Henry VIII, son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, was the second heir to the throne. His elder brother Arthur, however, passed away, leaving Henry VIII as the heir to the throne. He received papal dispensation in order to marry his brother's now widowed wife, Catherine of Aragorn. During his early years, Henry had heavily relied on Thomas Wolsey to rule for him, and soon elevated him to the highest role in government: Lord Chancellor. Henry was named Defender of the Faith by Pope Leo X in 1521, for Henry's work, Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, affirming the supremacy of the Pope in hopes to quiet the spread of the teachings of Martin Luther. Henry soon began to think about his lack of a male heir, along with the only surviving child to show from his marriage with Catherine, who was now in her 40's. The king then turned to (now) Cardinal Wolsey, and asked him to appeal to Pope Clement VII for an annulment on his marriage to Catherine of Aragorn.
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It was soon clear Henry VIII wished to marry Anne Boleyn. The Pope would not grant Henry the annulment, so he turned to very drastic measures. In 1533, Henry broke with the Church and married the now pregnant Anne Boleyn in secret. He was shortly excommunicated by the Pope, and the start of the English Reformation had begun. Wolsey soon passed away, and Henry was quick to replace him with Thomas Cromwell.Cromwell became Henry's chief minister, along with helping Henry break with the Church in Rome and setting Henry up as the head of he Church in England. More than 800 monasteries were disbanded by Cromwell and had their lands and riches taken for the king.
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Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, was pregnant when he first married her. In September of 1533, she gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth I. Her next 2 pregnancies resulted in miscarriages, and Henry soon grew tired of her. He had her arrested in 1536 for adultery and was publicly beheaded at the Tower of London.
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Henry's sixth and final marriage was with a nurse, Catherine Parr. He was very sick when he married her, and she would go on to outlive him. The marriage went very well while it was together, but Henry died on January 28, 1547. He was buried next to his third wife, Jane Seymour, in St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle.
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