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| OCTOBER, 2008 |
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In 2002 the BBC polled their viewers to determine whom they believed to be the 100 greatest Britons of all time. The British, bless 'em, have a keen sense of history. As you might imagine given the long, nearly continuous monarchy of England, several kings and queens placed high in this ultimate national popularity contest: |
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Queen Elizabeth I
— daughter of King Henry VIII — was the highest ranked monarch,
placing 7th |
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Where’s that most macho and domineering of English monarchs, King Henry VIII, the Tudor terror, he of six wives, various mistresses, a sickly son and two powerful daughters, the man who declared himself God’s intermediary for England and Ireland, who thumbed his nose at the two most powerful men in the world — the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor — who personally led armies to victory against the French and won jousting tournaments in full armor, and, we believe, helped invent the modern world? How ironic that Henry VIII was voted only to #40 in the reader’s poll, behind seven other British sovereigns (or demi-sovereigns) including four women, a commoner and a Welsh rebel. Henry the 8th, massive man with a massive ego, would have been livid! Who was Henry VIII, and why might his legacy not be as revered among his countrymen today as perhaps it once was? |
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Henry VII arranged for Arthur to marry the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, Catherine of Aragon. They married — he was 14, she 15 — in 1501. Their marriage was designed as a political union between Spain and England. At the time Spain — having itself only recently become united by the join monarchy |
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of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile — was a major European power looking to bolster its power base through this alliance by marriage to the future king of England. But Arthur was not a robust teenager, and he caught the sweating sickness (a mystery disease that swept England with four epidemics over fifty years) and died within six months of taking wedding vows. |
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enry had two sisters,
Margaret Tudor,
19 months his elder, and Mary
Tudor,
almost 5 years younger. Because the practice of English royalty was that
a woman could not become sovereign as long as a male heir could be
found, Henry — and
not his older sister Margaret —
replaced his brother as Prince of Wales three months before his
eleventh birthday. The female children of royalty
— in England and Scotland as in Spain
— proved very useful politically
through arranged marriages designed to create alliances. Both of Henry’s
sisters served in this capacity. Margaret became Queen of Scots when she
married
King James IV of Scotland.
Mary Tudor — engaged
at 11 to marry the 5-year-old future
Emperor Charles V of the
Holy Roman Empire
— instead became Queen of France when
she married 52-year-old
King Louis XII
when she was 18. |
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When Catherine swore that her marriage to Arthur had never been consummated, the pope agreed to the annulment, and King Henry VII quickly announced the betrothal of 13-year-old Henry to the 19-year-old widow of his brother. |
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he engagement continued for the next four years. King Henry VII and Ferdinand & Isabella dragged their royal feet: Henry VII delaying paying the required dowry for Catherine of Aragon and the Spanish co-monarchs withholding the delivery of promised gold and silver wedding gifts. Then in April 1509, England’s 52-year-old king suddenly died — some say he had never recovered from the loss of his wife and first-born son — leaving his 17-year-old heir still unmarried and the alliance with Spain uncertain. Teenaged King Henry VIII, sportsman, bon vivant, and learned ecclesiast, found himself catapulted onto the throne facing the same challenges that had consumed his father’s life: consolidating the power of the English monarchy into the Tudor dynasty, establishing England’s secure place among the powers of Europe, and producing a healthy male heir to keep the kingdom united and civil unrest at bay. |
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— END OF PART I — |
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