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Henry VIII

(1491 - 1547)

Henry VIII in 1509 married his dead brother’s wife Catherine of Aragon, whose seven pregnancies failed to produce for him a male heir. In 1533 he annulled the marriage and married Anne Boleyn, dissolving ties with the papacy and becoming the head of the Church of England one year later. Boleyn did not bear an heir either, and so he charged her with treason. His third wife died in childbirth, his fourth was divorced before the marriage was consummated, his fifth was also beheaded for treason and adultery, and his sixth outlived him.

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After the pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, King Henry VIII separated the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s, initiating a series of property seizures that delivered coal-rich church lands in England to gentry who had it mined and sold to consumers in the cities. Over the next two centuries, the English coal-mining industry ballooned in scale; coal replaced wood as the country’s main energy source and fueled its rapid urbanization.

Voices In Time

1528 | London

Royal Ardor

Henry VIII sends a love letter. More

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