Certainly true, but one of his biographers has pointed out that depending on the numbers you accept, his overall toll would amount to 2-3% of the English population during his reign ( ~2,800,000 ). Rummel notes that in those last 11 years of his reign, that if you accept his numbers, he was knocking off 560/year, which he compares unfavorably to Paris in the 14th century ( 25/year ) or Brussels over a two century span ( 5/year ).
Now I find Rummel’s comparison in particular a bit weak, as they aren’t comparing like to like. His contemporaries like Charles V and Francis I certainly had plenty of blood on their hands in the latter portions of their reigns in particular, due to their heavy-handed attempts to stem the tide of heresy. Still, the point stands that in retrospect Henry VIII does seem a bit gallows-happy and one curator has pointed out that he probably executed more “prominent” members of his court than any other English monarch. Mass murderer? Well, he didn’t kill them by his own hand ;). But he certainly seems fairly bloody as such things go.
I’ve noticed that the key point here is the moral culpability of Henry VIII in non-religious terms. And yes, that’s important. It’s also significant that Henry was to some extent superstitious – he seriously believed, to the edtent we can establish truth vs. politically expedient claim four centuries later, that Catherine’s multiple stillbirths with Mary as the sole exception, were God’s punishment for his sinfully taking his dead brother’s widow to wife – a violation of canon law from which he had received a Papal dispensation. In a classic case of mixed motives, this scruple went along with his raunch for Anne Boleyn. And of course the Pope was not acting from pure motives of moral theology, either – Catherine’s nephew Charles V had a garrison in Rome and was not at all pleased at the idea that Henry wanted to put away his aunt. So religion, politics, and lust all played a part.
But most importantly, the claim that “Henry VIII founded the Church of England” is one circulated by Catholic polemicists. In practical terms, there was no difference in theology, liturgy, or church polity from the time Henry VII married the heiress of York and the time his son married Catherine Parr – the only distinction was that the Pope no longer had civil authority over English canon-law courts. (This bypasses the closing of the monasteries, which impacted the religious life of the average Englishman not at all.) It was the same church as that in existence under the House of Wessex before the Conquest, the same one as under Henry II, Edward I, and the Houses of Lancaster and York. The theological distinctives evolved as it lurched towards Protestantism, Catholicism, Protestntism, via media, etc., over the ensuing 100 years after Henry VIII’s death – and that did not impact the church polity one iota.
Did he sincerely believe that or was it just an excuse to rid himself of Catherine? He quite clearly married her voluntarily and gladly after Arthur died and his father passed away.
He could have thought something like “My sons by Catherine must have died because I’m being punished for something.” Thinking that you must be being punished for something when bad things happen to you is very common.
Thinking that marrying someone is a good idea at one time, but coming to regret it later, is hardly rare, either.
That’s not true. First of all, the closing the monasteries had a tremendous effect on English religious life, by destroying the English pilgrimage sites that had been the center of public devotion. It also got rid of the mendicant orders, who had provided most of the popular preaching and sermonizing. (It also had a tremendous effect on English social life, as the monasteries had been the main source of poor relief. The high rate of crime and vagrancy that lead to Henry VIII’s crackdown on crime, as referred to in the earlier posts, was due in large part to the dissolution.) And, of course, it wasn’t that “the Pope no longer had civil authority over English canon-law courts.” Canon-law courts no longer existed in England. The ecclesiastical courts became civil courts, and Oxford and Cambridge stopped granting degrees in canon law.
Also, comparing the English church at the time Henry VII married Elizabeth of York to the time Henry VIII married Catherine Parr is misleading. At the time of his marriage to Catherine Parr and his death, Henry VIII and the English church had reverted back to a traditionalist position. If you look at the policies of the English church in the 1530s (the Cromwell years), it was much more Lutheran in orientation, with things like universal bible reading in the vernacular, iconoclasm, etc.
The biggest change that Henry VIII’s break with Rome brought about, and the reason you can say that “Henry VIII founded the Church of England” was that it subordinated the church to the secular state. If there “was no difference in theology, liturgy, or church polity” when Henry VIII married Catherine Parr, it was because Henry wanted it that way, and Henry, because of the break, could change doctrine more or less at will.
In Mary’s defense, she didn’t have such an easy life either – once her father divorced her mother, she was declared a bastard, Ann Bolyn was really your typical wicked stepmother, she wasn’t even allowed to see Catherine, from what I recall.
Then, of course, once she was Queen, she falls in love with Phillip of Spain, who really only married her for dynastic reasons (and let’s face it, Mary wasn’t that much of a looker, at least not in her old age). She has a miscarriage and he sails back to Spain, (I believe he may have returned later once or twice), she hears of his infidelities, etc.
It does seem that after Ann, her other stepmothers were more sympathetic, but really, it must have been a hard blow going from being the apple of her father’s eye to “that little bastard” in such a short time. She was permitted to be her brother’s godmother at least, and she seems to have been close with her siblings to a degree, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be in her place.
No, this isn’t correct. The ecclesiastical courts continued to operate, under the jurisdiction of the two Archbishops. The most important of that jurisdiction outside of true ecclesiastical matters was probate, which continued to be dealt with by the the ecclesiastical courts, commonly called “Doctors Commons”, until the mid-1850, when the secular Court of Probatewas established and the probate jurisdiction taken away from the ecclesiastical courts.
While it’s true that the universities no longer taught canon law, they did continue to teach Roman law, which was the foundation of the law administered by the ecclesiastical courts, as mentioned in the wiki article on Doctors’ Commons.