VIII Henry 
VIII was born on June 28th, 1491 in Greeenwich Palace, London, Middlesex, England. VIII's father was Henry VII King of England and his mother was Elizabeth Plantagenet. His paternal grandparents were Edmund Tudor and Margaret Beaufort; his maternal grandparents were Edward IV Plantagenet and Elizabeth Woodville. He had two brothers and three sisters, named Prince of Wales, Edward, Margaret, Mary and Catherine. He died in Palace At Whitehall, London, England. He was buried in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, Windsor, Berkshire, England.General Notes
King of England (1509-47), who presided over the beginning of the English Renaissance and the English Reformation. His six wives were, successively, Catherine of Aragon (the mother of the future queen Mary I), Anne Boleyn (the mother of the future queen Elizabeth I), Jane Seymour (the mother of Henry's successor, Edward VI), Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr.
Accession to the throne.
Henry was the second son of Henry VII, first of the Tudor line, and Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, first king of the short-lived line of York. When his elder brother, Arthur, died in 1502, Henry became the heir to the throne; of all the Tudor monarchs, he alone spent his childhood in calm expectation of the crown, which helped give an assurance of majesty and righteousness to his willful, ebullient character. He excelled in book learning as well as in the physical exercises of an aristocratic society, and, whe n in 1509 he ascended the throne, great things were expected of him. Six feet tall, powerfully built, and a tireless athlete, huntsman, and dancer, he promised England the joys of spring after the long winter of Henry VII's reign.
Henry and his ministers exploited the dislike inspired by his father's energetic pursuit of royal rights by sacrificing, without a thought, some of the unpopular institutions and some of the men that had served his predecessor. Yet the unpopular means for governing the realm soon reappeared because they were necessary. Soon after his accession, Henry married Catherine of Aragon, Arthur's widow, and the attendant lavish entertainments ate into the modest royal reserves.
More serious was Henry's determination to engage in military adventure. Europe was being kept on the boil by rivalries between the French and Spanish kingdoms, mostly over Italian claims; and, against the advice of his older councillors, Henry in 1512 joined his father-in-law, Ferdinand II of Aragon, against France and ostensibly in support of a threatened pope, to whom the devout king for a long time paid almost slavish respect.
Henry himself displayed no military talent, but a real victory was won by the Earl of Surrey at Flodden (1513) against a Scottish invasion. Despite the obvious pointlessness of the fighting, the appear ance of success was popular. Moreover, in Thomas Wolsey, who organized his first campaign in France, Henry discovered his first outstanding minister. By 1515 Wolsey was archbishop of York, lord chancellor of England, and a cardinal of the church; more important, he was the King's good friend, to whom was gladly left the active conduct of affairs. Henry never altogether abandoned the positive tasks of kingship and often interfered in business; though the world might think that England was ruled by the Cardinal, the King himself knew that he possessed perfect control any time he cared to assert it, and Wolsey only rarely mistook the world's opinion for the right one.
Nevertheless, the years from 1515 to 1527 were marked by Wolsey's ascendancy, and his initiatives set the scene. The Cardinal had some occasional ambition for the papal tiara, and this Henry supported; Wolsey at Rome would have been a powerful card in English hands. In fact, there was never any chance of this happening, any more than there was of Henry's election to the imperial crown, briefly mooted in 1519 when the emperor Maximilian I died, to be succeeded by his grandson Charles V. That event altered the European situation. In Charles, the crowns of Spain, Burgundy (with the Netherlands), and Austria were united in an overwhelming complex of power that reduced all the dynasties of Europe, with the exception of France, to an inferior position. From 1521, Henry became an outpost of Charles V's imperial power.
