’s attendants. He immediately conceived
the design of annuling his marriage with Catharine, and marrying this
younger and more agreeable person. Finding a pretext for such an act
in the previous marriage of Catharine to his brother, he attempted to
obtain from the Pope a decree, declaring his own marriage unlawful,
and that the dispensation upon which it had proceeded was beyond the
powers of the former Pope to grant. The pontiff (Clement VII) was much
perplexed by this request of King Henry, because he could not accede
to it without offending Charles V, Emperor of Germany, one of his best
supporters, and the nephew of Queen Catharine, and at the same time
humbling the professed powers of the Papacy, which were now trembling
under the attacks of Luther.
Henry desired to employ the influence of his minister, Cardinal
Wolsey, who had now reached a degree of opulence and pride never
before attained by a subject of England. But Wolsey, with all his
greatness, could not venture to urge a matter disagreeable to the
Pope, who was more his master than King Henry. The process went on for
several years, and still his passion for Anne Boleyn continued
unabated. Wolsey at length fell under the king’s displeasure for
refusing to serve him in this object, was stripped of all his places
of power and wealth, and in November 1530, expired at Leicester Abbey,
declaring that, if he had served his God as diligently as his king, he
would not thus have been given over in his gray hairs. The
uncontrollable desire of the king to possess Anne Boleyn, was destined
to be the immediate cause of one of the most important changes that
ever took place in England――no less than a total reformation of the
national religion. In order to annul his marriage with Catharine, and
enable him to marry Anne Boleyn, he found it necessary to shake off
the authority of the Pope, and procure himself to be acknowledged in
Parliament as the supreme head of the English church. His marriage
with Anne took place in 1533, and in the same year was born his
celebrated daughter Elizabeth.
In 1536, Henry became as anxious to put away Queen Anne as he had ever
been to rid himself of Queen Catharine. He had contracted a passion
for Jane Seymour, a young lady then of the queen’s bedchamber, as Anne
herself had been in that of Catharine. In order to gratify this new
passion, he accused Anne of what appears to have been an imaginary
frailty, and within a month from the time when she had been an honored
queen, she was beheaded (May 19) in the Tower. On the very next day he
married Jane Seymour, who soon after died in giving birth to a son
(afterwards Edward VI.) His daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, were
declared illegitimate by act of Parliament, and therefore excluded
from the succession.
Hitherto, though professing independence of Rome, Henry still
maintained, and even enforced, by severe and bloody laws, the most of
its doctrines. He now took measures for altering this system of
worship to something nearer the Lutheran model, and also for
suppressing the numerous monasteries through the country. Being
possessed of more despotic power, and, what is stranger still, of more
popularity, than any former sovereign of England, he was able to
encounter the dreadful risk of offending by these means a vastly
powerful corporation, which seems moreover, to have been regarded with
much sincere affection and respect in many parts of England. No fewer
than 645 monasteries, 2374 chanteries and chapels, 90 colleges, and
110 hospitals, enjoying altogether a revenue of £161,000, were broken
up by this powerful and unscrupulous monarch. He partly seized the
revenues for his own use, and partly gave them away to the persons who
most actively assisted him and who seemed most able to protect his
government from the effects of such a sweeping reform. By this act,
which took place in 1537, the Reformation was completed in England.
Yet for many years Henry vacillated so much in his opinions, and
enforced these with such severe enactments, that many persons of both
religions were burnt as heretics. It was in the southern and eastern
parts of England, where the commercial class at this time chiefly
resided, that the doctrines of the Reformation were most prevalent. In
the western and northern parts of the country, Catholicism continued
to flourish; and in Ireland, which was remotest of all from the
continent, the Protestant faith made little or no impression.
After the death of Jane Seymour, Henry married Anne of Cleves, a
German princess, with whose person, however, he was not pleased; and
he therefore divorced her by an act of Parliament. He next married
Catherine Howard, niece to the Duke of Norfolk; but had not been long
united to her when he discovered that she had committed a serious
indiscretion before marriage. This was considered a sufficient reason
for beheading the unfortunate queen, and attainting all her relations.
Though Henry had thus murdered two wives, and divorced other two, and
become, moreover, a monster in form as well as in his passions and
mind, he succeeded in obtaining for his sixth wife (1543) Catherine
Parr, widow of Lord Latimer, who, it is certain, only contrived to
escape destruction by her extraordinary prudence. Almost all who ever
served Henry VIII as ministers, either to his authority or to his
pleasures, were destroyed by him. Wolsey was either driven to suicide,
or died of a broken heart. Thomas Cromwell, who succeeded that
minister, and chiefly aided the king in bringing about the
Reformation――Sir Thomas More, lord chancellor, the most virtuous, most
able and most consistent man of his time――the Earl of Surrey, who was
one of the most accomplished knights of the age, and the first poet
who wrote the English language with perfect taste――all suffered the
same fate with Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.
When James IV died at Flodden, in 1513, the Scottish crown fell to his
infant son JAMES V, who struggled through a turbulent minority, and
was now a gay, and, upon the whole, an amiable prince. His uncle,
Henry VIII, endeavored to bring him into his views respecting
religion; but James, who was much in the power of the Catholic clergy,
appears to have wished to become the head of the Popish party in
England, in the hope of succeeding, by their means, to the throne of
that country. A war latterly broke out between the two monarchs, and
the Scottish army having refused to fight, from a dislike to the
expedition, James died (December 1542) of a broken heart, leaving an
only child, MARY, who was not above a week old. Henry immediately
conceived the idea of marrying his son Edward to this infant queen, by
which he calculated that two hostile nations should be united under
one sovereignty, and the Protestant church in England be supported by
a similar establishment in Scotland. This project, however, was
resisted by the Scots, of whom very few as yet were inclined to the
Protestant doctrines. Henry, enraged at their hesitation, sent a fleet
and army, in 1544, to inflict vengeance upon them. The Scots endured
with great patience the burning of their capital city, and many other
devastations, but still refused the match. The government of Scotland
was now chiefly in the hands of Cardinal Beaton, a man of bold and
decisive intellect, who zealously applied himself to suppress the
reforming preachers, and regarded the English match as likely to bring
about the destruction of the Catholic religion.