Guest Author - Nicola Jane Soen

So was Henry a monster, or was he a Monarch who was desperate for an Heir so the throne stayed in Tudor possession?
Well looking at it critically it appears he was both. To understand Henry, one must understand the age in which he lived and his thinking.
The changes he made were controversial as any made today. He turned England and indeed religion and the place of male leaders in power and spiritual power upside down.

Catholicism was the only real accepted Christianity up till that time. Anything else was heretical and seen as coming directly from Satan himself. Any person who did not line up with catholic belief was severely punished extremely cruelly and often put to death.
Scientists had to be extremely careful as their theories of the universe would condemn them to death very quickly if they did not meet up with catholic explanations of how the universe was.

No one could be buried; married, baptised or any religious ceremony could take place with out a catholic priest. But perversely one could get what one wanted from the Pope including divorce if one paid a high enough price, the church was open to bribes and used legalisation to legislate them. This was the world in which Henry grew up. Nothing that was not blessed by the Pope was holy but sacrilegious and dangerous. Things changed with Martin Luther a German priest who nailed his thesis on the door of the church. Luther did not hold with the catholic beliefs and was bold enough to say so. Many people began to believe him; his way of thinking and the ‘protestant’ movement began. ‘Protesting’ against the catholic regime whose tight legalistic, traditional and fanatical reign was choking the whole of Europe.

Remembering that catholic was legalistic and used loopholes to both make them richer and persecute others who were of different ideas it is no wonder Henry was likeminded. It was a legal principal he found and used when he wanted a divorce. And even that needs analytical thought because women were not regarded in the same way as men in those times, so although Henry DID have a living child she was a girl and for many men, just one child being a woman really did not count for much. A male heir was everything. In Leviticus it says a man shall not marry his brother’s wife, because if he does he shall remain childless. This was the legal principle Henry used to suggest a divorce. This ‘secret matter’ as it became known was on the king’s conscience. And the king’s conscience was dangerously active whenever he wanted something.

Leviticus 20 V 21 “And if a man shall take his brothers wife, it is an unclean thing: he has uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.”

The trouble was the Pope himself, the highest possible spiritual authority in the civilised world had given his blessing to the union, so he was not going to grant Henry a divorce. However again, this is not as it seems because this was not for the reason; that it was spiritually wrong he objected to the divorce. He would have been bought off (as was normal in those times) but because Catherine’s nephew Charles was the most powerful man in Europe, much more powerful than Henry and the Pope could not afford to offend him!

It was here the new thinkers of the Universities, came into importance, seeing the greed and hypocrisy not to mention wealth and power of the Catholic Church they said the Pope was not head, but the king was, so if he was head then he should have spiritual authority to divorce his own wife! And they argued Catholicism was corrupt so it was in everyone’s interest that Henry take his God given place.

Henry unable to bribe the Pope; with Anne refusing to become his mistress but promising him sons if they wed and having convinced himself that he was childless because of sin; began to think of other alternatives than the Popes help. So choosing to believe his daughter did not count; after eight long years of legalistic fighting and going around in circles decided to break with Rome and the Pope. He declared himself head of the church as well as head of his country. He also got all the wealth of the church by the dissolving of the monasteries who he declared were corrupt anyway. So as one can see Henrys conscience, a driving factor in getting him what he wanted as well as his desperation to get a male heir were both to play a huge part in making him the man he was beginning to become.