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Ancestor Pedigree Chart
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*There are earlier generations for the ancestor(s) indicated. See their page(s) for details (click name)
- b.~ 1330 d.1367
- b.< 1367 d.> 1402
- b.< 1352
- b.1402 in Snowden, Wales d.2 FEB 1460/61 in Hereford, Herefordshire, England
- b.~ 1380
- b.1430 in Hadham, Bedfordshire, England d.01 Nov 1456 in Carmarthen Castle
- b.21 JAN 1336/37 in Château de Vincennes, Vincennes, France d.16 Sep 1380 in Nogent-sur-Marne, France
- b.03 Dec 1368 in Paris, France d.22 Oct 1422 in Paris, France
- b.3 FEB 1337/38 in Clermont, Bourbon, France d.6 FEB 1377/78 in Vincennes, France
- b.27 Oct 1401 in Hotel St. Pol, Paris, France d.3 JAN 1436/37 in Bermondsey Abbey, England
- b.~ 1337
- b.1370 in Ingolstadt, Bavaria d.24 Sep 1435
- b.28 JAN 1456/57 in Pembroke Castle, England d.05 Apr 1509
- b.24 Jun 1340 in Abbaye de St. Bavon, Ghent, Flandre-Orientale, Belgium d.3 FEB 1397/98 in Leicester Castle, Leicestershire, England
- b.~ 1370 in Beaufort Castle, Anjou, France d.21 Apr 1410 in England
- b.1350 in Picardy, Somme, France d.10 May 1403
- b.25 Mar 1404 in Wimborne, Co Dorset, England d.27 May 1444
- b.~ 1348 in Upholland, Lancastershire, England d.23 Apr 1397 in Abby Bourne, Lincolnshire, England
- b.~ 1375 in Upholland, Lancastershire, England d.30 Dec 1439
- b.~ 1352 in Arundel, Sussex, England d.17 MAR 1414/15
- b.Apr 1441 in Bletso, Bedfordshire, England d.05 Jul 1509 in Westminster Palace, London, England
- b.1363 in Bletsoe, Bedford, England d.03 May 1406
- b.~ 1385 in Bletsoe, Bedford, England d.1412
- b.~ 1363 in Paston, Norfolk, England
- b.~ 1410 in Bletsoe, Bedford, England d.1482
- b.~ 1360 in Upholland, Lancastershire, England d.9 JAN 1398/99 in Pleshey Castle, Essex, England
- b.~ 1390 in Upholland, Lancastershire, England
- b.~ 1365 in Leicester, England d.24 Nov 1425 in Burford, Shropshire, England
- b.28 Jun 1491 in Greeenwich Palace, London, Middlesex, England d.28 JAN 1546/47 in Palace At Whitehall, London, England
- b.05 Jun 1341 in Langley, Hertsfordshire, England d.01 Aug 1402 in King's Langley, Hertsfordshire, England
- b.1375 in Coinsbrough Castle, York, England d.05 Aug 1415 in Beheaded, South Hampton Green, South Hampton, England
- b.1355 in Morales, Toedesollas, Spain d.23 Nov 1392 in Langley, Hertsford, England
- b.21 Sep 1411 in Coinsbrough Castle, York, England d.30 Dec 1460 in Battle of Wakefield, York, England
- b.11 Apr 1374 in Usk, Monmouth, England d.20 Jul 1398 in Kells, Meath, Ireland
- b.27 Dec 1388 in Usk, Monmouth, England
- b.1386 in Upholland, Lancashire, England d.23 Oct 1405
- b.28 Apr 1442 in Rouen, France d.09 Apr 1483 in Westminster, England
- b.~ 1331 in Raby, Durham, England d.17 Oct 1388 in Newcastle-on-Tyne, Northumberland, England
- b.1364 in Raby, Durham, England d.21 Oct 1425 in Raby Castle, Durham, England
- b.1335 in Warkworth Castle, Alnwich, Northumberland, England d.< 1379
- b.03 May 1415 in Raby, Durham, England d.31 May 1495 in Berkhamstead Castle, Hertsfordshire, England
- b.24 Jun 1340 in Abbaye de St. Bavon, Ghent, Flandre-Orientale, Belgium d.3 FEB 1397/98 in Leicester Castle, Leicestershire, England
- b.1379 in Beaufort Castle, Anjou, France d.13 Nov 1440 in Howden, Yorkshire, England
- b.1350 in Picardy, Somme, France d.10 May 1403
- b.11 FEB 1464/65 in Anjou, France
- b.1341 in Grafton Regis, Northamptonshire, England
- b.~ 1385 in Mote, Maidstone, Kent, England d.1442
- b.~ 1345 in Buckinghamshire, England
- b.~ 1405 in Maidstone, Kent, England d.1469 in Executed by King Richard III
- b.~ 1344 in Bedlisgate, Northamptonshire, England d.31 Dec 1388
- b.~ 1385 in Bedlisgate, Northamptonshire, England d.17 Jul 1448
- b.~ 1365 in Wellington, Somerset, England
- b.~ 1435 in Regis, Northampton, England d.08 Jun 1492 in St Saviour's Abbey, Bermondsey, London
- b.1370 in Luxembourg, Belgium d.1397 in Luxembourg, Belgium
- b.1390 in Luxembourg, Belgium d.31 Aug 1433
- b.~ 1372 in Bassily, Hainaut, Belgium
- b.~ 1416 in Luxembourg, Belgium d.30 Apr 1472
- b.1329 in Andria, Italy d.1422
- b.1394 in Luxembourg, Belgium d.1469
- b.1370
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VIII and Catherine of were married in a religious ceremony on June 3rd, 1509. They had two sons and a daughter, named Henry, Henry and Mary.
VIII and Katherine were married in a religious ceremony on August 8th, 1540.
VIII and Katherine were married in a religious ceremony on July 10th, 1543.
VIII and Anne were married in a religious ceremony. They had a son and a daughter, named Henry and I.
VIII and Anne of were married in a religious ceremony.
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