Henry_8

In 1514, in the parish of Hampton, Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York began building a magnificent palace on the north bank of the River Thames. In 1525 he gave the palace to Henry VIII in a desperate bid to win royal favour, however he continued to live there until 1529 when Henry eventually took possession of the 1000 roomed palace. Henry made many additions to the palace and most of the Tudor parts that remain in modern times were built by him. Henry enlarged and rebuilt his own apartments, parts of the kitchens, the Chapel Royal, replaced most of the Great Hall and added tennis courts. Henry also laid out the overall plan for the gardens at Hampton Court, the basic structure of which is still in evidence today. Henry VIII spent three of his honeymoons there, as did his daughter Mary I when she married Philip of Spain. Henry VIII is one of the best known of English monarchs; mainly because he had six wives but also because of his larger than life character, political demands and his desperate need to produce a healthy male heir. For all his efforts, only three legitimate children survived, just one of which was a boy, Edward. Henry was married to Catherine of Aragon for over 20 years. Catherine was the widow of Henry’s older brother, Arthur. In 1502, Arthur died at the age of 15. His death thrust all his duties upon his younger brother, Henry, who then became Prince of Wales. Henry VII renewed his efforts to seal a marital alliance between England and Spain, by offering his second son in marriage to Prince Arthur's widow, Catherine, the youngest surviving child of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile. For the new Prince of Wales to marry his brother's widow, a dispensation from the Pope was normally required to overrule the impediment of affinity because, as told in the book of Leviticus, "If a brother is to marry the wife of a brother they will remain childless”. Still, both the English and Spanish parties agreed that an additional papal dispensation of affinity would be prudent to remove all doubt regarding the legitimacy of the marriage. Henry became impatient with Catherine's inability to produce the heir he desired. All of Catherine's children died in infancy except their daughter Mary. Henry wanted a male heir to consolidate the power of the Tudor dynasty. Henry’s attempts to have this marriage annulled were refused by the pope, and this is in turn led to the events which caused the Church of England to be created. He divorced Catherine and married Anne Boleyn, daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn and Lady Elizabeth Howard. It is told that Anne was pregnant on the day of her marriage to Henry on the 25th January 1533. Following the birth of Elizabeth, Anne then failed to produce a male heir and accusations of adultery eventually led to her execution for treason on 19th May 1536. One day after Anne's execution in 1536 Henry became engaged to Jane Seymour, one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting to whom the king had been showing favour for some time. They were married 10 days later. Jane gave birth to a son, Prince Edward, the future Edward VI. The birth was difficult and the queen died at Hampton Court Palace on 24 October 1537. Henry then married Anne of Cleves, daughter of the Duke of Cleves. He chose her when he saw a painting of Anne. Very soon after the marriage he was not impressed as the painting had been overly flattering and with their cultural differences were not compatible, the marriage didn’t last. The marriage was annulled on 9th July 1540. On 28 July 1540, Henry married the young Catherine Howard, Anne Boleyn's first cousin and one of her ladies-in-waiting. Catherine was high spirited but by this time Henry was in his late 40’s and had become rather portly. It was at Hampton Court that Henry VIII was told of her infidelities, which would eventually lead to her arrest and execution on February 13th 1542. Henry married his sixth and final wife, the wealthy widow Catherine Parr, in 1543. She argued with Henry over religion; she was a protestant reformer, but Henry remained conservative in his religious views in spite of the reformation of the church that he had begun. This behaviour nearly proved her undoing, but she saved herself by a show of submissiveness and taking on the function of nurse to him and stepmother to his children. She helped reconcile Henry with his two daughters, the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth and in 1544, an Act of Parliament put the daughters back in the line of succession after Edward, Prince of Wales, though they were still deemed illegitimate. In his later years, Henry developed a binge-eating habit, consisting of a diet of mainly fatty red meats and few vegetables. This would have been a contributory factor to the very painful gout that he developed in his legs. Henry's obesity undoubtedly hastened his death at the age of 55, which occurred on 28 January 1547 in the Palace of Whitehall. Henry VIII was buried in St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, next to his wife Jane Seymour, the mother of his only surviving son.  His surviving wife, Catherine married again, this time to Sir Thomas Seymour with whom she had one child. According to legend, it is said that two of Henry’s wives, Jane Seymour and Catherine Howard, haunt Hampton Court Palace to this day.