Posted by
Bert Chapman on Saturday, November 07, 2009 8:37:44 PM
This year England has been commemorating the quincentennial of Henry VIII's accession to the English throne. When my wife and I were in England this summer, we experienced this visiting Henry VIII's palace at Hampton Court and at the Tower of London where an exhibit of his military attire entitled "Dressed to Kill" was on display. Henry was an enormously significant monarch and an equally complicated and contradictory person. He built a series of coastal defenses that enhanced English power and this can arguably be seen as the beginnings of its aspirations for great international power status. The young Henry was an athletic individual and a devoted theologian whose attacks against Martin Luther's rebellion against papal authority saw Henry recognized as "Defender of the Faith" by the papacy.
Yet Henry himself would turn against Catholicism when he was unable to get papal approval to divorce Katherine of Aragon due to her inability to produce a son who would become heir to the throne. Henry's frantic desire to have a male heir to succeed him would lead him into five additional marriages and would eventually produce a male heir in Edward VI who would die at 15 just a few years after Henry's 1547 death. Ironically, it was Henry's daughters who extended the Tudor dynasty. Mary ruled from 1553-1558 and sought to forcibly reinstate Catholicism as the preeminent religion with tragic results. Elizabeth, who ruled from 1558-1603, was able to achieve relative balance in English religious affairs, presided over a growing economy and cultural renaissance which produced Shakespeare and other articles, and provided the leadership, aided by skilled advisors such as Walsingham and Cecil, to increase English power to the point where it could defeat the Spanish Armada in 1588 and firmly establish England as a global maritime power that also sought to influence continental European affairs.
The one-time defender of the faith sought to destroy the power of the Roman Catholic Church through measures such as the dissolution of the monasteries and through creating the Church of England whose existence continues nearly five centuries later. In his later years, Henry became the bloated figure featured in numerous paintings. Henry was the quintessential absolute monarch who would have no understanding of democratic governance and would have resisted any reduction of his power with every tool at this disposal. Yet, the impact of his work is still felt in the United Kingdom today and in the still separate existences of the Roman Catholic Church and Anglican Communion. The actions and decisions of political rulers can endure far beyond their lifetime as the case of Henry VIII demonstrates.